KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Good Riddance to the Cheneys and All Their Squishy Ilk. “The Cheneys and all of the other Bush remnants don’t have any principles, they’re simply having a years-long temper tantrum because they know that their once-special place in Grand Old Party no longer exists. If the party ever does return to something that is acceptable to the mentally unwell Never Trump crowd, the country probably won’t see another Republican president.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
September 10, 2024
CHANGE (IT BACK): Company plans to track workers’ locations in return-to-office crackdown.
One of the world’s biggest consulting and accounting firms plans to monitor its employees’ locations to ensure compliance with a stricter return-to-office policy set to take effect next year.
PricewaterhouseCoopers, known as PwC, announced that its U.K. branch is “placing more emphasis on in-person working.” It initiated a new policy that requires staff to spend at least three days a week, or 60% of their time, in the office or with clients. That’s up from the previously mandated two to three days in the office or with clients, according to the firm.
In an internal email, staffers were told that the company would be sharing their location data with them on a monthly basis, a PwC spokesperson told FOX Business.
What the story doesn’t reveal is how PwC will gather location data.
ROBERT SPENCER: Oh, the Ingratitude! ISIS Plots to Murder Pope Francis. “Those who were plotting to kill the pope, however, don’t seem to have been all that bright.”
THE CHINA SYNDROME: China’s Deflationary Spiral Is Now Entering Dangerous New Stage.
Deflation stalking China since last year is now showing signs of spiraling, threatening to worsen the outlook for the world’s second-largest economy and raising calls for immediate policy action.
Data released Monday confirmed that apart from food costs, consumer price growth barely registered in large swathes of the economy at a time when incomes are sagging.
A broader measure of economy-wide prices known as the gross domestic product deflator will likely extend its current five-quarter drop into 2025, according to Bloomberg Economics and analysts at banks including BNP Paribas SA. That would amount to China’s longest streak of deflation since data began in 1993.
“We are definitely in deflation and probably going through the second stage of deflation,” said Robin Xing, chief China economist at Morgan Stanley, citing evidence from wage decreases. “Experience from Japan suggests that the longer deflation drags on, the more stimulus China will eventually need to break the debt-deflation challenge.”
The danger for China is deflation could snowball by encouraging households reeling from falling paychecks to cut back on spending, or delay purchases because they expect prices to fall further. Corporate revenues will suffer, stifling investment and leading to further salary cuts and layoffs, bankrupting families and firms.
So far, Beijing has been trying to export their problem — literally — by flooding global markets with even cheaper goods. But there are limits, economically and politically, to how much of that other countries will absorb.
Xi Jinping can either loosen controls or prepare for a Japan-style “lost decade.”
DON’T. GET. COCKY. Wargaming the Electoral College: This Pollster Just Said Landslide.
September 9, 2024
DON’T GET COCKY: Wargaming the Electoral College: This Pollster Just Said Landslide.
SERIOUSLY, DON’T GET COCKY: Even CNN Is Panicking About About Kamala’s Slide in the Polls.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China to test lunar-soil bricks in space to pave the way for its planned moon base.
Samples of bricks made of varying compositions from lunar soil simulant will be launched to the Tiangong space station aboard the upcoming Tianzhou 8 cargo mission, according to a report from Chinese state media CCTV.
The bricks will be subjected to three years of exposure tests in space. They will be bombarded by ultraviolet light and cosmic rays and subjected to temperature differences. This will test the strength and durability of bricks in extreme environments and how the materials behave in the vacuum of space.
The experiment is designed to give insight into which composition and which methods of producing bricks from lunar soil will be most suitable for building structures on the moon.
China is not messing around with landing — and staying — on the moon.
EDIT: I’d left the “not” out originally. Sorry for the confusion!
IF NOTHING ELSE, WATCHING DEMS DO AN INSTANT 180 FROM “DARTH CHENEY” TO “HE’S OUR GUY” HAS BEEN ENTERTAINING: Why Dick Cheney’s Endorsement of Kamala Is Utterly Worthless.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. A Harris Victory in 2024 Makes the U.S. a One-Party State.
In the wake of her 2024 election, Harris, by her own words, is certain to take the following actions in pursuit of the agenda of the one-party government.
Harris will target the Supreme Court, as that is the most potent source of resistance to Democratic rule. To defeat the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the Harris administration will push to pack the Court so that it may nominate justices who support judicial activism and oppose originalism—that the constitution, or subsequent laws, be interpreted by their original meanings. A Harris administration that packed the Court, with new Justices confirmed by a Democratic-controlled Senate, would usher in the one-party state that would never give up power.
Additionally, a Harris administration would seek to add states to the Electoral College. Specifically, the Harris administration supports the push to add the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as states, adding four Senators and at least two Representatives to the House of Representatives. The addition of these states to the Union would give the Democrat Party permanent control over the presidency. Again, another example of a one-party state, something that is anathema to freedom and liberty and has always resulted in death and destruction to the citizens of the people of other countries.
Given the decisions by the Biden-Harris administration to open America’s border, illegal immigration will continue and be accelerated.
Read the whole thing.
KDJ: This Is Why Your Blue-Haired Harpy-in-Law Is a Raging Marxist. “The key to survival in college for white students is to denounce themselves and hate other white people who do not ascribe to Marxist values. They must submit fully to commie indoctrination. There is no diversity of thought.”
WE HAVE AN INCREASINGLY HOLLOW MILITARY AND ZERO LEADERSHIP. THAT’S NO WAY TO KEEP THE PEACE:
With Biden's incredible weakness in forbidding Ukraine from fighting back, Iran realizes they don't even need to lie anymore.
What's the US going to do?
For enemies of America, it's a golden era. pic.twitter.com/680bKTUFeB
— Jay in Kyiv (@JayinKyiv) September 8, 2024
WELL, AT LEAST SHE FINALLY HAS A POLICY PAGE: Kamala’s New Policy Page Reveals What She’ll Do With Illegals She Let Into the U.S.
PRIORITIES: Nation With Lowest Birthrate Is Rocked by Soaring Sales of Dog Strollers.
A global discourse has emerged, including in the U.S., about childlessness and the reluctance to bear offspring. But the hand-wringing might be at its fiercest in South Korea, home to the wealthy world’s lowest birthrate, as well as another distinction that has fur flying: the skyrocketing sales of dog strollers, which last year outpaced those of baby strollers for the first time, according to Gmarket, one of South Korea’s largest online retailers. The trend held true for the first six months of this year, too.
They are so ubiquitous a national broadcaster in January aired a segment titled: “‘Am I the Only One Annoyed By This?’ A Heated Debate Over Dog Strollers.”
In many advanced economies, including the U.S., adults treat their pets like pampered children, with fancy birthday parties, decked-out doggy mansions, private-plane travel and rides in dog strollers.
But pet parents have South Korean officials howling.
The country is confronting a national fertility rate of 0.72—or a mere third of the level needed to maintain the population. At a youth roundtable last year, Kim Moon-soo, the country’s now labor minister, scolded the fresh-faced attendees: “What I worry about is young people not loving each other,” Kim said. “Instead, they love their dogs and carry them around, they don’t get married, and they don’t have children.”
Dogs are great — I have three. It’s interesting that a society that’s basically stopped having kids has started treating dogs as substitute children.
But they aren’t children, shouldn’t be used as substitutes for children, and most importantly, won’t take care of people when they get too old to care for themselves.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Elon Musk Set a Timeline for Landing on Mars and I’m Slack-Jawed.
COLORADO: More On Venezuelan Gangs.
“The report recounts that this summer, the gang approached the property manager and told him they would help him out in exchange for half of all the rent that he collected.”
“The gang members then allegedly took over vacant apartments, and according to the document, moved families into those units and started collecting rent.”
The gang obviously didn’t fear property management or the police.
Much more at the link.
THAT DOES NOT MAKE ME FEEL THE JOY: Vote for Kamala Harris, You Sexist Pig.
NO. NEXT QUESTION? Will Kamala Build a Wall? Most Voters Doubt It. “Axios reported last week that Harris promised to “spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the wall along the southern border — a project she once opposed and called ‘un-American’ during the Trump administration.” Twenty-eight percent (28%) of voters believe it’s likely that, if elected president, Harris would actually build the border wall, including 11% who say it’s Very Likely. However, 64% don’t consider it likely Harris would actually build the border wall, including 41% who think it’s Not At All Likely.”
THE BEEB: BBC breaches its own editorial guidelines 1,500 times over Israel-Hamas war.
The research analyzed four months of the BBC’s output across television, radio, online news, podcasts, and social media. Additionally, a team of around 20 lawyers and 20 data scientists contributed to the research and analyzed nine million words of BBC output using artificial intelligence (AI), The Telegraph added.
The research found that there was a “deeply worrying pattern of bias against Israel” and that Israel was associated with genocide 14 times more than the Hamas terror group was throughout the analyzed BBC coverage.
The total number of BBC editorial breaches, including impartiality, accuracy, editorial values, and public interest, was 1,553.
Further findings from the research included the BBC’s repeated downplaying of Hamas terrorism. Conversely, Israel was presented as a “militaristic and aggressive nation” by the BBC, the report said.
When 1,500 mistakes all run in the same direction, they aren’t mistakes.
HOWEVER MUCH YOU DESPISE THE MEDIA, IT IS NOT ENOUGH:
Republican: I have oppo that can make or break this race.
Reporter: Ehhhhh. Let me see. Feels like a stretch. Need to talk to my editor, my dog. Get back to you in a few days.Dem: I need—
Reporter: Say no more https://t.co/SKxyv8sEF5— Alex Wilkes (@AlexandraWilkes) September 8, 2024
Biden got away with running a basement campaign because the press let him. The only difference between now and 2020 is that Harris’s basement campaign is only in the metaphorical basement.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: There Are Three Kinds of Lies — Lies, Damned Lies, and Political Polls. “Oddly, many of the people I know who don’t trust anything about our elections are still clinging to the polls. I’ve been bumping into a lot of them lately. The disconnect is understandable, though. Adrift on a sea of uncertainty, we need to cling to something to keep ourselves from drowning. Good news in the polls can feel like a life preserver while we’re waiting for the election.”
CRISIS BY DESIGN: Costa Rica Heightens Alert for Terror Suspects Among Migrants.
Panamanian authorities have reported that members of Hezbollah, one of the most influential paramilitary groups in the Middle East, have been detected crossing the Darién jungle. Authorities also noted that these individuals are linked to groups involved in migrant smuggling.
Costa Rica’s Minister of Security, Mario Zamora, explained that the recent rise in migration has heightened alerts for individuals connected to terrorism. However, no direct cases involving Hezbollah have been reported in Costa Rica so far.
Other cases of individuals with links to terrorism, however, have been recorded. “Costa Rica has detained three individuals with international terrorism alerts: two Somalis linked to a little-known group and an Egyptian connected to Al Qaeda. Currently, we have a person from Kazakhstan, linked to ISIS, in custody. This migratory flow has brought individuals with a history of terrorism,” Zamora stated.
More:
It's too little too late. Of the ~9 million who entered the USA illegally under the Biden admin, if a meager 0.1 % are terrorists, there are 9,000 in country.
— Mist – Free speech 🥩 🥚 (@Mist671) September 8, 2024
Even a tenth that many could do something truly horrifying.