HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The DEI Rot At UT. “Christopher Rufo has obtained a cache of documents from the University of Texas, and if you’ve wondered how extensive the rot is at UT Austin, wonder no more.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
May 9, 2023
TALES FROM THE SWAMPLAND: Emails Prove Hunter Biden Arranged Meeting Between His Dad and a Client.
SKYNET SMILES: The Air Force is adding AI pilots to 6 F-16s. “The U.S. Air Force has announced plans to equip a small group of F-16 Fighting Falcons with artificial intelligence (AI) pilots, as part of the Project Viper Experimentation and Next-Gen Operations Mode, or VENOM. The news came just about a month after the branch announced an AI-piloted and heavily modified F-16 known as the X-62A successfully flew a variety of air-combat missions over the span of two weeks this past December.”
HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): You Knew This Was Coming: NYC Catholic Church Hosts ‘God Is Trans’ Exhibit.
HUGH HEWITT: Expect An LBJ 1968 Withdrawal From Biden Next Year.
“Gallup came in at 38% approval. So the ABC/Washington Post poll at 36 does not sound like an outlier. You got the money quote. It’s the one I have written down. I have a hell of a lot of wisdom and I know more than the majority of people. That’s not how one runs for the presidency. And I ask myself what does General Secretary Xi, what does Vladimir Putin, what does the Ayatollah Khomeini think about Joe Biden and I think they think he is infirm because that’s what I see and that’s what I hear. And I think the American people coming to the recognition he really can’t do this,” Hewitt said.
“I’m expecting an LBJ ’68 exit sometime next year,” Hewitt said.
“You are?” Baier asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I don’t think can he do it. I don’t think his wife is going to let him do it and his friends certainly should be counseling him not to do it.”
I think Hewitt might be underestimating the callousness of the cabal that installed Biden in the first place, and particularly Jill Biden.
TALES FROM THE SWAMPLAND: Secretary of State Antony Blinken May Face Contempt of Congress Charge.
CUE THE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN: California reparations recommendations have Newsom between rock and hard place.
Newsom has yet to weigh in on the recommendations by California Reparations Task Force, which was created by state legislation he signed in 2020. While the formal recommendations were approved by the task force during a public meeting in Oakland on Saturday, they’ve been working on the plan for more than two years.
Newsom has chosen to remain silent on the issue even though he may soon be forced to choose a side. The task force’s final recommendations will be submitted to the California Legislature, which will then decide whether to implement the measures and send them to Newsom’s desk to be signed into law.
“This has been a fool’s errand from the start,” James Gallagher, California Assembly Republican Leader, told Fox News Digital. “Democrats have promised the world with this reparations task force, and now the massive taxpayer bill is coming due. Newsom has painted himself into a corner, and he’ll have to choose between signing off on a ridiculous policy that will bankrupt the state or admitting once and for all that this task force was nothing more than a political stunt.”
The problem with political stunts is that they sometimes take on a life of their own, particularly when they suit the desires of a vital constituency.
THE BIGGEST SELF-OWN IN CABLE NEWS HISTORY? Tucker Laughs While the Bloodbath Continues at Fox News.
LEFTISM IS A JEALOUS GOD: When Irish mouths are gagged: A new era of secular blasphemy law in Éirinn. “The new bill explicitly reverses the burden of proof in ‘hate speech’ prosecutions. Defendants will be forced to prove their innocence of hatred rather than have the state required to provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s absolutely tyrannical, and one has to wonder how the Irish — who just liberated their country from eight centuries of this kind of tyranny a century ago — could even contemplate returning to an imperial view of speech.”
KEVIN DOWNEY JR GOING WHERE FEW OTHERS DARE: Why Do They Keep Voting for This? Spelunking the Minds of Leftists.
CHANGE: Poland will be wealthier than Britain by 2030 – it’s time we took notice.
After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Poles were the first former Soviet country to restore democracy, free markets and the rule of law. Yet they still had a mountain to climb. In 1989, Polish workers had a GDP per capita that was just a tenth of their German counterparts.
Three decades of steady growth has wrought a miracle. The economic disparities have narrowed dramatically. Adjusted for purchasing parity, GDP per head in Poland is now £28,200 compared with £35,000 in the UK, £34,200 in France and £39,800 in Germany. At its current trajectory rate, Poland will overtake the UK by 2030.
Since the millennium, Poland’s real GDP per capita has more than doubled; by contrast, GDP per capita in Britain, France and Germany grew between 15pc and 24pc over the same period.
The truth is that living standards in places like Warsaw or Wrocław are already comparable to those in Berlin, Paris and London.
Indeed, the quality of life for young families is undoubtedly higher.
Read the whole thing.
Related: Poland Becomes First NATO Country to Send Fighter Jets to Ukraine.
NATO has a defense spending target of 4% of each nation’s GDP. Most spend maybe half that, including Poland until recent years. Right now, Poland is doubling the size of its army to 300,000 men out of a population of 37 million. The German Bundeswehr has fewer than 185,000 active troops and a reserve so tiny it’s barely worthy of the name. That’s despite Germany having more than twice Poland’s population and a higher per capita income.
Germany talks about maybe hitting the 2% target… someday. Currently, Berlin spends an anemic 1.4% of GDP on defense, and they don’t spend it very well. Readiness in the German armed forces is considered virtually nonexistent.
Poland will soon have Europe’s largest tank force (except for Russia), including 1,000 South Korean K2 Black Panthers and 250 American-made M1 Abrams with plenty of upgrades.
Poland is something that so many Western nations (including our own) has forgotten how to be: A serious country. It’s probably going to take losing a major war, national default, or both to remind us how.
KEVIN DOWNEY JR: NYC DA Alvin Bragg Sees His Shadow, Only Days Left Before Riot Season. “As a 20-year denizen of New York City, I can assure you there is nothing more terrifying than a raggedly dressed, aggressive, homeless guy — redolent of human feces — screaming in your face for a ‘donation.'”
GOING GALT, FLORIDA-STYLE: America’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ Moment Has Already Arrived, New IRS Data Show.
New IRS data, however, show the speed with which blue states are losing taxpayers—and their adjusted gross income (AGI)—is increasing. A recent Wall Street Journal analysis found that more than 100,000 people left Illinois in 2021, taking with them some $11 billion in AGI, nearly double its 2019 total. For New York it was $24.5 billion, an increase of more than 150 percent from 2019. California, meanwhile, saw its AGI loss ($29 billion) more than triple since 2019.
That people are migrating from these states is important. But who is migrating is equally important, and the data paint a bleak picture for these states. Taxpayers giving up on the Prairie State and the Empire State made about $35,000 more per year than new arrivals. For Florida, the data are even more stark. The average income for a new arrival to the Sunshine State was roughly $150,000—more than double those leaving.
“In other words, the geese with the golden eggs are flying away,” writes economist Daniel Mitchell, referring to the IRS data.
Meanwhile: California panel approves $800 billion reparations package.
If that goes through, it should do wonders for California’s already-shrinking tax base.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Democrats Are Holding Dress Rehearsals for More ‘Summer of Love’ Riots. “Many expect some sort of trouble in the streets to pop up next year just before the election. But what if they decide that more is better and want to kick things off this year? Maybe just give it a trial run.”
SISTER TOLDJAH: GOP ‘Smart Set’ Hardest Hit After NBC News Report Shatters Perceptions of DeSantis/Disney War.
For instance, GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley all but outright begged Disney during a Fox News interview to come to her home state of South Carolina and bring their “70,000+ jobs,” taking a Trump-like jab at Desantis in the process.
“Hey @Disney, my home state will happily accept your 70,000+ jobs if you want to leave Florida,” she wrote in a tweet that included the video clip. “We’ve got great weather, great people, and it’s always a great day in South Carolina! SC’s not woke, but we’re not sanctimonious about it either.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) also told the network that though the “governmental-type powers” issue was a legitimate one, other aspects of the feud were potentially “problematic” for future business.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) also was critical, suggesting DeSantis try to sit down with Disney instead of fighting this battle in court (though it’s Disney that filed the lawsuit).
Former President Donald Trump, who like Haley is a 2024 presidential candidate, attacked DeSantis over his Disney battle a week prior to the lawsuit being filed, though Trump’s attack was viewed as suspect considering the millions one now-former Disney executive poured into the 2016 and 2020 campaign cycles to help Trump and Trump-affiliated candidates.
So, with the “prevailing wisdom” in mind from these high-profile Republicans that it’s unwise for DeSantis to not back down from Disney, we turn to a new report from NBC News, which surprisingly enough shattered GOP-driven perceptions of how the feud is playing out in the state among Republican voters, strategists, and pollsters.
Details at the link.
Americans generally don’t like bullies and Disney has done an excellent job of making themselves look like just that, while also ruining several franchises — the MCU, Star Wars, their own classic animations “reimagined” as woke live-action features — as a kind of side project.
VIDEO: China’s Slacker City. “Young people [in China] see no hope for their future and choose to lie down. Their motto is no buying a home, no car, no marriage, no baby, no consumption.”
COLORADO: Denver Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca says white-owned businesses should pay reparations. “CdeBaca claimed that the constitutionality of a race-based tax is ‘not a factor’ because the taxes from a business improvement district are ‘voluntary.’”
She’s not very bright or well-informed, even for a politician.
RACING AWAY FROM A COLORBLIND SOCIETY: US Air Force Ran A Social Experiment To Graduate More Minority Pilots. It Didn’t Go As Planned. “As part of the larger military-wide effort to promote diversity in the service’s pilot ranks, the 19th Air Force command near San Antonio, Texas, ‘clustered’ racial minorities and female trainees into one class, dubbed ‘America’s Class,’ to find out if doing so would improve the pilots’ graduation rates. However, not only did the effort fail to boost minority and women candidates’ success rates, but officers involved say they were ordered to engage in potentially unlawful discrimination by excluding white males from the class, documents show.”
IT ISN’T ABOUT “SAVING” THE CLIMATE, IT’S ABOUT GRAFT AND CORRUPTION AND GREASING THE CORRECT PALMS: Without Waterways Biden’s Climate Plan Will Waste Trillions. “With a staggering 15,000+ miles of navigable waterways, it’s critical to note that river barges can carry over ten times the cargo of trucks while producing a mere tenth of the carbon emissions per ton mile. America’s waterways are an untapped goldmine in the fight against climate change. Yet, the Biden Administration has shockingly spent less than 1% of the colossal $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Act on the single most carbon-efficient mode of transportation. This glaring oversight begs the question: is this administration serious about meeting climate goals? Or are there other motivations at play?”
NOT UNTIL AFTER THE ELECTION, JACK: Is Joe Biden Going to Pardon Hunter?