Russia’s Withdrawal From START: Less Than Meets The Eye

February 23rd, 2023

It’s tempting to write up a piece on the one year anniversary of Russia launching its illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine, but the situation right now is largely a static cycle of “Russia grinds out gains near Bakhmut and Vuhledar, followed some time later by Ukraine mostly erasing those gains and inflicting heavy losses on Russian troops.

So let’s talk about Putin’s announcement that Russia is suspending the New START treaty.

Feb 21 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Russia was suspending participation in the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty with the United States, after accusing the West of being directly involved in attempts to strike its strategic air bases.

“I am forced to announce today that Russia is suspending its participation in the strategic offensive arms treaty,” he said.

New START is the successor to START I, signed by Bush41 and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, limiting strategic weapons to 6,000 nuclear warheads and 1,600 ICBMs and nuclear bombers. New START, signed by Obama and Putin, lowered that to 1,550 nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers (800 total for non-deployed). It placed no limits on tactical nuclear weapons.

Should we worry that Putin is about to launch a new nuclear arms race?

I wouldn’t.

One repeated lesson of the Russo-Ukrainian War is that Russian equipment is ill-kept and ill-maintained. If Russia can’t even properly maintain it’s current military infrastructure, how is it going to launch a new nuclear arms race?

The United States is going to spend some $634 billion this decade maintaining its nuclear deterrent. The U.S. spends more money maintaining nuclear weapons in a given year than Russia spends annually on its entire military. Thermonuclear weapons (not fission-only tactical nuclear weapons) require regular Tritium refresh. Fission weapons still require battery and explosive refresh. Where is Russia going to find money to expand it’s nuclear arsenal when it’s going into it’s second year fighting a full-fledged conventional war, for which it’s already expended most of it’s high precision munitions?

Could Russia build more nuclear weapons? Sure. They have a lot of the old Soviet infrastructure left over, known Uranium deposits, and probably some remaining personnel from the Soviet era with the know-how to do so. But what they don’t have is an overabundance of money, with the Russian economy contracting under sanctions, dwindling hard currency reserves and difficulty obtaining high tech components.

The real reason that Putin withdrew from START is that it allows America to carry out regular inspections of Russian infrastructure, and I’m sure they feared America relaying any actionable intelligence from such inspections to Ukraine.

Aside from that, it’s likely this is simple brinkmanship designed to make the world back down from supporting Ukraine, but if Russia does want to expand it’s nuclear arsenal, expect the process to be slow, difficult and underfunded.

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Military | 9 Comments »

2023 Greg Abbott Declares War On 2020 Greg Abbott

February 22nd, 2023

Texas Governor Greg Abbott wants you to know he’s totally opposed to pandemic restrictions.

The most surprising component of Gov. Greg Abbott’s largely unsurprising slate of emergency items this session is a prohibition on COVID-19 restrictions and directives — not because of what the governor hasn’t done, but because of what he did.

During the pandemic’s height, Abbott, like many other GOP governors across the country, issued his own executive orders closing businesses, restricting the ingress and egress of persons, and mandating masks — the lattermost of which was announced only weeks after the office’s official position stated that “no jurisdiction can impose a civil or criminal penalty for failure to wear a face covering.”

A similar instance occurred in 2021 relating to vaccine mandate bans when Abbott’s spokesman stated that “private businesses don’t need government running their business.” A couple of months later, the governor expanded his vaccine mandate ban to include private companies along with governmental entities.

Abbott is now embroiled in a legal fight — to be featured at the Texas Supreme Court this week — with school districts who tried to preserve their own mask mandates well after the state ended its own.

The goalposts of pandemic policy across the country have moved constantly over the last three years, including in Texas — attributable in part to the giant uncertainty about the situation, especially early on. Mixed messages from officials were a common theme in the first few months.

“People didn’t know what we were dealing with with COVID, so there’s some grace that has to be extended,” state Rep. Matt Schaefer (R-Tyler), a frequent critic of the governor’s emergency response, said at The Texan’s 88th Session Kickoff in January. “I think there’s some grace that is extended to our leaders for getting through a chaotic period of time.”

Some grace is fine. After all, Flu Manchu was new and potentially deadly, and no one knew just how deadly at the start. It became evident very early on that Mao Tse Lung was not remotely as deadly as Ebola, yet Abbott still took six weeks of two weeks to bend the curve before he even started lifting the lockdown by a magnanimous 25% (remember the absurdity of tapped over restaurant tables you couldn’t sit at), markedly slower than many other Republican governors. Florida’s Ron DeSantis was notably faster at lifting all his markdown restrictions than Abbott was.

Finally, keep in mind that just renewed his own Flu Manchu disaster declaration February 13th. There’s never been a good explanation of how Flu Manchu lockdown restrictions were compatible with basic constitutional rights. So why has Abbott kept that disaster declaration going years after everyone else has moved on with their life?

The first target of Greg Abbott’s 2023 ire over “COVID-19 restrictions and directives” should be the Greg Abbott of 2020.

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Posted in Regulation, Texas | 9 Comments »

The Republican Andrew Yang?

February 21st, 2023

If I were tracking the 2024 Republican Presidential Primaries the way I tracked the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primaries (I’m not; the Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update was a huge pain in the ass and I don’t have the time to spend on it), Vivek Ramaswamy is exactly the sort of fringe candidate I’d give some time and attention to.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the millionaire entrepreneur and author of Woke, Inc., told National Review on Monday that he is “strongly considering” a run for president and expects to make a decision “very soon.”

Ramaswamy said he’s been drawn to the idea of running to address a “national identity crisis” that has left Americans hungry for purpose, meaning, and identity.

“We are at a point in our national history when the things that used to fill that void — faith, patriotism, hard work, even family — have disappeared,” he said, adding that in its absence, “wokeism, climate-ism as an ideology, radical gender ideology, Covidism” have become secular religions that fill that “black hole of identity.”

Conservatives have gotten too good at pointing out the problem and “trying to stamp out the poison without actually addressing the real problem,” said Ramaswamy, who has been dubbed the “CEO of Anti-Woke Inc.” The solution, he says, is to “fill that identity void with a vision of American national identity that runs so deep, that it dilutes the secular agendas to irrelevance.”

Those such as President Biden who deliver a vision of national unity by beginning in the middle and calling for compromise are doing it wrong, Ramaswamy said. In order to build unity, the country must return to the “extremism of the ideas that set America into motion: free speech, unbridled meritocracy,” he said.

“I think most people believe these ideals and most people think their neighbors and their colleagues believe these ideals to be true as well, but they can’t be sure anymore, because they don’t feel free to talk about it,” he said. “And so that’s been one of the hallmarks for me, is to start talking openly, again, to lead the way by actually doing it.”

Ramaswamy founded biotech company Roivant Sciences in 2014 and served as its CEO until 2021. That year, he published Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, which says that despite “rosy promises of a better, more diverse, environmentally-friendly world,” stakeholder capitalism “robs us of our money, our voice, and our identity.”

In May 2022, Ramaswamy announced the launch of his new financial firm, Strive, which would focus on “excellence capitalism” rather than encouraging American corporations to get involved in social or environmental issues.

The Ohio-based firm was created to solve what it says is a fiduciary problem created by investment companies such as BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, which have used clients’ funds to “exercise decisive influence over nearly every U.S. public company to advance political ideologies that many of their clients disagree with.”

“Over the last two years, I have traveled the country and listened to the concerns of everyday Americans who want to be heard in the places where they shop, work and invest,” Ramaswamy said in a statement at the time. “We want iconic American brands like Disney, Coca-Cola and Exxon, and U.S. tech giants like Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and Google to deliver high-quality products that improve our lives, not controversial political ideologies that divide us. The Big 3 asset managers have fueled this polarizing new trend in corporate America, and that’s why we’re going to compete with them head-on to refocus American companies on the shared pursuit of excellence over politics.”

In September, Ramaswamy published his second book, Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence.

He told National Review on Monday that he has been working to create a space for open conversations about a return to American ideals in recent years.

“I wasn’t free to speak as an elite CEO or the other environments I had been in, but I purposefully stepped aside from my job as a CEO to make this my mission over the last three years, to start talking openly,” he said.

He wants to “revive the American dream in the 21st-century context,” a vision that is of personal importance to Ramaswamy who has “lived the full arc of the American dream” as a first-generation Indian American. Ramaswamy, who attended Harvard for undergrad before attending Yale Law, is the son of a General Electric engineer and a geriatric psychiatrist.

Another box he checks is “Can self-fund,” as he is reportedly worth $500 million. That’s the sort of money that can easily get you to the finish line…in a senate or governor’s race. As Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg proved, spending $50 to $200 million

Is he a better speaker than Steyer or Bloomberg? That’s a pretty low bar, but yes:

That’s the latest video from his YouTube channel. Which, as of this writing, has 44 views.

So you can begin to see the scope of the problem.

Ramaswamy is a guy who might make a serious candidate for a lower-level job, but who wants to run for President as an outsider message candidate. In that sense, he’s a lot like Andrew Yang was for Democrats in 2020. But while Yang’s message was a bit eclectic for Democrats, Ramaswamy’s seems to be a lot closer to the default position for Republicans. It’s hard to see the necessary war against radical social justice being a wedge he can use to calve votes from higher profile and more experienced candidates.

It would be great if there were a Republican candidate in the 2024 Presidential race who was running to destroy wokeness…and who was also a proven elected leader of a large, successful state.

Like, say, Florida.

That’s the sort of candidate a majority of Republicans could get behind…

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Posted in Elections, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court | 6 Comments »

DEI Continues To Infect Flagship Texas Universities

February 20th, 2023

Via Texas Scorecard comes two different stories of how radical racist social justice warrior ideology in the form of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion continues to infect Texas universities.

First up: A University of Texas professor is suing UT officials for violating his First Amendment rights.

In attempts to silence the professor for speaking out on controversial issues, university administration threatened his job, pay, institute affiliation, research opportunities, and academic freedom.

Richard Lowery, Ph.D., a tenured finance professor at University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business, said in the complaint, “The officials at the state’s flagship university violated his constitutional right to criticize government officials.”

In the suit, Lowery claims the university administration “harmed his right to academic freedom.”

Lowery’s suit explains that the First Amendment “protects the right of public university professors to engage their colleagues and administrators in debate and discussion concerning academic matters, including what should be taught and the school’s ideological direction and balance.”

According to the Institute for Free Speech, Professor Lowery is “well known” for his “vigorous commentary on university affairs.” Lowery’s articles have been featured in The Hill, The Texas Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, and The College Fix.

Lowery has also been known to use social media and online opinion articles to “publicly criticize university officials’ actions, and ask elected state-government officials to intervene. He has also used such tools to participate in the sort of academic campus discourse that faculty traditionally pursue.”

In his articles criticizing UT officials, Lowery specifically calls them out for their approaches on issues such as “critical race theory indoctrination, affirmative action, academic freedom, competence-based performance measures, and the future of capitalism.”

On multiple occasions, Lowery reported that university administrators are using diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirements to filter out “competent” teachers and professors who disagree with the DEI ideology prevailing on campus.

In response, Lowery claims university administrators “responded with a campaign to silence” him, where they threatened his job, pay, institute affiliation, research opportunities, academic freedom, and labeled his behavior as inviting violence or lacking in civility.

The suit continues, saying school officials “also allowed, or at least did not retract, a UT employee’s request that police surveil Lowery’s speech, because he might contact politicians or other influential people.”

“Lowery got the message,” the suit says.

In response, the professor is seeking to “vindicate” his right of free speech, asking the court to declare the administration’s actions as unconstitutional and restore his First Amendment rights to speak on matters he was previously prevented from speaking on.

DEI has even infected the university previously considered a bulwark of conservative value, Texas A&M:

Thought of by many Texans as a relatively conservative university, a new report explains how Texas A&M has “gone woke” in recent years.

Scott Yenor, a Boise State professor and fellow at the Claremont Institute, explained during a recent interview on The Luke Macias Show how leftist Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies have seeped into the campus.

DEI programs have come under fire recently for prioritizing factors like race, gender, and sexual orientation over merit in hiring, admission, and curriculum.

“Texas A&M has this reputation as being one of the more conservative public universities. I know a generation ago when someone asked me where I would send my kids to school, I said the best public university in the country is Texas A&M,” said Yenor.

But when Yenor began researching DEI programs in college campuses across the country, he found something troubling in Texas.

The interesting thing about these universities is that they advertise what they’re doing. They have a plan and they’re proud of the plan. And then they go about trying to execute the plan. And Texas A&M announced a very radical diversity plan in 2010 and has been executing it like on steroids the last two years.

Yenor mentioned recent efforts to take down a statue of former Confederate General and Texas Governor Sul Ross from campus. Though that movement was unsuccessful, Yenoer argued bigger factors are at play.

“There were attempts to take down statues and, and, you know, other other ways of affecting the campus climate symbolically. But the more important thing is that there’s been a real, real ratcheting up of their understanding of what they have to do. The 2020 diversity plan really concerns breaking down the systems of oppression in words like ‘merit,’ hiring the best person, and things like that,” said Yenor.

To that end, Yenor pointed out a shocking statistic: Texas A&M University currently has more DEI personnel than the University of Texas at Austin.

“It’s true at A&M that diversity is the new merit,” said Yenor.

Governor Greg Abbott issuing a directive banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory doesn’t seem to discouraged social justice warriors from continuing to radicalize Texas higher education. There needs to be sterner measures, including defunding the DEI bureaucracy, followed by pink slips.

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Posted in Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 2 Comments »

Rifle Bullets vs. Steel At 250,000 FPS

February 19th, 2023

Here’s some spectacular slow motion footage of various rifle calibers hitting a steel plate at 250,000 frames per second. Rounds tested include .223, 5.56 NATO, 300 Blackout, 7.62×39 (the AK-47 round, but out of an AR pattern rifle), 7.62×54 (Mosin–Nagant), .308, and our old friend, .50 BMG.

A few notes:

  • 5.56 NATO seems to pack more punch than 300 Blackout, which is strangely unimpressive.
  • You can actually see the shadow of the shock cone from the 7.62×39, which is pretty cool.
  • The fireball from the Mosin–Nagant is huge!
  • The .50 BMG is shot from a Noreen 50, which I don’t think I’ve seen before (on video or in person).
  • The .50 BMG punches through the ballistic steel plate and destroys the wooden backstop. You can see the shockwave distortion pass in from of the camera.
  • The fireball from the .50 BMG muzzle break is a lot more noticeable at 250,000 fps compared to 33,000 fps.

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    Posted in Guns, video | 5 Comments »

    Tab Clearing Poll

    February 18th, 2023

    Like just about every blogger, I have some half-finished drafts of posts I never finished, many of which I still have Firefox tabs open for. Every now and then I have a hankering to bear down and finish one of them, if only to close a few tabs. So let’s have a poll!

    [ays_poll id=5]

    Let me know what you’re interested in and I’ll make an effort to finish that one. Just don’t expect it immediately…

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    Posted in Austin, Media Watch | 5 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for February 17, 2023

    February 17th, 2023

    Bit of a mini-LinkSwarm this time around, as this was a week that I almost caught up on stuff delayed by the ice storm.
    
    

  • Bidenomics: “Core CPI Rises 32nd Straight Month, Headline Inflation Hotter Than Expected.”
  • “Biden’s job growth is mostly immigrants working for low wages.” Also this: “The Department of Homeland Security has been issuing an unknown number of two-year work permits to illegal immigrants, which will keep them in the workforce suppressing wages and fanning the flames of discontent amongst Americans unable to find jobs until the next presidential election.” What the hell?
  • Auto repos hit new records.
  • California’s income tax revenues decline by 50%. Tax it, and they will leave. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Disinformation Inc: State Department bankrolls group secretly blacklisting conservative media.”

    The Department of State has funded a deep-pocketed “disinformation” tracking group that is secretly blacklisting and trying to defund conservative media, likely costing the news organizations vital advertising dollars, the Washington Examiner can confirm.

    The Global Disinformation Index, a British organization with two affiliated U.S. nonprofit groups, is feeding blacklists to ad companies with the intent of defunding and shutting down websites peddling alleged “disinformation,” the Washington Examiner reported . This same “disinformation” group has received $330,000 from two State Department-backed entities linked to the highest levels of government, raising concerns from First Amendment lawyers and members of Congress.

    “Any outfit like that engaged in censorship shouldn’t have any contact with the government because they’re tainted by association with a group that is doing something fundamentally against American values,” Jeffrey Clark, ex-acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, told the Washington Examiner. “The government or any private entity shouldn’t be involved with this entity that’s engaged in conduct that is either legally questionable or at least morally questionable.”

    GDI compiles a “dynamic exclusion list” that it feeds to corporate entities, such as the Microsoft -owned advertising company Xandr, emails show. Xandr and other companies are, in turn, declining to place ads on websites that GDI flags as peddling disinformation.

    The Washington Examiner revealed on Thursday that it is on this exclusion list. The list includes at least 2,000 websites and has “had a significant impact on the advertising revenue that has gone to those sites,” said GDI’s CEO Clare Melford on a March 2022 podcast.

    GDI has identified that the 10 “riskiest” news outlets for disinformation are the American Spectator, Newsmax, the Federalist, the American Conservative, One America News, the Blaze, the Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, Reason, and the New York Post.

  • Huge earthquake rocks Syria and Turkey. That was less than a week ago and already it’s pretty much out of the news…
  • Another huge story that the news media has done it’s best to ignore: a toxic derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The blew it up to prevent a BLEVE and ended up releasing Phosgene gas. That’s carrying your World War I reenactment too far.
  • 90-year California Democratic Senator old Dianne Feinstein to retire after 2024. But…
  • A few hour later she was evidently unaware she had retired. Increasingly, “crazy” or “senile” seem to be the two most common flavors of the Democratic Party…
  • Texas Governor Greg Abbott announces legislative priorities for the current session.
    1. Cutting Property Taxes
    2. End COVID Restrictions
    3. Education Freedom (School Choice)
    4. School Safety
    5. Ending Revolving-door Bail
    6. Doing More to Secure the Border
    7. Addressing the Fentanyl Crisis

    We’ll see if he follows through.

  • Followup: Transient encampment moved away from Headpsace Salon so they can go destroy someone else’s quality of life instead. (Previously.) (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Dumbass reaches for off-duty cop’s gun, with the expected results. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Inside China’s livestreamer girl factories.
  • Updated contact information for the Austin City Council.
  • Not a Babylon Bee headline: “Catalytic converter stolen from Oscar Mayer Wienermobile in Las Vegas.”
  • I chuckled.
  • Biden Taken To Coroner For Annual Physical.

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Jihad, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 6 Comments »

    Another Reason To Hate Toast Tab

    February 16th, 2023

    I’ve already mentioned how I hate having to order at restaurants using QR codes in general and Toast Tab in particular. Today I found out yet another reason to hate Toast Tab: Al Gore is an investor.

    Toast, the all-in-one restaurant technology platform and one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the U.S., today announced an additional $101 million in financing led by new investors Generation Investment Management and Lead Edge Capital.

    Snip.

    ABOUT GENERATION

    Generation Investment Management LLP is dedicated to long-term investing, integrated sustainability research, and client alignment. It is an independent, private, owner-managed partnership established in 2004 and headquartered in London, with approximately $17 billion in assets under management. Its Chairman is former Vice President of the United States Al Gore and its senior partner is David Blood. Generation Investment Management LLP is authorized and regulated in the United Kingdom by the Financial Conduct Authority.

    Funny how an ex-American Vice President feels a need to run an investment company out of London.

    Also infuriating: Toast currently has a market cap of over $10 billion, despite the fact that it’s still losing money…

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    Posted in Democrats | 3 Comments »

    Would You Believe Austin’s New Interim City Manager Is Soros-Backed DA Jose Garza’s Uncle?

    February 15th, 2023

    As mentioned previously, Austin City Manager Spencer Cronk has been fired.

    he Austin City Council on Wednesday voted to fire City Manager Spencer Cronk following his response to the winter storm earlier this month. The council voted 10-1 in a special called session, with only Natasha Harper-Madison (District 1) voting against Cronk’s firing.

    Natasha Harper-Madison is an ultra-lefty sort, which makes me slightly more assured that firing Cronk was the right move.

    Cronk’s termination is effective Thursday, Feb. 16. He will receive a one-year severance of $463,001.50, under a City ordinance in which he was hired in 2018. The council has appointed Jesus Garza, who served as Austin’s city manager from 1994 to 2002, to serve as interim city manager.

    This is where things get interesting. The city of Austin has an Assistant City Manager, Veronica Briseno. Normal procedure is that the Assistant City Manager takes over as Acting City Manager while a permanent replacement is found. Why was that not done here? Could it have something to do with the fact that current Travis County DA and Soros-backed leftist tool Jose Garza is Jesus Garza’s nephew?

    What are the odds?

    I mean, it’s just plain odd to hire someone who was last city manager 20 years ago. That’s like thinking that M. Night Shyamalan is a sure thing to helm a big budget movie because Signs made a lot of money.

    Something here doesn’t add up…

    (Hat tip: Friend of the blog RoadRich.)

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    Posted in Communism, Democrats, Texas | 2 Comments »

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