It’s a Freaking Winter Wonderland in Austin This Morning

February 15th, 2021

7°F and a good four inches of snow on the ground (which probably feels like a foot to us).

There’s an official disaster declaration and the city has pretty much shut down:

The University of Texas at Austin is closed through 8 a.m. Wednesday.

Austin Energy is performing rolling blackouts to conserve power. The electricity provider, which has more than 500,000 customers, instituted the measure as a “last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole,” the city said in a statement. The outages typically last 10 to 40 minutes but were lasting longer than expected as of early morning Dec. 15, Austin Energy tweeted. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has asked utilities around the state to use rotating outages to lessen the strain on the state’s power grid.

Many flights are canceled. Austin-Bergstrom International Airport officials urged travelers to confirm their flight status if flying in the next 48 hours. The airport also announced that Security Checkpoint 1 is closed and all passengers will be screened through Security Checkpoint 2. According to FlightAware, 138 flights into or out of ABIA had been canceled as of 8 a.m. Feb. 15. In addition, many roads around the airport have been closed because of ice.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the Texas Interconnect Grid, reports that the grid is near capacity and rolling blackouts may last some time. My power hasn’t gone out here since it was restored Friday morning.

You don’t even need to tell Austin drivers to stay out of this stuff. If you look at the traffic cams, the roads are empty.

Yesterday HEB reported that it was running out of items and closing early, and even if it’s open today, it’s on a reduced schedule. The local HEB phone number just rings, so I wouldn’t count on any of them being open.

I imagine that almost all restaurants are closed (here’s an outdated list). No answer at the Jim’s and Denny’s locations I called. I even tried calling all three local Waffle Houses to see if any were open, and all three calls went to voicemail.

Truly the end times are upon us.

I’ll give you more first hand info when I walk the dogs later.

Stay warm…

Update: There are reportedly almost 2 million people without power across Texas this morning.

Update 2: A whole lot of power outages all across Austin. This isn’t an outage map, it’s a bad Picasso painting:

Update 3: Firefighters close East Parmer at Dessau due to too many stuck vehicles. (Hat tip: johnnyk20001.)

Update 4: No Capital metro today.

Update 5: It’s not just Austin. Houston-area households are suffering from a huge number of power outages.

Update 6: A commenter asked about Dallas, so here’s Oncor’s outage map. But it’s even less useful than the Houston or Austin maps…

Update 7: 4.4 million without power?

Update 8: Pflugerville is under a boil water notice:

Update 9: Lists of which Austin restaurants are open or closed.

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Posted in Austin, Texas | 3 Comments »

Tank News Roundup for February 14, 2021

February 14th, 2021

A few bits of tank-related news have been caught in the hopper, so let’s do a quick roundup:

  • The M1A2 Abrams gets a new tank round:

    The US Army’s main battle tank, the M1 Abrams, is about to receive a new multipurpose super tank round that can breach concrete walls, pulverize obstacles, and destroy bunkers, according to Forbes.

    The Advanced Multi-Purpose, or AMP, is specially designed for the M1 Abrams to replace the rapidly aging inventory of tank munitions.

    The new round is long overdue as tank crews on the modern battlefields in the Middle East have been confronted by new evolving threats.

    Unlike the M829 depleted uranium round, which can punch through almost anything – it tends to have difficulties blowing up vehicles or houses, as it just zips right through those types of targets. The new AMP can destroy everything the M829 cannot.

    Well, duh. The M829 is an APFSDS round, a kinetic kill anti-tank munition that does its damage via spawling and hydrodynamic shock effects. It’s not designed to breach buildings. For that you’d probably fire a M830A1 HEAT round. But that too is designed for maximum effect vs. armor rather than concrete.

    “The AMP adds an important new capability. The existing canister round is only for short-range use with a maximum reach of about 500 meters. This makes it useless for dealing with one of the biggest threats to tanks, infantry equipped with anti-tank guided missiles like the Russian-made AT-14 Kornet, used in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. When used in airburst mode, the AMP can target groups of personnel at ranges of up to 2,000 meters: even if it does not disable a missile team, the round is likely to distract them enough so that they are not able to keep a missile on course.”

    Another important new capability is breaching walls. Currently, making a breach an infantry assault requires engineers to get next to the wall and emplace explosives. Three rounds of AMP will create a thirty-by-fifty-inch hole clean through a double-thickness reinforced concrete wall, big enough for troops to advance through. This includes cutting through the steel reinforcement bars, and breaching can be carried out from several hundred meters away,” said Forbes.

    Forbes described the new round has “three different fusing options” for blowing up different targets.

    “With Point Detonation, the round explodes on contact with the target — this mode will make it effective against targets like light armored vehicles. Set to Point Detonation-Delay, the round does not explode immediately on contact – this is the mode used against obstacles and bunkers, as it gives enough time to penetrate deeply into concrete or other material before exploding. In the Airburst mode, the round explodes at a pre-set height above the ground, spraying the area below with tungsten shrapnel – this is the antipersonnel mode,” said Forbes.

    Here’s video of it in action:

  • China has deployed a new light tank:

    On Jan. 30, China North Industries Group Corporation announced on state-owned television that Type 15 (also known as ZTQ-15) lightweight battle tank entered service with the Xinjiang Military Command of the People’s Liberation Army Ground Force (PLAGF).

    China Central Television (CCTV) said an undisclosed number of Type 15s were delivered to a PLAGF regiment in Xinjiang. CCTV broadcaster said it was “the first lightweight tank to join the military command.”

    The Xinjiang mention is interesting. I’ve long wondered if China’s brutal treatment of the Uighers would provoke an indigenous revolt. Maybe it already has?

    The broadcaster said the Type 15s are outfitted with special oxygen equipment to allow the tanks to operate at high altitudes.

    Janes said no confirmation on how many Type 15s were deployed, but it appears these new tanks will significantly increase PLAGF’s combat capabilities in the region.

    The Type 15 was announced in 2018, but now they’re making it out into the field. It evidently has a 105mm rifled main gun.

  • The U.S. is also testing two light tank prototypes:

    The Army recently started its light tank prototype assessment, according to Jane’s. Part of the vehicle assessment phase will rely on solider input, and tanker crews will be able to put the MPF prototypes through their paces themselves, as well as contribute feedback in order to improve platform characteristics.

    The Army is specific in what it wants the Mobile Protected Firepower vehicle to accomplish, specifying that the MPF must be able to “neutralize enemy prepared positions and bunkers and defeat heavy machine guns and armored vehicle threats during offensive operations or when conducting defensive operations against attacking enemies.”

    Though the Army’s light tank project would be a radical departure from steadily increasing main battle tank weight, it would not be the first time Army leadership opted for a smaller, more mobile armored platform. In the mid-1960s and early 1970s, the United States developed the M551 Sheridan light tank, a dedicated armored reconnaissance/airborne assault vehicle.

    Snip.

    Two companies have submitted prototypes to the Army: BAE Systems, and General Dynamics Land Systems division.

    BAE Systems has the advantage of drawing upon and updating their M8 Armored Gun System, a mid-1990s project that attempted to serve as an air-mobile light tank for American airborne troops. BAE’s bid appears to carry over some features of the M8 project, including a 105mm main gun, possibly with an autoloader, and with more modern armor features that the company claims offers equal protection as their “highly survivable” Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle.

    On the other hand, General Dynamics benefits from extensive tank design and manufacture experience, as the company builds the venerable M1 Abrams main battle tank. Their bid is based on GD’s AJAX armored fighting vehicle and features a modified version of the Abrams turret. This could indicate a desire to retain the Abrams’ larger 120mm main gun, despite housing it on the smaller MPF platform. Lastly, GD claims that their light tank would benefit from a high-performance diesel engine that would afford a high power to weight ratio.

    The return of the light tank is an interesting development, since most nations have opted for infantry fighting vehicles (remember, Bradleys were able to take out T-72s in Desert Storm) or wheeled combat vehicles like the Stryker or Mowag Piranha for similar roles. But if you were looking for a good use case for light tanks, a guerilla war in Xinjiang or the Chinese-Indian border probably fits the bill.

  • Speaking of which, China and India have evidently agreed to pull their troops back from the disputed border region. (Previously.)
  • Speaking of India, the MK-1A Arjun Main Battle Tank just entered service:

    Prime Minister Narendra Modi Sunday handed over the indigenously developed Arjun Main Battle Tank (MK-1A) to the Indian Army at a ceremony in Chennai. The army will get 118 units of the Main Battle Tank, indigenously designed, developed and manufactured by CVRDE and DRDO along with 15 academic institutions, eight labs and several MSMEs.

    The Arjun Main Battle Tank project was initiated by DRDO in 1972 with the Combat Vehicles Research and Development Establishment (CVRDE) as its lead laboratory. The objective was to create a “state-of-the-art tank with superior fire power, high mobility, and excellent protection”. During the development, the CVRDE achieved breakthroughs in the engine, transmission, hydropneumatic suspension, hull and turret as well as the gun control system. Mass production began in 1996 at the Indian Ordnance Factory’s production facility in Avadi, Tamil Nadu.

    The Arjun tanks stand out for their ‘Fin Stabilised Armour Piercing Discarding Sabot (FSAPDS)’ ammunition and 120-mm calibre rifled gun. It also has a computer-controlled integrated fire control system with stabilised sighting that works in all lighting conditions. The secondary weapons include a co-axial 7.62-mm machine gun for anti-personnel and a 12.7-mm machine gun for anti-aircraft and ground targets.

    The MK-1A is about ten tons heavier than its predecessor, which probably indicates upgraded Kanchan composite armor, the exact thickness of which seems to be classified. It also appears to have some new sloped armor panels (possibly reactive) to the front of the turret:

    Which is probably a good thing, since its predecessor had a really boxy turret:

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Military, video | No Comments »

    Zer0

    February 13th, 2021

    The estimated Austin low temperature for Monday, February 15, is now 0°F:

    One good thing about Thursday’s ice storm is that maybe it snapped all the power lines its going to snap, and hopefully everyone will have power for the great temperature plunge. It will definitely be the coldest day I’ve experienced, even colder than two winter weeks I spent in Stavanger, Norway for a job.

    Really, if you live in central Texas stay the hell off the roads Monday if at all possible. Call in sick or use a vacation day. Drip your interior faucets to keep the pipes in your attic from freezing.

    Despite all this, I’ll still have to take the dogs out for a couple of walks, brief though they’ll be. I plan on having 4-5 layers of clothing on my torso. I’m thinking of crafting a makeshift scarf from an old shirt (since I own no scarves). I think the previous record for walking my dog was 17°F. I found it unpleasant, but my dog loved it.

    I know there’s very little that’s quite as exciting as blogging the weather, but it’s really occupying my attention.

    Now some thematic Smashing Pumpkins:

    (Now I’ve wasted entirely too much time trying to figure out who the bassist in that video is. She looks entirely too healthy to be D’arcy Wretzky…)

    Maybe they’ll revise the forecast up to 1°F tomorrow and I can share some U2…

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    Posted in Austin, Texas, video | 4 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for February 12, 2021

    February 12th, 2021

    Greetings, and welcome to a Friday LinkSwarm! Bad weather and bad driving are themes, as the ice storm mentioned yesterday already slammed Texas hard. I was without power for over 10 hours last night and this morning, and every tree is heavy with frost.

    

  • Hit black ice at 95/They said I’m lucky to be alive…

  • Seriously, try to avoid driving on ice if it’s even remotely possible:

  • Bad news for law-abiding Austinites: Police Chief Brian Manley is retiring after 30 years on the force. I’m sure the City Council is eager to replace him with some social justice warrior approved tool. On the other hand, if he wants to run for mayor…
  • How crazy leftwing do you have to be for the French to call you lunatics?

    The threat is said to be existential. It fuels secessionism. Gnaws at national unity. Abets Islamism. Attacks France’s intellectual and cultural heritage.

    The threat? “Certain social science theories entirely imported from the United States,’’ said President Emmanuel Macron.

    French politicians, high-profile intellectuals and journalists are warning that progressive American ideas — specifically on race, gender, post-colonialism — are undermining their society. “There’s a battle to wage against an intellectual matrix from American universities,’’ warned Mr. Macron’s education minister.

    Emboldened by these comments, prominent intellectuals have banded together against what they regard as contamination by the out-of-control woke leftism of American campuses and its attendant cancel culture.

    You can ding France (and French intellectuals) for a lot of sins, but “insufficient appreciation of western civilization and culture” is not one of them.

  • The bloom was off the Andrew Cuomo rose for anyone who had eyes to see last year, but now even the Democratic Media Complex is is being forced to admit what a giant pile of manure he is:

    America’s worst governor probably never thought he would miss America’s most obnoxious president.

    But that is the situation that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo likely finds himself in now that Donald Trump is no longer around to take all the heat for mismanaging the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, now that the man who commanded nearly every minute of the media’s attention has shuffled off to Florida following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Cuomo is at long last experiencing widespread criticism and scrutiny in the press for his grossly incompetent handling of the COVID-19 outbreak in the Empire State.

    The New York Times, for example, took the governor to task after he announced that indoor dining in the state can resume as soon as Feb. 14, arguing that the flip-flop makes no sense based on the available data and his past diktats. “Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York said on Friday that New York City could reopen indoor dining on Feb. 14,” the newspaper notes. “But by nearly every measure, the coronavirus outbreak in the city is worse than it was when he announced a ban on indoor dining in December.”

    The New York Times adds, “As the governor spoke on Friday, citing the ‘current trajectory’ of cases as his reasoning for reopening, average per-capita case counts in New York City were 64% higher than when he announced the ban in December.” The paper even published an article titled “N.Y.C.’s Covid Metrics Are Dire. Cuomo Is Reopening Restaurants Anyway,” laying into the governor for his about-face on indoor dining.

    Elsewhere, Cuomo is weathering blistering criticism over news reports that his administration dramatically undercounted the number of deaths connected to his order last year forcing infectious coronavirus patients into long-term care facilities. Criticism so bad, in fact, that the governor actually declined an invitation to appear on CNN, which has done more than any news network to boost his image amid the pandemic.

    The bad press, by the way, appears to be having an adverse effect on the governor, whose increasingly frenetic decrees suggest a man who is spiraling. Recall that Cuomo claimed recently that the effort to vaccinate restaurant workers was a “cheap, insincere discussion.” Now, he has expanded vaccine eligibility in New York to include — you guessed it — restaurant workers. It’s almost as if he has no idea what he is doing.

    Then, there is the sudden bout of unflattering news reports regarding the growing number of high-level resignations by New York health officials, including nine top state executives who have stepped down since last summer. Cuomo is also suffering embarrassing news coverage for his recent statement in response to the reports that his administration undercounted nursing home deaths: “But who cares? … Died in a hospital. Died in a nursing home. They died.” Add to it all the fact that the governor is catching heat for saying that he doesn’t trust health experts, and it seems clear we are witnessing the end of the love affair between the news media and the man who won an Emmy recently for his supposedly savvy COVID-19 management.

    It is good that the news industry as a whole is finally scrutinizing the Cuomo administration for its ineptitude, but where was this critical look last year? It’s not as if Cuomo flipped a switch. He didn’t become an incompetent, callous, flailing bureaucrat overnight. This is who he is. This is how he has behaved for the entirety of the pandemic. Many newsrooms either did not notice or did not care. After all, there was a bad man in the White House.

    The Cuomo who is getting badly beaten up today in the press is the same Cuomo who in April 2020 said glibly of out-of-work, anti-lockdown protesters that if they want to provide for themselves and their families, they should “take a job as an essential worker.”

    This is the same man who targeted the state’s Jewish communities over social distancing violations, all while giving a free pass to the thousands of anti-police demonstrators and other political activists who clogged New York’s streets last year, gathering cheek to cheek in both protest and celebration. At a press conference in October of last year, Cuomo even dredged up a 14-year-old photo showing Jewish mourners gathered to mark the death of Rabbi Moses Teitelbaum, claiming falsely that it was proof of those people’s refusal to follow his COVID-19 restrictions.

    This is the same man whose administration flip-flopped constantly on the timeline for when COVID-19-positive front-line workers should return to work.

    This is the same man who, during a press conference in September, attempted to absolve himself of responsibility for his state’s deadly mismanagement of the coronavirus by claiming, “Donald Trump caused the COVID outbreak in New York. That is a fact. It’s a fact that he admitted and the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] admitted and [Dr. Anthony Fauci] admitted.” No one “admitted” any such thing.

    Cuomo actually wrote an entire book praising his response to the pandemic. He even hawked a stupid poster boasting of New York’s alleged victory over the outbreak. The poster, which bears more captions than a Herblock cartoon, is careful to highlight infection increases in Arizona, Texas, and Florida. Because nothing says responsible, caring leadership quite like cheering case increases in fellow states, which, by the way, likely got the virus from New York.

    Yet, amid all of these missteps, many in the press claimed last year that New York’s governor led one of the best, if not the best, coronavirus responses in the country. The way certain journalists and commentators told it, Cuomo’s wisdom and steady hand safely guided the state through one of the most dangerous and deadly episodes in its history.

  • “Cuomo aide admits they hid nursing home data so feds wouldn’t find out.” I strongly suspect that falsifying data reported to the federal government for federal grant programs is a felony…
  • Speaking of coronavirus, previous timelines had pegged “Patient Zero” as being infected in November of 2019, but new evidence suggests the first cases showed up October 2019. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Let them have their Impeachment 2: Electric Boogaloo. It won’t result in a conviction. It won’t affect Donald Trump’s standing with his supporters or his detractors. But it will delay the Senate from action on Joe Xiden’s initial legislative goals and confirmation of His Fraudulency’s nominees.”
  • More on the same subject:

    Democrats may end up paying a higher political price than they anticipate. The trial won’t only delay Mr. Biden’s program. It will tarnish his image as a “unifier” eager to work across party lines. That identity will be much harder to sustain after Democratic senators vote in lockstep to convict Mr. Trump and push through a mammoth Covid relief bill without any Republican votes.

    I see they misspelled “trillions in pork graft for politically connected cronies” as “Covid relief.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “14 State Attorney Generals Tell Biden They’re Reviewing Legal Options Regarding Keystone XL.”
  • Texas intermediate crude is now up above pre-coronavirus drop levels.
  • The Social Justice Warrior Thunderdome at The New York Times has reached the point where you get fired for using the N-word in the process of talking about the N-word.
  • Related: “New York Times Has Used the N-Word 6,481 Times.”
  • Teen Vogue publisher Conde Nast can’t pay its rent. Oh no! Where else will teenage girls be encouraged to try anal sex?
  • More on the great ammo shortage:

    During a media presentation at Virtual SHOT Show 2021, Winchester said that if they stopped taking orders for .22 LR right now, it would take 2 years to fill all the back-orders. In December, the Vista family of companies, which comprises Federal, CCI, Speer, and Remington, announced they had a $1 billion backlog in orders. In the first 3 months of the COVID-19 lockdown, Winchester experienced a 17-percent surge in orders, which hasn’t tapered off.

  • Superbowl ratings show it was the leas watched since 2006. How is that wokeness working out for you, NFL? (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • How painfully ignorant of literature do you have to be to not recognize the tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow soliloquy from Macbeth? Evidently Andrea Mitchell ignorant…
  • Rancher believes Biden wants to hurt border security to undo President Trump’s legacy. True, but incomplete. The entire Democratic Party sees every illegal alien as a potential Democrat voter.
  • Heh:

  • Most shocking update:

    Got to admit, 140 MPH is hauling ass. One problem with Most Shocking is that they would intone “…with speeds hitting 90 miles and hour!” and I wanted to ask “Dude, have you never driven on a Texas highway before? That’s pretty much the prevailing speed…”

  • Bruce Springsteen arrested for DWI. I’m pretty sure he makes enough to hire an Uber. Or a full-time chauffeur.
    

  • This one was is from up in Milwaukee:

  • Just no:

  • Shipping container homes are not all they’re cracked up to be.
  • “Today’s Youth Simply Don’t Have The Work Ethic To Build The Gulags Needed For Their Communist Ideals.”
  • “Jill Biden Decorates Migrant Cages With Valentine’s Day Message Hearts.”
  • “I’m not a cat.”

  • Dribble:

    • By the way, the current forecast is for it to hit 1°F here on Monday, which would only be 3 degrees above the coldest temperature ever recorded in Austin…

    

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Global Warming, Guns, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, video | 4 Comments »

    Se7°en

    February 11th, 2021

    Here’s the seven day forecast:

    Take a look at the temperature on Monday: 7°F. Not 37, not 27, but 7°F. That wouldn’t be the coldest Austin day on record, but it would be the coldest this century and the coldest since it hit 4°F in 1989.

    For those who haven’t been in Austin during a winter storm before, the entire city shuts down. Nobody knows how to drive on snow or ice, nobody has any tire chains, and the roads become a very expensive game bumper cars. Untrimmed, ice-covered tree limbs snap and take out power lines.

    So be forewarned! You probably want to stock up on necessities at the store before the really cold weather hits Sunday and Monday. Wrap any exterior pipes. Get your pets and plants in. Make sure emergency devices like flashlights have good batteries. Consider getting a jump starter for your car, if you don’t already have one (far more convenient than jumper cables; I’ve had good luck with this one).

    And above all:

    Now, with the thinnest of justifications, here’s David Bowie’s “The Heart’s Filthy Lesson.”

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    Posted in Austin, Texas, video | 10 Comments »

    Immodest Proposal: Tax The Homeless

    February 10th, 2021

    Remember how Governor Greg Abbott said he was going to clear homeless camps out from under bridges and highway overpasses in Austin? TxDOT was supposed to enforce that edict for state highway underpasses, but I can tell you that every time I drive under the McNeil/183 underpass, that’s not being done.

    If highway underpasses are indeed state property, then I have an immodest proposal for solving the problem: The state of Texas should pass a law taxing homeless camping under state highway overpasses.

    After all, subsidize something (like the Austin City Council has done for homelessness) and you get more of it. Tax it, and you get less of it.

    Want to pitch a tent under a state overpass? Fine. then you can pay $10 a night for the privilege. That’s still cheaper than renting an apartment, but no longer free, and it helps to offset the considerable expense of cleaning up those homeless camps. But contrast, designated homeless areas like Camp RATT in East Austin would remain free, theoretically providing incentives for the homeless to take up legal residence elsewhere.

    Gov. Abott has once again been warning Austin that if they don’t reinstate the camping ban, he’ll take action:

    All well and good, but we’ve heard this before, and the problem continues to get worse:

    Something certainly needs to be done about the situation. Issuing press releases and throwing more money at the problem to be siphoned into the pockets of leftwing activists isn’t going to solve the problem.

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Texas | 10 Comments »

    Biden’s CIA Pick Runs Think Tank Filthy With Chinese Money

    February 9th, 2021

    Well, this seems like a huge conflict of interest:

    William J. Burns, who is President Joe Biden’s nominee for director of the CIA, is president of a think tank that has received up to $2 million from a Chinese businessman as well as from a think tank with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

    As president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Burns also invited nearly a dozen congressional staffers to attend a junket to China, where they met with a communist party operative and a president of a Chinese front group.

    Burns, who was paid $540,580 last year as president of Carnegie, will appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee for a confirmation hearing likely to be held this month. He has been president of Carnegie since March 2015.

    During Burns’ tenure at Carnegie, a businessman named Zhang Yichen joined the think tank’s board of trustees.

    “We are very fortunate to have Zhang Yichen on our board,” Burns, a former deputy secretary of state, said in a statement in October 2016. “I look forward to working with him to make Carnegie an even finer institution.”

    Zhang, the CEO of CITIC Consulting, a China-based investment firm, donated between $500,000 and $999,999 to Carnegie from July 1, 2017, through June 30, 2018, according to Carnegie’s website. He gave between $250,000 and $549,999 in the 2020 fiscal year, according to Carnegie’s 2020 annual report.

    Zhang is a member of two organizations linked to the Chinese Communist Party, according to his biography at CITIC Capital: the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the Center for China and Globalization.

    Can you imagine any Cold War president nominating a CIA director who worked for a think tank that took Soviet money? “Sure, Hubert J. Kissup’s Detente Institute took money from the Young Communist League, but you should confirm him because he’s a swell guy!”

    Notice how quickly our garbage elites went from “Ivanaka Trump sells clothing in Russia! This is a huge conflict of interest!” to “CIA director bringing in a half million dollars in Communist Chinese money at his last gig? Nothing to see here! Move along, pleb!”

    President Trump’s list of his administration’s accomplishments cites numerous instances of confronting and reigning-in communist China. However, Democratic Party grandees seem far more concerned with sucking up to, appeasing, and profiting off China than confronting it. From Hunter Biden’s documented payoffs from China to universities taking money from China to Hollywood studios bowing to censorship pressure to attempting to repress any mention of the possibility that the Wuhan cornavirus escaped from a Chinese lab to getting a case of the vapors over mentioning Flu Manchu as the “China Virus” to a sitting Democratic congressman literally banging a communist spy, our garbage Democratic ruling class is in bed with communist China both literally and figuratively.

    The Burns nomination should be rejected on the basis of his Chinese ties alone.

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    Posted in Communism, Democrats, Foreign Policy | 1 Comment »

    George Shultz, RIP

    February 8th, 2021

    George Shultz, who served as Secretary of State for Ronald Reagan for six years, died yesterday at age 100.

    Reagan assumed the presidency at a time when the existence of the Soviet Union and its domination of eastern Europe was regarded as an immutable fact of world politics. Taking office after Alexander Haig, Shultz helped implement Reagan’s vision of containing and rolling back communism across the globe. From supporting Solidarity in Poland, to backing anticommunist rebels in Reagan Doctrine countries like Afghanistan and Nicaragua, to the liberation of Grenada, to deploying intermediate nuclear missiles in Europe, to a hundred other policies, the Reagan Administration pressed Soviet communism in ways that would eventually force not only the liberation of Eastern Europe, but the demise of the Soviet Union itself. Shultz would play a key role in keeping American allies onboard with the program, and eventually in negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that would lead to the end of the Cold War.

    Compared to Haig, Shultz was a low-key, drama-free professional who skillfully kept a wide variety of western governments broadly aligned with American goals, and for that he deserves credit. That he was wrong about much outside the Cold War (the gold standard, carbon taxes, and Brexit, to name but three) should not take away from his central achievement. With James A. Baker III, Secretary of State under Bush 41 (who largely followed the policies laid down under Reagan), Shultz presided over the most successful period of post-World War II diplomacy in American history, and his achievements were far more lasting than those under flashier Secretaries of State like Henry Kissinger or Colin Powell.

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    Posted in Communism, Foreign Policy | No Comments »

    Mike Lindell’s Absolute Truth Documentary on 2020 Presidential Election Fraud

    February 7th, 2021

    I kept meaning to put up this 2020 Presidential election fraud documentary by Mike Lindell (the MyPillow CEO), but YouTube keeps taking it down, so here’s a BitChute version:

    I haven’t watched all of it it yet, but it’s more proof that there’s a lot of evidence out that there the 2002 Presidential election was rigged, and that very powerful people in the Democratic Media Complex want to keep you from examining the evidence for yourself. And I wanted to put up a copy that I don’t think is going to disappear…

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    Posted in Crime, Elections, Media Watch, video | 4 Comments »

    Supreme Court Strikes Down California’s Church Service Ban

    February 6th, 2021

    Evidently Americans do continue to enjoy some modest minimum of freedom of religion, as the Supreme Court just struck down California’s ban on indoor church services:

    Late Friday evening, the Supreme Court, in South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, issued emergency relief suspending California’s broad ban on indoor religious services. The Court ruled that California was “enjoined from enforcing the . . . prohibition on indoor worship services . . . pending disposition of the petition for a writ of certiorari.” The order is limited: Relief was “denied with respect to the [25%] percentage capacity limitations” and denied with respect to the prohibition on singing and chanting during indoor services,” although the Court left the door open to hear any “new evidence . . . that the State is not applying the percentage capacity limitations or the prohibition on singing and chanting in a generally applicable manner.” This lifts some of the most stringent restrictions on religious services in the country. Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito wanted to grant broader relief on these fronts; Justices Barrett and Kavanaugh thought the evidentiary record was too unclear.

    The Court was yet again divided on these issues, but not entirely along the same lines as in prior cases. Chief Justice Roberts, who dissented when the Court ruled against Andrew Cuomo’s restrictions in November, reiterated his view that courts should defer to elected officials and public-health experts, but thought that California had gone too far this time: “The State’s present determination — that the maximum number of adherents who can safely worship in the most cavernous cathedral is zero — appears to reflect not expertise or discretion, but instead insufficient appreciation or consideration of the interests at stake.” Justice Gorsuch argued that California was overgeneralizing the risks of religious services:

    California . . . insists that religious worship is so different that it demands especially onerous regulation. The State offers essentially four reasons why: It says that religious exercises involve (1) large numbers of people mixing from different households; (2) in close physical proximity; (3) for extended periods; (4) with singing . . . California errs to the extent it suggests its four factors are always present in worship, or always absent from the other secular activities its regulations allow. Nor has California sought to explain why it cannot address its legitimate concerns with rules short of a total ban . . .

    On further inspection, the singing ban may not be what it first appears. It seems California’s powerful entertainment industry has won an exemption. So, once more, we appear to have a State playing favorites during a pandemic, expending considerable effort to protect lucrative industries (casinos in Nevada; movie studios in California) while denying similar largesse to its faithful. . . . Even if a full congregation singing hymns is too risky, California does not explain why even a single masked cantor cannot lead worship behind a mask and a plexiglass shield. Or why even a lone muezzin may not sing the call to prayer from a remote location inside a mosque as worshippers file in.

    Gorsuch concluded:

    [California’s] “temporary” ban on indoor worship has been in place since August 2020, and applied routinely since March. California no longer asks its movie studios, malls, and manicurists to wait. And one could be forgiven for doubting its asserted timeline. Government actors have been moving the goalposts on pandemic-related sacrifices for months, adopting new benchmarks that always seem to put restoration of liberty just around the corner. As this crisis enters its second year — and hovers over a second Lent, a second Passover, and a second Ramadan — it is too late for the State to defend extreme measures with claims of temporary exigency, if it ever could. Drafting narrowly tailored regulations can be difficult. But if Hollywood may host a studio audience or film a singing competition while not a single soul may enter California’s churches, synagogues, and mosques, something has gone seriously awry.

    The three liberal justices dissented, asserting that the opinions of unelected experts should trump enumerated constitutional rights.

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