Two videos on increasing Russian logistics difficulties in the Russo-Ukrainian War. First up: A video that suggests Ukraine has switched from a territory recapture strategy to an attrition strategy.
“Russia is burning whether it’s oil terminals on the Baltic and the Black Sea, factories in far-flung Siberia, or military bases in Crimea, it seems almost every day something bursts into flames in Putin’s backyard. And Ukraine is thought to be the one behind it.” It’s an open question whether structure hits in places like Siberia are Ukrainian “werewolf” teams operating behind enemy lines, or native anti-Putin/anti-war (or even anti-Russian) partisans, but the effect seems the same: Russia now has to worry about attacks to its military, transport, energy, and manufacturing infrastructure far from the frontlines in Ukraine.
Zelensky warned Putin that if Russia attacked Ukrainian cities with indiscriminate missile attacks again, Ukraine would hit back. When it did, “Ukraine struck back a fire at the electrical substation outside Moscow, plunged three districts of the capital into darkness. Water pipes also burst, leaving people freezing in their homes. The plague of accidents soon spread to the cities of Omsk and Novosibirsk, deep in Siberia, which were left without heating as temperatures fell below -2.” Actually, Omsk and Novosibirsk aren’t “deep” in Siberia, because the place is so vast there another five time zones east of there.
“Soon after attacks began on critical infrastructure, including oil refineries upon which Putin’s economy relies. To date, three refineries have been blown up or set on fire, including two which were hit by long-range Ukrainian drones. One of those the Ust-Luga oil refinery near St. Petersburg, is almost 600 miles from Ukraine.”
“Railways and factories have also been blown up or burned down at the same time the Ukrainians have stepped up their campaign against Crimea.” Naval successes we’ve covered here already skipped.
At this point the video argues that Ukraine’s strategy was to liberate Ukrainian territory, no matter the strategic value. I don’t think that was the case.
Following the “failure” of the summer offensive (I would say “limited gains”), “Ukraine is digging in and refocusing liberation of territory is no longer the main goal hitting Russia where it hurts most.”
“Ukraine knows that victory in a long war depends on two things above all else: The will of people to keep fighting, and the ability of the country to provide weapons for them to fight with, and that’s where these drone missile and sabotage attacks come in.”
It then argues (as many others have) that Crimea is Putin’s main weakness, and that losing it will cripple his prestige and ability to stay in power and continue the war.
I think there has been a shift in Ukrainian strategy, but that shift has mainly been driven by the development and availability of longer-ranged weapons Ukraine lacked earlier in the war, combined with the effects of a long-term campaign to degrade Russia air power, naval assets and SAM systems, opening up avenues for longer range strikes. Ukraine focused on attacking Russia’s logistics systems right after the Battle of Kiev was won, but now they have the capability to hit much deeper into Russia’s logistics infrastructure.
Actually, I’m surprised there haven’t been any reported attacks on the Trans-Siberian Railway, given what a long, slender link that is. A few medium-to-long range drone teams inserted into northern Kazakhstan or Mongolia could wreck real havoc on trains, lines, bridges, etc.
Next, a video from Kanal 13 (very much a pro-Ukrainian source) suggests that the war and sanctions are cratering Russia’s military industrial complex.
“The Russian military industrial complex is being destroyed because of the war against Ukraine.”
Dimitri Fidive, CEO of the Muram Machine Building Plant, wrote in an email intercepted by the activists, that inflation and the shortcomings of Russia’s bureaucratic approach prevents plants that form the country’s military industrial complex from fulfilling government orders.”
“Plants are forced to sell their goods at prices set in 2019, but are at the same time expected to purchase details at market prices and in advance.”
“The money received from the government was not enough to cover the interest on the credit that his firm would need to take out to pay its suppliers.”
“Money is tied up until the completion of the government contracts, which normally last 3 to 5 years, meaning during this time the money is effectively frozen.”
“There is a shortage of staff at the plants due to both mass mobilization and a lack of accommodation [housing] in the area.”
Hell of a way to run a railroad. One wonders how extensive these problems are with other companies in Russia’s military industrial complex
Ukraine’s strategy has shifted more in relation to the way the war developed, and the changing availability of western weapons, than any fundamental shift in strategy. It became apparent that this was going to be a war of attrition in the first year, and the question of which would break first: The west’s willingness to send Ukraine weapons, or Russia’s economy and ability to wage it’s illegal war of territorial aggression?
Nothing about that strategy has changed, only Ukraine’s greater reach to affect the latter.
Farmers blockaded Paris to protest the impossible mandates being handed down to them by both Paris and the EU in the name of fighting “global warming.”
“Farmers are laying siege to Paris, as they put it, at eight points around the capital. And they say they won’t budge until the government gives them more concessions.”
“We need one of our French celebrities to do the same thing as Jeremy Clarkson.”
He said Clarkson “exposed the red tape in relation to the environment. Everything he explained, we’re going through in France.”
“It’s about bureaucracy, it’s about the European Union.”
He says farmers in the UK are still waiting for promised post-Brexit support.
“Everything in relations to environmental requirements is exactly the same in France, maybe even worse.”
“We are fed up with the admin, which is excessive in our country with regards to our work, the red tape that France adds in addition to the EU requirements.”
The farmer interviewed says they (i.e. FNSEA, the largest French farming union) have a list of 140 demands. Try as I might, I can’t find a list of those demands, in English or even French. This seems to hit on key grievances, but there’s a fair amount of highfalutin generalities in the English translation. This seems to be a key point: “In Europe, the very philosophy of the Green deal which assumes degrowth needs to be reviewed to restore visibility to farmers.”
If previous demands from other Eurostrikers are any guide, the demands are probably a mix of good (stop with the green insanity, lower taxes and eliminate red tape) and bad (more subsidies).
The French farmers said President Emmanuel Macron’s government now needed to act fast on its pledges, which have included scrapping plans to raise tax contributions on tractor diesel, an easing of pesticide regulations, a pause on new fallow land rules, and more safety checks on food imports.
If you had told some one five years ago that “French farmers will be hailing Jeremy Clarkson as a hero,” no one would have believed you…
Tons of Fani Willis’ crooked shenanigans come to light, Ukraine bags another warship, all those things they said the vaccine wouldn’t do it’s doing, and an anger management therapist who was very poor at his job. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Business partners of District Attorney Fani Willis’ alleged lover Nathan Wade, whom she appointed to work on the case against former President Donald Trump, made donations to her campaign before receiving lucrative contracts from her office.
Terrence Bradley, Wade’s former partner, and Christopher Campbell, his current partner, have collectively contributed more than $5,000 to Willis’ campaign, contribution disclosure reports show. Moreover, both men have each raked in tens of thousands of dollars from contracts with the district attorney’s office, according to county records.
Campbell is a partner at Wade & Campbell Firm, where he works with Wade. Bradley formerly worked with Wade at Wade, Bradley & Campbell Firm, and also represented Wade in his divorce case until Sept. 2022.
The donations add another wrinkle to Willis’ already-scrutinized relationship with Wade.
Willis was accused in a motion earlier this month by Trump co-defendant Michael Roman of benefiting from the “lucrative” contract she awarded Wade when he took her on vacations using money earned from the position. Wade filed to divorce his wife on Nov. 2, 2021, the day after his contract with the district attorney’s office began, and has earned nearly $700,000 from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office since his appointment.
More Willis shenanigans: “DA Fani Willis fired a whistleblower who informed her about the intentional misuse of federal funds and there’s audio of their conversation.”
BREAKING: @FreeBeacon has obtained audio of a whistleblower privately warning Fani Willis in 2021 that her top aide was trying to misuse federal funds.
Willis did not dispute the allegations.
56 days later, Willis fired the whistleblower and perp walked her out of the office. pic.twitter.com/YEkKIB2L5f
Resident Biden appears to be in serious trouble with black voters ahead of the 2024 election, and black lawmakers and organizers are starting to panic.
“What I’m hearing in my district is how ‘Bidenomics’ hasn’t really hit them in the pocket,” New York representative Jamaal Bowman told National Review earlier this week on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. “I need him in the barbershops. I need him on the basketball courts. I need him talking to the hip-hop community. I need him talking to the sports and athletics community to really get at what is troubling black men.”
Polling suggests Bowman is right to be concerned. Just 50 percent of black adults said they approve of Biden in a national AP-NORC poll last month — a 36-point drop from July 2021. An October Siena College/New York Times poll found that 22 percent of black voters surveyed in six competitive presidential battlegrounds say they will vote for Trump over Biden in 2024, a stunning polling shift from a reliably Democratic coalition that helped Biden win the White House in 2020. That same survey found Trump’s numbers were even higher among black men.
In the 40 years he’s spent in political activism, National Black Farmers Association president John Boyd Jr. says the Biden administration has done worse than any other administration in his lifetime in opening its doors to black voters. That lack of outreach, Boyd warns, may come back to bite him in November.
Wait, black people like jobs and safe neighborhoods and dislike inflation and illegal aliens sucking up welfare benefits? Who knew?
The U.N.’s agency for Palestinians said that it fired several employees after receiving information from Israel showing that they had taken part in the October 7 terrorist attacks. The State Department indicated that twelve U.N. employees allegedly took part in the attacks and announced that it had temporarily paused funding for the agency while it reviews the situation.
The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) delivers aid to Palestinians across Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. The U.S. is UNRWA’s largest donor, providing $343 million of its budget in 2022.
In a statement Friday morning, UNRWA commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini disclosed that Israel had presented his agency with evidence of its employees’ involvement in Hamas’s massacre of Israelis.
“To protect the Agency’s ability to deliver humanitarian assistance, I have taken the decision to immediately terminate the contracts of these staff members and launch an investigation in order to establish the truth without delay. Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution,” he said.
Sure they will. The question is why the United States ever funded UNRWA, since the funds seem to go straight into rockets and murder tunnels to kill Israeli civilians with?
The Trump administration cut off all funding to UNRWA in 2018, saying that the U.S. shoulders a disproportionate share of its budget. Blinken resumed funding to UNRWA three years later, pledging that the U.S. would seek reforms to the organization.
You know all those crazy “fringe” “conspiracy theories” about the Flu Manchu vaccine? Yeah, about that.
We found the number of myocarditis reports in VAERS after COVID-19 vaccination in 2021 was 223 times higher than the average of all vaccines combined for the past 30 years. This represented a 2500% increase in the absolute number of reports in the first year of the campaign when comparing historical values prior to 2021.
“Starbucks Employee Opposed to Unionization Sues to Declare National Labor Relations Board Unconstitutional.” “The National Labor Relations Board should not be a union boss-friendly kangaroo court run by powerful bureaucrats who exercise unaccountable power in violation of the Constitution.” This is another post-Chevron lawsuit that has the potential to completely dismantle the administrative state.
Proposition 2 allowed counties to create transportation reinvestment zones (TRZs), a power they did not previously have. According to the Texas Department of Transportation, a TRZ is a kind of tax increment financing district where a “zone is created, a base year is established, and the incremental increase in property tax revenue collected inside the zone is used to finance a project in the zone.”
The proposition did not include language about the use of increased ad valorem taxes to pay bonds or notes issued by the county in the TRZ district. A similar measure in 2011 that included such language was voted down.
“Anger management therapist loses his temper and murders a homeless man.” To be fair, the transient did try to fark with his dogs…
Woman with Master’s degree finds out that her trade school husband is quadrupling her salary with no debt.
A San Diego federal judge on Wednesday again struck down a state law that required background checks for nearly all purchases of firearm ammunition and barred California residents from bringing home ammunition that they purchased out of state.
U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez ruled that such restrictions violate the Second Amendment. He also ruled that the portion of the law restricting out-of-state purchases violated the dormant Commerce Clause and is preempted by federal law regulating interstate transportation of firearms.
Benitez had previously struck down the same law in April 2020, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the law just days later while the government appealed the ruling. Before the 9th Circuit could rule on that appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion in a New York gun case that upended Second Amendment case law.
After the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, the 9th Circuit sent the case back to Benitez to be relitigated under that new framework, which holds that modern gun laws must be “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
Benitez found that the “ammunition background checks laws have no historical pedigree and operate in such a way that they violate the Second Amendment right of citizens to keep and bear arms.” He issued an immediate injunction barring the state from enforcing the law.
The California Rifle & Pistol Association, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement that Wednesday’s ruling represents “continued progress in rolling back decades of attacks on the rights of lawful gun owners.”
Chuck Michel, president and general counsel of the group, said the ruling showed, once again, that the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision has greatly impacted how courts must analyze “these absurdly restrictive laws.”
Snip.
“In the end, the State has failed to carry its burden to demonstrate that the ammunition background check laws ‘are consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,’ as required by Bruen,” the judge wrote. “… A sweeping background check requirement imposed every time a citizen needs to buy ammunition is an outlier that our ancestors would have never accepted for a citizen.”
He also wrote that state data showed too many people seeking to lawfully purchase ammunition were being rejected because of flaws in the system. He said that according to state statistics, when the system was first implemented in 2019, the rejection rate was 16 percent. That has since fallen to 11 percent, “but is still too high,” he wrote.
When a circuit court as notoriously liberal feels compelled to send cases back to lower court in light of Bruen, the the Second Amendment is winning.
On the downside, the Democratic Party in general, and California Democrats in particular, have proven that no amount of rulings will prevent them from pursuing the goal of complete disarmament of law-abiding citizens.
Expect California Democrats to respond by passing a whole slew of gun-grabbing legislation that continues to ignore the clear guidelines of Bruen.
“Christine Lee she was named by the MI5 back in 2022 as an agent of influence…British Security Service issued an alert earlier this year stating that a UK-based lawyer had been engaged in political interference activities for the Chinese state.”
This marked a shift in approach “being taken against the security threat posed by China.”
“She has personally met with Xi Jinping back in Beijing.”
“This is a bunch of people in a conference room. This is called the political consultative conference. They invite a bunch of people living overseas back to China to get greeted by Xi Jinping for to thank them for their effort in conducting influence operations overseas.”
“It’s also possible that CH Lee doubles as somebody from one of the intelligence bureaus.”
“On the surface she’s a lawyer in the UK, and she is also a political influence campaign, specialist and also she could also be a secret agent doing something even worse.”
“The entire thing started because Christine Lee did not want her face to appear on camera, but she was not able to go up directly to confront Dr K [Brendan Kavanagh], being that she’s publicly known by the MI5 as an agent of influence.”
“I think Dr K needs to be aware that this was not just against a series of random CCP nationalists, he’s actually against a systematically planned out series of influence operations. And this, in my view,escalates the situation entirely. I think he should do something to protect himself, protect his family, and also be aware of who he dealing with. This is not a regular group of people.”
Meanwhile, the Chinese communists are threatening to sue Kavanagh for “defamation.”
The story started out looking like it was just “Little Pinks” acting like assholes in another country, but the truth appears to be stranger and more sinister.
Former President Donald Trump has officially waded into the Texas House Republican primaries with his first endorsement, throwing his support behind House District (HD) 21 candidate David Covey, who is challenging incumbent House Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont).
In an exclusive interview with The Texan last year, Trump first indicated his intent to endorse Covey, saying, “Well, tell David to get ready,” after slamming Phelan for the House’s role in impeaching Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Now, in a post on Trump’s social media website Truth Social, the former president and leading 2024 GOP presidential candidate made his support for Covey official.
“David Covey is running against Dade Phelan, the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, who led the Fraudulent Impeachment of the recently re-elected, in a landslide, Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton,” Trump wrote. “David is an America First Conservative who will Secure the Border, Restore Election Integrity, Protect our Families, and Military/Vets, and Defend our under siege Second Amendment.”
Covey reacted to the news with a statement, writing that he spoke with Trump and reassured the president that he intends to win the race.
“When I spoke with President Trump, a few minutes ago, I reassured him that for the sake of Texas’s future, we will win this race for President, and my race to unseat liberal Dade Phelan,” Covey said.
Naturally this is big news. Texas House District 21 Republican voters who hadn’t been paying attention to how Phelan has repeatedly thwarted conservative priorities and foolishly impeached Paxton now have no excuse to ignore Phelan’s sins.
EAGLE PASS, Texas (TND) — A convoy seeks to line the southern border with more than 700,000 vehicles and hold several rallies next week to demand action from the Biden administration.
The Take Our Border Back Southern Border Convoy will span from Virginia Beach, Va. to San Diego, Calif. and hold protests urging officials to enforce the Constitution’s amendments and halt human and drug trafficking across the border from Jan.29-Feb. 3.
Fellow citizens and compatriots … I call on you in the name of liberty, of patriotism and everything dear to the American character to come to our aid with all dispatch,” Pete Chambers, one of the coalition’s commanders, wrote. “If this call is neglected, we are determined to sustain ourselves as long as possible and act like soldiers who never forget what is due to our own honor and that of our country.”
The convoy aims to “send a message” to local, state and federal officials and law enforcement that they need to close the border and deport all illegal immigrants in its plan to “shine a spotlight” on open borders. Chambers claims Americans are “besieged on all sides” by evil “dark forces.”
“We have sustained continual bombardments of tyranny and have maintained our honor, prestige and esprit de corps,” Chambers asserted. “The enemy has demanded the surrender of Lady Liberty and her children. Tyrannical actors have tortured and oppressed without cause, without mercy and without reprieve.”
This is a bad idea and a silly story. Before we get to the ideological reasons, let’s explicate a much more basic one: Math.
Since there are three routes, let’s divide that 700,000 into three, which gives us 233,333 each going to Eagle Pass, Texas, Yuma, Arizona and one from California to Yuma (all details from their website).
They say that not just 18-wheelers, but cars, campers, etc. are welcome. So let’s use the average car length of 14.7 feet (rather than an average 18-wheeler length of 70 feet) just to be on the conservative side. There are 5,280 feet to a mile. That yields 359 cars per mile.
That’s 649 miles of cars per convoy.
But wait! It gets worse! According to their route, they are taking 290 through Dripping Springs, Texas on their way to Eagle Pass. 290 is a four-lane state highway (two lanes each way). Dripping (as the locals call it) is a small town of just under 5,000 people that used to be way the hell out in the country and is now in the Austin exurbs.
In April of last year, I went through Dripping on the way to and from a dog rescue event. They were having their Founder’s Day Festival, which they say draws “thousands,” and traffic on 290 slowed to a crawl.
I think there are seven stoplights in Dripping proper, and much more between it and Austin, between Austin and Manor, Manor and Elgin, etc.
There’s no way 649 miles of cars and trucks are passing Dripping in one day. It’s probably pushing it to expect one week.
By contrast, the Canadian trucker protests (for reasons very immediately concerning the truckers themselves) may have had 2,000 trucks join. Even that many would tie up Dripping for several hours.
This is evidently the guy behind it, who I’ve never heard of before:
The Infowars watermark doesn’t give me much confidence.
This is all before we ask why would truckers even go to the border in the first place. To make a wall that illegal aliens could just duck under between your tires? To be seen on TV? Neither are good reasons to massively inconvenience ordinary Texans who are already suffering the worst under Biden’s failure to secure the border.
I’m not sure if this is a false flag or some puffed up idea of a local gadfly. The 700,000 is an impossibility, and I would expect the actual turnout to be a tiny handful. (They might expect the same, which is why the Dripping rallying point is an HEB parking lot.)
If you wanted to do something equally stupid and counterproductive, but at least have the satisfaction of irritating the actual targets of your ire, a rolling roadblock of the Beltway and all the arteries into and out of D.C. for days on in, blowing your horns like they did in Canada, that would at least piss off the people responsible…
If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, then you’ve already familiar with some of how the Homeless Industrial Complex operates. Here’s a somewhat naive look at some of those problems.
There are some decent nuggets in here, but there are several big parts of the problem this piece ignores.
“America has a homelessness crisis as record numbers of people are ending up on the streets in a few concentrated city centers.”
“Cities are spending billions of dollars on failing projects to try and solve this problem, which has attracted a growing list of companies happy to provide their services for a price.”
“Helping the homeless has become a lucrative business, with multi-million dollar government contracts awarded every day. But if there’s so much money to be made, do these companies really want a long-term fix?”
Austin: “49 apartments for the homeless built at a whopping $739,000 a unit.”
“The annual budget for the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority Rose from $63 million in 2015 to $808 million in 2022, a 1,300% increase in just 7 years. And what did the hardworking taxpayers of Los Angeles get for their money? The number of homeless people went up by 56%.”
“Everybody deserves the right to Affordable comfortable shelter.” False. Shelter is a good. Rights are God-given and Constitutionally guaranteed, not material goods.
LA: “The Inside Safe Homelessness Reduction Policy [was] to have social workers offer hotel rooms to homeless individuals while they sought out longer term housing arrangements data collected by the City and compiled by local news outlet The Center Square found that the plan had cost $250 million over just one year the program only served 1,463 individuals, which works out to be $17,000 per individual per month, that is over $200,000 every year being spent on one individual.”
“The homeless industrial complex is actually a combination of bad management structures, bad incentives, and bad market conditions.”
“The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority is a joint Powers Authority that gets funding from federal, state, county and city budget budgets, but it doesn’t actually do any of the work itself.”
“According to the authority’s own website, the LHSA offers funding programs, design outcomes, assessment and technical assistance to more than 100 nonprofit partner agencies that assist people in experiencing homelessness achieve independence and stability in permanent housing.” Or so they say. How much of the money given to those 100 programs is siphoned directly to the pockets of leftwing activists?
“The organization that only runs a few programs of their own has over 750 employees, primarily dedicated to liasing with their nonprofit partners overseen by highly paid executives, including the CEO of public Va Licia Adams Kellum, who is paid a base salary of $430,000 per year.” Nice work, if you can get it. And that $420K doesn’t include any money that might be kicked back to her…
“According to SalaryCube and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this is roughly double the pay of the average CEO for organizations of this size in the private sector.”
“Most of the money entering this program goes to nonprofit partners, but since each of them are contracted for niche roles across dozens of different programs the real work is bogged down an endless siloing of responsibilities and overhead.” No, harvesting the graft to leftwing activists and causes via the overhead is the intended result.
“Even though these are nonprofit organizations, they all want to protect their role so their people can keep their jobs and they frequently get into turf wars over whose responsibility is what. They also don’t have a direct line of communication to one another since all report reporting goes back through the LHSA.”
“The Housing Authority isn’t even the central authority within Los Angeles. Within just this one city, different homeless issues are handled by the LHSA, the chief of Housing and Homeless solutions, county homeless services, the California Department of Housing and Community Development, the federal inter-agency Council of homelessness, in addition to federal, state, city, and local police departments.” The more red tape and bureaucracy, the more palms that get greased.
“A senior adviser on homelessness to Governor Gavin Newsom defended the state of California spending $17.5 billion that much money would have been enough to just pay rent at market rates for every homeless person in the state with around $4 billion left over.”
I think I’m done critiquing this video. Despite having some useful numbers, he’s not looking in the right places. “Addiction” and “mental illness” each receive one mention (besides the counselor accused of identity theft fraud), but no mention of how that’s the primary driver of keeping people on the street, and only one mention of “housing first,” and no analysis of why it’s a disastrous policy. Nor has he looked to see if the principles receiving fund are passing that money on to Democratic candidates and causes.
In a followup to this post, I am happy to report that the St. Pancras station piano has now been freed from Chinese commie oppression.
And pianist Brendan Kavanagh had a few things to say about the CCP:
He displays a Winnie the Pooh doll and picture because “Pooh has been banned by the CCP as being subversive, and apparently if you have Winnie the Pooh, your videos won’t be shown in the Chinese Mainland. This shows the power of the arts to undermine authoritarianism.”
The original video has “taken particularly off in Hong Kong, in Taiwan, and anyone who suffered from oppression.”
“We all know who [the oppressors] are: They are living Western lifestyles, but having a Communist authoritarian ideology.”
“This piano has become a CCP free zone. Yesterday, there was people from Hong Kong here. God bless Hong Kong, glory be to Hong Kong, and the people who put on the Hong Kong video. Their YouTube channel was immediately deleted.”
“I completely support the arts to undermine authoritarianism.”
“Winnie the Pooh has the ability to undermine authoritarian cultures. It’s not just political activism it’s actually the arts which they are afraid of.
“XiXi is frightened of Winnie, can you believe it? The Red Army is frightened of Winnie the Pooh because what they were doing they were comparing XiXi to Winnie. They said he looked a bit similar. XiXi’s feelings were hurt, and so he banned Winnie the Pooh completely from mainland China. So Winnie the Pooh has also become a symbol of free artistic expression in the face of unjust authoritarians.”
“It it was the Streisand Effect effects par excellence, this video.”
“I totally support Taiwan, and I totally support artistic expression.”
“The little pinks tried to shut us down they failed miserably.”
“This piano has become a CCP little pink free zone! God bless you all, thank you for supporting the video!”
A tiny, technical correction: The Communist Chinese are totalitarians rather than authoritarians, as they seek to control every aspect of life, not just rule an existing social structure. See Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s Dictatorships and Double Standards.
The biggest story right now is that Abbott isn’t backing down from securing the border, and a whole bunch of states are backing him in his high-profile fight with the federal government.
As the standoff continues between the Biden administration and the state of Texas over the crisis at the southern border, Gov. Greg Abbott says Texas will continue to push back against the invasion.
At the center of the current controversy is a recent U.S. Supreme Court order that allows federal agents to remove concertina wire and other barriers placed along the Rio Grande by the Texas National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Ground Zero of that battle is Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, where state forces have taken over a park along the border and have thus far prevented federal officials from entering.
Abbott says the state is taking action because of a failure from the Biden administration.
“The federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the States. The Executive Branch of the United States has a constitutional duty to enforce federal laws protecting States, including immigration laws on the books right now. President Biden has refused to enforce those laws and has even violated them,” said Abbott. “The result is that he has smashed records for illegal immigration. Despite having been put on notice in a series of letters—one of which I delivered to him by hand—President Biden has ignored Texas’s demand that he perform his constitutional duties.”
He went on to say the U.S. Constitution allows for states to push back against invasions:
James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the other visionaries who wrote the U.S. Constitution foresaw that States should not be left to the mercy of a lawless president who does nothing to stop external threats like cartels smuggling millions of illegal immigrants across the border. That is why the Framers included both Article IV, § 4, which promises that the federal government “shall protect each [State] against invasion,” and Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which acknowledges “the States’ sovereign interest in protecting their borders.”
To that end, Abbott cited an executive order issued by him in November 2022 to “invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself.”
“President Biden and his Administration have left Americans and our country completely vulnerable to unprecedented illegal immigration pouring across the Southern border. Instead of upholding the rule of law and securing the border, the Biden Administration has attacked and sued Texas for stepping up to protect American citizens from historic levels of illegal immigrants, deadly drugs like fentanyl, and terrorists entering our country.
“We stand in solidarity with our fellow Governor, Greg Abbott, and the State of Texas in utilizing every tool and strategy, including razor wire fences, to secure the border. We do it in part because the Biden Administration is refusing to enforce immigration laws already on the books and is illegally allowing mass parole across America of migrants who entered our country illegally.
“The authors of the U.S. Constitution made clear that in times like this, states have a right of self-defense, under Article 4, Section 4 and Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution. Because the Biden Administration has abdicated its constitutional compact duties to the states, Texas has every legal justification to protect the sovereignty of our states and our nation.”
Signatories include: Governor Kay Ivey (AL), Governor Mike Dunleavy (AK), Governor Sarah Sanders (AR), Governor Ron DeSantis (FL), Governor Brian Kemp (GA), Governor Brad Little (ID), Governor Eric Holcomb (IN), Governor Kim Reynolds (IA), Governor Jeff Landry (LA), Governor Tate Reeves (MS), Governor Mike Parson (MO), Governor Greg Gianforte (MT), Governor Jim Pillen (NE), Governor Joe Lombardo (NV), Governor Chris Sununu (NH), Governor Doug Burgum (ND), Governor Mike DeWine (OH), Governor Kevin Stitt (OK), Governor Henry McMaster (SC), Governor Kristi Noem (SD), Governor Bill Lee (TN), Governor Spencer Cox (UT), Governor Glenn Youngkin (VA), Governor Jim Justice (WV), and Governor Mark Gordon (WY).
Moreover, documents prove that Biden’s assault on America’s border security was intentional.
As President Joe Biden’s immigration crisis overwhelms the United States and wreaks havoc on the state’s resources, confidential documents suggest the president’s open border policies were intentional.
The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) filed a lawsuit against Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), claiming the agency halted the 287(g) program, which assists in the deportation of illegal migrant child rapists, attempted murderers, assailants, carjackers, and other known criminals.
In August 2023, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) revealed that the government ended the program in January 2021— right after Biden entered office. However, the compromised agency gave no reason why the government did that.
The 287(g) program allows local law enforcement agencies to work closely with ICE to capture illegal aliens who have committed crimes. They were then able to turn the migrants over to federal officials for arrest and deportation.
Expenditures on one of the most controversial federal programs aiding the millions of illegal immigrants and refugees from Afghanistan, Cuba, and Haiti have skyrocketed more than $2 billion in two years, according to a new report by a non-profit government spending watchdog.
Spending on the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) jumped from $8.9 billion in 2022 to more than $10.9 billion last year, auditors at OpenTheBooks.org (OTB), the Hinsdale, Illinois-based watchdog, found.
Most of the ORR spending explosion came in grants under ORR’s Refugee and Entrant Assistance program that provides a lengthy list of services to such individuals, including emergency housing assistance, work authorizations, public assistance benefits, medical screening, school enrollment, employment, and mental health referrals, and legal assistance.
Such spending was $33.4 million in 2021, the first year of President Joe Biden’s administration. But it hit $404.5 million the next year and then increased to $616.6 million last year, according to federal data obtained by OTB under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Much of the funding went to seven social service organizations, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops ($66.5 million), the International Rescue Committee ($66.4 million), Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services ($66.2 million), Church World Service ($64.9 million), U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants ($64.6 million), HIAS (originally the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society)($56.4 million), and the Ethiopian Community Development Council ($51.6 million).
Trump says he’ll reverse all this:
NEW: Donald Trump says illegals shouldn't get too comfortable because they will be going home, pledges to work with Abbott and Texas to stop the invasion pic.twitter.com/i9dPyBglaA
1. More Democrats voted for Haley than Republicans.
Much like the morning after a drunken hookup with that salad-phobic dude from the IT department, the sun rose to reveal Darling Nikki’s reality. It turns out that a whopping 70% of Haley’s votes were grudge votes from Democrats according to exit polls.
I’m surprised Haley didn’t dump a bucket of Gatorade over herself Tuesday night as she celebrated another shattering loss. More importantly, either Haley doesn’t know a bunch of patchouli ghoulies voted for her, or she doesn’t care.
According to my calculator, 70% of her 136,461 votes is 95,522. Do the subtraction and Haley received a paltry 40,938 Republican votes compared to Trump’s 172,202. In other words, Trump got well over four times as many Republican votes, and Haley got hammered like Thor for the second time.
And yet Haley still got more votes than Biden…
Things that make you go Hmmm: “U.S., Chinese Researchers Wanted to Engineer Virus Similar to Covid One Year before Pandemic Outbreak, Internal Docs Show.”
In an editorial fit for The Onion or the Babylon Bee, Los Angeles Times’ letters editor Paul Thornton wrote a column this week entitled “If you want to leave, fine. But don’t insult California on the way out.”
The column acknowledges an exodus from the state, but sees the problem as former Californians sharing their experiences about what drove them from the Golden State.
It is like Captain William Bligh asking the mutinous crew of the Bounty for a reference as they head for the lifeboats.
Thornton wrote that “more than 800,000 Californians moved away in 2022, and many thousands more left last year. Often, the departees, cash in hand from the sale of their $1-million bungalows, feel the need to express disdain for their home state, and even some anger too.”
He then begs them to keep mum about their reasons for leaving the state, which commonly range from rising crime to high taxes to runaway spending.
And speaking of the LA Times, 115 staffers were just laid off. Sucks to be you. I would suggest learning some Python, but with so many startups shutting down, it probably wouldn’t help. Instead, maybe they should learn to weld. (Hat tip: Legal Insurrection.)
“Senate Candidate Says Fraudulent Donation to Speaker Phelan Made in His Name…Jace Yarbrough, an attorney and Air Force veteran, was shown on a recent campaign finance report as having sent a $75 donation to Phelan on December 24, just days after he filed to run for the open Senate District 30 seat. Yarbrough, however, has categorically denied making any donation to Phelan…He also emphasized his role as counsel to State Sen. Angela Paxton (R–McKinney) during the impeachment trial of her husband Attorney General Ken Paxton that was championed by Phelan.”
Islam is on the verge of completely taking over Europe, in all ways—at least according to one who should know, Hans-Georg Maaßen, Germany’s top domestic intelligence chief from 2012 to 2018. In a recent interview, he stressed several points that spell the imminent downfall of Europe to Islam.
His warnings are buttressed by disturbing demographic changes. According to conservative estimates from Pew Research, over the next 25 years—meaning most of the current generation’s lifetime—Europe’s Muslim population will triple to a staggering 76 million. In fact, the actual current and future numbers of Muslims appear to be higher, though there are no official tallies. For example, in an earlier, 2011 study, Pew Research found that “The number of Muslims in Europe has grown from 29.6 million in 1990 to 44.1 million in 2010. Europe’s Muslim population is projected to exceed 58 million by 2030.” Clearly 58 million in five years’ time is more significant than 76 million in 25 years’ time.
Not only is mass migration responsible for Islam’s exponential growth in Europe, but once there, the average Muslim woman has significantly more children than the average European woman. “Muhammad” is taking West Europe by storm as the number one name for newborn baby boys.
During his interview, Hans-Georg Maaßen said that these large numbers are intentional, and the work of Europe’s ruling elite. For this intelligence chief, the “great replacement” theory is no myth. The more ideologically mixed a population is forced into becoming, the less able it is to identify itself, much less protect any beliefs:
[O]ur politicians want a different population. The political left follows the course of the anti-German ideology. The more heterogeneous a population, the less able it is to articulate itself and have a democratic say. The more politics accept immigrants from other countries as they see fit and grants them citizenship, the more politics select the people of the state and influence the election results. These migrants then vote differently than the locals.
Journalist who criticized tennis players Novak Djokovic for not getting the jab dies of suddenly.
B-21 Raider officially enters production. Though the B-21 has contained costs better than some Air Force programs, I believe the days of expensive manned bombers has passed.
Director Norman Jewison dead at 97. He directed more popular and critically acclaimed films, but for me he’ll always be the director of the vastly underrated Rollerball. (Previously.) (Hat tip: Dwight.)
America’s largest skyscraper will be built in…Oklahoma City? Yeah, can’t see the economic case there.
