China Invades Taiwan: Two Scenarios

October 10th, 2020

Two different pieces have come out recently, painting competing pictures of what a Chinese attempt to conquer Taiwan would look like. First up, this Samson Ellis piece for Bloomberg:

Beijing’s optimistic version of events goes something like this: Prior to an invasion, cyber and electronic warfare units would target Taiwan’s financial system and key infrastructure, as well as U.S. satellites to reduce notice of impending ballistic missiles. Chinese vessels could also harass ships around Taiwan, restricting vital supplies of fuel and food.

Airstrikes would quickly aim to kill Taiwan’s top political and military leaders, while also immobilizing local defenses. The Chinese military has described some drills as “decapitation” exercises, and satellite imagery shows its training grounds include full-scale replicas of targets such as the Presidential Office Building.

An invasion would follow, with PLA warships and submarines traversing some 130 kilometers (80 miles) across the Taiwan Strait. Outlying islands such as Kinmen and Pratas could be quickly subsumed before a fight for the Penghu archipelago, which sits just 50 kilometers from Taiwan and is home to bases for all three branches of its military. A PLA win here would provide it with a valuable staging point for a broader attack.

As Chinese ships speed across the strait, thousands of paratroopers would appear above Taiwan’s coastlines, looking to penetrate defenses, capture strategic buildings and establish beachheads through which the PLA could bring in tens of thousands of soldiers who would secure a decisive victory.

In reality, any invasion is likely to be much riskier. Taiwan has prepared for one for decades, even if lately it has struggled to match China’s growing military advantage.

Taiwan’s main island has natural defenses: Surrounded by rough seas with unpredictable weather, its rugged coastline offers few places with a wide beach suitable for a large ship that could bring in enough troops to subdue its 24 million people. The mountainous terrain is riddled with tunnels designed to keep key leaders alive, and could provide cover for insurgents if China established control.

Taiwan in 2018 unveiled a plan to boost asymmetric capabilities like mobile missile systems that could avoid detection, making it unlikely Beijing could quickly destroy all of its defensive weaponry. With thousands of surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns, Taiwan could inflict heavy losses on the Chinese invasion force before it reached the main island.

Taiwan’s military has fortified defenses around key landing points and regularly conducts drills to repel Chinese forces arriving by sea and from the air. In July outside of the western port of Taichung, Apache helicopters, F-16s and Taiwan’s own domestically developed fighter jets sent plumes of seawater into the sky as they fired offshore while M60 tanks, artillery guns and missile batteries pummeled targets on the beach.

Chinese troops who make it ashore would face roughly 175,000 full-time soldiers and more than 1 million reservists ready to resist an occupation. Taiwan this week announced it would set up a defense mobilization agency to ensure they were better prepared for combat, the Taipei Times reported.

Doesn’t sound like a cakewalk, does it?

This Tanner Greer piece in Foreign Policy like Beijing’s chances even less:

When Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke to the 19th Party Congress about the future of Taiwan last year, his message was ominous and unequivocal: “We have firm will, full confidence, and sufficient capability to defeat any form of Taiwan independence secession plot. We will never allow any person, any organization, or any political party to split any part of the Chinese territory from China at any time or in any form.”

This remark drew the longest applause of his entire three-hour speech—but it’s not a new message. The invincibility of Chinese arms in the face of Taiwanese “separatists” and the inevitability of reunification are constant Chinese Communist Party themes. At its base, the threat made by Xi is that the People’s Liberation Army has the power to defeat the Taiwanese military and destroy its democracy by force, if need be. Xi understands the consequences of failure here. “We have the determination, the ability and the preparedness to deal with Taiwanese independence,” he stated in 2016, “and if we do not deal with it, we will be overthrown.”

Snip.

Two recent studies, one by Michael Beckley, a political scientist at Tufts University, and the other by Ian Easton, a fellow at the Project 2049 Institute, in his book The Chinese Invasion Threat: Taiwan’s Defense and American Strategy in Asia, provide us with a clearer picture of what a war between Taiwan and the mainland might look like. Grounded in statistics, training manuals, and planning documents from the PLA itself, and informed by simulations and studies conducted by both the U.S. Defense Department and the Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense, this research presents a very different picture of a cross-strait conflict than that hawked by the party’s official announcements.

Chinese commanders fear they may be forced into armed contest with an enemy that is better trained, better motivated, and better prepared for the rigors of warfare than troops the PLA could throw against them. A cross-strait war looks far less like an inevitable victory for China than it does a staggeringly risky gamble.

Chinese army documents imagine that this gamble will begin with missiles. For months, the PLA’s Rocket Force will have been preparing this opening salvo; from the second war begins until the day the invasion commences, these missiles will scream toward the Taiwanese coast, with airfields, communication hubs, radar equipment, transportation nodes, and government offices in their sights. Concurrently, party sleeper agents or special forces discreetly ferried across the strait will begin an assassination campaign targeting the president and her Cabinet, other leaders of the Democratic Progressive Party, officials at key bureaucracies, prominent media personalities, important scientists or engineers, and their families.

The goal of all this is twofold. In the narrower tactical sense, the PLA hopes to destroy as much of the Taiwanese Air Force on the ground as it can and from that point forward keep things chaotic enough on the ground that the Taiwan’s Air Force cannot sortie fast enough to challenge China’s control of the air. The missile campaign’s second aim is simpler: paralysis. With the president dead, leadership mute, communications down, and transportation impossible, the Taiwanese forces will be left rudderless, demoralized, and disoriented. This “shock and awe” campaign will pave the way for the invasion proper.

This invasion will be the largest amphibious operation in human history. Tens of thousands of vessels will be assembled—mostly commandeered from the Chinese merchant marine—to ferry 1 million Chinese troops across the strait, who will arrive in two waves. Their landing will be preceded by a fury of missiles and rockets, launched from the Rocket Force units in Fujian, Chinese Air Force fighter bombers flying in the strait, and the escort fleet itself.

Confused, cut off, and overwhelmed, the Taiwanese forces who have survived thus far will soon run out of supplies and be forced to abandon the beaches. Once the beachhead is secured, the process will begin again: With full air superiority, the PLA will have the pick of their targets, Taiwanese command and control will be destroyed, and isolated Taiwanese units will be swept aside by the Chinese army’s advance. Within a week, they will have marched into Taipei; within two weeks they will have implemented a draconian martial law intended to convert the island into the pliant forward operating base the PLA will need to defend against the anticipated Japanese and American counter-campaigns.

This is the best-case scenario for the PLA. But an island docile and defeated two weeks after D-Day is not a guaranteed outcome. One of the central hurdles facing the offensive is surprise. The PLA simply will not have it. The invasion will happen in April or October. Because of the challenges posed by the strait’s weather, a transport fleet can only make it across the strait in one of these two four-week windows. The scale of the invasion will be so large that strategic surprise will not be possible, especially given the extensive mutual penetration of each side by the other’s intelligence agencies.

Easton estimates that Taiwanese, American, and Japanese leaders will know that the PLA is preparing for a cross-strait war more than 60 days before hostilities begin. They will know for certain that an invasion will happen more than 30 days before the first missiles are fired. This will give the Taiwanese ample time to move much of their command and control infrastructure into hardened mountain tunnels, move their fleet out of vulnerable ports, detain suspected agents and intelligence operatives, litter the ocean with sea mines, disperse and camouflage army units across the country, put the economy on war footing, and distribute weapons to Taiwan’s 2.5 million reservists.

There are only 13 beaches on Taiwan’s western coast that the PLA could possibly land at. Each of these has already been prepared for a potential conflict. Long underground tunnels—complete with hardened, subterranean supply depots—crisscross the landing sites. The berm of each beach has been covered with razor-leaf plants. Chemical treatment plants are common in many beach towns—meaning that invaders must prepare for the clouds of toxic gas any indiscriminate saturation bombing on their part will release. This is how things stand in times of peace.

As war approaches, each beach will be turned into a workshop of horrors. The path from these beaches to the capital has been painstakingly mapped; once a state of emergency has been declared, each step of the journey will be complicated or booby-trapped. PLA war manuals warn soldiers that skyscrapers and rock outcrops will have steel cords strung between them to entangle helicopters; tunnels, bridges, and overpasses will be rigged with munitions (to be destroyed only at the last possible moment); and building after building in Taiwan’s dense urban core will be transformed into small redoubts meant to drag Chinese units into drawn-out fights over each city street.

Interesting analysis of a PLA grunt’s disillusioning journey toward war snipped.

But by the time he reaches the staging area in Fuzhou, the myth of China’s invincibility has been shattered by more than rumors. The gray ruins of Fuzhou’s PLA offices are his first introduction to the terror of missile attack. Perhaps he takes comfort in the fact that the salvos coming from Taiwan do not seem to match the number of salvos streaking toward it—but abstractions like this can only do so much to shore up broken nerves, and he doesn’t have the time to acclimate himself to the shock. Blast by terrifying blast, his confidence that the Chinese army can keep him safe is chipped away.

The last, most terrible salvo comes as he embarks—he is one of the lucky few setting foot on a proper amphibious assault boat, not a civilian vessel converted to war use in the eleventh hour—but this is only the first of many horrors on the waters. Some transports are sunk by Taiwanese torpedoes, released by submarines held in reserve for this day. Airborne Harpoon missiles, fired by F-16s leaving the safety of cavernous, nuclear-proof mountain bunkers for the first time in the war, will destroy others. The greatest casualties, however, will be caused by sea mines. Minefield after minefield must be crossed by every ship in the flotilla, some a harrowing eight miles in width. Seasick thanks to the strait’s rough waves, our grunt can do nothing but pray his ship safely makes it across.

As he approaches land, the psychological pressure increases. The first craft to cross the shore will be met, as Easton’s research shows, with a sudden wall of flame springing up from the water from the miles of oil-filled pipeline sunk underneath. As his ship makes it through the fire (he is lucky; others around it are speared or entangled on sea traps) he faces what Easton describes as a mile’s worth of “razor wire nets, hook boards, skin-peeling planks, barbed wire fences, wire obstacles, spike strips, landmines, anti-tank barrier walls, anti-tank obstacles … bamboo spikes, felled trees, truck shipping containers, and junkyard cars.”

At this stage, his safety depends largely on whether the Chinese Air Force has been able to able to distinguish between real artillery pieces from the hundreds of decoy targets and dummy equipment PLA manuals believe the Taiwanese Army has created. The odds are against him: As Beckley notes in a study published last fall, in the 1990 to 1991 Gulf War, the 88,500 tons of ordnance dropped by the U.S.-led coalition did not destroy a single Iraqi road-mobile missile launcher. NATO’s 78-day campaign aimed at Serbian air defenses only managed to destroy three of Serbia’s 22 mobile-missile batteries. There is no reason to think that the Chinese Air Force will have a higher success rate when targeting Taiwan’s mobile artillery and missile defense.

But if our grunt survives the initial barrages on the beach, he still must fight his way through the main Taiwanese Army groups, 2.5 million armed reservists dispersed in the dense cities and jungles of Taiwan, and miles of mines, booby traps, and debris. This is an enormous thing to ask of a private who has no personal experience with war. It is an even great thing to ask it of a private who naively believed in his own army’s invincibility.

They know war would be a terrific gamble, even if they only admit it to each other. Yet it this also makes sense of the party’s violent reactions to even the smallest of arms sales to Taiwan. Their passion betrays their angst. They understand what Western gloom-and-doomsters do not. American analysts use terms like “mature precision-strike regime” and “anti-access and area denial warfare” to describe technological trends that make it extremely difficult to project naval and airpower near enemy shores. Costs favor the defense: It is much cheaper to build a ship-killing missile than it is to build a ship.

But if this means that the Chinese army can counter U.S. force projection at a fraction of America’s costs, it also means that the democracies straddling the East Asian rim can deter Chinese aggression at a fraction of the PLA’s costs. In an era that favors defense, small nations like Taiwan do not need a PLA-sized military budget to keep the Chinese at bay.

My feeling is that Greer’s analysis is probably more correct, though not to the extent that the United States or Taiwan can rely on it to guarantee victory over a Chinese invasion.

A few further thoughts:

  • One reason defending Taiwan is so vital is that TSMC is the most important semiconductor foundry in the world. Apple, AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Broadcom and even Intel get their cutting-edge chips fabbed there, as does Huawei. Losing that would be a huge blow to the free world’s technological dominance, and a good 12-18 months of supply disruption at a minimum. TSMC’s announced Arizona fab won’t even start construction until next year, and won’t come online for production until 2024.
  • I am very far indeed from an expert on the weather in the Taiwanese straits, but I don’t think we can assume that the PLA won’t try an attack other times of the year if they think they can maintain the element of surprise, even if it means significant personnel loses due to inclement weather. Communist military doctrine has always been indifferent to high personnel loses if it means achieving important objectives. But achieving surprise for an amphibious invasion of this size is almost impossible.
  • The point about the leathality of modern precision munitions is well taken. As modern Marine Corps doctrine states: “To be detected is to be targeted is to be killed.” Amphibious invasions are extremely difficult things to pull off under the best of circumstances, and China will not be operating under the best of circumstances.
  • The precariousness of the situation is why U.S. arms sales to Taiwan for things like M1A2 tanks and Stinger missiles are so important. And we should also sell Taiwan F-35s. China may make noise about their miltech being equal to or better than our own, but ours is the gold standard for the rest of the world.
  • LinkSwarm for October 9, 2020

    October 9th, 2020

    Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Today’s topics include Texas, voting fraud, and Texas voting fraud.

  • Potentially the biggest story of the week is President Donald Trump authorizing the release of all documents relating to the Russian Collusion Hoax and Hillary Clinton’s email scandal in unredacted form. We were already getting a steady trickle of those declassified. Let’s see if this turns it into a flood.
  • Borepatch thinks the election is over. “The only thing that the Democrats had going for them was the lockdown. The breathless hyping of the ‘rona was intended to fan the flames of fear which would justify further lockdown and economic devastation. They then blamed Trump for all this, while the media shamelessly covered for them. That’s all gone now.”
  • How dare Trump recover?

    A keening wail of lamentation rings out across the land at Mr. Trump’s possible, dastardly recovery. How dare he! — to paraphrase Saint Greta Thunberg. 209,000 other Americans died, and not him! What vile and unholy devices got him out of a sure death sentence? No doubt Democratic Party astrologasters and consulting augurers will be searching for clues among the orbiting planets and the spilled organs of sacrificed chickens in the days to come. Perhaps Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) can snare a few of the president’s attending physicians into his House Intel Committee and rev up another impeachment for going against doctors’ orders. Wouldn’t that be a delectable counter to the looming confirmation process for Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement next door in the Senate this month?

  • “Media Criticizes Trump For Downplaying Virus Threat By Not Dying.” “Every hour that he lives is another hour that the severity of this virus is undermined!”
  • “Party That Wants To Run Your Healthcare Roots For Political Opponent To Die.”
  • Anti-Trumpers and their festival of hatred:

    Some of the worst things about it is the element of transformation of the formerly mild-mannered and kindly into founts of seething malevolence.

    It’s deeply unsettling to see the rage come over a person, as I recently did when looking into the eyes of a previously genial acquaintance who was shrieking with rage at me, her eyes narrowed with what looked like hatred.

    People don’t like what threatens them, especially if they have no immediate factual answer to some of the evidence presented to them. What’s left to them is to explode—which this person did, ultimately getting into her car and peeling off with tires screeching. I would guess, although I don’t know, and I’m certainly not about to ask, that she and plenty of other people I know might be rejoicing, openly or secretly, in Trump’s diagnosis.

    Are they “possessed?” Is this “demonic?” I don’t know, but I don’t think so. I tend to think in psychological terms because these people are, for the most part, not inherently evil. They are filled with self-righteousness, and they have been whipped up into a fever pitch by an MSM and Democratic Party bent on doing so for political reasons. This is no accident.

  • This week’s #BlackLifeMatters riots come to you from Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Kurt Schlichter on dangerous talk from stupid people:

    Wishing that your opponent dies of a disease is pretty bad, but some go beyond the passive voice when hoping for our deaths. They seek to do it. Exhibit A is tech overlord Dick Costolo, a former Twitter CEO apparently, who tweeted on September 30th, “Me-first capitalists who think you can separate society from business are going to be the first people lined up against the wall and shot in the revolution. I’ll happily provide video commentary.” So Dick, which by coincidence also happens to also be your name, you want to play horsey, huh?

    I guess casually cheering the murder of political opponents gets you some guffaws from your pals in Palo Alto cafes. But those of us who have ventured outside of the carefully constructed (and costly, in terms of sweat and blood) safe space that is the United States, and who get that the natural state of man is not driving Teslas and sipping bespoke Napa Chardonnay in prosperous, secure enclaves with one’s liberal cronies, know better. People who cheerlead political murder tend to be people who will support political murder given the chance to make it happen.

    One challenge for the dilettantes of death is to find the people who would actually commit political murder for them, but money and institutional inertia make that possible. As we have seen, woke zillionaires can fund their own lil’ revolutionaries. They are the ones behind Antifa, and if Donald Trump is reelected, we will likely see the DoJ (once Trump rids himself of the worse than useless FBI Director Christopher Wray, who never met self-serving establishment narrative he didn’t eagerly hump like a horny dog rubbing on the nearest leg) forced by Bill Barr to concede that this is an Astroturfed RICO conspiracy paid for by rich leftists. Yet, Antifa is not a combat organization (unless you are one person surrounded by a dozen of these brownshirts) but an information operation asset.

    But the Dicks of the elite are spoiled and soft and while this all seems like fun and games to them, with somebody else doing the murdering, they don’t realize that history holds that the status quo doesn’t remain in effect for everyone else when one group decides to alter it to its advantage. That is the plan – the establishment, outraged at the people who held them accountable for their legacy of failure, incompetence, and corruption by electing Donald Trump and a Republican Senate, intend to alter the status quo to ensure that this outrage never happens again. They intend to add states to increase their leverage. They intend to change voting laws to allow cheating and impose “campaign finance laws” that will be enforced against your candidates but not against establishment candidates to ensure there are no more troublesome populist alternatives. They intend, using tech companies and big corporations, to impose thought control and punish dissenters by cutting them off from access to the routine modes of living in this society – social media, banking, transportation, education. They intend to pass laws to disarm you so the ultimate failsafe of freedom is negated. And they intend to pack the Supreme Court to ensure they can’t be stopped by that pesky Constitution.

    But they will expect you to remain static and to respect and obey as if nothing has changed. You must be loyal to the institutions that betrayed you because…well, that’s unclear. Perhaps they hope you’ll just keep going along as if nothing is different out of habit, or from fear of losing what little they have left to you.

    Yet, the notion that Americans will wake up one morning, see that they are no longer free, shrug, obediently line up to turn in their Remingtons and Mossbergs and reconcile themselves to serfdom is not in the cards.

    Read the whole thing.

  • “Medical experts: Lockdowns do more harm than good.” You don’t say.
  • More studies find face masks ineffective against the Wuhan coronavirus than found them effective. I suspect that N95 masks might well be effective, but not this ‘wear any damn thing” Virus Theater we’re stuck in.
  • Arizona’s Republican governor Doug Ducey puts the kibosh on last-minute Democratic attempts to force through online voting.
  • SCOTUS to DC District Court: No, you can’t rewrite South Carolina voting laws a month before the election just to give Democrats a better chance to win. Not yours.
  • Carrollton mayoral candidate arrested on 109 counts of mail ballot braud. For the Texas geography challenged, Carrollton is part of the Greater Dallas Metroplex.

    Authorities arrested a North Texas candidate on dozens of felony voter fraud charges after catching him red-handed with a box of mail-in ballots belonging to local voters.

    Carrollton mayoral candidate Zul Mirza Mohamed was charged Wednesday with 109 felonies for fraudulently requesting and obtaining mail-in ballots he alleged were for nursing home residents.

    According to a press release from Denton County Sheriff Tracy Murphree, his office was tipped off to the possible mail-ballot harvesting scheme on September 23 by the Denton County Elections Office.

    Multiple mail ballots had been requested on behalf of Carrollton residents to be sent to a post office box in Lewisville, which purportedly belonged to a nursing home facility. Investigators contacted the voters and found they had not made the ballot requests.

    Investigators also learned the post office box was obtained using a fake Texas driver’s license and fake student ID from the University of North Texas, and they began surveilling the post office.

    On October 7, investigators saw the suspect pick up a box of requested mail-in ballots and take them back to his residence in Carrollton. Officers obtained a search warrant for Mohamed’s home and inside found the fake driver’s license and box of ballots—several of which had been opened.

  • What it’s like to be a cop in the antifa/#BlackLivesMatter era:

    I’m a police officer in a major American city. Many of you reading this have seen a movie or TV show set in this city. Some of you have vacationed here. We have a big problem with poverty, unemployment, people scamming the welfare system, drugs, and violent crime.

    Honestly, though, who I am and where I work isn’t important—what I stand for is. I show up every day I’m scheduled to work, on time, and I work. I don’t hang out at the station, I handle calls for service and I constantly back up other officers. I quickly progressed to different specialized units and, over time, even began to help out at the academy and became a Field Training Officer.

    But after a couple of high-profile incidents where suspects wound up dead, we were essentially told to stop pursuing the bad guys: Too much liability for the city. So, if a violent felon who shot someone last week is spotted and you know it’s him? Depending on the ranking officer working, you’re most likely not going to be allowed to go get him.

    Snip.

    Call someone out on being a worthless lazy officer? Is that worthless lazy officer a lieutenant’s mistress?! You just earned yourself a transfer to night watch in some outpost no one wants to work.

    In every major city there’s a punishment assignment. Everyone who’s ever been a city cop knows this to be true.

    After a while, that same lazy officer who’s been sitting in that same lieutenant’s lap, or who’s never really done anything noteworthy, except maybe they went to the right school or are in the right clique, they now have time on the job and they take the sergeants test. They pass and, if your department doesn’t go straight down the list, they’re now a supervisor! Newer officers have no idea they’re working for someone who’s telling them someone else’s war stories or making themselves seem more important than they really were in the situation.

    Roll call training is all about administrative work and checking boxes off for monthly audits. We barely talk about that stolen silver SUV that is absolutely raping us nightly with auto burglaries. Oh, and since our policies are out there for anyone to read (including the bad guys) in the “interest of transparency,” they know we can’t pursue them for a property crime once they blow the red light at the intersection after we light them up and they flee. Never mind the fact that that stolen SUV is occupied by a wanted felon for armed robber in possession of a stolen AK-47. It’s just a property crime, right? No big deal. If they t-bone a family of four and kill someone, the fleeing felon isn’t at fault. I am.

    Snip.

    You have mayors bowing to the political pressure from a small, very vocal, minority that wants to defund (read: abolish, in many cases) the police.

    Some mayors have made it known to their department brass they’d rather endure the optics of Revolutionary Communists (read: ANTIFA/BLM) rioting, looting, and burning their cities down, than have their police officers be seen wading into the fray with riot batons in hand.

    You realize that if cities abolish police departments, gated communities are going to hire private police forces, made up of nearly all ex-police from the agency that just disbanded (see Minneapolis when that happens) and ex-military guys. The city won’t have oversight and their rules and regulations are going to be way more relaxed. Less area to patrol and a large pay raise? Less crime? Sign me up!

    Major media outlets constantly fan the flames of civil unrest nationwide. In a race to be first with many stories, they finish last in credibility. The initial tragedy de jour is front-page news, leading all newscasts in prime time. Meanwhile, the retraction or exoneration of the officer is buried. No apologies from the likes of Shaun King, MSNBC, CNN, or Al Sharpton. They’ve all already moved on to the next rage-bait.

    Who gives a f— if some honest hard-working cop had his or her life ruined and is in financial shambles because they got a no-win call dropped in their lap, right? All cops are bastards, anyway. Black Lives only seem to matter when cops are involved in the death, justified or not, of a black person.

    Every single week, in many major cities all across this country, murders within the black community occur — oftentimes with stolen firearms. I’ve lost count of the bodies (mostly black, never in my case shot by police) I’ve stood over. Sometimes at night when I’m trying to fall asleep I hear the blood-curdling screams of family members (mostly mothers) who rush to the scene and are held back at the police tape.

    So, in a knee-jerk reaction to a high-profile incident, in an effort to placate a mob, there is talk of not only defunding the police but abolishing them. Do you know what that leads to nationwide? Cops like me are not being proactive. At all. Because the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

    Read he whole thing. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • New York Times editorial writer is shocked, shocked to find left wing anarchists burning down America. (Hat tip: Vikingpundit.)
  • Real antifa group or an amazing parody of same? The answer may shock you!
  • Hamas: Hell yes, we’re getting missiles from Iran.
  • Seven of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s own aides have accused him of “improper influence, abuse of office, bribery and other potential criminal offenses” in relation to Austin investor Nate Paul.
  • Former Paxton assistant and current United State congressman Chip Roy called on Paxton to resign, which is not a good sign.
  • Lockdowns are the new global warming.
  • Boeing moving all 787 production from Washington State to South Carolina. How’s that hard left Democratic governance working out for you?
  • Speaking of Democratic governance, Baltimore’s next mayor is complaining about Donald Trump when he should be complaining about his fellow Democrats:

    Baltimore is no more “unjust” now than it was before its murder rate soared half a decade ago. What has changed is that Baltimore is less policed than it was back then. And that’s thanks to the policies and pronouncement of its pathetic Democrat mayors and other leading pols.

    It seems clear that Brandon Scott will continue in their tradition. Thus, it seems equally clear that Baltimore will remain exhibit A when informed people talk about the breakdown in law and order under the watch (if you can call it that) of Democratic mayors.

  • Today’s Democratic politician receiving a felony indictment comes to you from Rochester, New York, where Democratic Mayor Lovey Warren was indicted on felony campaign finance fraud charges. “At issue are transfers made from Ms. Warren’s political action committee to her campaign committee that far exceeded the $8,557 limit that a campaign could receive from an individual donor.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • “Democrat Party official arrested for allegedly pulling knife on ‘Women for Trump.'” “The communications director for the Democrat Party of Washington County, Oregon [Clayton John Callahan], was arrested after allegedly pulling a knife on female Trump supporters at an outdoor event hosted by the Oregon Women for Trump.”
  • “Texas Partisan Index: Rating Senate Districts From Most Republican to Most Democratic.”
  • European Union slaps tariffs on Chinese, Indonesian and Taiwanese steel for price dumping.
  • ESPN got woke, and now it’s going broke, or at least laying off between 300 and 700 employees. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Fake investor con artist hauls in a cool $30 million.
  • All the media Trump-bashing just makes people like President Trump more.
  • Truth:

  • Interesting Twitter thread on how Google, Facebook and Amazon all straight-up lied to the Australian government about anticompetitive practices.

    Worth reading the whole thing.

  • The Red Headed Libertarian notes that the MSM seems to intentionally conflate anarchists with legal militias, and offers a brief history lesson:

  • OK, I laughed:

  • King Abbott Deems Some of His Subjects Might Be Permitted To Quaff A Flagon Of Ale. Sometime Next Week. Maybe. If The Local Baron Approves.

    October 8th, 2020

    The title of this post is a shameless riff on this Michael Quinn Sullivan tweet:

    Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that he’s finally going to let some bars reopen at 50% capacity, as opposed to the total closure they’ve been laboring under since March.

    While other states like Florida are lifting the last of their coronavirus restrictions, Abbott is keeping his executive orders in place and continuing to keep some businesses closed.

    On Monday, Abbott teased an upcoming announcement on Twitter which implied bars and other similar establishments—which have been barred from reopening alongside restaurants and other businesses—would finally be allowed to open their doors.

    Abbott’s announcement on Wednesday, however, was less sweeping than many expected.

    Instead, Abbott announced a new order that passes the buck onto county judges, who he has given the authority to determine whether local bars can reopen as soon as October 14 at 50 percent capacity.

    For many Texans in populous Democrat-controlled counties, such approval will likely be difficult to obtain.

    In fact, shortly after the announcement, Clay Jenkins—the Democrat Dallas County Judge—announced he would “not file to open them at this time.”

    Williamson County is evidently opening back up, but I’m betting the Democratic judges overseeing Dallas, Travis, Harris, and Bexar counties are perfectly content to keep the remnants of their lockdown in place until the election, if not longer.

    Up until this year, I was reasonably pleased with Abbott’s job as governor of Texas, though his cautious, consensus-driven brand of governance has been extremely frustrating for conservative activists who have seen many issues (such as the ban on taxpayer-funded lobbying) die in the legislature thanks to lack of support from the governor’s mansion. But I believe that Abbott’s overly cautious approach has severely hampered Texas’ recovery from the Wuhan coronavirus, especially when compared to Ron DeSantis in Florida, who has completely opened the state up rather than forcing business owners to play “Mother May I” with hostile county bureaucrats. It seems Abbott is more concerned with avoiding risk than doing the right thing.

    Gov. Abbott, and Texas, can can do better

    Cuties Brings Indictments

    October 7th, 2020

    I was going to write a piece about Cuties, the French film picked up by Netflix that, while theoretically condemning the sexual exploration of children, actually functions as sexual exploitation of children and meets the definition of child pornography.

    John Nolte has a good summary of the issue:

    If the uproar over Netflix’s Cuties tells us anything, it’s that we’re now at a point where the political left and the national media want to normalize child pornography.

    There is no moral world, no sane world in which a movie like Cuties is okay. While I acknowledged in my review that Cuties is critical of the misogynist elements of traditional Islam and that that’s a perfectly reasonable message, I do not agree the movie is a critique of how social media sexualizes children.

    To me, Cuties is a classic story with a classic structure. You put your hero through a difficult journey and the hero comes out the other end better for it. That’s what twerking and posting nude photos accomplish for the 11-year-old Ami, the protagonist in Cuties. This journey is portrayed as difficult but ultimately healthy. Spiritually and mentally healthy. There’s no lasting damage at the end of that journey, just growth and enlightenment. Terrible message. Indefensible.

    Even if you buy the manure that Cuties is critical of sexualizing children, how is sexualizing children to criticize sexualizing children okay?

    Cuties is not like a movie opposed to torture or animal abuse or rape that dramatizes torture and animal abuse and rape. The sexualization of young girls is not dramatized in Cuties. The girls are sexualized. The camera floats all over them like a pervert, even when they spread their 11-year-old legs.

    So why is the left suddenly crossing this line? Why is Netflix mainstreaming soft-core child pornography? Why is it now acceptable for the elite media to publish headlines like this one?: “Cuties, Netflix Review: a Provocative Powder-Keg for an Age Terrified of Child Sexuality” — as if only backwards hicks could be “terrified” of sexualizing 11-year-olds.

    Or this headline: “The Creepy Conservative Obsession With Netflix’s Cuties, Explained” — as though finding soft-core child pornography revolting and outrageous is all of a sudden a “creepy obsession.”

    Those in the media not openly defending soft-core child pornography are defending it by covering up the controversy, by pretending it doesn’t exist.

    A few other reactions:

    Anyway, I was going to write about it, along with California’s move to decriminalize child-diddling, but 2020’s furious Press Of Events meant I never got to it.

    But now a grand jury in Tyler County [corrected – LP], Texas has indicted Netflix for “promotion of lewd visual material depicting a child” over the movie:

    A grand jury in Tyler County, Texas has indicted Netflix for “promotion of lewd visual material depicting a child” over the movie “Cuties,” which depicts 11-year-old girls learning to perform sexualized dance moves with a plot loosely wrapped around it.

    According to the indictment, Netflix knowingly promoted “visual material which depicts the lewd exhibition of the genitals or public area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was younger than 18 years of age,” which “appeals to the prurient interest in sex, and has no serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

    “The film routinely fetishizes and sexualizes these pre-adolescent girls as they perform dances simulating sexual conduct in revealing clothing, including at least one scene with partial child nudity,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) last month, as he called for a criminal investigation into the film, calling it “pornographic.”

    “These scenes in and of themselves are harmful. And it is likely that the filming of this movie created even more explicit and abusive scenes, and that pedophiles across the world in the future will manipulate and imitate this film in abusive ways…Although the First Amendment provides vigorous protection for artistic expression, it does not allow individuals or for-profit corporations to produce or distribute child pornography,” Cruz added.

    The big mystery is why, when the controversy first broke, Netflix didn’t just admit they made a mistake and drop Cuties from their lineup? They could have earned a lot of good will for that. Instead, they just doubled-down, and kept doubling down, that there was nothing at all wrong with sexual depictions of children because it was artistic, you stupid mouth-breathing flyover country retards! Indeed, they’re still defending it, despite a huge spike in service cancellations over it.

    Netflix so loves Cuties that they’re willing to lose paying customers and weather a criminal indictment for child pornography over it.

    Between this, the California law, and other cultural signifiers (remember all those creepy pro-pedophilia pieces in Salon a few years back?), the inescapable conclusion is that numerous powerful individuals in our culture seem very heavily invested in normalizing sex with children.

    Want to guess which political party Netflix CEO Reed Hasting donates big bucks to?

    Go ahead. Guess.

    Austin Hires Thief For Library, Shocked He Keeps Stealing

    October 6th, 2020

    As a book collector, book thieves are something that angrys up my blood. Not only did Austin hire a thief, they made it illegal to ask if he was a thief:

    A former Austin Public Library employee is facing a pending criminal case after an internal investigation by the city auditor’s office alleged that he fraudulently bought and stole at least $1.3 million in printer toner and resold it online.

    Randall Nelson Whited is charged with theft, a first-degree felony because the amount stolen is more than $200,000. The theft occurred from 2007 and 2019 when Whited could approve his own purchases and was subjected to little oversight by his supervisors, according to the auditor’s office.

    Sounds like massive incompetence, something we’ve come to expect at just about every level of Austin government. (The possible exception being the police, who of course had their budget cut as a reward for their sanity.)

    If you’re going to steal items for years on end, a consumable like toner for a large organization strikes me as a pretty good candidate.

    The next thing? Not so much.

    Whited also is accused of using city credit cards to buy at least $18,000 worth of items that appeared to be for his personal use, including video games, virtual reality headsets, robotic vacuums, and a drone from a big-box retailer.

    Yeah, that sort of thing sends up huge red flags. You were running a $1.3 million scam and you got busted because you used a city credit card to buy an Oculus Rift and a Roomba. Credit cards leave paper trails, which is a big no-no if you were paying attention during Graft 101.

    “The library’s poor practices and procedures provided an opportunity for Whited to steal from the city during his tenure, leading to waste and overspending by the department,” the auditor’s office noted in a 72-page report released Monday morning.

    A background search shows Whited, who turns 54 this month, has been arrested multiple times on theft charges dating back to the mid-1980s. A city spokesman said Monday that criminal background investigations during Whited’s tenure showed no convictions within the last 10 years.

    In 2008, the city banned the criminal history box from its employment application, and in 2016 the city committed to being a Fair Chance Hiring employer. The city conducts two types of criminal background checks, for positions that have financial responsibility or for vulnerable populations.

    I’m sure the SUPERgeniuses running the city of Austin were quite shocked when the convicted thief stole from them. What are the odds?

    Also, just what does the “for vulnerable populations” euphemism mean here? That you’re immune to background checks if you have a certain color skin?

    Whited, according to the report, took advantage of poor purchasing reviews by his supervisors, former Financial Manager Victoria Rieger and Contract Management Specialist Monica McClure.

    “Whited also took advantage of several other purchasing and budget-related shortcomings, such as having a role in the approval of his own purchases and insufficient oversight of the library’s budget by Rieger and Assistant Director Dana McBee,” the report said.

    As an accounting associate, Whited was responsible for making and approving purchases, cash receipts, billing, and other accounting transactions, the report states.

    What could possibly go wrong?

    Since Whited allegedly started stealing things in 2007, this is a reminder that Austin leftist incompetence and mismanagement precedes the reigning clown show at City Hall, and will probably continue long after the current cadre of clowns is gone…

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

    BidenWatch for October 5, 2020

    October 5th, 2020

    Like antifa, Joe Biden is just an idea, CNN skews its poll even more than usual, more “inappropriate” touching, and Biden refuses to take a position on, well, just about everything. It’s this week’s BidenWatch!

  • New poll shows Biden “lead” down to three points after debate.
  • Hold on! Zogby says it’s down to two.
  • Speaking of polls: How to lie with statistics, CNN division:

    Always check the crosstabs. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Joe Biden is just an idea:

    Lost in the blinding gaslighting over Donald Trump’s remarks about white supremacists during the first presidential debate was the fact that Joe Biden proved again that he’s little more than a stand-in propped up by a compliant political press.

    Biden was unable to answer even the most rudimentary queries about his beliefs, never mind specifics about policy. Apologies to the Twitter expert class, but opposing Donald Trump is neither a moral doctrine nor a policy agenda.

    There is plenty to dislike about the president, but you rarely have to guess where he stands. Biden, on the other hand, says “I am the Democratic Party,” and yet, after a half century in American politics, we have virtually no idea what his presidency would look like.

    Biden’s already put a lid on his past, and the press has obliged. The same reporters who will comb over 15 years of Trump’s tax returns have shown zero curiosity in nearly 40 years of Senate papers Biden has buried somewhere in a University of Delaware basement. Then again, there’s not a single significant piece of legislation Biden sponsored in his 36 years in Senate that he still supports, so maybe it doesn’t matter.

    Thanks to the media, though, I know more about some flaky QAnon candidate in Georgia than I do about the presidential frontrunner’s foreign-policy positions. Or much else. If Republicans were threatening to destroy the constitutional order by packing the courts and throwing out the legislative filibuster — one that Biden’s mentor Barack Obama once argued was an indispensable tool of a representative democracy — there would be massive pressure on the head of the party to stake out a public position.

  • Biden campaigns from the shadowrealm:

    Biden’s basement has proved more of a tomb than a front porch. And his vice-presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, the avatar of the “Harris Admiration,” seemed almost as scarce as Biden. Until now, both thought it wiser to let Trump Agonistês flail at his existential enemies and to let the press do its now-accustomed work of churning out periodic hit jobs on Trump. When Biden gave a rare scripted interview, his obsequious interviewers grimaced as they sought to prop him up when he bizarrely claimed that he had served 180 years in the Senate or that 200 million Americans had died from the coronavirus.

    Technology has allowed Biden to hobble along now and then with Zoom and Skype. Hidden teleprompters and a conspiracy of toady journalists have passed off fake press conferences as spontaneous rather than scripted events.

    Biden was never up to 16- to 18-hour days, as we learned in the year-long primary fights. So staying home purportedly also gave him rest and the chance to run an occasional on-screen Wizard of Oz campaign — and again let the ram Trump beat his head against the media, the virus, and the chaos of the cities.

    So without current technology, a slavish media, the weirdest year in American history, and strong polling, Biden could not have gotten away by disappearing from a presidential campaign for months on end.

    Yet there were other reasons that the once loquacious motor-mouth Biden never really campaigned. He became a virtual candidate in quite another sense: He has acted as an emissary for a Bernie Sanders socialist agenda that otherwise would have stayed underground after expiring and being buried in the Democratic primary. A prisoner of ideology, Biden found it wiser not to rebel and comment on the issues — well aside from the pragmatic worries of his handlers that he might detour to yet another “You ain’t black” revelation.

    If Biden were to openly oppose any of the hard-left ideologies that his handlers and masters embrace — if he endorsed fracking, issued a list of liberal rather than hard-left judges, or objected to dismantling the Electoral College — he would lose his new base and with them a close election.

    And yet if Biden were to explicitly and publicly advocate the Sanders, AOC, or Warren neo-socialist agenda, he would also lose, turning off his supposed swing-voter and independent suburban constituents.

    So Biden in the vortex stays nearly mute — a quietude certainly well suited to his age, the prior news cycles of 2020, his cognitive limitations, and his hope that he can win with a rope-a-dope, run-out-the-clock strategy.

    And now? The polls tighten. This strange year is gradually normalizing. Biden should be rested, after his months-long hiatus. And so will he in the eleventh hour actually conduct a campaign? Yes and no.

    His strategists still seem to suffer from the Hillary disease. As in 2016, Trump is frenetic in the swing states, the Democratic candidate is virtually nonexistent.

    As in 2016, Biden and the Democrats talk of a 70 to 90 percent likelihood of victory and an Electoral College blowout. They speculate about who will be the nation’s next cabinet officers, oblivious that such arrogance only feeds their blindness.

    As in 2016, a few polls — Rasmussen, Trafalgar, Emerson, Zogby — show Trump nearly even or ahead in some states and are thus dismissed. Mainstream polls, as in 2016, likely “prove” their absence of bias by under-sampling working-class Democratic constituencies and over-sampling suburbanites, many of them Republicans — as if they cannot be accused of party asymmetries even as they do not reflect accurate ideological affinities.

    And the polling outfits that in 2016 assured a Clinton victory are now once against cited for their reassurance that the Democrat remains clearly ahead.

    As in 2016, when millions would not reveal their preferences and were written off as mythical voters, so too now we are told that the proverbial stealthy Trump voter remains an exaggeration and a likely no-show.

    As in 2016, when Hillary dismissed Trump’s road-runner-like feverish visits to swing states as an ossified strategy, at least compared with the tactics of her twentysomething technical wizards, so too Biden’s youngsters now laugh off Trump’s calcified ideas, such as knocking on millions of doors to talk to voters in person.

    And as in 2106, when Hillary’s social-media masters and tech experts proved incompetent, so too Biden’s scripted tele-campaigning is often plagued by glitches, inadvertent glimpses of teleprompter reflections, and prompts left on the script that Biden dutifully speaks out loud, giving the game away.

    Long ago, we knew that Biden was physically not up for a normal campaign. Yet the freakish year of 2020 gave him the chance to outsource his candidacy to the weird cycle of events that drove down Trump’s polls.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Biden sends mixed signals on whether he supports the socialist “Green New Deal,” but his own proposals look like the Green New Deal’s Little Brother:

    For starters, the Biden Plan does include the following:

    • “Ensure the U.S. achieves a 100% clean energy economy and reaches net-zero emissions no later than 2050.”
    • “On day one, Biden will make smart infrastructure investments to rebuild the nation and to ensure that our buildings, water, transportation, and energy infrastructure can withstand the impacts of climate change.”
    • “He will not only recommit the United States to the Paris Agreement on climate change – he will go much further than that.”
    • “The Biden plan will make a historic investment in our clean energy future and environmental justice, paid for by rolling back the Trump tax incentives that enrich corporations at the expense of American jobs and the environment.”
    • “Biden will set a target of reducing the carbon footprint of the U.S. building stock 50% by 2035, creating incentives for deep retrofits that combine appliance electrification, efficiency, and on-site clean power generation.”
    • “Make climate change a core national security priority.”

    These are just a few examples of the radical progressive elements in Biden’s plan.

    Plus Green New Deal Supporter Kamala Harris would be waiting in the wings.

  • Kyle Rittenhouse’s layer threatens to sue Biden for libel for falsely calling him a white supremacist. As well he should.
  • Black members of the Proud Boys react to Biden calling them white supremacists. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Speaking of actual white supremacists, “Will MSM Ask Biden To Renounce White Supremacist Richard Spencer’s Endorsement?” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Tech stocks are likely to take it on the chin under a Biden presidency.
  • American Jews should reject Joe Biden.

    The Obama administration oversaw the lowest point in the US-Israel relations since Israel’s establishment in 1948. Biden was party to regular leaks of Israeli intelligence and political attacks targeting Israel on the global stage. In 2010, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the US to mend relations. The prime minister was taken in and out of the White House through a side door with no official media related to the visit.

    Biden also worked to pass the Iran nuclear deal, which Israel heavily opposed. There are reports that in a 2014 meeting, Obama threatened to shoot down Israeli fighter jets should they target facilities in Iran. Biden does not get to run on the Obama-Biden record and play coy to these events. It is no coincidence that a month before Netanyahu addressed the House of Representatives, the Obama administration decided to declassify a 386-page report on Israeli nuclear capabilities.

  • No Wuhan coronavirus for Biden.
  • Biden refuses to denounce court-packing because he’s afraid of losing the radical left.
  • “The wife of a Massachusetts transit police officer who was injured in the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers accused Joe Biden of touching her inappropriately and making a suggestive comment in 2014.” Hey, remember when we were supposed to believe all women during #MeToo? It already seems a million years ago…
  • Not that our media will report any of them:

  • “Biden Transition Team Member Worked With CCP Officials For Over a Decade.” “Suzy George, a new addition to the transition team of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, is a former principal of Albright Stonebridge Group, a consulting firm that has extensive links to the Chinese Communist Party.”
  • The ghost:

  • Context:

  • Beto O’Rourke shows the same keen political acumen that made him a U.S. Senator and Presidential nominee.
  • Heh:

  • The whiff of desperation:

    Like BidenWatch? Consider hitting the tip jar:





  • Observations from the San Antonio Gun Show

    October 4th, 2020

    I finally got my ducks in a row to carry out a roadtrip to the Saxet San Antonio Gun Show, the largest in central Texas, along with Dwight and Mike. (With two large dogs to board, the logistics can be daunting.) My last trip to a gun show was a few years ago, so I wanted to see how The Great Gun Buying Panic of 2020 has changed things. Here are some observations that people of the gun may find of interest.

  • We got there at about 11 AM, and while sales seemed brisk, they weren’t “if you see it you better buy it or it’s gone forever” brisk. At a glance all regular rifle and pistol manufacturers and makes in the usual calibers seemed to be there, with the possible exception of Glocks. Usually they seem to be plentiful, but I don’t recall seeing the usual arrays of new Glock cases. Then again, I wasn’t looking for a Glock, so I might just not have seen them, or the dealer mix was Glock-lite.
  • I was looking for a Smith & Wesson M&P15 in 5.56 NATO/.223, and boy prices have gone up on those. Used to be you could find them in the $550 to $600 range. You could find them in stock boxes at the show, but they started at $998. Supply and demand has driven this one through the roof.
  • My less scientific survey of pistol prices suggests they’re up as well, but not as much, and I got the impression that quality name-brand models were generally up some $100 to $150 over a few years ago.
  • Ammunition prices were also up, and business also seemed brisk, but didn’t suffer from the “put it out and it’s gone” condition people seem to be finding at their local sporting goods shops. I bought 50 rounds of .45 ACP ammo for $25 (and brass, not steel). That’s up from the 33 cents a round I used to pay, but not up as much as I expected.
  • Again, I wasn’t looking for them, but reloading supplies seemed nearly non-existent. The Great Primer Shortage of 2020 continues apace.
  • The San Antonio Gun Show was a whole hell of a lot more diverse than the average antifa riot, with Hispanic, black and Asian attendees. It also seems to skew younger and with more women (maybe 25%) than in previous years.
  • Out: The weirdo Nazi memorabilia dealers you used to find at gun shows last century. In: People selling quilts, water softeners and beard oil (two different vendors for the last).
  • While we were in San Antonio, we tried to hit various Half Price Books locations. Two trips were successful, but but two others stores (including the Broadway location) were inexplicably closed, with locked doors and “closed to foot traffic” signs on the windows.
  • On the way to the show, we had some excellent breakfast tacos at Lucy’s Tacos in San Marcos, which is just a trailer next to a convenience store with three picnic tables under a vine-covered gazebo.
  • On the way back, we had some fine German food for our Saturday Dining Conspiracy at Alpine Haus in New Braunfels.
  • There are still a lot of gun shows in Texas on the calendar between now and the end of the year.
  • Shooting a S&W .500 Magnum

    October 3rd, 2020

    Been a while since I posted some gun videos, so here’s a video of someone firing the ridiculous Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum, a cool gun I have absolutely no justifiable use-case for.

    Looks like a lot of fun to shoot, assuming your wrist hods up.

    And he’s right: Nobody likes eggplant.

    LinkSwarm for October 2, 2020

    October 2nd, 2020

    Welcome to the October country, one of my favorite months! It being 2020, things lean rather more heavily on tricks than treats…

  • Two important points from Tuesday’s debate:

    (1) If he wins, Biden will almost certainly sign off on ending the filibuster to pack the courts and add two new states for a permanent Democrat majority that will leave the Constitution behind.

    (2) Trump may have announced that he’s about to reveal that the Democrats, from Obama on down, engaged in a coup against an American president.

    (Hat tip: ZeroHedge.)

  • Is CIA Director Gina Haspel personally blocking the release of Russiagate documents?
  • New documents show that the goal of the Flynn investigation wasn’t a search for truth, it was to get him fired.
  • So, who had “Armenian Azerbaijani War Over Nagorno Karabakh” on their 2020 bingo card? Here’s a map I swiped from Wikipedia:

    And here’s the Livemap.

  • France has accused Turkey of sending Syrian jihadists there to fight for Muslim Azerbaijan. Remember that Turkey killed over 1.5 million Armenians during the rise of the Young Turks as part of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, so the bad blood there goes back a long ways.
  • Virginia passes law decreeing that Christians have no right to that pesky First Amendment and must align their theology with the tranny mafia or face fines. Is your Church government approved, comrade? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Top Obama FBI official wants a commission to rule out any presidential candidates who threaten to bust their scams. Of course, he uses different language… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Has a member of Mueller’s team flipped for Durham?
  • Australian blogger examines Wuhan coronavirus data:

    Quick conclusion: Relative to the number of infections fewer people have died in the US than in Australia. So for all the talk about not letting us have a US style health system, it has performed relatively better than ours did. True, Australian base levels of health are higher than US levels. Relatively fewer people got infected here than in the US. (We can argue about why that happened in the comments – probably policy errors in themselves at the State level in the US). Once infected, however, it looks like the chances of survival was higher in the US.

  • Kuwait’s ruler Emir Sheikh Sabah dead at 91.
  • “Clare Bronfman Becomes First NXIVM Sex-Slave Trafficker to Get Jail Time.” Namely six years and nine months. You know it’s a crazy year when you don’t have time to pay attention rich, powerful weirdos being tried for running a sex cult…
  • Coinbase SJW babies: We have to be woke! Coinbase CEO: There’s the door.
  • Hopefully Spotify will do the same to staffers demanding the right to censor Joe Rogan.
  • What things irritate the left the most during a nomination fight? Republicans nominating blacks, women, or Hispanics. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Things generating irrational hatred in Trump Derangement Syndrome suffers this week is (rolls dice)…bales of hay in Rappahannock County, Virginia, population 7,252.
  • The Texas House District 148 battle features a fight between a Hispanic Republican against a Democratic candidate with even more ties than usual to communism. “During a July 2018 presentation, “The Art and Science of Building the Communist Party,” Chairman of the Houston chapter of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) Bernard Sampson boasted that his club had placed four communist party members on the Texas ballot, including Morales-Shaw who he specifically identified as a member of his group.”
  • NBA conference finals down 40% since last year, despite involving the Lakers.

    I think the explanation for plummeting viewership is fairly obvious, even if Strauss would rather not talk about it. Conservative America is disgusted with the NBA, and therefore is tuning it out. We’re disgusted with the way the league kowtows to China and even more disgusted with the embrace of the radical BLM movement by the league and its players.

    I didn’t watch a minute of the playoffs this year and rarely even checked the scores. Not because of what many of the players think about the police and about America, in general, as slanderous as those views are. And not even because players made pro-BLM gestures before the games began.

    My problem was what was allowed, indeed encouraged, during the games. I will not watch any sports event during which the preaching of politics or ideology occurs.

    I guess I’m not alone.

    Conservative America’s divorce from the NBA is a sign, I think, of things to come. Unless corporate America steps back from its embrace of woke leftism, we are going to have to divorce ourselves from large swathes of it. To the extent feasible, we may have to divorce ourselves from many of America’s public schools. And so forth.

  • New South Korean mini nuclear reactor that can’t melt down approved for use in the United States. First plant is scheduled to come online in Utah, but not until 2029. Faster, please.
  • How to disable the nightmarish bullshit that is the WordPress “Block” Editor.
  • And here’s the post I was tempted to write: “Fuck You WordPress, Yet Again (Block Editor).”
  • Ireland’s Supreme Court rules that Subway bread isn’t. You would think that if it used that much sugar it would taste better. Then again, I’m not sure I’ve bought a Subway sandwich since the heyday of the $5 Footlong era…
  • “See Inside a 1926 Rolls-Royce Phantom, the Most Expensive Rolls-Royce Ever Made.”
  • There would be an amusing Tweet here about a guy riding a wall of death with a lion, but some bastard hacked Iowahawk’s account.
  • The good news is that he’s back, the bad news is that right now he’s lacking all tweets after May 22. I hope they get that fixed soon.
  • Enjoy a movie review of The Abominable Dr. Phibes.
  • “Amy Coney Barrett Holds Press Conference In Handmaid’s Tale Costume Just To Mess With Liberals.”
  • “Democrats Prepare To Give Republicans Free Ad Footage Of Them Attacking Successful, Religious Mother Of 7.”
  • “Ninth Circuit Court Overturns Death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green.)
  • “‘Coexist’ Molotov Cocktails Now Available.”
  • Looks like someone is worried about the competition:

  • Rheinmetall Unveils New 130mm Cannon With Autoloader

    October 1st, 2020

    Germany’s Rheinmetall is now testing 130mm smoothbore cannon with a integral autoloader.

    German defense company Rheinmetall has unveiled a prototype of a 130mm smoothbore gun for a future main battle tank (MBT). Combined with a state-of-the-art auto-loader, this system is the latest evolvement in Rheinmetall’s, Main Battle Tank Advanced Technologies competence. According to the company, the increase of 8 percent in caliber results in 50 percent more kinetic energy over the 120mm smoothbore gun from Rheinmetall, installed in thousands of main battle tanks worldwide. The 130mm developmental cannon delivers leap ahead capabilities in lethality for next generation main battle tanks.

    A MBT equipped with the 130mm cannon would be capable of successfully engaging better-protected opponents at greater ranges with superior firepower. Rheinmetall developed its 130mm main gun technology demonstrator to address the emerging necessity of gaining significant performance enhancements against modern armored vehicles. The 130mm live fire demonstrator has completed developmental efforts that have showcased superior energy and output performance when compared to the standard 120mm L55/L55A1 cannon in a direct live fire test with modern targets. The 130mm/L51 smoothbore gun weighs (without mounting components) 3,000 kilograms with a barrel length of 6.63 meters.

    Here’s video of the cannon mounted on what appears to be its Challenger 2 demonstrator chassis:

    Since Rheinmetall currently supplies the L/55 120mm cannon used as the main gun on the M1A2 Abrams (as well as the German Leopard 2, Japan’s Type 90 and Korea’s K1A2), I expect the 130mm to get a serious look as an upgrade for the M1A2, or in the next-generation tank currently being designed under the Next Generation Combat Vehicle—Future Decisive Lethality project, though that effort is said to be looking at lighter and faster tanks.