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Lefties Mourn End To Facebook Censorship

Sunday, January 12th, 2025

As when Elon Musk dismantled the censorship apparatus at Twitter, leftists are bemoaning Meta/Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg ending “fact checking” at Facebook as though it was the end of some sort of golden age. What they are actually bemoaning is that they will no longer be able to suppress political opinions they disagree with.

Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan to spell out just how the Biden Administration’s censorship regime worked.

I don’t necessarily trust Zuckerberg’s assertions that Facebook’s original intentions were pure as the driven snow when he started putting fact checkers in place (and that’s one reason I’m not editing out things like “um,” “like,” and “you knows,” as these may be verbal tells when he’s glossing over or eliding information rather than just verbal throat clearing), but I think his depiction of how government pressure for censorship came down is probably accurate.

  • Mark Zuckerberg: “We’re just going to have the system where these these third party fact checkers and they can check the worst of the worst stuff right, so, um, things that are very clear hoaxes…so so that was sort of the original intent we put in place the system, and it just sort of veered from
    there.”

  • MZ: “I think to some degree it’s because some of the people whose job is to do factchecking, a lot of their industry is focused on political factchecking so they’re just kind of veered in that direction.” Left unsaid is that everywhere in the MSM, that “fact checking” is slanted to the left and has been for a long time.
  • MZ: “I think people just felt like the fact checkers were too biased. Not necessarily even so much in what they ruled, although sometimes I think people would disagree with that a lot of the time, it was just what types of things they chose to even go in fact check in the first time, in the first place.”
  • MZ: “After having gone through that whole exercise, it, um, I don’t know, it’s something out of, like, you know, Nineteen Eighty-Four. One of these books where it’s just, like, it really is a slippery slope, and it just got to a point where it’s just ‘OK, this is destroying so much trust, especially in the United States, to have this program.” Maybe it’s just me, but I kind of feel that when the guy forced to institute the censorship regime compares the censorship regime instituted under his watch to Nineteen Eighty-Four, maybe we ought to consider taking him at his word and not automatically write it off as hyperbole.
  • MZ: “Covid was the other big one, where that was, that was also very tricky, because you know at the beginning it was, you know, it’s like a legitimate public health crisis.”
  • MZ: “We didn’t know at the time how dangerous it was going to be, so at the beginning it kind of seemed like, OK, we should give a little bit of deference to the government and the health authorities on how we should play this.”
  • MZ: “But when it went from, you know, two weeks to flatten the curve to, um, you know, in…like in the beginning, it was, like, OK, there aren’t enough masks, masks aren’t that important to then it’s like oh no you have to wear a mask and, you know, all, the like, everything was shifting around.”
  • MZ: “It just become very difficult to kind of follow, and this really hit the most extreme, I’d say, during the Biden Administration, when they were trying to roll out um the vaccine program.”
  • MZ: “I’m generally pretty pro rolling out vaccines. I think, on balance, the vaccines are more positive than negative. But I think that while they’re trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who was basically arguing against it, and they pushed us super hard, um, to take down things that were honestly were true.”
  • MZ: “They basically pushed us and said, you know, anything that says that vaccines might have side effects you basically need to take down.”
  • Joe Rogan: “Who’s ‘they?’ Who’s telling you to take down things that talk about vaccine side effects?”
  • MZ: “It was people in the in the Biden Administration.”
  • Rogan talks about the difficulty of moderating at scale. Zuckerberg says one-third to one-half of the planet use one of Meta’s services on a daily basis.
  • Zuckerberg says that he wasn’t directly involved in these discussions, or in moderation (again, grains of salt here), but that a lot of the Biden Administration censorship demands are “documented. I mean, because, uh, you know, Jim Jordan and the the house had this whole investigation and committee into into the the kind of government censorship around stuff like this, and we produced all these documents, and it’s all in the public domain.”
  • MZ: “They wanted us to take down this meme of Leonardo DiCaprio looking at a TV, talking about how 10 years from now or something, um, you know, you’re going to see an ad that says OK, if you took a Covid vaccine, you’re eligible [for] this kind of payment, like this sort of like class
    action lawsuit type meme. And they’re like ‘No you have to take that down.’ We just said no, we’re not we’re not going to take down humor and satire. We’re not going to take down things that are that are true.”

  • MZ: “It flipped a bit. Biden, when he was, he gave some statement at some point, I don’t know if it was a press conference or to some journalist, where he basically was like these guys are killing people and, and um, and I don’t know. Then, like, all these different agencies and branches of government basically just like started investigating and coming after our company it was it was brutal it was brutal.”
  • Rogan slamming government supressing basic disease recovery mechanisms to boost the vaccine snipped. That “red-pilled a lot of people.”
  • MZ: “Trust in media has fallen off a cliff.”

    • Should we trust Zuckerberg? To quote Omar Little from The Wire, “I trust his fear.” As I noted in Friday’s LinkSwarm, the MAGA winds must be blowing very strong indeed for Zuckerberg to flip so quickly and completely. Zuckerberg probably had misgivings while these things were going on, but unlike Musk, would never have voiced them so openly had Trump not won.

    Also, as Tim Pool noted, “Facebook built a portal for Feds to log into their system to flag ‘misinformation.’ For more than a decade, the federal government, the FBI, the CIA, I think the NSA, had backdoor access to Facebook as well as other companies.”

    Time for an update to this old classic

    The Jim Jordan report Zuckerberg references is the final committee report on the weaponization of the American government to censor opposing political viewpoints. The report is not only hard to find online (it’s not in the first page of Google results), it is so large (17,014 pages) that it seems to be literally unreadabe in Firefox, as whatever Acrobat window thing they have wants to jump back when you scroll to the second page. As a partial remedy, I have (with a bit of difficulty) captured the introduction and posted it here, though the paragraph breaks may not be exact.

    The founding documents of the United States articulate the ideals of the American republic and guarantee to all American citizens fundamental rights and liberties. For too long, however, the American people have faced a two-tiered system of government—one of favorable treatment for the politically-favored class, and one of intimidation and unfairness for the rest of American citizens. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, the contrast between these two tiers has become even more stark.

    To stand up for the American people, the House of Representatives authorized the creation of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government within the Committee on the Judiciary. During the 118th Congress, the Select Subcommittee worked to “bring abuses by the Federal Government into the light for the American people and ensure that Congress, as their elected representatives, can take appropriate action to remedy them.”2 The mission of the Select Subcommittee has been to protect and strengthen the fundamental rights of the American people.

    By investigating, uncovering, and documenting executive branch misconduct, the Select Subcommittee has taken important steps to ensure that the federal government no longer works against the American people. This work is not complete, but it is a necessary first step to stop the weaponization of the federal government. From its inception, the Select Subcommittee sought to protect free speech and expand upon the constitutional protections of the First Amendment. Throughout the Biden-Harris Administration, multiple federal agencies, including the White House, have engaged in a vast censorship campaign against so-called mis-, dis-, or malinformation.

    The Select Subcommittee revealed the extent of the “censorship-industrial complex,” detailing how the federal government and law enforcement coordinated with academics, nonprofits, and other private entities to censor speech online. The Select Subcommittee also revealed how the Stanford Internet Observatory’s Election Integrity Partnership—created “at the request of” the Department of Homeland Security3—urged Big Tech to censor Americans online.

    The Select Subcommittee’s oversight has had a real effect in expanding the First Amendment. In a Supreme Court dissent, three justices noted how the Select Subcommittee’s investigation revealed “that valuable speech was . . . suppressed.”4 In a letter to the Committee and Select Subcommittee, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the Biden-Harris Administration “pressured” Facebook to censor Americans.5 Facebook gave in to this pressure, demoting posts and content that was highly relevant to political discourse in the United States. In response to the Select Subcommittee’s oversight, universities and other groups shut down their “disinformation” research and federal agencies slowed their communications with Big Tech.

    Pursuant to its mission, the Select Subcommittee also examined the weaponization of federal law-enforcement resources. Many FBI whistleblowers have disclosed to the Select Subcommittee examples of waste, fraud, and abuse at the FBI. When these whistleblowers came forward, the Bureau brutally retaliated against many of them for breaking ranks—suspending them without pay, preventing them for seeking outside employment, and even purging suspected disloyal employees. Through its oversight, the Select Subcommittee revealed how the FBI abused its security clearance adjudication process to target whistleblowers, with the FBI even admitting its error and reinstating the security clearance of one decorated FBI employee.

    The Select Subcommittee also investigated the executive branch’s actions in intruding on and interfering with Americans’ constitutionally protected activity. The Select Subcommittee revealed and stopped the FBI’s effort to target Catholic Americans because of their religious views, detailed the Justice Department’s directives to target parents at school board meetings, stopped the Internal Revenue Service from making unannounced visits to American taxpayers’ homes, caused the Justice Department to change its internal policies to respect the separation of powers and limit subpoenas for Legislative Branch employees, and highlighted the vast warrantless financial surveillance of Americans by federal law enforcement.

    The Select Subcommittee has examined the federal government’s efforts to interfere in our elections, highlighting the FBI’s fervent efforts to “prebunk” a story about the Biden family’s influence peddling scheme in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election. The Select Subcommittee’s work also demonstrated how the Biden campaign colluded with the intelligence community to falsely discredit this story as “Russian disinformation.”

    This report accumulates and presents the findings of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government during the 118th Congress. The federal government must work for all Americans, not just the favored few. As the country moves forward from the disastrous policies of the Biden-Harris Administration, it is important that policymakers ensure that the federal government can no longer be weaponized against American citizens. “Freedom is fragile thing,” Ronald Reagan warned in 1967, “it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.”6 The Select Subcommittee’s work in the 118th Congress has been a start to a long and difficult process to better protect Americans’ fundamental freedoms. But our work is not the end. More must be done to ensure that our fundamental liberties and cherished rights continue for Americans to come.

    1 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE para.
    2 (U.S. 1776). 2169 CONG. REC. H130 (daily ed. Jan. 10, 2023) (statement of Rep. Tom Cole).
    3 STAFF OF SELECT SUBCOMM. ON THE WEAPONIZATION OF THE FED. GOV’T OF THE H. COMM. ON THE JUDICIARY, 118TH CONG., THE WEAPONIZATION OF ‘DISINFORMATION’ PSEUDO-EXPERTS AND BUREAUCRATS: HOW THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PARTNERED WITH UNIVERSITIES TO CENSOR AMERICANS’ POLITICAL SPEECH (Comm. Print Nov. 6, 2023) [hereinafter “NOV. 6 REPORT”].
    4 Murthy v. Missouri, 603 U.S. 43, 78 (2024) (Alito, J., dissenting).
    5 Letter from Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Exec. Officer, Meta, to Rep. Jim Jordan, Chairman, H. Comm. on the Judiciary (Aug. 26, 2024).
    6 Governor Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address (Jan. 5, 1967).

    And remember this was all part of a coordinated international censorship regime. The recently shut down Center for Global Engagement, started under Obama, was a a key proponent of this censorship regime.

    When lefties bemoan the change in Facebook, this is what they’re lamenting: The ability to censor the free speech of fellow Americans under the direct mandate of federal government agencies working on behalf of the Democrat Party to suppress the speech of their ideological opponents.

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    Posted in Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, video | 12 Comments »

    Prager On Why California Is Burning

    Saturday, January 11th, 2025

    Much of this Prager U video on why California wildfires are burning out of control will be familiar to you, but this succinct six minute overview does a good job of hitting the highlights.

  • “In 2018 [government owned Pacific Gas & Electricity] spent $2.4 billion on renewables. By comparison, in 2017, it spent $1.4 billion on existing infrastructure.”
  • “The forests grow ever more dense [because California Democrats have all but outlawed logging].”
  • “Brush builds up because controlled burns are not permitted.”
  • “Developers build in wilderness areas.”
  • “The dominant power company chases its renewable energy mandate at the expense of nuts and bolts line maintenance.”
  • “PG&E is in bankruptcy, sued into oblivion, with no viable plan to fix the grid.”
  • “Instead of bringing vital infrastructure into the 21st century, California is voluntarily turning itself into a third world country. That’s what happens when progressives and environmentalists run things.”
  • “The Golden State isn’t going green, it’s going broke and it’s going dark.”

    • Bonus Babylon Bee: “Nation Gets Preview Of Gavin Newsom Presidency.”

    As the entire nation watched in horror at the devastation being unleashed on California by multiple wildfires, the American people were treated to a preview of what a Gavin Newsom presidency might look like.

    As fires raged throughout Los Angeles and surrounding hills this week and forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their homes. Gavin Newsom surveyed the fires as Americans saw firsthand what a Newsom presidency might look like.

    “A flaming hellscape? Ok, good to know that’s what we’d have to look forward to,” North Dakota resident Mark Larsen said. “Add in rampant taxes, thousands of illegal aliens pouring across the border, and no prosecution for criminals? The country’s future has never looked brighter. Brighter because of fire.”

    Many critics have linked the wildfires to Newsom’s governance, or lack thereof, and are grateful to know now what the entire country would look like if he were president. The governor was quick to defend his record.

    “My results speak for themselves,” Newsom said to reporters. “And when I am president, I can assure every American that the United States will look exactly like California.”

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    Posted in Democrats, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, video | 5 Comments »

    Marvel Rivals Censors On Behalf Of Communist China

    Tuesday, December 31st, 2024

    Video game YouTuber Asmongold documents some interesting behavior in the new video game Marvel Rivals: It censors your text messages if you try to say anything critical of Communist China.

    Marvel Rivals is a “third person hero shooter” that’s just been released featuring Marvel characters. Unusually in a year in which AAA video game titles lost the companies releasing them big money due to gamers rejecting them for being woke, Marvel Rivals has garnered generally good reviews.

    Like many games, it has a chat system. But testing other reports on the game, Asmongold verified that it will not let you post such messages as:

  • Free Taiwan
  • Free Hong Kong
  • Free Tibet
  • Taiwan number one
  • Tiananmen Square
  • 1989
  • Dalai Lama
  • Winnie the Pooh (ironic, considering Disney owns what Winnie the Pooh IP isn’t in the public domain)
  • Wuhan Virus
  • Mao Zedong

    • It flags all these as “text contains inappropriate content.”

    I’m sure it will come as no surprise to you that Marvel Rivals was developed and published by Chinese developer NetEase Games for Marvel Games.

    Remember, when you subcontract IP development to China, you’re importing censorship…

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    Posted in Communism, Media Watch, video | No Comments »

    China’s Population Only 600 to 800 million?

    Saturday, December 28th, 2024

    We’ve previously covered that China’s demographics are in severe decline and that China’s GDP may be overstated by 60%. Now a researcher says that China’s population could be overstated by 37-50%.

    (Before we dig in, two caveats: First, the channel is Lei’s Real Talk, from someone who came over from communist China and was a student in the U.S. during the Tiananmen Square crackdown, but she doesn’t use her full name, which she says is to protect her family back in China. Second, she’s using AI to answer some of her questions. Still, the math-based questions don’t seem conducive to the “AI hallucinations” we see elsewhere, but some caveat lictor seems in order.)

  • “We know China is facing a series of economic challenges. Weak consumer, confidence falling real estate prices, high debt, industrial overcapacity, sluggish exports, and so on and so forth. But the underlying issue of the faltering economy, in my opinion, is a severe population crisis.”
  • “China’s actual population is far below than the official figure of 1.4 billion.”
  • “I want to compare China and India’s population between the 30-year period from 1990 to 2020. Let’s also compare their average fertility rate between the two countries and their medium age.” If you run those very basic numbers, things don’t add up.
  • “In 1990, China’s population is over India is by about 270 million [1.14 billion vs. 870 million], and 30 years later China’s population is still over India by 30 million [1.41 billion vs. 1.38 billion].”
  • “However, if you look at the fertility rate, India’s average fertility rate [2.97%] during the 30 years years is so much higher than China’s [1.70].” All these are the official published rates.
  • “With that kind of fertility rate in India consistently over 30 years, India’s population should be larger than China’s. Mathematically it’s impossible that China’s population is still greater than India’s.”
  • I’m skipping over a detailed breakdown of the two country’s respective fertility rates by decades.
  • “I asked GPT to apply the fertility rates for each country and give me the total population in 2020 for India and China respectively, and this is the results it generate. In 2020 population, India’s population was 1.38 billion, China’s was only 890 million.” India’s number is off the official figure by 4%. China’s number is off by 37%, or 520 million people. And this is at a time when life expectancy for China has been increasing.
  • Analysis of various other population factor considerations snipped.
  • “I asked AI to recalculate everything by replacing the official fertility of 1.7 and 1.5 from the year to 2000 to 2010 replaced them with Dr. Yi Fuxian [University of Wisconsin Madison demographic researcher whose work we previously mentioned here] fertility assessment of 1.1. It came up with a shocking total population of 695 million, and that’s less than half of the announced population of 1.4 billion.”
  • We didn’t see a huge drop in economic output because China’s economy is investment driven.
  • “Population loss took place over 30 years, and particularly started since 2000, and this reduction in population didn’t show up as reduction in consumer spending until this generation reached the age of 18, or even older, when they started to spend money. So now we start to see the impact on consumer spending because there’s a time lag.”
  • Plus Flu Manchu deaths.
  • “China suddenly saw a wave of kindergarten closures, so in some cases private kindergartens have been shrunk by 20% in some regions.”
  • “So for all these factors combined, I think China’s real population may be between 600 million and to 800 million.”

    • Given the GDP overstatement estimates, this enormous overstatement of China’s population seems plausible. It also makes all those wild claims of “China will soon overtake the US economically” look even more ridiculous.

    China’s “one child per couple” policy will be seen by future generations as one of the greatest self-inflicted catastrophes in history.

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    Posted in Communism, Economics, video | 15 Comments »

    ASML Exits, China Screwed

    Thursday, December 26th, 2024

    I’ve previously talked about China’s difficulties in catching up to the west in semiconductor manufacturing here, here, and here, among other places. To summarize: Western nations have an advanced, highly interconnected semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem that China doesn’t have the technical expertise to replicate. In particular, China has nothing like ASML’s extreme ultraviolet lithography machines (AKA a “stepper”) necessary to build the most advanced chips with the smallest feature geometries.

    Here’s a piece with ASML’s CEO talking about just how far China is behind.

    Though advancements that SMIC and Huawei have made in the semiconductor sector in recent years are pretty impressive, the companies are 10 to 15 years behind industry giants like Intel, TSMC, and Samsung, said Christophe Fouquet, chief executive of toolmaker ASML. It’s well known that even with the best-in-class DUV tools, Chinese fab SMIC will be unable to match TSMC’s process technologies cost-effectively. This is because Chinese companies cannot access leading-edge EUV lithography tools.

    “By banning the export of EUV, China will lag 10 to 15 years behind the West,” said Christophe Fouquet in an interview with NRC (machine translated). “That really has an effect.”

    ASML has never shipped its EUV tools to China due to the Wassenaar Arrangement, despite SMIC’s reported order for one EUV machine. The details remain unclear, but ASML did not deliver the machine to the Chinese foundry due to US sanctions. However, ASML kept shipping advanced DUV lithography tools, such as the Twinscan NXT:2000i, which are capable of producing chips on 5nm and 7nm-class process technologies.

    As a result, SMIC has been producing chips for Huawei using its 1st-generation and 2nd-generation 7nm-class process technology for years now. This has certainly helped the Chinese high-tech giants weather U.S. government sanctions.

    Having understood that EUV tools are not coming to China, Huawei and its partners have explored extreme ultraviolet lithography themselves with the aim of building their own lithography chipmaking tools and ecosystem, which will take 10 – 15 years at best. For reference, it has taken over 20 years for ASML and its partners from foundational work to complete commercial machines to build the EUV ecosystem.

    China thought it had found a way out of the western ban on high end lithography machines. Turns out: Not so much.

  • “In the past two years, China has spent a staggering 8 billion euros to procure fewer than 120 Advanced immersion DUV lithography machines from Dutch company ASML.” DUV (Deep Ultraviolet) was the generation of machines before EUV, and can’t effectively pattern features of less than 10nm.
  • “On the surface this seemed like a bold and extravagant move. However, as of September 7th, the reality has turned into a bitter irony. Maintenance and upgrades for these machines are now completely restricted. In other words, starting next year these state-of-the-art [not quite – LP] lithography machines could become little more than scrap. To make matters worse, even repairs for older equipment are off the table.”
  • “Lithography machines are the backbone of semiconductor manufacturing, etching intricate circuits onto silicon wafers. Without proper maintenance and upgrades, these machines, worth tens of millions of euros each, will gradually deteriorate into expensive junk. Producing advanced chips smaller than 14 nanometers will become nearly impossible. Yield rates will plummet and costs will skyrocket.”
  • “Even TSMC, a global benchmark, requires ASML engineers to be stationed on site for regular recalibrations every 3 to 6 months. Earlier this year, an earthquake in Taiwan caused TSMC’s lithography operations to halt, and it took a month of recalibrations to resume lithography.” Requalification is indeed a huge pain in the ass.
  • “Machine maintenance depends on ASML proprietary components, software and technical support. Hiring a few engineers, or even the CEO of ASML, won’t solve the fundamental complexities of this highly specialized system. China’s attempts to rely on sheer manpower to bridge this gap are wishful thinking.”
  • “Thinking a few engineers could crack this technology is simply laughable. Lithography machines are just the tip of the iceberg in the complex semiconductor manufacturing supply chain.”
  • “China owns nearly 1,400 ASML lithography machines. With Western restrictions on maintenance spare parts and engineering services, these multi-million euro machines have been reduced to a rob Peter to pay Paul situation keeping them operational for just one more day at a time. Chip production is bound to shrink, creating a vicious cycle.”
  • “New sanctions implemented in September have blocked sales of models like the NXT1970i, shutting down access to both hardware and technology. At best, China’s capabilities remain stuck at the level of ASML’s older NXT 1470 machines, which date back to the early 2000s.”
  • “China’s so-called domestic lithography machines are limited to 65 nanometer dry DUV technology, with some reports claiming they can reach 55 nanometer. However, this is equivalent to ASML 2006-era technology, putting China 18 years behind. Worse, key components for these domestic machines still rely on suppliers from Japan and Germany.”
  • “China’s domestic lithography machines are largely a symbolic effort, more about saving face than actual technological advancement.”
  • There’s no way China can catch up to ASML in EUV lithography, and no way they can eliminate their deep dependence on western semiconductor manufacturing technology.
  • “Cutting edge EUV systems have been banned from China since 2019. Last June, high-end immersion DUV machines were added to the list. Now even older models like the NXT 1970i and 1980i can’t be sold or upgraded. China’s ambitions have been crushed, reducing it to square one.”
  • “This February, the Dutch Minister of Trade openly stated that China uses foreign high tech knowledge to advance its military capabilities, and ASML tools could produce sophisticated weapons. Handing over lithography machines to China is akin to arming an adversary, a move unacceptable on any strategic level.”
  • Without western technology, China’s desire for a technologically advanced semiconductor industry are dead in the water.
  • “The myth of China’s technological rise is unraveling and heading toward decline.”

    • When you buy a piece of high-end semiconductor equipment, you’re not just buying the machine, you’re buying the knowledgebase of deep technical expertise of both the on-site technical staff, as well as the process wizards back in Eindhoven, Santa Clara and Tokyo. There are inumerable parameters that need to be just right, and you need to know how to tweak them if the yield goes south. Without that expertise to guide you, the high end machines quickly become worthless.

    I can imagine President Trump offering China a grand bargain, in which they stop stealing western technology, stop committing genocide against the Uighers, stop clashing with Philippine ships in the South China Sea, meet its treaty obligations regarding Hong Kong, and let international agencies inspects its high level bioweapon labs in exchange for easing semiconductor sanctions.

    I doubt China would take such a deal, as it would be too humiliating for Xi to stand. But I can imagine Trump making it…

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    Posted in Communism, Foreign Policy, video | 7 Comments »

    Merry Christmas: Stellarscope’s “Silent Night”

    Wednesday, December 25th, 2024

    As is the now annual tradition, enjoy Stellarscope’s version of “Silent Night”:

    Merry Christmas!

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    Posted in video | No Comments »

    How Not To Make A Pistol

    Saturday, December 21st, 2024

    Been a while since we did some gun geeking, so here’s Ian McCollum doing a Forgotten Weapons video on all the ways you can screw up while trying to make a new pistol.

  • “If you design an answer to a question that nobody is asking, well, not a lot of people are going to pay you for it.” His first example: The Zip 22. “It’s a piece of junk.”
  • Another way to screw up: Have a good design, but manufacture it poorly. “An excellent example would be the South African Mamba.” Designed by competitive shooters, they had problems with the heat treating. “Even if people like the concept, the gun has to work effectively.”
  • Or you can have a good design with quality control issues. “The Caracal C slides had a tendency to break in the middle and launch back at their shooters faces.”

  • Or you can produce a really good pistol, and then announce that you’ve got a better version coming out soon. “Hudson H9, another darling of Shot Show, highly anticipated. [It’s] a really nice pistol, it did everything it was supposed to, [but] was a little more expensive than a lot of people would have liked when it came out.” Then they announced they were just about ready to come out with a lighter aluminum-framed model. “And all of a sudden everybody who had been considering spending $1,200 on a Hudson H9 decided “‘Ah, I’m just going to wait for the aluminum framed version.’ Their cash flow dried up and the company went bankrupt.”

    • There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip…

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    Posted in Guns, video | 19 Comments »

    Russia Showing Visible Cracks

    Wednesday, December 18th, 2024

    More than two years into Putin’s three day Special Operation, Russia is starting to show extensive cracks in its facade of normalcy.

  • Would you believe the return of food rationing?

    Russian lawmakers have proposed introducing food ration cards across the entire country in response to rising prices, claiming the idea has a “healthy foundation”, the Moscow Times wrote on Dec. 15.

    Anatoly Aksakov, head of the State Duma’s Committee on Financial Markets, endorsed the idea of reintroducing food vouchers reminiscent of those used in the Soviet Union – the proposal, initially suggested by the Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast governor.

    Aksakov believes the initiative should be expanded nationwide. The Russian official stated that food vouchers would help “support socially vulnerable groups,” though he did not specify a potential monthly allowance for these cards.

    “As of Dec. 9, the Russian Ministry of Economic Development reported annual inflation reaching 9.2%, the highest level since February 2023. However, alternative metrics indicate significantly higher figures,” the publication noted.

    Food ration cards in Kaliningrad Oblast are set to roll out in 2025, targeting pensioners with incomes below the subsistence minimum.

    On Dec. 10, it was reported that the Kremlin had significantly increased military spending amid a catastrophic collapse of the ruble. The Russian government has allocated unprecedented funds for the war against Ukraine.

    For 2025, Russia’s budget includes a 25% increase in military spending, bringing it to 13.49 trillion rubles ($175.37 billion). Military expenditures will account for 32.5% of the budget, an unprecedented level since the Soviet era. By comparison, during the first year of the war against Ukraine, the government spent 17% of its budget on the military. In 2023, this figure rose to 19%, and the 2024 year’s allocation stands at 29.5%.

  • And how is the rest of the Russian economy doing? The parts supporting the war are doing great, but the rest is overheating due to inflation and crumpling under the load of high interest rates.

    • Interest rates are expected to hit 23% this month.
    • Despite the high interest rates, inflation isn’t going down, running at an official rate of 9% (and unofficially much higher).
    • Food staples are up even more, from 12% for bread to 74% for potatoes. Stores are locking up butter to prevent theft.
    • Russian business bankruptcies are up 30%.
    • Russia’s rail system can’t afford preventive maintenance due to higher interest rates.
    • Russia’s current low unemployment is driven by government spending on its war economy, and its not sustainable.
    • The military sector is sucking in more and more manpower, leaving fewer and fewer workers for other sectors of the economy hit by higher labor costs, higher interest rates, and higher inflation.
    • Unequal distribution of the gusher of war economy money is screwing the poor even harder.
    • Even Putin says Russia needs another million workers.
    • “There is a shrinking number of people who can keep Putin’s war machine running.”
  • Speaking of Russia’s illegal war of territorial aggression, just how is that going? Given that Russia now has 63-year old recruits, I’ve got to guess not that well.

  • Also, two Russian oil tankers sank in the Kerch Strait, reportedly because they were river going vessels, and thus not rated for seaborne stresses. That suggests that Russia’s oil transportation capability is in serious trouble.
  • Also in serious trouble: Russia’s arms export industry, thanks to how poorly their arms have performed in Ukraine.

  • Finally, largely (though not entirely) unrelated to the Ukraine quagmire—

    —is the collapse of Assad’s Syria, an important client state for Russia:

    Russia is in a pickle getting its men and equipment home, because it can’t overfly nations hostile to it (most of them), it can’t sail ships home through the Bosporus (Montreux Convention), and it probably can’t get them all the way home up to its Baltic ports because it can’t refuel and resupply at hostile NATO ports (I wonder if a combination of Mediterranean African ports and at-sea resupply could get the job done). Plus Russia has been resupplying its mercenary army supporting Africa’s League of Assholes (Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso) from Syria, and Assad’s fall puts the entire operation in jeopardy.

    • The stresses on Russia are only going to get worse moving forward. For all the talk that Trump is going to bail Russia out, Volodymyr Zelenskyy evidently doesn’t think so. Plus one of Trump’s key negotiating tactics is to threaten whatever the other party holds most dear to force them to agree to a deal. And given Russia’s numerous manifest weaknesses, Trump is going to go into talks with an awful lot of leverage points…

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Military, video | 9 Comments »

    The Battle Of The Bulge: 80th Anniversary

    Tuesday, December 17th, 2024

    Eighty years ago, on December 16, 1944, Hitler’s last-ditch effort to stave off defeat in World War II got underway. Using the same trick Germany had used twice before (1914 and 1940), they launched a massive offensive push through the Ardennes that came to be known as the Battle of the Bulge. To quote Wikipedia, the source of all vaguely accurate knowledge:

    The Germans’ initial attack involved 410,000 men; just over 1,400 tanks, tank destroyers, and assault guns; 2,600 artillery pieces; 1,600 anti-tank guns; and over 1,000 combat aircraft, as well as large numbers of other armored fighting vehicles (AFVs). These were reinforced a couple of weeks later, bringing the offensive’s total strength to around 450,000 troops, and 1,500 tanks and assault guns. Between 63,222 and 98,000 of these men were killed, missing, wounded in action, or captured. For the Americans, out of a peak of 610,000 troops, 89,000 became casualties out of which some 19,000 were killed. The “Bulge” was the largest and bloodiest single battle fought by the United States in World War II and the third deadliest campaign in American history.

    Though well-planned and executed, achieving the element of surprise against outmanned and outgunned American forces, German forces soon bogged down due to harsh weather conditions and fiercer-than-anticipated resistance. In particular, the town of Bastogne, through which all seven main roads in the Ardennes highlands converged, was supposed to fall early in the campaign, paving the way to the Meuse River and the ultimate objective of Antwerp beyond. Instead, American forces held off the Germans just long enough for the 101st Airborne and other forces to mount a perimeter defense around Bastogne.

    Surrounded on all sides, outnumbered 5-1, low on supplies and ill-equipped for cold weather fighting, American forces were asked to surrender. Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe answered with one of the most famous replies in the history of warfare: “NUTS!” American forces would stave off repeated attacks, until a resupply airdrop on the 26th and elements of Patton’s Third Army arrived on the 27th to lift the siege of Bastogne.

    Another hard month of fighting lay ahead (aided by better weather and America’s overwhelming air superiority) until the “bulge” was entirely eradicated, but after Bastogne, Hitler’s last great gamble had failed.

    Here’s the Simple History video overview:

    The Battle of the Bulge produced 21 Medal of Honor winners.

    See also:

  • Five Things Bbout The Battle of the Bulge
  • The Battle of the Bulge: A Helmet Full of Beer
  • Memorial Day: Remembering Henry F. Warner

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    Posted in Military, video | 9 Comments »

    The Case Of The Missing 15,000,000

    Saturday, December 14th, 2024

    From Russiagate to the uselessness of masks to Hunter Biden’s laptop, the pattern we’ve all come to recognize is Democrat-controlled institutions lying to our face about something, then accusing people of being “conspiracy theorists” when people question the false narrative. Time after time, the “conspiracy theorists” were proven right.

    So let’s hear Townhall’s Larry O’Connor talk about those missing 15,000,000 Biden votes from the 2020 Presidential election.

  • “It appears that upwards to 15 million or more Americans have been abducted.”
  • Then he shows The Chart.

  • “Starting all the way to the left, with Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney, and you can see there that Barack Obama just got over about 66 million votes. Then four years later, Hillary Clinton [got] about the same about 66 million votes as Barack Obama did. And then we get to 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, Joe Biden got, of course, famously, 82 million votes which is you know the difference of about 15-16 million votes.”
  • “That would be about 15 million votes that we believe disappeared. Because when you come back to this presidential election, you can see that Kamala Harris once again returns to form and gets that same sort of 66 million that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama did.”
  • “We saw this drastic drop all of a sudden this year, where the same number of voters in 2012, 2016 and 2024 all voted for a Democrat. But there’s that that outlier Joe Biden.”
  • “They were either abducted by aliens, or they got taken up to heaven by Jesus in The Rapture, or the people suddenly became apathetic about politics, where they rallied to vote in 2020 but now they don’t care.”
  • “They loved Joe Biden so much that they came out of the woodwork by the level of 15 million, but then they don’t like Kamala Harris, so they’re just going to sit it out?”
  • “Or our last option is that they never actually existed in the first place. The people didn’t exist. The ballots certainly existed, but not the people.”

  • “Total votes cast: 2004, 121 million. 2008, big year, Barack Obama caught fire, built a huge momentum behind him, and people got excited about making history. That increased by about 8 million [129 million]. 2012 it went down a bit about two million, two and a half million [126 million]. 2016, we’re back up around the same level. Total votes cast 128 million, which is about the same as it was in 2008.”
  • “You pop down to 2024, again, slight increase about 129 million again, which puts us back to the Barack Obama levels.”
  • “But then it was four years ago. Four years ago you’re looking at total votes cast 155 million. Have we ever seen anything like this before?”
  • “Is there any possible explanation to that? Are we to believe that that many people wanted to vote in 2020, and only 2020, and then this year they just shrugged and said, ‘Ah, forget about it?'”
  • “Are you telling me that with a billion dollars in the bank, Kamala Harris only focusing on seven states, the same seven states, by the way, that Joe Biden focused on four years ago, that they were that inept?”
  • “This is criminal malpractice in the world of politics, that they were that incompetent that with a billion dollars, they couldn’t get out that vote?”
  • “Somebody posted going back to 1984…Bellweather counties in America are seen as counties that [the] way these counties vote generally speaking reflect the way the presidential election will go.” Rather than O’Connor describing the chart, here’s the chart itself:

    That seems…statistically unlikely.

  • “Donald Trump won every single one of those counties except for one. And yet that year (2020), the only year since 1984 the winner of these bellweather counties, which was Donald Trump, did not become the eventual winner of the Electoral College, the only one. And then we go to this last election, and you can see [in] 2024 Donald Trump won 88% of the counties, Kamala Harris won only two of them, and he was eventually the president.”
  • “So 2020 is the outlier. It’s the only year that Joe Biden ends up being the president, the winner of the Electoral College, by only winning 6% of these bellweather counties, just one of them, just one county, and it happened to be in his home state of Delaware.”
  • Roseanne Barr: “They still think Biden got 81 million votes at 4 a.m. Trump’s the most popular candidate of all time. He won three elections, two handily in a row.”
  • “It’s a fair observation. In fact, it’s hard not to reach this conclusion.”
  • “I’m curious as to how anyone is looking at these numbers and not asking this question.”

    • Democrats have been confronted by a whole lot of difficult truths following this election: A majority of Americans dislike their party, people hate wokeness, and Joe Biden was just as senile and corrupt as Republicans have argued all along.

    Now they should face up to the fact that President Lol81million’s 2020 “victory” was due to massive voter fraud.

    Just like all of us said four years ago.

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Obama Scandals, Uncategorized, video | 5 Comments »

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