BidenWatch for October 19, 2020

October 19th, 2020

Hunter Biden revelations continue to explode, Kazakhstan joins China and Ukraine in the Biden Payola Sweepstakes, inside Biden’s Malarkey Factory, and the revolving door between social media giants and Team Biden. It’s this week’s BidenWatch!

Just two more BidenWatchs until election day!

  • If you haven’t been following last week’s Hunter Biden revelations, click here and here.
  • Latest Hunter Biden revelations: Crooked dealings with Kazakhstan:

    Hunter Biden is facing fresh questions over business dealing in yet another nation — Kazakhstan.

    Between 2012 and 2014 — when his father Joe Biden served as Vice President — Hunter Biden worked as a go-between to Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakh oligarch with close ties to the country’s longtime kleptocratic leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, The Daily Mail reported.

    The British tabloid said they obtained emails from “anti-corruption campaigners” in Kazakhstan showing Hunter making contact with Rakishev and attempting to facilitate investment for his cash in New York, Washington DC and a Nevada mining company.

    Through his connections, emails show Hunter Biden successfully engineered a $1 million investment from Rakishev to filmmaker Alexandra Forbes Kerry — the daughter of ex-Sen. and former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, the report said.

    Hunter Biden also traveled to the country’s capital of Astana for business talks.

    Rakishev, however, repeatedly ran into problems finding western business partners due to the murky origins of his wealth. The respected International Finance Corp. pulled out a planned deal with him over “liabilities” stemming from his connections to the country’s rulers.

    As in other nations like Ukraine and China where Hunter plied his trade, Joe Biden may not have been far behind. The Mail published a photo they obtained from the “Kazakhstani Initiative on Asset Recovery” showing Hunter Biden with his beaming father alongside Rakishev.

  • Has another Hunter Biden laptop been seized in Ukraine? “A Ukrainian lawmaker has claimed a second laptop belonging to Hunter Biden’s business contacts in the country has been seized by law enforcement there. Andrii Derkach posted to Facebook on Friday to say there is a ‘second laptop’ involving evidence of corruption and connected to the Bidens.” As with all foreign sources, some caution is probably in order.
  • “Has the FBI had the Hunter Biden laptop material for ten months?”

    A whistleblower says that many months ago, he provided the FBI contents of a laptop computer once used by Hunter Biden.

    That’s according to a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray sent today by Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.). The letter states that an unnamed whistleblower contacted Sen. Johnson’s committee on September 24, a day after the committee released its investigation into alleged Biden conflicts of interest.

    The whistleblower reported he had turned over the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop December 9, 2019 in response to a grand jury subpoena issued by the FBI from the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. Delaware is the Bidens’ home state.

    In the letter today, Sen. Johnson says that he and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked the FBI about facts alleged by the whistleblower but the FBI stonewalled. That despite the fact that Johnson says several of their questions were not related to confidential information regarding “the possible existence of an ongoing grand jury investigation.”

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • More from Rudy Giuliani on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Including the fact that Biden’s lawyer tried to get the laptop back after the story broke. Plus: “It’s got him [Hunter Biden] there with crack pipes, it’s got him there doing an imitation of Anthony Weiner about 50 times.” Also:

    He went on to say that there would be more communications that would describe how Joe Biden was being compensated.

    “In fact, he was getting a large portion of this money,” Giuliani said, adding that the information would explain how Joe Biden, who has never made that much money as a politician, “has two or three luxurious homes.”

    “Because he didn’t pay for anything, Hunter did,” he explained.

    “This is a long term bribery scheme that started low level in Delaware with his brother James—selling his office,” Giuliani told Crowder.

    “When they got to the big time, they shook down Iraq for … I think about 500 million, Ukraine for about 20 [million], China—I don’t know—30, 40 million?” he said.

    Giuliani added that he almost forgot Russia. “The 3.5 million from the mayor’s wife,” who he noted is a good friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “That woman is a close ally of Putin,” Giuliani said, pointing out the irony of the president being accused of colluding with Russia, when “Biden actually got paid by Russia!”

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • “Hunter Biden demanded Chinese billionaire pay $10 million for ‘introductions alone,’ emails show.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Here’s a New York Times piece that attempts to debunk the Hunter Biden story by taking every Team Biden pronouncement at face value, but which nonetheless provides an awful lot of damning context for his China dealings:

    The $1.5 billion figure to which Mr. Trump referred on Thursday appears to be the amount of money that a Shanghai-based private-equity company, BHR Equity Investment Fund Management Co., aimed to raise in 2014. The company, which says its biggest shareholder is the state-controlled Bank of China, pools money and invests in companies, many of which are also state owned.

    Hunter Biden has been a member of the board of BHR since it was formed in late 2013. In October 2017, after his father had left the vice presidency, he bought 10 percent of the firm, investing the equivalent of $420,000.

    But his lawyer, George Mesires, said on Thursday that he has never been paid for his role on the board, and has not profited financially since he began as a part-owner.

    “He has not been compensated for being on the board of directors, nor has he received any return on his investment to date,” Mr. Mesires said. Although BHR has been involved in a number of business deals, he said, “there have been no distributions to the shareholders since Hunter has been an equity owner.”

    Translation: “Sure, he’s part owner of a company with several Communist Chinese officials, but you have top trust us when we say he hasn’t made any money off the deal!”

    With his latest attacks on the Bidens, Mr. Trump is “desperately clutching for conspiracy theories that have been debunked and dismissed by independent, credible news organizations,” Kate Bedingfield, Mr. Biden’s deputy campaign manager, said in a statement.

    Still, the fact that Chinese state-owned firms were interested in linking arms with Hunter Biden while his father was vice president fits a long pattern of companies owned by or closely tied to foreign governments courting the families of high-ranking American officials. In 2002, for example, when George W. Bush was president, his brother Neil won a $400,000 consulting contract to advise a Chinese semiconductor company co-founded by the son of the man who was then China’s president.

    “Almost any senior name that I start researching, I run into practices like this. It is extraordinarily widespread,” Sarah Chayes, the author of the book “Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security,” said in an interview on National Public Radio on Thursday. “How did we all convince ourselves that this isn’t corrupt?”

    Asked if there was any conflict of interest, Mr. Mesires, said: “Hunter has been repeatedly clear on this point. Hunter has not and does not discuss his business interests with his father.”

    A spokesman for the Biden campaign also said that the former vice president never discussed the China venture with his son.

    The only known connection between the elder Mr. Biden and BHR came in early December 2013 in Beijing. Mr. Biden, who had traveled to China on official business as vice president, met and shook hands with his son’s business associate, Jonathan Li, in the lobby of the hotel where the American delegation was staying, according to an account in The New Yorker. The magazine said Hunter Biden had arranged the encounter with Mr. Li, who was headed for a post as BHR’s chief executive.

    Hunter Biden went along to Beijing, too, because his young daughter had been invited and needed to be chaperoned, according to Mr. Mesires. He said that his client and Mr. Li met for coffee on the trip but that it was only a social chat. “He conducted no business there,” the lawyer said.

    Several days after the trip, BHR won a business license from the Chinese government. Mr. Mesires said that the registration paperwork had already been submitted and that the timing of the approval was purely coincidental. Hunter Biden was not involved in the firm’s registration, and its approval “was not related in any way, shape or form to Hunter’s visit,” he said.

    To raise funds, BHR teamed up with some of China’s leading state-owned financial companies, including its biggest indirect shareholder, Bank of China, as well as China Development Bank and the country’s social security fund, according BHR’s website. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2014 that the firm was seeking to raise $1.5 billion.

    That figure was then cited by Peter Schweizer, a conservative author, in a 2018 book detailing the China business ties of some prominent American political families. Mr. Schweizer was also the author of the 2015 book “Clinton Cash.”

    Until October 2017, well after his father had stepped down from the vice presidency, Hunter Biden had no equity stake in BHR, Mr. Mesires said. He said Mr. Biden bought a stake in the firm in the name of a company named Skaneateles L.L.C. for the equivalent of about $420,000. That gave him about 10 percent of the company’s registered capital of 30 million renminbi, China’s currency. Skaneateles is the New York hometown of Hunter Biden’s mother, who died in 1972.

    BHR has invested in a number of state-owned Chinese companies, including a subsidiary of the oil refiner Sinopec and China General Nuclear Power Group. The business focus of some of them is at odds with American policy.

    For example, the company invested in Face++, a division of the Chinese company Megvii, which specializes in facial recognition technology that is promoted for use by China’s police, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. BHR also invested alongside AVIC, a major state-owned aerospace and defense company that builds fighter jets for the Chinese military.

    “Nothing to see here, folks! But that Ukrainian phonecall was an impeachable offense!”

  • “5 Ways Hunter Biden’s Business Deals Empowered China at America’s Expense:

    1. Military technology

    “In 2015, Hunter Biden’s Bohai Harvest joined forces with Chinese military contractor AVIC to buy American parts manufacturer Henniges,” Schweizer explains in the documentary. Henniges produces dual-use technology, which can be used for commercial and military purposes. The deal required Obama administration approval, and the Obama administration did approve it.

    AVIC, a company notorious for stealing U.S. military technology, bought 51 percent of Henniges while Bohai Harvest bought the other 49 percent.

    2. Military surveillance tech used on the Uyghurs

    “Hunter’s firm, Bohai Harvest, also invested in military surveillance technology that the Chinese government would use to monitor and control the population in their own country,” Schweizer says.

    The company, FACE++, developed technology the Chinese Communist Party used to identify potential terrorists, which helped result in the detention of over 1 million Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.

    Plus helping China obtain nuclear secrets.

  • More on the Ukraine emails.
  • If you’re wondering what photos of Hunter Biden Twitter is trying to censor, here’s the NSFW one of him snorting cocaine off a woman’s ass. Some have asserted that the lady in question is underage, but that’s not in evidence from the pic.
  • Interestingly, nothing comes up when using “Hunter Biden cocaine ass” as the Twitter image search terms, but do come up if you remove “ass.” So: The usual twitter incompetence extends to their censorship as well…
  • Testy:

  • You know that Team Biden is none too pleased with the New York Post daring to report on the laptop scandal.
  • More of that all-in-the-family Biden corruption: “Biden’s son-in-law advises campaign on pandemic while investing in Covid-19 startups.” That’s Howard Krein for those of you playing along on the home game…
  • China and Iran want you to vote for Biden:

    It’s no secret the totalitarian governments of China and Iran favor Joe Biden in the presidential election.

    The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would like nothing more than to go back to the status quo ante, the pre-Trump world when American politicians convinced themselves (or pretended to) China would turn democratic if we gave them favorable trade terms and shut up about their monstrous repressive policies, including the hundreds of thousands—or is it millions—languishing in “reeducation” camps while the rest of their population becomes subject to the pervasive Orwellian surveillance of the “social credit“ system.

    Then there’s the little matter of the as yet still mysterious provenance of the novel coronavirus, appropriately called the CCP virus hereabouts, that has wreaked such havoc across the globe. When we will know the truth about what really happened in the Wuhan virology lab? Would a Biden administration even want to know?

    And, yes, as most of us realize, there’s considerably more, but it was all okay in the view of Democrats like Biden and Sen. Dianne Feinstein—she of the Chinese chauffeur who, mirabile dictu, was suddenly exposed as a spy after twenty years of service to her—as long as there was money to be made.

    And there was, a lot, as Hunter Biden, not to mention Feinstein’s husband and Michael Bloomberg, can attest.

    Hunter’s father had to revise his initial praise of China, pooh-poohing the idea they might be an enemy, when things started to get a little obvious and handlers whispered in his ear this was not exactly the road to the White House.

    So it’s hard to feel reassured about how Joe would behave toward the communist regime once in office. There’s a great deal more reason, actual evidence of deals, to believe the Chinese have “special leverage” with Biden than there ever was that the Russians had something on Trump.

    And politicians like Biden and Feinstein are far from alone in their fealty to Beijing. They have plenty of support among American progressives. As is well known, many of our universities, from Harvard on down, have been bribed with huge sums by the CCP to regard them favorably, even have had spies on the faculty, with Confucius Institutes, essentially communist propaganda arms, installed on many campuses.

    Would a President Biden fight this network of corruption that actually justifies and teaches totalitarianism to our youth? Does he even think or know about it?

    We know Trump would because he already has. He does it.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • You know that whole “Biden Landslide” narrative the media is trying to sell? You shouldn’t be buying.

    Early voting data in battleground states shows Trump outpacing national polls giving Biden an edge

    The Republican Party is keeping pace in mail-in and early voting in three key swing states despite polls showing early voting should clearly favor Joe Biden.

    Data out of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio indicates that registered Republicans are returning ballots at about the same rate as registered Democrats in the battleground states.

    In Michigan as of Wednesday, just over 1 million ballots have been returned, 40% from registered Democrats, with the same from registered Republicans. In Wisconsin, 40% of the 711,855 returned ballots have been from Democrats, while 38% have come from Republicans. The GOP actually leads in Ohio, with 45% of 475,259 early ballot returns coming from Republicans, compared to 43% from registered Democrats. The preliminary data matches up with the requests by party affiliation for mail-in ballots.

    The data contradicts national polls showing Biden supporters overwhelmingly plan to vote by mail or early in person. According to a Pew Research poll released Friday, 55% of voters who plan to cast their ballot in person before Election Day support Biden, compared to 40% who support President Trump.

    For a few weeks now, there has been a massive divide between what the polls say and what you can see happening on the ground. Every poll shows Biden leading, yet public support for Trump remains huge and enthusiastic.

    One other thing that’s not showing up in the polls and that’s favoring Trump is voter registration.

  • Borepatch wonders how many fraudulent votes Biden will need to win.

    Breaking it down, we see the following minimum fraudulent ballots needed:

    Michigan +5%
    Pennsylvania: + 5%
    Wisconsin: +6%

    So I went and looked at what the percentages translated into in terms of actual ballots cast. Here’s what’s needed:

    Michigan: 113, 442
    Pennsylvania: 146,322
    Wisconsin: 82,952
    Total: 342,716

    Note that this is net new fraud, on top of whatever was done in 2016. And this is the best case scenario – there’s no margin of error at all for Team Biden here, and so it really needs to be 500,000.

    Plus that many again to keep Trump from flipping Blue states.

  • “Hillary Auditions for SecDef in 5000-Word Pro-Biden Article Which Admits Massive Defense Jobs Cuts Plan.”
  • Biden was gassed an hour into his softball-tossing Town Hall. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Why a Biden Presidency will end the U.S. oil boom:

    To talk about a Biden-Harris administration let’s first talk about the Obama-Eric Holder/Loretta Lynch administration.

    Back in 2015 and 2016, when Holder and Lynch were President Obama’s Attorney Generals, my frack company was beset with an IRS audit, an International Fuel Tax (“IFTA”) audit and a Department of Labor investigation. Not to be excluded, I was also personally audited by the IRS. Fortunately, me and my company cleared the IRS audits without penalty (other than paying our accountant). The Department of Labor audit got us for something less than $250, based on some arcane back of the book calculation on arbitrarily given bonuses. But the IFTA audit did some damage with a $40,000 paperwork related fine even though all our taxes were paid at the pump. All three agencies and all four audits were federal, and all came at roughly the same time. When I asked the Department of Labor attorney how she even found our little basement office, she kept mum.

    There was no point in her answering – we both knew why she was there.

    Her 18,000-employee strong department, like the IRS and IFTA, had been weaponized to undermine the oil and gas industry. AGs Holder and Lynch, likely with President Obama’s blessing, were picking and choosing and me and my industry got picked.

    Snip.

    Now, we have Vice President Biden saying he supports fracking when he swings through natural gas rich Pennsylvania, but we all know that is just politicking. His previous anti-fracking statements, all of them inconveniently caught on imperishable video tape, suggest some double speak here.

    So where does Joe Biden truthfully stand on fracking?

    That depends on who he’s talking to. In the old days they called it “waffling” and it was a disqualifier. Not so any longer. If there is any sort of pushback, the 2020 method is to simply just deny that you have multiple positions on the same subject. When no one pushes back, why not?

    They call Joe a fair-minded moderate, a congenial and thoughtful friend to both sides of an argument. I’m sorry, I just don’t see it. A moderate doesn’t choose a San Francisco prosecutor with an anti-fossil fuel record as a running mate. A moderate also wouldn’t choose socialist New York Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez to co-chair his climate task force.

    During the recent Harris-Pence debate, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez Tweeted “Fracking is bad, actually”. So, I guess we at least know where she stands, a breath of fresh air given the chicanery of the Biden-Harris oil and gas platform. Now rumors of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as a Biden administration Attorney General are being reported. True or not, it knocks the wind out of the rest of that moderate argument. Remember, Governor Cuomo was the guy who ordered his own state regulators to study the health and safety of fracking. When their study qualified fracking as environmentally safe, Mr. Cuomo outlawed it anyways. So much for open minded moderation, Mr. Biden. These aren’t “across the aisle” sorts of people that Biden’s handlers would want you to believe are open minded to US Energy Policy. Moderates simply don’t choose vehemently anti oil and gas lightning rods as successors, advisors and top cops.

    In a recent Rasmussen Reports poll, 59% of respondents didn’t think Joe Biden would serve-out a full four-year term due to health-related issues. That would leave us with Senator Harris as president. And where exactly would that leave us? I would argue, uncertain at best. When President Trump won the 2016 presidential election, the oil and gas industry immediately turned on after a punishing two-year downturn. Oil and gas prices didn’t rise as a result of his victory, but business confidence did. Operators teed up new drills and completions and service companies like mine were immediately called back to work. We finally had an administration that was supportive of extraction rather than vaguely duplicitous about it. Four years later, having a new Commander and Chief who is well known as anti-fracking isn’t going to do much for industry confidence. Investment will dwindle, jobs will be lost and the environment will suffer. Natural gas power plants are the reason for the considerable drop in CO2 emissions in US air over the last decade. Fueling these plants is the gas from fractured horizontal shale. Stop fracking and natural gas stops flowing—right away.

    Should a Biden presidency prevail in the upcoming elections, my own experience tells me that our oil and gas industry will be facing regulatory headwinds that will far exceed the blow back I personally faced during President Obama’s time in office.

  • “Biden Tries To Gloss Over His Long History of Supporting the Drug War and Draconian Criminal Penalties.”

    First, Biden did not merely “support” the 1994 law; he wrote the damned thing, which he has proudly called “the 1994 Biden Crime Bill.” Second, as much as Biden might like to disavow the law’s penalty enhancements now that public opinion on criminal justice has shifted, he was proud of them at the time. Third, the 1994 crime bill is just one piece of legislation in Biden’s long history of supporting mindlessly punitive responses to drugs and crime.

    Biden is trying to gloss over a major theme of his political career. “Every major crime bill since 1976 that’s come out of this Congress—every minor crime bill—has had the name of the Democratic senator from Delaware, Joe Biden,” he bragged in 1993. Now he wants us to believe his agenda was limited to domestic violence, community policing, and gun control.

    “Things have changed drastically” since 1994, Biden said last night, noting that “the Black Caucus voted” for the crime bill, and “every black mayor supported it.” In other words, now that black politicians and Democrats generally have rejected the idea that criminal penalties can never be too severe, Biden has shifted with the winds of opinion. But as Sen. Cory Booker (D–N.J.) noted during a Democratic presidential debate last year, that does not mean we should forget Biden’s leading role in the disastrous war on drugs and the draconian criminal justice policies that put more and more people in cages for longer and longer periods of time.

    “The crime bill itself did not have mandatory sentences except for two things,” Biden said. He mentioned the law’s “three strikes and you’re out” provision, which required a life sentence for anyone convicted of a violent crime after committing two other felonies, one of which can be a drug offense. He said he “voted against” that provision, which is not exactly true. While he did express concern that the provision was not focused narrowly enough on serious violent crimes, he voted for it as part of the broader bill.

    In any case, Biden did not just go along with the crime bill’s punitive provisions; he crowed about them. Like a crass car salesman hawking a new model with more of everything, he touted “70 additional enhancements of penalties” and “60 new death penalties—brand new—60.” He denounced as “poppycock” the notion, which would later be defensively deployed by Bill Clinton and Biden himself, that “somehow the Republicans tried to make the crime bill tougher.” Biden bragged that he had conferred with “the cops” instead of some namby-pamby “liberal confab” while writing the bill.

    As for “what the states did locally,” the law was designed to increase incarceration. It provided $10 billion in subsidies for state prison construction, contingent on passage of “truth in sentencing” laws that limited or abolished parole. “What I was against was giving states more money for prison systems,” Biden said last night. But that is simply not true. As FactCheck.org noted last year, “Biden did support $6 billion in funding for state prison construction, but not the $10 billion that was part of the final bill.”

    For all that people bitch about, that crime bill, incarcerating repeat offenders, and the “broken window policing” embracing by many big cities did help bring crime rates down. But the drug war incarcerated millions of users without putting a dent in the drug trade.

  • Indeed, President Donald Trump has a far more compelling pitch to Black Americans than Biden:

    Trump first lamented the horrific treatment of George Floyd, calling it “a terrible thing to watch.” He noted Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-S.C.) proposal, the JUSTICE Act. “He came up with a bill that should have been approved. It was great,” the president noted. “And the Democrats just wouldn’t go for it.”

    Indeed, Senate Democrats pre-emptively blasted the bill before Republicans had finished drafting it. Minutes after Scott, a black Republican senator, revealed the bill, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) called it a “token” effort. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) went so far as accusing Republicans of “trying to get away with murder, the murder of George Floyd,” because the JUSTICE Act’s provisions against chokeholds did not go far enough, in her view.

    Trump went on to repeat his rather grandiose claim, “I have done more for the African American community than any president. With the exception of Abraham Lincoln.”

    Yet the president mentioned specific accomplishments. “Criminal justice reform, prison reform, historically Black colleges and universities — I got them funded. They were on a year-to-year basis. … I got them 10-year funding and financing, and more than they even asked for,” Trump explained.

    The president also mentioned opportunity zones, his program to help black entrepreneurs. He claimed that President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Biden “never even tried” to do criminal justice reform. While Obama did suggest reform measures, he did not get them passed through Congress and signed into law, as Trump did.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Biden admission: “We stopped showing up at the Polish American Club and instead started hanging out with really smart people instead.”
  • Hey, remember when The New Yorker did a profile of Hunter Biden…and focused on his art? Good times, good times…
  • “Joe Biden is not a good person.” “He’s a man with a short temper and a history of lying.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Inside Biden’s Malarkey Factory:

    Joe Biden’s campaign has quietly built a multimillion-dollar operation over the past two months that’s largely designed to combat misinformation online, aiming to rebut President Trump while bracing for any information warfare that could take place in the aftermath of the election.

    The effort, internally called the “Malarkey Factory,” consists of dozens of people around the country monitoring what information is gaining traction digitally, whether it’s resonating with swing voters and, if so, how to fight back. The three most salient attacks the Malarkey Factory has confronted so far are claims that Biden is a socialist, that he is “creepy” and that he is “sleepy” or senile.

    In preparation for misinformation spreading as voters head to the polls, especially a stretch around Election Day when Facebook will not let campaigns buy new ads, the campaign has partnered with dozens of Facebook pages associated with liberal individuals or groups that have large followings. The campaign has also enlisted 5,000 surrogates with big social media platforms who can pump out campaign messages.

    The Malarkey Factory has already been at work. When Trump began attacking Biden as a socialist, for example, the Biden campaign saw that it was affecting Hispanic voters in Florida. So it developed counter-messaging that showed a different image of Biden, with him speaking of his love for America and being endorsed by former president Barack Obama, and the campaign blasted the messaging to Latinos in the state.

    Hunter’s name appears once, China and Ukraine not at all. One wonders if Post writer Matt Viser is himself an employee, given how fervently the piece regurgitates Biden campaign talking points…

  • “Anna Makanju, Facebook’s Public Policy Manager for Global Elections, was Joe Biden’s senior policy adviser…on Ukraine.”

    Here are some of the other areas of concern, especially when we consider the role she plays at Facebook should be filled by someone who is politically unbiased:

    • Senior Policy Advisor to Ambassador Samantha Power
    • Director for Russia at the National Security Council
    • Chief of Staff for the Office of European and NATO Policy
    • Professor at Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University
    • Field organizer for Obama for America in Wisconsin
    • Worked for the President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
    • Distinguished Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship recipient

    Caveat: I’m not familiar with noqreport.com, but there seems to be some supporting information out there.

  • More social media honchos walking through the revolving door to team Biden: Twitter public policy director Carlos Monje is joining Biden’s “transition team.” 1. Why does Twitter even have a “public policy director? (Don’t answer that: Obviously to help Democrats.) 2. Seems like he’s counting his chickens before they’re hatched, doesn’t it?
  • In case you hadn’t noticed yet, the Biden-Harris tax plan is to hike your taxes until your eyeballs bleed.

    Most households would face a tax increase under the Biden-Harris tax plan. In fact, as the chart shows, unless your household income is less than $45,600, there is more than a 90 percent chance that the Biden-Harris plan, if enacted, will raise your taxes. In the exact middle of the household income distribution, over 95 percent of households can expect a tax increase if the Biden-Harris plan becomes law. Overall, 82.6 percent of American households can expect a tax increase.

  • But you won’t just be taking home less money thanks to taxes, you’ll be taking home less money period. “A new study on Biden’s tax, health-care, energy and regulation proposals predicts $6,500 less in median household income by 2030.”
  • Evidently Joe Biden has seen his own shadow and will not be showing his face until Thursday:

    Does that sound like a hale, healthy man on his way to a landslide victory to you?

  • “Biden Endorses Transgender Activism for 8-Year-Old Children.”
  • Boom:

  • Slow Joe is even having problems reading a Teleprompter:

  • “WATCH: Joe Biden Attacks ‘Systemic Racism’; Forgets Name of ‘Proud Boys.'” He’s fighting against, you know, the thing…
  • How Biden is spending his ad money.
  • I think this very short flowchart is worth highlighting:

  • Supposedly Kamala Harris has tested positive for the Wuhan coronavirus, and so won’t be traveling anymore. Which is a lot more palatable to the press than saying she’s come down with the Dontwannatalkaboutmyrunningmatesobviouscorruptionproblemsvirus.
  • You’ll need to turn up your audio for this one:

  • Feel the enthusiasm:

  • Any day now…

  • “Trump Attempts To Catch Hunter Biden In Trap Labeled ‘Free Crack.'”

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    Posted in Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Obama Scandals | 3 Comments »

    Joe Rogan Interviews Wesley Hunt

    October 18th, 2020

    You may remember Wesley Hunt, the former Apache helicopter pilot and Republican candidate for the Texas Seventh Congressional District, from his appearance in Dan Crenshaw’s Texas Reloaded ad. Well, Joe Rogan seems to have hit the ground running after his move to Texas, and interviewed him. Here’s a clip on why transplanted Californians shouldn’t vote for what made them leave the state:

    And here they are discussing why the Green New Deal won’t work:

    Here’s he full interview, which I haven’t watched yet:

    Hunt is running against Democratic incumbent Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, who beat Republican John Culberson in the 2018 Year of Beto wave by a mere five points. Given how close that race was, and the fact that Hunt has raised almost six million dollars for the race through September, means that Hunt flipping the seat back is far from a pipe dream.

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    Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas, video | 3 Comments »

    Hunter Biden Has An Armory Of Smoking Guns

    October 17th, 2020

    If you thought we were done with smoking guns among Biden’s email treasure trove, think again:

    One of the people on an explosive email thread allegedly involving Hunter Biden has corroborated the veracity of the messages, which appear to outline a payout for former Vice President Joe Biden as part of a deal with a Chinese energy firm.

    One email, dated May 13, 2017, and obtained by Fox News, includes a discussion of “remuneration packages” for six people in a business deal with a Chinese energy firm. The email appeared to identify Hunter Biden as “Chair / Vice Chair depending on agreement with CEFC,” in an apparent reference to now-bankrupt CEFC China Energy Co.

    The email includes a note that “Hunter has some office expectations he will elaborate.” A proposed equity split references “20” for “H” and “10 held by H for the big guy?” with no further details. Fox News spoke to one of the people who was copied on the email, who confirmed its authenticity.

    Sources told Fox News that “the big guy” is a reference to the former vice president. The New York Post initially published the emails and other controversial messages that Fox News has also obtained.

    But wait! Confirmation of Hunter’s crooked dealings isn’t confined to his abandoned laptop:

    Newly obtained emails from a Hunter Biden business partner lay out in detail how the Vice President’s son and his colleagues used their access to the Obama-Biden administration to arrange private meetings for potential foreign clients and investors at the highest levels in the White House. These never-before-revealed emails outline how a delegation of Chinese investors and Communist Party officials managed to secure a private, off-the-books meeting with then-Vice President Joe Biden.

    In a 2011 email, Hunter Biden’s business associates also discussed developing relations with what one called “China Inc.” as part of a “new push on soft diplomacy for the Chinese.” These emails are completely unconnected to the Hunter Biden emails being released by the New York Post.

    These and more explosive never-before-revealed emails were provided to Schweizer by Bevan Cooney, a one-time Hunter Biden and Devon Archer business associate. Cooney is currently in prison serving a sentence for his involvement in a 2016 bond fraud investment scheme.

    If you’ve been following BidenWatch and the Clown Car updates, Devon Archer should be familiar to you.

    In 2019, Cooney reached out to Schweizer after becoming familiar with the revelations in his 2018 book Secret Empires. Cooney explained that he believes he was the “fall guy” for the fraud scheme and that Archer and Hunter Biden had avoided responsibility.

    Archer, who was also convicted in the case, saw a federal judge vacate his conviction. But an appellate court overturned the lower court judge’s ruling, reinstating Archer’s conviction in the case. Archer, Hunter Biden’s longtime business partner, awaits sentencing.

    Cooney, their associate who is currently serving a prison sentence on his conviction in the matter, later reestablished contact with Schweizer through investigative journalist Matthew Tyrmand. From prison, Cooney provided Schweizer with written authorization, his email account name, and password to his Gmail account to retrieve these emails. He authorized, in writing, the publication of these emails— notable because it is the first time a close associate has publicly confirmed Hunter’s trading on his father’s influence.

    The emails offer a unique window into just how the Biden universe conducted business during the Obama-Biden Administration. These associates sought to trade on Hunter Biden’s relationship with, and access to, his father and the Obama-Biden White House in order to generate business.

    For instance, on November 5, 2011, one of Archer’s business contacts forwarded him an email teasing an opportunity to gain “potentially outstanding new clients” by helping to arrange White House meetings for a group of Chinese executives and government officials. The group was the China Entrepreneur Club (CEC) and the delegation included Chinese billionaires, Chinese Communist Party loyalists, and at least one “respected diplomat” from Beijing. Despite its benign name, CEC has been called “a second foreign ministry” for the People’s Republic of China—a communist government that closely controls most businesses in its country. CEC was established in 2006 by a group of businessmen and Chinese government diplomats.

    CEC’s leadership boasts numerous senior members of the Chinese Communist Party, including Wang Zhongyu (“vice chairman of the 10th CPPCC National Committee and deputy secretary of the Party group”), Ma Weihua (director of multiple Chinese Communist Party offices), and Jiang Xipei (member of the Chinese Communist Party and representative of the 16th National Congress), among others.

    “I know it is political season and people are hesitant but a group like this does not come along every day,” an intermediary named Mohamed A. Khashoggi wrote on behalf of the CEC to an associate of Hunter Biden and Devon Archer. “A tour of the white house and a meeting with a member of the chief of staff’s office and John Kerry would be great,” Khashoggi said before including what should have been a major red flag: “Not sure if one has to be registered to do this.” Presumably, Khashoggi meant a registered lobbyist under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

    Khashoggi believed the trip presented “a soft diplomacy play that could be very effective” and would give Hunter Biden’s business partners “good access to [the Chinese] for any deal in the future.”

    Indeed, the email boasted of CEC’s wealthy membership:

    CEC’s current membership includes 50 preeminent figures such as: Liu Chuanzhi, Chairman of the CEC, Legend Holdings and Lenovo Group; Wu Jinglian, Zhang Weiying, and Zhou Qiren, China’s esteemed economists; Wu Jianmin, respected diplomat; Long Yongtu, representative of China’s globalization; Wang Shi (Vanke); Ma Weihua (China Merchants Bank); Jack Ma (Alibaba Group); Guo Guangchang (Fosun Group); Wang Jianlin, (Wanda Group); Niu Gensheng (LAONIU Foundation); Li Shufu (Geely); Li Dongsheng (TCL Corporation); Feng Lun (Vantone) and etc.

    The gross income of the CEC members’ companies allegedly “totaled more than RMB 1.5 trillion, together accounting for roughly 4% of China’s GDP.” The overture to Hunter Biden’s associates described the Chinese CEC members variously as “industrial elites,” “highly influential,” and among “the most important private sector individuals in China today.”

    With Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, that’s two high ranking Obama Administration officials who were running play-for-play scams. How many more were there, and who was running them?

    At this point, I think even liberal campaign professionals have to be impressed by the operational security Team Trump has maintained to successfully roll out these October surprises right on schedule. Whoever they have running it it (Barr? Giuliani? Don Jr.?) has managed to keep a lid on everything until now. This is a huge contrast with the first year of the Trump Administration, which leaked like a sieve until Trump fired those responsible for the leaks and got the right people in place.

    And here’s the kicker: You have to believe that more October surprises are to comes from Team Trump. Maybe even one a day until the election.

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Obama Scandals, Waste and Fraud | 7 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for October 16, 2020

    October 16th, 2020

    I couldn’t post to Twitter yesterday, and briefly thought they’d finally banned me for spreading Disapproved Hunter Biden News. Sadly, it was down for everyone, not just me.

    Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:

  • “Twitter, Facebook Go Full Tilt Protecting Biden Just Weeks After Execs Join Transition Team.”

    Perhaps the selective enforcement of content which is politically harmful to Democrats can be explained by recent hires by the Biden transition team.

    According to Breitbart, Twitter Public Policy Director Carlos Monje left the social media giant to join Biden’s transition team in September. He will reportedly serve as co-chair of Biden’s infrastructure policy committee, and helped organize a fundraiser for the former VP this week, according to an invitation from Politico.

    Meanwhile in October, Biden’s transition team hired Facebook executive Jessica Hertz to its general counsel to deal with ‘ethics’ issues. Notably, Facebook was the first platform to ban the Post article – with former Democrat staffer and Facebook communications team member Andy Stone tweeting that the company would be ‘reducing its distribution.’

  • Kurt Schlichter says that Trump’s momentum is back:

    Trump is back and this is a real race. I think we will win it.

    Except all the polls are telling us Grandpa Badfinger is up +37, right? Weird how four years ago right now, we were hearing the exact same thing. Ignore the spinners who are solemnly informing you that your lying eyes are lying again and the 2016 polls were akshually very accurate. Baloney. A key component of effective gaslighting is plausibility, and I was there. You were there. All we heard in 2016 was how Trump was going down to a landslide defeat. Instead, everyone in the smart set got blindsided by the Trump Train.

    And it can happen again.

    Now, it doesn’t have to happen again. Nothing is written, and we have to fight for our victory. There are a lot of stupid people around – my district regularly re-e-elects Ted Lieu – and Oldfinger could build a Coalition of the Drooling to put him in the White House. But I think the Trump lightning will strike again.

    Remember, the polls are the only data point in Biden’s favor. The only one. And as we have seen they screwed up last time and their proponents have an interest in them being bad for Trump.

    But Kurt, the libs say, “You must hate science because the science of polling cannot be wrong! It’s science.” Yeah, but so is phrenology. The fact is that not only do the polls have a track record of failure with regard to populists like Trump – remember that they also missed a number of Senate seats that were supposed to spin down the drain with The Donald – but many of the pollsters are retained by media outlets with an anti-Trump agenda. If these very fine people in the media lie about everything, like the “very fine people” quote, why would you buy the notion that there’s some line they won’t cross when it comes to faking polls?

    Am I saying they will push bullSchiff poll results to try to demoralize patriots? Yes, yes I am. You don’t have to just make up numbers – though I would not put it past them. You just tweak the turnout model and fiddle with the cross-tabs and voila! – CNN has its narrative. After all, it’s not like in the editorial offices they are saying “Sure, we’ll lie about Trump/ Russia, Trump/COVID, and Trump/Nickelback, and hey, there’s no way we’ll fake a poll! We have scruples.” They would sacrifice their babies to Baal if A) they hadn’t hit Planned Parenthood, and B) they thought it would ensure Trump loses.

    Also: “Biden rallies look like the shopping mall in Dawn of the Dead, which is apt since the guy handling his media events is apparently George Romero. Only the flesh-eating zombies had more pep than the Delaware Dementite’s fans.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • “Democrats Were Awful Filth Questioning ACB.” Kamala Harris looked sad, but Mazie Hirono of Hawaii was probably the biggest loon.
  • Hmmmm: “Pelosi takes a big stake in CrowdStrike.”
  • Trump has broken their minds.
  • Democrats want to pack the courts:

    Why do Joe Biden and Kamala Harris refuse to give a straightforward yes or no answer when asked whether they intend to “pack the Court” and expand it to a number larger than the nine justices that have been on the Court for the past 150 years?

    Because a considerable portion of the Democratic Party wants to expand the Court beyond nine. In a recent YouGov survey, 47 percent of registered voters opposed expanding the size of the Supreme Court, 34 percent supported it, and 19 percent responded they didn’t know how they felt. But self-identified Democrats were much more supportive: 60 percent wanted to expand the Court, 18 percent opposed the idea, and 22 percent didn’t know.

  • “Democrat Proposing To His Girlfriend Says He Won’t Reveal Position On Adultery Until After The Wedding.”
  • Kansas Democratic senate candidate Barbara Bollier comes out in favor of Australian-style gun confiscation.
  • More examples of that voting fraud that Democrats swear doesn’t exist. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Twitter discovers the Streisand Effect:

    It quickly became clear that in their attempts to strangle the Hunter Biden story, two social media giants left themselves gasping for air.

    Twitter and Facebook took major steps to squelch the New York Post piece, but wound up giving it far more attention than if they had done nothing and let their millions of users share it freely.

    For Twitter in particular, if you had to come up with a plan to reinforce conservative complaints about its liberal bias, you could hardly do better than for the tech giant to lock the Trump campaign’s account. Not to mention that of press secretary Kayleigh McEnany as well.

    Hashtag: #Fail

    In fact, Twitter chief Jack Dorsey admitted in a tweet that the company’s conduct–censoring stories and locking accounts with little public explanation–was “unacceptable.” You got that right, Jack. But then he didn’t do anything to fix it, apparently viewing the self-inflicted wound as just a PR problem. Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans plan to subpoena Dorsey next week.

    (Hat tup: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “A Poor Farrier’s Journey to Political Sanity.”

    After a few years of shoeing horses, briefly interrupted by a temporary job mining silver, I ran a brush-clearing and landscaping company as a side hustle. During this scramble for meaningful independence, the leftist tendencies I’d absorbed at college dropped off bit by bit. Life as a capitalist entrepreneur brought out the best in me, even when I was flirting with homelessness. Moreover, being in the real working world pushed me into contact with people, ideas, and situations that challenged me in all sorts of ways. After a few near-fatal incidents with horses (one of which left my skull and jaw shattered), I began pursuing my own business full time in 2016.

    Now in my early 20s, I still had a soft spot for socialist ideas, including a lingering resentment toward the wealthy. And so, from a progressive politician’s perspective, I was hardly a lost cause. But I also was becoming aware that the Left didn’t really have much interest in the challenges I was facing, being far more concerned with issues of race and gender identity. As a straight white male, I was supposedly luxuriating in a life of privilege—a stereotype that had nothing to do with my experience as a blue-collar worker who’d faced debilitating family traumas.

    Plus Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson.

  • Seattle’s far-left city council is busy taxing the golden goose to death. (Hat tip: johnnyk20001.)
  • Speaking of crazy leftwing city councils, thanks to the SUPERgenius police defunding policies of Mayor Adler and the Austin City Council, some 911 calls have waits of between 2-6 hours.
  • Austin Police is searching four four different suspects in a string of 7-11 robberies.
  • More Austin restaurant closures.
  • Some Wuhan Coronavirus perspective:

  • If you newly sign up for Twitter, they only recommend leftwing politicians to you.
  • Would-be second debate moderator Steve Scully lied about his account being hacked.
  • U.S. Cybercommand clobbers botnet.
  • “China Conducts Test Of Massive Suicide Drone Swarm Launched From A Box On A Truck.” I hope we’re working on similar or more advanced technology.
  • How malls die. Slowly, then all at once.
  • Daryl Morey steps down as Houston Rockets GM. He had everything on his resume (including the NBA trade of the century so far) but a championship.
  • “Twitter Shuts Down Entire Network To Slow Spread Of Negative Biden News.”
  • “Donald The Orange Returns Triumphantly As Donald The White.”

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Guns, Media Watch, Supreme Court, Texas | 2 Comments »

    Hunter Biden’s Smoking Guns

    October 15th, 2020

    I was debating whether to post this story or wait to use it in next week’s BidenWatch, but the fact that so many tech giants are so intent on censoring has forced my hand:

    Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company, according to emails obtained by The Post.

    The never-before-revealed meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, allegedly sent Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, about a year after Hunter joined the Burisma board at a reported salary of up to $50,000 a month.

    “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” the email reads.

    An earlier email from May 2014 also shows Pozharskyi, reportedly Burisma’s No. 3 exec, asking Hunter for “advice on how you could use your influence” on the company’s behalf.

    The blockbuster correspondence — which flies in the face of Joe Biden’s claim that he’s “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings” — is contained in a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer.

    The computer was dropped off at a repair shop in Biden’s home state of Delaware in April 2019, according to the store’s owner.

    Other material extracted from the computer includes a raunchy, 12-minute video that appears to show Hunter, who’s admitted struggling with addiction problems, smoking crack while engaged in a sex act with an unidentified woman, as well as numerous other sexually explicit images.

    The customer who brought in the water-damaged MacBook Pro for repair never paid for the service or retrieved it or a hard drive on which its contents were stored, according to the shop owner, who said he tried repeatedly to contact the client.

    The shop owner couldn’t positively identify the customer as Hunter Biden, but said the laptop bore a sticker from the Beau Biden Foundation, named after Hunter’s late brother and former Delaware attorney general.

    Photos of a Delaware federal subpoena given to The Post show that both the computer and hard drive were seized by the FBI in December, after the shop’s owner says he alerted the feds to their existence.

    Good job by Emma-Jo Morris and Gabrielle Fonrouge of reporting on the story for the New York Post.

    Absolutely no one is surprised that Joe Biden lied about this contact when asked. Now we just have proof of it.

    You wouldn’t think a story that merely confirms what people already knew about Biden’s lies would have been the tripwire for Internet media giants to abandon even the pretense of objectivity, but you’d be wrong.

    Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted Wednesday evening that his platform’s handling of a New York Post article about the Bidens and Burisma “was not great,” after Twitter began blocking users from sharing the article and locking the accounts of those that did.

    “Our communication around our actions on the@nypost article was not great,” Dorsey stated. “And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable.”

    Twitter even briefly suspended the account of White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany (who, thanks to that, I’m now following):

    I’ve heard that Facebook was also blocking the posts, but I just now posted it (and the story below) successfully.

    Other Twitter condemnation was swift:

    How did Joe Biden respond to the new evidence? He didn’t. He called a lid (i.e., retired for the day) after the news broke.

    Today, Part 2 dropped: “Emails reveal how Hunter Biden tried to cash in big on behalf of family with Chinese firm.”

    Hunter Biden pursued lucrative deals involving China’s largest private energy company — including one that he said would be “interesting for me and my family,” emails obtained by The Post show.

    One email sent to Biden on May 13, 2017, with the subject line “Expectations,” included details of “remuneration packages” for six people involved in an unspecified business venture.

    Biden was identified as “Chair / Vice Chair depending on agreement with CEFC,” an apparent reference to the former Shanghai-based conglomerate CEFC China Energy Co.

    His pay was pegged at “850” and the email also noted that “Hunter has some office expectations he will elaborate.”

    In addition, the email outlined a “provisional agreement” under which 80 percent of the “equity,” or shares in the new company, would be split equally among four people whose initials correspond to the sender and three recipients, with “H” apparently referring to Biden.

    The deal also listed “10 Jim” and “10 held by H for the big guy?”

    Neither Jim nor the “big guy” was identified further.

    The email’s author, James Gilliar of the international consulting firm J2cR, also noted, “I am happy to raise any detail with Zang if there is [sic] shortfalls ?”

    “Zang” is an apparent reference to Zang Jian Jun, the former executive director of CEFC China.

    The email is contained in a trove of data that the owner of a computer repair shop in Delaware said was recovered from a MacBook Pro laptop that was dropped off in April 2019 and never retrieved.

    The computer was seized by the FBI, and a copy of its contents made by the shop owner shared with The Post this week by former Mayor Rudy ­Giuliani.

    Another email — sent by Biden as part of an Aug. 2, 2017, chain — involved a deal he struck with the since-vanished chairman of CEFC, Ye Jianming, for half-ownership of a holding company that was expected to provide Biden with more than $10 million a year.

    Ye, who had ties to the Chinese military and intelligence service, hasn’t been seen since being taken into custody by Chinese authorities in early 2018, and CEFC went bankrupt earlier this year, according to reports.

    Biden wrote that Ye had sweetened the terms of an earlier, three-year consulting contract with CEFC that was to pay him $10 million annually “for introductions alone.”

    “The chairman changed that deal after we me[t] in MIAMI TO A MUCH MORE LASTING AND LUCRATIVE ARRANGEMENT to create a holding company 50% percent [sic] owned by ME and 50% owned by him,” Biden wrote.

    “Consulting fees is one piece of our income stream but the reason this proposal by the chairman was so much more interesting to me and my family is that we would also be partners inn [sic] the equity and profits of the JV’s [joint venture’s] investments.”

    A photo dated Aug. 1, 2017, shows a handwritten flowchart of the ownership of “Hudson West” split 50/50 between two entities ultimately controlled by Hunter Biden and someone identified as “Chairman.”

    According to a report on Biden’s overseas business dealings released last month by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a company called Hudson West III opened a line of credit in September 2017.

    Credit cards issued against the account were used by Hunter, his uncle James Biden and James’ wife, Sara Biden, to purchase more than $100,000 “worth of extravagant items, including airline tickets and multiple items at Apple Inc. stores, pharmacies, hotels and restaurants,” the report said.

    The company has since been dissolved, and Hunter Biden’s law firm, Owasco PC, was one of two owners, according to the report.

    Biden’s email was sent to Gongwen Dong, whom The Wall Street Journal in October 2018 tied to the purchase by Ye-linked companies of two luxury Manhattan apartments that cost a total on $83 million.

    Dong, who owns a sprawling mansion in Great Neck, LI, has been identified in reports as CFO of the Kam Fei Group, an investment firm based in Hong Kong.

    The documents obtained by The Post also include an “Attorney Engagement Letter” executed in September 2017 in which one of Ye’s top lieutenants, former Hong Kong government official Chi Ping Patrick Ho, agreed to pay Biden a $1 million retainer for “Counsel to matters related to US law and advice pertaining to the hiring and legal analysis of any US Law Firm or Lawyer.”

    In December 2018, a Manhattan federal jury convicted Ho in two schemes to pay $3 million in bribes to high-ranking government officials in Africa for oil rights in Chad and lucrative business deals in Uganda.

    Ho served a three-year prison sentence and was deported to Hong Kong in June.

    As of this writing, Twitter hasn’t suppressed the second link…yet.

    I am given to understand that more stories on the email trove are to come.

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Media Watch | 17 Comments »

    Round Rock ISD and North Austin MUD #1 Election Roundup

    October 14th, 2020

    Since early voting has already started in Texas, here’s my “No one else is doing this so it might as well be me” local races roundup. Consider this “one-eyed man in the land of the blind” advice.

    Round Rock ISD Race Recommendations

  • Place 1: This piece from Round Rock ISD Parents & taxpayers says that Kim Boen (Place 1), Lacey Mase (Place 2) and Jenn Griffith (Place 7) are all “establishment” candidates. However, in Place 1, I’m deeply suspicious of Jun Xiao, mainly for the degree to which he flogs “diversity” on his website, and the fact that the local white pro-BLM banner loon has a sign out for him in his front yard. Also, the Williamson County Republican Party rates Xiao a “Weak D” and Boen a “Hard R.” So Kim Boen wins here.
  • Place 2: Mase is the establishment candidate, and Cornell Woolridge, despite having a name close to that of a famous mystery writer, seems pretty Social Justicey, with his talk of a “Chief Equity Officer” and “equity for marginalized communities.” So Mary Bone is the pick here.
  • Place 6: David Schmidt seems to be the taxpayer-friendly candidate, so he gets the nod. One of his opponents, Tiffanie Harrison, is the Social Justice Warrior lunatic in the race.
  • Place 7: Air Force Vet and Blue Star Mom Danielle Weston gets the nod over establishment favorite Jenn Griffith here.

    • More resources:

  • Place 1 candidate profiles
  • Place 2 candidate profiles.
  • Place 6 candidate profiles.
  • Place 7 candidate profiles.
  • Williamson County Republican Party non partisan race roundups

    • North Austin MUD #1

    The choices to vote for here are Donald Ayers and Kim Roche-Green You may remember that I also endorsed Ayers back in 2018, and the Wilco GOP rates him a Hard R. Also, both of their opponents have been endorsed by Democratic groups. Finally, they make a compelling case in this flyer:

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    Posted in Austin, Elections, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 7 Comments »

    China Invading Taiwan Follow-Up: From Nukes to Knives

    October 13th, 2020

    There have been some interesting comments, both here and at Instpundit, on my Taiwan invading Taiwan scenarios piece.

    First up, some commenters wondered if China would just nuke Taiwan rather than risk the uncertainties of a massive amphibious invasion. That’s never going to happen for the same reason you don’t torch a car you’re planning on stealing. China wants Taiwan not only as a symbol of its own power and territorial unity, but also for its wealth and technological leadership. A Taipei reduced to glowing rubble not only defeats that goal, but would encourage South Korea and Japan (and maybe even Vietnam and the Philippines) to start producing their own nuclear weapons, and might even prod atherosclerotic transnational bureaucracies to actually spring into action to sanction China on a variety of fronts. There are few upsides and an incredible number of downsides to China nuking Taiwan.

    Second, as commenter Old Paratrooper noted, this year China launched only its second amphibious assault ship:

    The Chinese Navy has now launched a second large amphibious assault ship engineered to carry weapons, helicopters, troops and landing craft into war, a move which further changes international power dynamics by strengthening China’s ability to launch expeditionary maritime attacks.

    The ship is described at the second Type 075 Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD), somewhat analogous to the U.S. WASP-class. This Chinese amphibious assault ship reportedly displaces as much as 30,000 tons and is able to carry as many as 28 helicopters, a report from Naval News states. The report adds that the new People’s Liberation Army Navy LHD is likely powered by a diesel engine with 9,000kW, four Close In Weapons Systems and HQ-10 surface-to-air missiles. The new ship’s “aim is likely to increase the “vertical” amphibious assault capability with the very mountainous East Coast of Taiwan in mind,” the Naval News report writes.

    The addition of more LHDs certainly increases China’s maritime attack power, making it a formidable threat along the Taiwanese coastline. Photos of the ship show well-deck in back, capable of launching ship-to-shore transport craft similar to the U.S. Navy Landing Craft Air Cushion or newer Ship-to-Shore Connector. Such a configuration makes it appear somewhat similar to U.S. Navy WASP-class which, unlike the first two ships of the America-class, also operates with a well-deck from which to launch large-scale amphibious assaults.

    Wikipedia says a third ship of this type is under construction.

    Three ships isn’t going to get a Taiwanese invasion done, no matter how advanced, even assuming all the helicopters and landing ships make it to shore. (They wouldn’t.) However, China also has has some 70 other Type 071 through 074 amphibious assault ships in it’s inventory, plus some 200 or so small landing craft, slightly larger than the ones that hit Omaha Beach, some almost 50 years old, many with hovercraft designs. (They have some even older, Soviet-derived crap, that I doubt they’d try to use unless they were really desperate.)

    For comparison, the U.S. Navy used over 500 ships during the invasion of Iwo Jima, an island of 8 square miles, as opposed to Taiwan’s 973.

    Maybe Chinese planning calls for a massive “set everything moving straight across the straits at once” push, which would explain why only April and October are suitable, because the smaller and older craft simply wouldn’t make it in rougher seas. Such a plan would also only work with massive air superiority over the strait, else they’re asking for a repeat of The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, only with a lot more target and precision munitions.

    Finally, over on Instapundit, user bigfire pointed out that the ChiComs shelled the outpost island of Kinmen (AKA Quemoy) for months. The result? The islanders use the steel from the bombs to make excellent knives:

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

    BidenWatch for October 12, 2020

    October 12th, 2020

    Biden refuses to reveal his position on court-packing, but he still wants to take your guns and hike your taxes until your eyeballs bleed, plus more on the enthusiasm gap, fracking flip-flops, and we’re all going to be millionaires (the Weimer Republic kind). It’s this week’s BidenWatch!

  • “Hey Joe, are you gonna pack the courts?” “Not telling!”

    As the Senate moves forward on the president’s Supreme Court pick, both former Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, continue to deflect when asked if they would try to add more justices to the nation’s highest court, a practice known as court packing.

    Biden and his party face increasing pressure because of the frustration of many progressives at the Republican effort to rush through a replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a longtime liberal icon, with Amy Coney Barrett just before the Nov. 3 election. Because the addition of Barrett is expected to create a conservative majority on the high court some have called for adding more justices.

    The question of adding seats to the Supreme Court also hinges on the battle for control of the U.S. Senate, where Republicans currently hold a slim 53 to 47 majority. If Democrats are able to wrest control of the GOP, maintain control of the U.S. House and Biden wins the presidency, the party would need to pass legislation expanding the court beyond its current limit of nine justices.

    Lord knows progressive frustration is a just a swell reason to overthrow centuries of tradition.

  • Biden actually says voters don’t deserve to know his stance on court packing. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • President Donald Trump is outperforming his 2016 polls in swing states.

    “According to an analysis from Real Clear Politics, Biden holds a 4.4 percentage point lead over the president in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina and Arizona,” she explains. “However, Democrat Hillary Clinton was ahead of Trump by 4.8 points in these swing states this time in 2016—a slightly greater advantage than the one Biden currently has.”

    Biden’s leads in Pennsylvania and Michigan, two states Trump won, are also smaller than Clinton’s leads at this time four years ago. “The Real Clear Politics average shows that Biden is ahead with a 6.3 lead in Pennsylvania and a 6.2 advantage in Michigan. Comparably, Clinton was leading in these two states by 9.2 points and 9.6 points, respectively, this time in 2016.”

    Similarly, polls for Wisconsin and North Carolina show Biden with a smaller lead than they did for Hillary Clinton back in 2016.

    The only outliers to this trend are Florida and Arizona. Biden’s lead in Florida is at 3.5, compared to Hillary’s 3.2 point lead in 2016. Biden also leads in Arizona by 3.4 points, compared to Trump’s 0.7 point advantage in 2016.

  • “Biden website vows ‘assault weapons’ ban, forced gun registration and banning online sales of guns, ammo and parts.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • More media shenanigans:

  • Biden still wants to tax you until you bleed:

    Asked about President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, which most economists agree are largely responsible for the resurrection of the U.S. economy following the slow-growth Obama-Biden years, Harris said: “On Day 1, Joe Biden will repeal that tax bill.”

    Never mind that a President Biden will have no such power to “repeal” anything. That’s Congress’ job, and if Biden isn’t blessed with having both branches of Congress firmly in far-left Democratic hands, “repealing” the tax cuts won’t happen.

    But then Harris went on to say Biden wouldn’t raise taxes on those earning less than $400,000. Say what? By “repealing” Trump’s tax cuts, he would be doing just that.

    The truth is, Biden has played games with his tax plans all along. But the actual tax plans he has revealed would be nothing short of disastrous for working men and women, and the economy as a whole. Those plans plainly show that 77-year-old Biden, a lifelong politician, understands nothing about the private economy. That is, apart from it being a great source of graft for him and his family.

    A report out just this week from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that taxes would rise about $4.3 trillion over the next decade under Biden’s plans, while taxes under Trump would actually decline by $1.7 trillion over that period.

    At least, you say, that $4.3 trillion in added taxes under Biden would cut the deficit more than Trump’s plans, right? Wrong.

    The CRFB notes that its projections show a 10-year rise in federal deficits of $8.3 trillion for Biden, versus $6.9 trillion for Trump.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Biden and Harris show up to campaign with each other for the first time in their campaign…too bad no one else did:

  • Trump, Biden and the enthusiasm gap:

    Enthusiasm for Trump among his voters “is historically high,” said Richard Baris, the director of Big Data Poll. “We saw that very early in the cycle, in his primary vote totals,” when the president drew unusually large voter turnout in uncontested races.

    “Meanwhile, Biden’s enthusiasm level is historically low — so low that the Democrats run the risk of replaying 2016,” Baris said.

    Just 46 percent of Biden voters in a recent Pew poll said that they strongly support him, compared to 66 percent of Trump’s base.

    Rank-and-file Dems are sounding the alarm.

    “I look out over my Biden sign in my front yard and I see a sea of Trump flags and yard signs,” Pennsylvania voter Susan Connors told Biden worriedly at a CNN-sponsored town hall Sept. 17.

    Experienced political hands have a saying: “Yard signs don’t vote.” And research appears to bear that out — a 2016 study found that political signage increases vote share by a mere 1.7 percentage points, on average.

    Biden holds a 10-point lead in the RealClearPolitics national polling average, a commanding position with Election Day less than four weeks away. But the exuberant signs and displays of Trump passion may actually point to a yawning enthusiasm gap that could make a big difference on Election Day — just as they did in 2016.

    Four years ago, a Washington Post/ABC News poll found a 13-point enthusiasm gap in Trump’s favor, a result echoed by other surveys, The Hill reported.

    Many people . . . said that the sheer volume of Trump signs they saw in 2016 — and the scarcity of Hillary Clinton signs — was their first clue that the polling was wrong and that Trump would have more success than the pundits had predicted,” Daniel Allott writes in “On the Road in Trump’s America: A Journey into the Heart of a Divided Nation” (Republic Books), out Oct. 20.

    It’s deja vu all over again… (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • “Biden Fans Upset That New York Times Accidentally Committed Journalism in One Headline.” How dare you ask for health plan details from the great and powerful Biden!
  • “Hunter Biden Longtime Biz Partner And Burisma Board-Buddy Going To Prison After Obama Judge Reversed.”

    A federal appeals court has reinstated a fraud conviction of Hunter Biden’s longtime business partner, Devon Archer, reversing a decision by an Obama-appointed judge (and wife of Mueller special counsel lawyer) to vacate Archer’s conviction and grant him a new trial.

    Archer and several of his business partners were indicted on March 26, 2018 in a $60 million bond scheme which defrauded Native Americans. Hunter was not implicated in the fraud, however Archer and the other partners repeatedly name-dropped the former Vice President’s son.

    Following a trial which lasted nearly one-month, Archer was found guilty of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and securities fraud. After requesting that the district court set aside the jury’s verdict, Judge Ronnie Abrams – the wife of Mueller special counsel attorney Greg Andres (who himself was a Deputy Assistant AG in the Obama DOJ, according to RedState) – granted Archer’s wish. What’s more, Abrams was Hunter Biden’s classmate at Yale Law school.

    In a unanimous opinion, a three-judge panel said that Abrams made a mistake by prioritizing her own theory above that of the jury’s, and that her assessment undercut the significance of the proof in its totality.

  • Ann Althouse reads the Vice Presidential debate transcript. Boy, the Biden-Harris ticket is 100% invested in promulgating the “Fine People” hoax.
  • “Pence effectively went after Harris — and a very biased moderator.”
  • How you know Pence won the debate.

    Mike Pence dominated in that debate. He was calm and cool. Rock-solid. Kamala Harris’s body language and voice reflected her nervousness—a stark contrast to her previous debate performances during the Democratic primary when she was still in the race. But neither her body language, her failure to answer questions, nor her constant reliance on fake stories as lines of attack were the key tell that she lost.

    The liberal media conceded Pence’s victory by describing Pence’s debate performance. And their go-to explanation was to attack the vice president by accusing him of “mansplaining.”

    

  • “China Censors Mike Pence’s Debate Comments On China But Freely Broadcasts Kamala Harris’s.” “‘China censored Pence’s comments on China,’ Canada’s Globe and Mail Beijing Correspondent Nathan VanderKlippe reported. ‘Signal returned when Harris began talking again.'”
  • Ace notes that 56% of Gallup respondents think they’re better off than four years ago and has some thoughts:

    Of all the people they know — including RINOs and squishes and NeverTrumpers who voted against Trump in 2016 — many of the NeverTrumpers are now reluctant Trump voters, and many of 2016’s reluctant Trump voters are now enthusiastic Trump voters.

    On the other hand, they don’t know anyone who has moved from voting for Trump in 2016 to voting for Biden.

    One friend tells me that the suburban well-to-do Wine Moms and Squish Sisters he knows are now fully on the MAGA train.

    Everyone they know who’s moved on The Trump Question (and Trump seems to be the only issue in 2020) has moved in favor of Trump.

    They also note that the “Shy Trumper” effect — where Trump supporters won’t admit to pollsters they still support Trump — is still strong, based on their own experience.

    One relates that he did not tell his own children that he voted for Trump, due to social pressure and the idea that he didn’t want to “normalize” Trump’s bad behavior to his children.

    If you can’t tell your own kids you voted for Trump, you’re not going to tell a pollster.

    And this person works in conservative politics, too!

    If even people in the conservative movement can’t admit they’re Trump supporters — well good luck getting Wendy Wine Mom to admit that on the phone.

    A friend of mine was a hardcore NeverTrumper in 2016 but now is a crawl-over-broken-glass Trump Voter. No, he doesn’t really like Trump, but unlike Jonah Goldberg and Steve Schmidt, he recognizes the profound threat the left poses to what is left of America.

    He has kept in touch with his NeverTrump pals. Media types. The types who annoy you on Twitter.

    And while he won’t Name Names, he tells me that many of the NeverTrumpers I hate are now “red pilled” Trump voters.

    They just won’t admit it publicly.

    Snip.

    If there were a lot of Trump defectors, the media would be profiling them and lionizing them and promoting them 24-7.

    But I haven’t seen a single story about Trump 2016-Biden 2020 defectors.

    The media hasn’t found any — despite the fact that by announcing that you’re now a full-on Democrat Liberal, you gain employment opportunities and social prestige.

    So if the media can’t find any of these people… do they even exist?

  • YouTuber Liberal Hivemind says that Biden is losing voters every day:

    Plus a supercut of Biden’s fracking flip flops.

  • Speaking of which, Pennsylvania voters are not fond of the fracking flip flop. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
    

  • Racist Joe does it again:
    

  • Good news! We’re all going to be millionaires thanks to Biden’s $15 million minimum wage:

  • Joe is trying his breast. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Biden wants to send psychiatrists on 911 calls:


    

  • Rimshot:

  • Kamala and The Knight of Columbus:

    chronicled many times over the last three years when Democratic senators questioned judicial nominees about their faith, suggesting in various forms that a candidate’s Catholic or Christian beliefs might render them unfit to serve on the bench.

    Several of those questions were posed by Harris herself, focusing especially on Catholic candidates. In late 2018, for instance, Harris grilled Brian Buescher, nominated to be a federal district judge in Nebraska, about his membership in the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization with more than 2 million members worldwide who conduct charitable work. Here’s one of Harris’s written questions to Buescher:

    Since 1993, you have been a member of the Knights of Columbus, an all-male society comprised primarily of Catholic men. In 2016, Carl Anderson, leader of the Knights of Columbus, described abortion as “a legal regime that has resulted in more than 40 million deaths.” Mr. Anderson went on to say that “abortion is the killing of the innocent on a massive scale.” Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization?

    She went on to ask whether Buescher was “aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed marriage equality when you joined the organization” and whether he had “ever, in any way, assisted with or contributed to advocacy against women’s reproductive rights.”

    Harris posed these and other similar questions to Paul Matey and Peter Phipps, Catholic nominees who, like Buescher, are members of the Knights. Among the questions she posed to Matey based on his involvement in the Knights were:

    * Do you agree with Mr. Anderson’s description of abortion as “the killing of the innocent on a massive scale”?

    * Do you agree with Mr. Anderson that legal abortion in the United States has “resulted in more than 40 million deaths”?

    * Do you believe that a fetus is entitled to any protection under the U.S. Constitution?

  • Race snapshot:

  • “Biden: ‘I Won’t Reveal Whether I Plan On Abolishing The Constitution And Establishing A Glorious Communist Utopia Until After I’m Elected.'”
  • “Kamala Harris’s Ratings Plummet As People Realize They’d Have To Listen To Her Voice For Next 4 Years.”
  • “Kamala Harris Sneaks Into White House To Plant Weed On Mike Pence.”

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    The Five Worst Production Tanks Of All Time

    October 11th, 2020

    Dwight and Borepatch have both weighed in on this one already, but as (I think) the only one of us who has actually visited the Tank Museum in Bovington, I though I would weigh in as well.

    This is not a bad list, and since it’s production tanks only, it doesn’t include the the execrable Valiant. However, I think you have to bump one of those five out to include this:

    That is the Italian Carro Veloce L3 flamethrower tank. A two man tank just over four feet high, today it’s been retroactively reclassified as a “tankette.” At the back right, you can barely see the edge of the 133 gallon tank it towed behind it on a two-wheel trailer. It deserves a place on this list due to the nasty tendency to roast the crew alive due to leaks in the gasoline lines.

    So which of the five in that video come out? I’m going to say the Jagdtiger. Not because anything in the video is wrong: it was a tremendously resource-hungry tank that required another parallel supply chain for its massive 128mm gun. However, that wasn’t clear in 1942, when it was first conceived, or 1943, when the bulk of development occurred. The main concern was dealing with massive numbers of Soviet tanks on the Eastern front, and where heavier Soviet tanks like the KV-85 were just starting to come online. In that environment, making the tradeoffs necessary to build that massive tank-killer probably seemed more justified in 1943, and the first Jagdtiger’s were delivered in January 1944. And even for the first few months after Normandy, there probably would have been no way to reclaim the material already allocated in the supply chain to build them. But any of them built after, say, September, were indeed a bad use of resources.

    In Tigers in the Mud, Panzer commander Otto Carius noted other flaws with Jagtiger (which are called “Hunting Tigers” in the English translation of the book), one of the biggest of which was the tendency of 128mm cannon to be jolted out of alignment during movement, which meant it had to be put into travel lock before maneuvers. Worse still, the travel lock “had to be removed from the outside during contact with the enemy!”

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    Posted in Military, video | 3 Comments »

    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.

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