Bosch’s New Fab And The State of European Semiconductors

June 23rd, 2021

This is interesting for what it says about the state of European semiconductor manufacturing:

German tech giant Bosch has opened the doors to a new semiconductor manufacturing facility in Dresden, which it hopes will plug the significant hole currently plaguing automotive supply chains.

The site – which was estimated to cost the company in excess of €1 billion (AU$1.57 billion) to build – will reportedly begin producing much-needed chips for vehicles by early September this year. It is so far unclear how the product will be distributed, and if German manufacturers – including Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz – will be given priority in the queue.

“The new [factory] is the single largest investment in the company’s history. This cannot be stressed too much. Its size and additional production capacity alone are impressive. The very latest methods of data-driven continuous improvement in production make the Dresden plant a smart factory,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“To put it another way: in this plant, natural and artificial intelligence have joined forces with the internet of things to form a productive symbiosis.”

Here Alte Jungfer Merkel is no doubt repeating some generic technomarketingspeak handed to her by an aide, as I suspect Merkel is as ignorant of current developments in artificial intelligence as I am of the songs she sang in the Freie Deutsche Jugend.

Here’s a Deutsche Weil English video segment on the fab, for which the headline says “Europe aims for independence from Asia”:

How cutting edge will the Bosch fab be?

The 300mm fab has been under construction since June 2018 and as recently as October 2019 it was stated that the Dresden wafer fab was expected to start operations in spring 2020…

The fab makes use of 5G communications and artificial intelligence [there’s that phrase again -LP] for extensive automation and will be used for the manufacture of power semiconductors and ASICs for automotive applications down to a minimum geometry of 65nm, according to a company spokesperson.

(record scratch)

300mm is industry standard, and Dresden makes sense, as Infineon, Global Foundries and X-FAB already have fabs there, so there’s a skilled labor pool to draw on. The strange thing here is spending $1.2 building a new 65nm fab, since that’s about seven process node generations behind the cutting edge. 65nm was cutting edge way back in 2005.

You don’t need cutting edge process technology to build automotive integrated circuits, which tend to use older process nodes, but 65nm doesn’t give you much headroom for the long haul. It also doesn’t really do much to “compete with Asia,” since it’s hopelessly behind not only leaders TSMC and Samsung, but also about half the fabs run by Chinese companies SMIC and Unigroup. It’s hard to see investing $1 billion in building a older technology fab as opposed to contracting out production to foundries. (Of course, foundry capacity is highly constrained right now, and maybe Bosch leadership was able to see that coming when they broke ground in 2018.)

Could it still turn out to be a decent investment? Possibly. In the short haul it will relieve the current capacity crunch and let Bosch gain share from competitors who can’t book foundry production. Plus semiconductor manufacturing seems like the sort of thing European governments like to subsidize. And indeed, the DW piece notes that “The German government also invested in the plant.” (It also wouldn’t surprise me to find out that various inscrutable, multi-acronym EU agencies unknown to voters in Barcelona and Gdansk are also kicking in money.) Fueled by taxpayer money, building a 65nm fab could still be a profitable proposition for Bosch.

But fabs close all the time, even 300mm fabs. Building a fab dedicated to such an old process node makes profitability a much more challenging proposition, especially given the next (inevitable) industry downturn. You only have so many years before everything is obsolete. Bosch has given themselves a very short runway to profitability for this investment.

Back in the 1990s, Europe was competitive with American and Japanese semiconductor companies, with fabs built in the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, the Netherlands and even Italy. Today, of those countries, only Ireland (Intel) and Germany have any 300mm fabs at all, despite having a highly educated workforce and modern technological infrastructure. (Russia evidently has one as well, owned by Crocus Nano Electronics (about which I know next to nothing), also running 65nm, that started production in 2015.) Europe’s semiconductor industry has been passed not only by Taiwan and South Korea, but also by China.

While Europe was integrating, its semiconductor manufacturing capacity was stagnating. Highly integrated, yes, but also highly regulated and highly unionized.

As I’ve said before, building cutting edge fabs is a very expensive game to play. Collectively, the world has decided that Europe is not a suitable location for one.

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Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Supreme Court Rumbles NCAA Scam

June 22nd, 2021

I used to follow some college athletics. Now I don’t. At the same time universities were getting more and more expensive, they were also getting more and more woke. College sports used to be an oasis from that nonsense, but so many programs bent the knee to #BlackLivesMatter last year that I just stopped paying attention.

So I was happy to see yesterday’s Supreme Court decision that colleges couldn’t collude to avoid paying student athletes.

he U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out limits set by the major governing body for American intercollegiate sports on education-related benefits that schools can give players as a violation of antitrust law, handing a big victory to student-athletes fighting for greater financial compensation.

The 9-0 ruling put the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) further on the defensive as it struggles to preserve a business model – huge revenues generated by college sports and big salaries for executives and coaches while players remain unpaid – under assault on multiple fronts.

The NCAA’s curbs on non-cash payments to college athletes related to education – including benefits such as computers, science equipment and musical instruments – were part of what critics have called the fiction of amateurism in college sports, an enterprise that rakes in billions of dollars annually.

These limits, according to the ruling authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, are anticompetitive under a federal law called the Sherman Antitrust Act. The ruling could pave the way for challenges to other NCAA compensation rules, a prospect that Justice Brett Kavanaugh appeared to invite in a separate opinion agreeing with Gorsuch.

Kavanaugh wrote that those other limits on compensation for players “also raise serious questions under the antitrust laws” and suggested they likely would be struck down if lower courts follow the analysis laid out in Monday’s ruling.

“The NCAA is not above the law,” Kavanaugh added.

For years, football and basketball have been big moneymakers for some colleges and universities (and money losers for others). Why not let student athletes benefit from that? Tradition? Hell, colleges are hellbent on destroying every tradition that made them vital institutions (including freedom of speech, free inquiry and the rule of law), so why not that one as well?

I’ve long thought that traditional football power schools (Alabama, Texas, USC, Oklahoma, etc.) could make a lot more money by leaving the NCAA and forming their own competing football conference of 15 or so teams, playing a round robin schedule plus playoffs. They could pay athletes and forge a partnership deal with the NFL to provide year-round professional coaching. It would provide more entertainment than watching power schools beat up on Rice or UNT every year.

America’s entire higher education system needs a hard reboot: Shut down all colleges and universities for a year, eliminate SJW departments like Women’s Studies entirely, hand every woke professor and administrator a pink slip, and deny federal loan and contracts for any university it costs students more than 10 grand a year to attend. Right now all this is a pipe-dream, but college athletics are one of the last sources of unwarranted affection ordinary people feel toward higher education. (“College is a $120,000 hooker, and you are an idiot who fell in love with her!”) Maybe the demise of the current plantation athletic complex will help pave the way for real reform.

Here’s the text of the decision.

And here’s a South Park clip to round out the post:

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Posted in Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, video | 3 Comments »

Assholes And Losers

June 21st, 2021

Critical Race Theory, like a lot of social justice/victimhood identity politics creeds, clothes horrible, racist ideas in the confounding camouflage of postmodern academic jargon. That’s one reason conservatives have had a hard time fighting it. Scott Adams says that labeling “Marxist” or “anti-white” isn’t getting the job done persuasion-wise. He suggests boiling down the poison of Critical Race Theory into something far more readily understandable: losers and assholes:

Being accurate matters for science and for budgeting. Accuracy often requires details and nuance and context and all that stuff. But persuasion craves simplicity. Every detail you add to a clean message gives someone a reason to not accept it.

We see this problem for the critics of Critical Race Theory. They try to argue it is a Marxist worldview, and 95% of the country isn’t quite sure that is true, and isn’t quite sure why that matters, exactly. Sounds bad, but perhaps not so bad for left-leaning people. And that’s who the right needs to persuade.

Calling CRT “anti-white” might be close to the truth, but that doesn’t matter to persuasion. The “anti-white” critique sounds exactly like a Fox News talking point, and not something moderates would take se …

That’s why I am A-B testing some new persuasion approaches. In this tweet I reframe CRT as sorting children into two classes: Losers and Assholes.

The “losers” would be any non-white kids born into this oppressive racist system. The assholes are the white kids who allegedly benefit from the system and perhaps are not keen to change what works for them.

That framing might well get the job done, though just asking parents “So, is your kid a loser or an asshole?” might bring sub-optimal results…

(I have a lot of links on fighting Critical Race Theory building up in the virtual hopper, though there are other topic posts I need to finish first.)

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Posted in Economics, Social Justice Warriors | 22 Comments »

The Long Road To Texas Constitutional Carry

June 20th, 2021

Though the 87th legislative regular session was a very mixed bag, among the good bills to actually make it to the end of the sausage factory was constitutional carry, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed that and a host of other Second Amendment bills this week:

Gov. Greg Abbott signed a number of pro-Second Amendment bills that were approved by the state legislature earlier this year at a press conference at the Alamo on Thursday.

“We gathered today at what truly is considered to be the cradle of liberty in the Lone Star State,” said Abbott.

The governor said they were holding the press conference “where men and women put their lives on the line, and they lost their lives, for the ultimate cause of freedom.”

“They fought for freedom. They fought for liberty, and that includes the freedom to be able to carry a weapon.”

Legislation that the governor signed, which will all go into effect on September 1, includes:

  • Senate Bill (SB) 19: prohibits state agencies and political subdivisions from contracting with any business that discriminates against firearm businesses or organizations.
  • SB 20: requires hotels to allow guests to store their firearms in their rooms.
  • SB 550: removes the specific language in state code that handguns must be worn in a “shoulder or belt” holster, allowing individuals to utilize any type of holster.
  • House Bill (HB) 957: exempts Texas-made suppressors from federal regulations surrounding the noise-reducing accessories.
  • HB 1500: removes the governor’s ability in state code to regulate firearms during a disaster declaration.
  • HB 1927: the “constitutional carry” bill that allows nearly all Texans over the age of 21 who can legally possess a handgun to legally carry it in public without a special permit.
  • HB 2622: the “Second Amendment sanctuary” bill that prohibits state and local government entities from enforcing certain types of potential federal firearm regulations that are not included in state code.

“[The Alamo defenders] knew the reason why somebody needed to carry a weapon was far more than just to use it to kill game that they would eat. They knew as much as anybody the necessity of being able to carry a weapon for the purpose of defending yourself against attacks by others,” said Abbott.

The governor pointed to the ongoing border crisis as a reason for Texans needing to be armed to defend themselves “against cartels and gangs and other very dangerous people.”

HB 1927, the Firearm Carry Act of 2021, takes effect September 1, so idiots blaming the Sixth Street shooting on it are talking out their ass.

In an email, Gun Owners of America Texas Director Rachel Malone notes that it took a decade to reach this point:

For me, the journey began ten years ago, in 2011. I became aware of the licensed open carry bill that the Texas Legislature was considering, and I figured that all the politically-involved people would do the work to pass it. How hard could that be? This is Texas, after all.

I was shocked when I heard that the bill had died without even receiving a vote….

When I showed up in 2013 for the legislative session, there were about half a dozen dedicated grassroots Texans who spoke up with me to end the permit requirement. That year, our words seemed to fall on deaf ears.

However, when all the significant gun bills in 2013 died, many more Texans came to the same conclusion that I had in 2011: you shouldn’t take it for granted that someone else will do the work to protect your rights.

During the next several legislative sessions, in 2015, 2017, and 2019, increasing numbers of Texans began showing up when it mattered — not merely at protests or rallies, but actually beginning to do the work inside the Capitol.

It was a long, uphill battle that not only took a lot of work and effort, but one that was ignored or fought by state congressional leadership along the way:

Constitutional carry has been a top priority for the Republican Party of Texas and gun owners across the Lone Star State for a long time.

In fact, constitutional carry was the first “legislative priority” approved by the delegates to the Texas GOP’s convention a decade ago.

Even as the list of party priorities expanded to eight over the years, constitutional carry has remained one of the party’s top goals for the legislature, as 20 other states—including Vermont—enjoy some form of permitless carry.

Despite this fact, however, the bill had not received much traction in the Texas Legislature in recent sessions. In 2019, for example, the bill was sent by then-House Speaker Dennis Bonnen to a committee led by Democrat State Rep. Poncho Nevarez (Eagle Pass), where it was not even given a hearing. Bonnen himself even referred to supporters of the legislation as “fringe gun activists.”

That same year, the legislation was not even filed in the Texas Senate.

So entering the legislative session at the beginning of 2021, the fight to pass the bill looked like an uphill battle. As the session began, numerous bills were filed in the House to remove the permit requirement to carry handguns, while State Sen. Drew Springer (R–Muenster) filed similar legislation in the Senate.

When committee assignments were announced in early February in the Texas House, new hope appeared for passing the bill.

Instead of appointing a Democrat to chair the Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee that has traditionally blocked constitutional carry legislation in the past, House Speaker Dade Phelan appointed Republican State Rep. James White (Hillister).

White, a known supporter of constitutional carry who had previously filed a bill to implement it in a previous session, was joined on the committee by four Republicans who had been endorsed by Gun Owners of America, an organization that has heavily advocated for constitutional carry, including State Reps. Cole Hefner (Mt. Pleasant), Matt Schaefer (Tyler), Jared Patterson (Frisco), and Tony Tinderholt (Arlington).

Ultimately it was Schaefer’s House Bill 1927 that made its way out of the committee and onto the House floor.

On Thursday, April 15, after several hours of debate and attempts by opponents to derail the legislation, the bill passed the House by a vote of 84 in support and 56 in opposition.

While most Democrat efforts to amend the bill were rebuffed, so too were some efforts by Republicans to strengthen the bill. One amendment that would have lowered the age from 21 to 18, for example, was strongly rebuked.

Notably, the lone Republican to vote against the bill was State Rep. Morgan Meyer (R–Dallas), while some Democrats like State Rep. Leo Pacheco (San Antonio) and Terry Canales (Edinburg) joined Republicans in support of the legislation

With the bill having passed its first major hurdle, attention quickly turned to the other chamber.

Just a few days after the bill’s passage in the House, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said the issue did not have enough votes to pass the Senate.

Almost instantly, activists began to light up Senators’ phone lines, demanding to know which Republicans were secretly blocking the bill behind the scenes.

Then, the Senate began to act.

First State Sen. Charles Schwertner (R–Georgetown) filed a new bill on the subject that was almost immediately referred to the Senate Administration Committee, chaired by Schwertner himself.

Then, seemingly overnight, Patrick created a new committee called the Senate Special Committee on Constitutional Issues. The only bill referred to the committee? HB 1927, the constitutional carry bill that passed the House the week prior.

Patrick then promised a vote on the issue in the Senate, even if it didn’t have the votes to pass, a move that would be considered highly unusual in the chamber, where normally authors must show they have the votes to pass their bill before it is brought up for consideration.

On May 5, the bill finally passed on an 18-31 party-line vote in the Senate. Due to amendments added in the Senate, the bill was sent to a conference committee, where members from House and Senate work to come to an agreement on which version of the bill will ultimately be sent to the governor.

On May 24, with just a week left in the session, the bill received final approval by both chambers.

Texas is actually fairly late to the game in passing Constitutional Carry:

35 years ago, it was illegal in 16 states (including Texas) for a civilian to carry a concealed weapon. Only Vermont did not require a pistol permit.

Working through the slow process of going state to state to change the law, the revolution happened.

First came the switch from no permit to may permit. That placed the decision on issuing permits in the hands of elected sheriffs, which explains why California and New York have not budged. Democrat sheriffs pocket a lot of money from patrons who want to carry.

Then came shall permit. This put the onus on law enforcement to show why a person should not carry a concealed weapon.

Finally, came freedom. 19 states no longer require the state’s permission to carry a concealed weapon.

What happens next? Well, as with open carry and campus carry, expect the gun grabbing crowd to predict horrific bloodshed from constitutional carry that never materializes, because it hasn’t happened in any other state that passed constitutional carry. Indeed, the three safest states in the union (Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire) are all Constitutional Carry states.

It’s been a long, hard road to get to this point, but it shows that dedicated activists can overcome establishment opposition and inertia to pass pro-freedom laws. And every pro-freedom law passed makes it that much harder for the leviathan state to take away those rights in the future.

There are no lost causes in American history because there are no won causes, and the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

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Posted in Guns, Republicans, Texas | 4 Comments »

Joe Rogan On The Media’s Tongue-Bathing Biden

June 19th, 2021

Joe Rogan and lefty Kyle Kulinski talk about the hallucinatory tongue bath the media gave Biden on his meeting with Putin:

“They’ll pretend things are happening that aren’t.”

Here are the Glenn Greenwald tweets they’re referring to:

Some people chalked up the media’s slavish coddling of Obama as hero-worship crossed with white guilt. But Joe Biden circa 2021 has none of the qualities that the media worshiped in Obama, except the (D) after his name. For the Democratic Media Complex, mere truth will always be suborned to the all-powerful Narrative.

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Posted in Democrats, Media Watch | 1 Comment »

LinkSwarm for June 18, 2021

June 18th, 2021

Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Hunter Biden channels Hunter S. Thompson (and not in a good way), Slow Joe stumbles around the G7, a top Chinese intelligence official defects, and Gillette inflicts toxic unprofitability on Proctor & Gamble.


  • Study shows that yes, indeed, Andrew Cuomo killed the elderly.
    

  • Kurt Schlichter is not impressed with Joe Biden:

    It’s beyond any reasonable dispute that the slack-jawed old pervert staggering through this punchline presidency is getting more senile by the day. All the while, his cackling understudy is biding her time everywhere but at the border, getting huffy at being questioned, and generally failing at a job historically assigned to morons as a role where they could do little damage. The only people who dig their hep jive – yeah, go on and believe the 79 percent approval numbers among people now paying $5 a gallon for unleaded – are the talking tubers of cable news. But even the tater thots of Brian Stelter, who is a potato, can’t dispel the growing sense of unease that watching these incompetent weirdos brings.

    This epoch is the interregnum, a caretaker presidency presided over by a human asterisk who cares only about his post-lid bowl of mush and being wrapped in a shawl, set in front of the tee-vee, and allowed to watch his stories. The only thing moving less expeditiously than his bowels is his ridiculous legislative agenda, and all the prunes in the world aren’t going to help clear out that particular constipation, not with Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema refusing to commit ritual political suicide on the altar of coastal leftist dreams.

    The progs were so close, just a vote or two away, to the unrestrained power they thought they could flex and thereby secure their control forever. But * is no Franklin Roosevelt. Nor is he Teddy Roosevelt. Nor Eleanor Roosevelt, though he could be if he really, really wanted to be. He’s not even Melvin Roosevelt. Instead, Grandpa Badfinger is a rickety joke, bumping elbows with his younger fellow-incompetents at the G7, wandering about mindlessly chasing moths until his ridiculous wife, with her ridiculous “Dr.”, wrangles him back into the hapless pack. You look at this sorry set of leaders of the formerly-free world and the vibe you get is “exhaustion.” There’s no energy, no drive, no hope. Boris Johnson, formerly a man, explained to a bored UK that that “nations coming out of the pandemic need to ‘build back better’ in a ‘greener,’ ‘more gender neutral and perhaps a more feminine way.’” Hack clichés are their solution, but these relics have nothing else. They are weak and stupid and they represent a spent elite that cares about nothing except just a little more time holding fast to their uncertain sinecures.

    You can feel the tension beneath the surface, the sense that something is coming, a great changing. Oh, the elite at Davos fantasizes about a “Great Reset,” but they mean it literally – they want to reset the world back to how it was set when they were young and had energy and people hadn’t yet noticed that their venality and incompetence was matched only by their insanely inflated sense of their own abilities. But why would they be any better at pulling that off than they are at anything else? When the shattering disruption comes, they are the ones who will be disrupted, they and the whole post-War establishment our betters thought would last a thousand years and that won’t make it past 80. The elite aren’t, not even close, and we all know it now and we all sense that their Jenga tower o’ power can’t keep from toppling over even as they pull more and more blocks out of it, shredding norms (just this once – it’s always “just this once”) to keep their grip.

    But what comes next? Something big, but the question is “What?” The only thing for certain is that the people running things now won’t like it. It’s been said here many times that Donald Trump was not our last chance, but theirs, our final fair warning to our failed elite from back when, at some level, we still thought the ruling caste acknowledged that we normals had at least some theoretical right to participate in our own government. But such illusions, to the extent they had endured, got shattered last November. We heard for four years how the 2016 election had been hacked, stolen, whatever the hyperbole du jour was, and the minute they could proclaim His Asteriskness president questioning elections became treason. But we saw the cheating, and we saw the judicial and executive sleight-of-hand that changed the rules in ways a real Supreme Court would have objected to, and we saw the informal rigging of the election through the lies and covering-up of the professional, licensed, and registered janitors of narrative journalism.

    Now it’s all about holding onto power no matter what the cost. The corrupt feds toss trespassers into solitary while letting Antifa/BLM scumbags walk. Their tech buddies desperately try to play whack-a-mole with the unapproved ideas that keep popping up. The garbage media celebrates noted onanists while it ignores the Snortunate Son’s latest entry on his CV of shame – he’s added racial epithets to his remarkable and remarkably unremarked-upon record of tapping the tills of Slavic oligarchs, tapping rando strippers, and re-imagining the classic 80s novel of coke-fueled excess as Bright Lights, Big Guy (who gets his 10%).

    It can’t last. Maybe if these puffy clowns were pros they could keep their boots on our throats forever, but they don’t own boots – too cis – and their Guccis and Birkenstocks just don’t have the same heft. They are weak, and stupid, and they are not even cunning enough to ensure that the cops and military, who would be expected to provide their final protective fire when accountability comes to overrun them, are prepared to do their dirty work.

  • Our venal ruling class: “President Biden and first lady Jill Biden kicked out the British media — to get the pub garden table they wanted.”
  • Hunter Biden is selling his “artwork” for up to half a million dollars to anonymous buyers. It’s like they want to rub the money-laundering in the faces of ordinary Americans…
  • Hunter is such an epic scumbag that he was banned from the Chateau Marmont (AKA “the hotel John Belushi ODed in”) for “drug use.” That’s like being banned from Studio 54 for doing too much cocaine…
  • Speaking of Hunter, congratulations to old friend Diana Fleischman for appearing on Gutfeld to talk about Hunter and other things. “Given the nepotism he’s been given, this is the least harmful way he could be using it…he’s making art at home and blowing through straws rather than sucking through them like he usually does.” (Previously.) (Hat tip: Mike the Musicologist.)
  • Did China’s top counterintelligence officer just defect?

    Dong Jingwei (董经纬) defected in mid-February, flying from Hong Kong to the United States with his daughter, Dong Yang.

    Dong is, or was, a longtime official in China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), also known as the Guoanbu. His publicly available background indicates that he was responsible for the Ministry’s counterintelligence efforts in China, i.e., spy-catching, since being promoted to vice minister in April 2018. If the stories are true, Dong would be the highest-level defector in the history of the People’s Republic of China.

    (Hat tip: Zero Hedge.)

  • The FBI has evidently decide it can just seize whatever valuables it wants:

    When FBI agents asked for permission to rip hundreds of safe deposit boxes from the walls of a Beverly Hills business and haul them away, U.S. Magistrate Steve Kim set some strict limits on the raid.

    The business, U.S. Private Vaults, had been charged in a sealed indictment with conspiring to sell drugs and launder money. Its customers had not.

    So the FBI could seize the boxes themselves, Kim decided, but had to return what was inside to the owners.

    “This warrant does not authorize a criminal search or seizure of the contents of the safety deposit boxes,” Kim’s March 17 seizure warrant declared.

    Yet the FBI is now trying to confiscate $86 million in cash and millions of dollars more in jewelry and other valuables that agents found in 369 of the boxes.

    Prosecutors claim the forfeiture is justified because the unnamed box holders were engaged in criminal activity. They have disclosed no evidence to support the allegation.

    I’m so old when that I can remember when the FBI were regarded as incorruptible knights of justice. Those days are long gone…

  • Nine out of ten Republican congressman who voted for the last iteration of the Trump impeachment farce have drawn primary challengers.

    Congressional members Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-Ohio), Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.), Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.), Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.), Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) all voted to impeach Trump, while the majority of Republicans voted against the impeachment, believing it was unconstitutional and unwarranted.

    Good. (Previously.)

  • “Rep. Richard Hudson and 140 House Members Urge DOJ and ATF to Withdraw Guidance on Stabilizing Braces.” Now we’ll find out if the Biden Administration really does want to turn millions of law-abiding gun owners into felons overnight… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Is Kamala Harris being set up for failure?

    Harris has been crashing and burning in regards to the border for weeks. It’s so bad at this point that even the mainstream media are going after her with the kind of veracity you’d never expect. After all, this is Kamala Harris we are talking about, and critical media coverage isn’t supposed to happen. There’s no way a piece like that gets written by CNN without input from the White House.

    But here’s the thing – all Joe Biden has to do to save Harris is send her to the border. So why hasn’t he?

    Instead, Harris has been left to twist in the wind, thrown into multiple major network interviews without an ability to answer basic inquiries about why she hasn’t gone to personally survey the illegal immigration crisis. There are no actual risks with her going to the border. It’s not like the media are going to suddenly turn on the Biden administration and stop covering up what’s going on. The only real logical conclusion left is that Harris’s disastrous tour wasn’t disastrous by sheer chance.

    Don’t get me wrong, Harris is an absolutely awful politician on her own merits. Every embarrassing flub and hysterical cackle of the last week serves as a reminder of why her own presidential campaign was such a failure. Yet, the Biden administration knows she’s incapable of being a likable, competent figure. Instead of helping her and protecting her, they are hanging the border crisis around her neck and throwing her into the deep end with no floaties on. Further, they are negating to do the one thing that could settle a lot of the questions causing Harris so much consternation – just sending her to the border and getting it over with.

    Meanwhile, Jill Biden is chilling at the G7, rubbing shoulders with royalty and cosplaying as co-president to the glowing reviews of the media. It’s all just too perfect to be a coincidence at this point. I’m convinced – Harris is the fall guy, and she’s being pushed over the cliff by the very administration she serves.

  • “The Rapid Response Team, a unit within the Portland police department, voted unanimously to resign on Wednesday during a meeting with the police union. This follows the criminal indictment of an officer for assault stemming from a riot in August 2020.” (Hat tip: Andy Ngo.)
  • The Biden Department of Education is trying to force transgenderism down America’s throat. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • California is facing a drought, yet they’re pouring fresh water into the ocean. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • “The secret behind Amazon’s domination in cloud computing. Amazon Web Services is snapping up former government officials who can help them gain access to lucrative federal contracts.” Not the only reason. Google was slow out of the gate and Microsoft’s Azure offering started out as a nightmare to figure out how to price and use. (“Which of these four types of inscrutable, poorly described storage do you want to outfit to your cloud?”)
  • “Parliaments In Czech Republic And Belgium Pass Motion Condemning Beijing’s Crimes Against Uyghurs.” Good for them.
  • Liberals not only ignore the roots of our democracy, they don’t even know what they are.
  • Australia’s Sky News slams the American media for their tongue bathes of Biden:

  • Instagram doesn’t want you reporting on anti-Semitic crimes.
  • “Joe Rogan Tears Into CNN’s Brian Stelter: ‘Hey Motherf*cker, You’re Supposed To Be A Journalist.'”

    Joe Rogan ripped CNN’s Brian Stelter on Thursday’s installment of The Joe Rogan Experience. Speaking with Kyle Kulinski, Rogan referenced an unspecified segment on CNN about the popularity of many YouTubers and podcasters, who in some cases receive more viewers than large cable networks such as CNN.

    “This is because the market has spoken and your show’s fucking terrible,” said Rogan, addressing the ratings battles. “Brian Stelter’s show keeps slipping and slipping and slipping in the ratings. Same with Don Lemon’s. It’s the same thing. Everybody knows they’re not real. They’re not real humans.”

  • The New York Times folds, removes defamatory statement about The Babylon Bee:

  • Sudden Clinton Death Syndrome strikes again. “The journalist who broke the story about the controversial 2016 tarmac meeting between former President Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch was found dead Saturday morning, according to police. The body of 45-year-old Christopher Sign, a news anchor for ABC 33/40 in Birmingham, was discovered by Hoover police and fire personnel at around 8 a.m.” His death is “being investigated as a suicide.” Of course it is.
  • Federal Judge Terry Doughty blocked the Biden Administration’s suspension of new oil and gas leases on federal land. “The omission of any rational explanation in cancelling the lease sales, and in enacting the Pause, results in this Court ruling that Plaintiff States also have a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of this claim.” Evidently “because we hate reliable energy” and “because we can’t channel graft to Democratic Party cronies” aren’t considered “rational” reasons…
  • Based on the just completed legislative session, this fiscal index ranks Texas State Representatives from most to least fiscally responsible. There’s one for State Senators as well.
  • Supreme Court rejects Texas-led lawsuit to invalidate Obamacare, citing a lack of standing. Much as I want to see ObamaCare stripped from the books entirely, when Clarence Thomas is part of the majority, that suggests there were indeed issues with the filing. Said Thomas: “The plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that the harm they suffered is traceable to unlawful conduct. Although this Court has erred twice before in cases involving the Affordable Care Act, it does not err today.”
  • Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. (Hat tip: 357 Magnum.)
  • “Gillette’s ‘toxic masculinity’ ad haunts P&G as shaving giant takes $8B writedown.” Get woke, go broke. Everyone involved in that debacle should have been fired.
  • Happy 50th anniversary to Southwest Airlines, who flew their first flight out of Love Field 50 years ago today.
  • Heh:

  • Epic Broadway disaster Spider-Man: Turn off The Dark opened ten years ago. “It opened, after the longest preview period in Broadway history, on June 14, 2011, and went on to lose nearly $100 million.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • “Biden: ‘Republicans May Have Standards, But We Have Double Standards.'”
  • “Biden Gets No Pudding Cup Today As Punishment For Taking A Question.”
  • “Elon Musk Excited To Once Again Be Richest Man On Earth While Jeff Bezos Is In Space.”
  • “Dems Shocked, Disappointed To Learn The New Israeli Prime Minister Will Still Be A Jew.”
  • Bath plus skritches:

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    Posted in Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Media Watch, ObamaCare, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas | 1 Comment »

    Guzman Makes Texas AG Run Official

    June 17th, 2021

    After resigning from the Texas Supreme Court, Eva Guzman has filed the paperwork to run for Texas Attorney General in 2022 against incumbent Ken Paxton and current Land Commissioner George P. Bush:

    Eva Guzman, who worked as a state supreme court justice from 2009 until her resignation last week, has filed the paperwork necessary to run in the Republican primary to be the Texas attorney general.

    The campaign treasurer appointment (CTA) form was received by the Texas Ethics Commission on June 11 — the date her resignation became effective — and was processed on June 14.

    Guzman’s CTA lists Orlando Salazar of Dallas, the vice-chairman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, as her treasurer.

    Having three serious candidates in a down-ballot race is certainly going to make things more interesting.

    Michael Quinn Sullivan ran a poll to see what conservatives though of the race. Guzman is a mostly unknown entrant at this point, but the lack of enthusiasm for George P. Bush is palpable:

    A prominent Hispanic Republican running probably hurts Bush more than Paxton. Paxton has a lot of solid conservative backers, while George P. Bush has the legendary Bush fundraising machine and squishy Chamber of Commerce business types behind him. As of now, I don’t have a good feel for what sort of backing Guzman has in the race, though ideologically she seems somewhere between the two. If you have a better idea of who’s backing Guzman, feel free to share them in the comments.

    Since it appears that I’m now tracking the race, let me throw up some links:

  • George P. Bush (Twitter) (Facebook)
  • The website for Eva Guzman appears to be down as of this writing. (Twitter) (Facebook)
  • Ken Paxton (Twitter) (Facebook)

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    Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | 5 Comments »

    Gaza ReBoomed

    June 16th, 2021

    My assessment that the recent Gaza flareup might have bought the new coalition government of Naftali Bennett “several months of relative peace in which to operate” appears to have been premature:

    Israel’s military said it launched airstrikes at the Gaza Strip on Tuesday night after militants in the Palestinian territory fired incendiary balloons into southern Israel.

    The counterattack targeting Hamas armed military compounds occurred early Wednesday morning local time and marked the first major flare-up between Israel and Gaza since May 21, when a ceasefire agreement ended eleven days of hostilities. The Israel Defense Forces said the targets were used by Hamas’s Khan Yunis and Gaza Brigades for “terror activities.”

    The Israeli military said in a statement that it was “ready for all scenarios, including renewed fighting in the face of continued terrorist acts emanating from Gaza.”

    The airstrike came after militants launched arson balloons from Gaza, sparking nearly two dozen fires, according to Fox News.

    Bombings will continue until morale improves…

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | 2 Comments »

    Why The Navy Killed Zumwalt Destroyers

    June 15th, 2021

    I can’t remember if I’ve included a LinkSwarm link on the problems of Zumwalt-class destroyers, which the navy killed after only three of the projected thirty-two ships were built. This video offers a solid overview of the issues that led to the cancellation.

    Zumwalt-class destroyers turned out to be quite stable, and the stealth design worked well, but they require far more personnel to run than originally specified, and the small number of Zumwalt class actually built resulted in the radical new shore-attack munitions costs spiraling to more than $1 million for each projectile, or more than the cost of a Tomahawk cruise missile, which offers 15 times the range and 30 times the payload.

    Other problems include having to retrain crew to take into account the unique shape and handling characteristics:

    The combination of the Zumwalt ’s size and inability to switch quickly from ahead to astern propulsion or vice versa (because of fixed pitch propellers) creates substantially more inertia than on a smaller vessel, a characteristic magnified by the large sail area.
    …The outward-sloping tumblehome design creates the illusion that the ship is farther away from the pier than it is.
    …All the mooring stations are internal. (it) makes it impossible for the bridge to see progress in the mooring stations.
    …A relatively low height of eye of 35 feet, along with large gun mounts on the forecastle, result in a substantial shadow zone of 469.2 feet dead ahead.

    If all this is disheartening, realize that technical innovations have just as many teething problems for the Chinese navy as well (and probably much worse quality control). I would say the Russians as well, but almost all of their much-hyped “superweapons” turn out to be pure vaporware.

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    Posted in Military, video | 4 Comments »

    The Fall Of Netanyahu

    June 14th, 2021

    I’m not going to pretend to understand the intricacies of Israeli politics, a nation who’s fragile coalition governments rival Italy for their fractious, unstable nature.

    The difference is that between March 2009 and yesterday, Italy had seven separate Prime Ministers (Silvio Berlusconi, Mario Monti, Enrico Letta, Matteo Renzi, Paolo Gentiloni, Giuseppe Conte, Mario Draghi), while Israel has had one: Benjamin Netanyahu. And that was Netanyahu’s second tenure as Prime Minister, his first lasting from 1996 to 1999. Other national leader when Netanyahu took office in 1996: Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin, John Major and Pope John Paul II. In 1996, Independence Day topped the box office, “Macarena” topped the pop charts and Barack Obama was running for a seat in the Illinois State Senate.

    But yesterday, Netanyahu’s run finally came to an end, with his Likud-led ruling coalition replace by a weird left-right amalgam headed by his former defense minister Naftali Bennett, leader of the New Right Party, and former opposition leader Yair Lapid, head of the left-center Yesh Atid party. This in effect means that Bennett, who is to the right of Netanyahu, will be leading a diverse coalition who’s political gravity is to the left of Netanyahu.

    This is not a recipe for stability.

    Also not a recipe for coalition stability: The coalition includes Ra’am, or the United Arab List, under the leadership of Mansour Abbas, the first an Arab party has ever participated in an Israeli ruling coalition. By the standards of Palestinian political leadership, Mansour Abbas is a flaming moderate; he opposed the Abraham Accords, but has occasionally worked with Netanyahu.

    Can such an unwieldy coalition survive long enough for Lapid to take his agreed-upon turn as Prime Minister in 2023? Maybe, but I’d bet against it. The coalition has the bare minimum 61 members to forge a governing majority, and a unified desire to oust Netanyahu only gets you so far. Pounding the snot out of Hamas has probably bought the new coalition several months of relative peace in which to operate, but that just means the internal stresses will be all the greater. And if it falls, it’s entirely possible that the indomitable Netanyahu (whose Likud still has more seats in the Knesset than any other party) could still end up as Prime Minister yet again.

    It’s hard to overstate how consequential Netanyahu’s tenure as Prime Minister has been. Before taking office, the Israeli “Land for Peace” left was a powerful (arguably dominant) force in Israel politics. Since then, the Labor Party (traditional leader of that faction) has dwindled to 7 seats in the Knesset and last occupied the Prime Minister’s office in 2001. Kadima, a short lived centrist party led by Ariel Sharon and (after Sharon’s stroke) Ehud Olmert, was the last non-Likud coalition government before Netanyahu, and effectively ceased to exist after 2015. Under Netanyahu, Israel completed the security barrier and saw a dramatic reduction in terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens as a result. With the help of the Trump Administration, he oversaw peace treaties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and saw several nations moves their embassies from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem. He also saw vastly improved relations with the majority of Sunni Arab nations, though that was largely the result of the Obama Administration alienating them with his Iranian nuclear deal. Netanyahu also survived Obama’s attempt to oust him from office.

    Netanyahu still has serious charges against him grinding through a slow-motion trial. (And I know even less about Israeli judicial proceedings than Knesset politics.) He could still end up in prison…or a return engagement as Prime Minister.

    Or both.

    Netanyahu so thoroughly dominated Israeli politics for a quarter century that it’s hard to imagine what a post-Netanyahu political landscape will look like. But he’s still leader of Likud, so he isn’t off stage entirely just yet…

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    Posted in Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad | 3 Comments »

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