If you’re looking to make a late, last minute U.S. Congressional race donation to help Republicans flip the House, here are three south Texas campaigns for majority Hispanic districts you might consider donating to:
Three Hispanic republican women, all of whom support securing the border. If you haven’t donated to a Republican House race this cycle and want to, consider donating to one of them.
I already touched on this story in Friday’s LinkSwarm, but lots of other people are now twigging to just how huge a story this is. Let’s start with that: “US Firms Pull Staff From China’s Top Chip Maker As Economic War Worsens.”
The Biden administration’s new technology restrictions are already causing disruptions in China as US semiconductor equipment suppliers are telling staff based in the country’s top memory chip maker to leave, according to WSJ, citing sources familiar with the matter.
State-owned Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. has seen US chip semiconductor equipment companies, including KLA Corp. and Lam Research Corp., halt business activities at the facility. This includes installing new equipment to make advanced chips and overseeing highly technical chip production.
The US suppliers have paused support of already installed equipment at YMTC in recent days and temporarily halted installation of new tools, the people said. The suppliers are also temporarily pulling out their staff based at YMTC, the people said. –WSJ
It’s hard to overemphasize how badly fucked China’s chip industry is with this latest move. Semiconductor equipment not only needs regular maintenance, but extremely specialized expertise when something goes wrong and your yields crash, wizards who can look at a wafer defect chart and determine by experience what’s gone wrong with which tool. Without support and spare parts from the western semiconductor equipment giants, expect yields to start crashing in a matter of months, if not weeks, especially if Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron join the pullout.
I just put in a call to the Applied Materials press office to ask them about this. I’ll let you know if I hear back.
As Peter Zeihan notes, these sanctions screw not only China’s semiconductor industry, but every segment of the high tech assembly chain that depends on them.
Takeaways:
Not only is China now unable to import the equipment to make semiconductors, or the tools to maintain and operate the equipment, or the software that’s necessary to operate the equipment, or any mid or high level chips at all. Now any Americans who want to assist with the Chinese semiconductor industry have to make a choice: you can have your job with China or you can have your citizenship.
I’ve read this elsewhere: “One of the provisions of President Joe Biden’s executive order is that any U.S. citizen or green card holder working in China cannot work in the Chinese semiconductor industry or risk of losing American citizenship.” The thing is, I don’t think such sanctions are constitutional, and I’m pretty sure stripping citizenship over trade regulations with a country we’re not at war with would fail the Ninth Amendment “necessary and proper” test.
Back to Ziehan:
One sign of that pullout is that Apple has shifted iPhone manufacturing from China to India, and has scrapped plans to use YMTC chips in iPhones.
In many ways, the Biden Administration’s approach to China has been a continuation and escalation of the Trump approach: No More Mister Nice Guy, with sanctions and reshoring of American industry.
Short of actual military action, it’s hard to see how China can effectively retaliate against America over these moves. American companies are already leaving, and China has built up so much ill will in various international trade organizations that it’s difficult to see how they could lodge a complaint with one of those and prevail.
Previously:
Sometimes you have both pieces of the puzzle right in front of your face and never twig to it.
For months I’ve been watching videos of Ukrainian forces dropping RPGs and grenades from hovering drones onto Russian vehicles. Like these:
I’ve written about the Russian tank cope cages before, and how they were probably ineffective against top-attack antitank weapons like Javelin. But only today, after several months of watching Ukrainian drones drop grenades on tanks and armored vehicles, did the blinding flash of the obvious occur to me that maybe this is the attack the cope cages were designed to thwart. Maybe Russia ran into this tactic and Syria and it was enough of a concern to have the cope cages installed before rolling into Ukraine. Focused on anti-tank weapons and tank-on-tank engagements, maybe we missed the possible effectiveness of the new drone-drop tactic.
Arguing against the effectiveness of this tactic, we saw a lot more cope cages at the beginning of the conflict than we’re seeing now. Maybe it’s an ineffective countermeasure. Or maybe Russia just doesn’t have the time or resources to put it on older replacement tanks being sent to the front.
This is a question I don’t know the answer to, so I thought I’d throw it out to my general readership.
Why hasn’t isopropyl alcohol dropped back down to its 2019 prices?
Back then, I remember isopropyl alcohol being priced about on par with hydrogen peroxide, somewhere under $1 for 16 oz bottles of 50% isopropyl alcohol.
But during The Great Flu Manchu Panic of 2020, the price of isopropyl alcohol spiked and it became scarce as untold millions of households tried to disinfect every possible surface in hopes of eradicating the then-novel virus.
But now that the pandemic is over, and store shelves are back to being stocked, why is the price of isopropyl alcohol stuck as twice as high as what is used to be? While hydrogen peroxide seems to be back around 86¢, HEB no longer seems to have 50% isopropyl alcohol at all, only the 70% at $1.94 a bottle. But 50% seems just as pricey online at Amazon.
Earlier this year, HEB was blowing out those off-brand hand sanitizers (which are mostly alcohol anyway) companies started producing during the pandemic for 10¢ each. So why has the price on the real one remained stuck so stubbornly high?
I have no idea why, so I’m throwing the question out to my readers. If you know, share it in the comments below.
Higher inflation, widespread corruption in the federal government, the Bank of England makes Liz Truss blink, and Muslims take exception to Dearborn Public School’s gay agenda. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The Journal reviewed more than 31,000 financial disclosure forms and analyzed more than 850,000 financial assets and 315,000 trades to shed light on any conflicts of interest among more than 12,000 senior career bureaucrats and political appointees. Its investigation found that “thousands of officials across the U.S. government’s executive branch disclosed owning or trading stocks that stood to rise or fall with decisions their agencies made.”
“Across 50 federal agencies ranging from the Commerce Department to the Treasury Department, more than 2,600 officials reported stock investments in companies while those companies were lobbying their agencies for favorable policies, during both Republican and Democratic administrations,” the Journal reports. “When the financial holdings caused a conflict, the agencies sometimes simply waived the rules.”
The federal employees weren’t even subtle about it. Per the Journal, “More than five dozen officials at five agencies reported trading stocks of companies shortly before their departments announced enforcement actions against those companies, such as charges or settlements.”
That’s sus.
To get an understanding of how shady this behavior is, consider examples from a few specific agencies. At the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for example, the Journal found that “more than 200 senior officials… or nearly one in three, reported that they or their family members held investments in companies that were lobbying the agency.”
Similar corruption plagues the Department of Defense, where, per the investigation, “officials in the office of the secretary or their family members collectively owned between $1.2 million and $3.4 million of stock in aerospace and defense companies, on average, during years the Journal examined. Some owned stock in Chinese companies while the U.S. considered blacklisting the companies.”
It’s a big party on your dime, and you’re not invited to it. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
I’ll still trying to wrap my mind around the phrases “pension fund margin call” and “unlimited quantity” of short term repo liquidity reserves.
The Biden administration’s new technology restrictions are already causing disruptions in China as US semiconductor equipment suppliers are telling staff based in the country’s top memory chip maker to leave, according to WSJ, citing sources familiar with the matter.
State-owned Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. has seen US chip semiconductor equipment companies, including KLA Corp. and Lam Research Corp., halt business activities at the facility. This includes installing new equipment to make advanced chips and overseeing highly technical chip production.
The US suppliers have paused support of already installed equipment at YMTC in recent days and temporarily halted installation of new tools, the people said. The suppliers are also temporarily pulling out their staff based at YMTC, the people said. –WSJ
It’s hard to overemphasize how badly screwed China’s chip industry is with this latest move. Semiconductor equipment not only needs regular maintenance, but extremely specialized expertise when something goes wrong and your yields crash, wizards who can look at a wafer defect chart and determine by experience what’s gone wrong with which tool. Without support and spare parts from the western semiconductor equipment giants, expect yields to start crashing in a matter of months, if not weeks, especially if Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron join the pullout.
- The IRGC may be mobilizing retired servicemembers and other affiliated officers to suppress protests in Tehran on October 15.
- Protesters have killed more Iranian security personnel in the current protest wave than in any previous wave in the regime’s history according to regime statistics.
- Anti-regime protests occurred in at least 11 cities in seven provinces.
- Social media accounts that are representing themselves as youth groups organizing and coordinating protests called for countrywide unrest on October 15.
Snip.
Social media accounts that are representing themselves as youth groups organizing and coordinating protests called for countrywide unrest on October 15. Dozens of social media accounts are presenting themselves as provincial components of a broader youth movement aimed at overthrowing the regime. The movement does not appear to have a central headquarters or hierarchy—at least on social media—and some of these groups’ rhetoric is notably disjointed from the others. These accounts claim to have a presence in multiple Iranian cities, including Tehran, Karaj, Neyshabour, Hamedan, Shiraz, and Ahvaz. Some of these accounts called for protests in Khuzestan on October 14, which did materialize in three different cities across the province on that date. Another account claimed that it had activated “sabotage groups” to destabilize the regime on October 14. The Tehran Neighborhood Youth group currently has the most followers and has posted for the longest period of time, possibly suggesting that it inspired copycat accounts based in other cities.
Some of these groups are presenting themselves as having moved from protest organization to coordinating phase one insurgency attacks.
A Virginia Democrat lawmaker says she will introduce legislation to have parents criminally prosecuted if they do not “affirm” their child as transgender. Teachers and social workers would report parents to Child Protective Services under the bill envisioned by state Delegate Elizabeth Guzman (D-Fauquier).
Guzman told WJLA that “It could be a felony, it could be a misdemeanor, but we know that CPS charge could harm your employment, could harm their education, because nowadays many people do a CPS database search before offering employment.”
Guzman, a social worker, went public with her plans to introduce the bill a week after The Daily Wire reported that a National Association Of School Psychologists official named Amy Cannava boasted that she was working with an unnamed state delegate matching Guzman’s description to craft such legislation. “I want to see a kid in a home with food and shelter and insurance and support, but I also don’t want to lose kids to death,” Cannava said, adding that “I will not deny the fact that I have put parents in their place in my office or at school.”
Cannava is also affiliated with a group called the Pride Liberation Project that said it would pick up trans and gay teens who didn’t like their parents, and “work with other supportive adult organizations in the region to find you someone who can provide you a kind and affirming home.”
A similar bill was quietly introduced in 2020 by Guzman and four other Democrats immediately after they took control of the legislature in the 2019 elections. It redefined the term “abused or neglected child” to include one whose parent “inflicts, threatens to create or inflict, or allows to be created or inflicted upon such child a physical or mental injury on the basis of the child’s gender identity or sexual orientation.”
The sole Senate sponsor of the 2020 bill was Joe Morrissey, who served prison time for contributing to the delinquency of a minor after sleeping with his teenage secretary. He accepted a plea deal after initially being indicted on possession of child pornography and other charges.
The only religious people the left is truly scared to offend are Muslims. Criticizing Muslims is completely off the table according to the left’s rules of engagement, so if Muslims are upset about something, the amount of twisting, back-bending, and acrobatics the left will perform in order not to offend them will be something to see.
So when hundreds of Muslim parents, upset at gay porn in the school libraries, showed up to a school board meeting in Dearborn, Mich., and it devolved into shouting and chaos with board members running away and gay protesters being chased to their cars, the fallout was absolutely hilarious. The headline in the Detroit Free Press after the event went haywire was “LGBTQ and Faith Communities Struggle for Unity.” BAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Can you imagine what the headline would have been if it were a Baptist church chasing gay protesters to their cars? “Fascist White Supremacist Book Burners Bash Gay Man in Parking Lot,” or “Rabid Religious Zealots Terrorize Gay Man Defending Right to Read,” or something equally terrible. I don’t know about you, but I’m enjoying this disaster.
Enjoy this thread and all the videos in it. I know I did.
Shouting between various factions as groups take over Dearborn public schools board meeting. Board members have left. Unclear if they are coming back or if meeting will restart. Heavy police presence. pic.twitter.com/XIMEqIRR1X
— Niraj Warikoo (@nwarikoo) October 11, 2022
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Ukrainian soldiers today shot down a cruise missile with an Igla MANPADS. pic.twitter.com/e5kbaWv2Mi
— NOËL 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) October 10, 2022
Between inflation, the Russo-Ukrainian War, drought, etc., there’s a lot of worry about food insecurity around the world. While I think America will do the best of just about anyone, I’ve long been a cheap prepper, spending around $20 a year on various prep items, but recently I’ve stepped up my food buying, trying to pick up just one extra shelf-stable item a week, just in case. And I’ve been thinking about growing more food beyond the pepper plant I already have.
Here’s a couple of videos on what to grow for food crops given limited areas.
Both mention beans, but dried pinto beans are still pretty darn cheap, and if you like those (I don’t), you’ll want to lay in a lot of dried beans. If the emergency lasts long enough, you can grow them when you start to run low.
I’m not wild about cabbage or kale, but I like potatoes well enough, and I think I could grow those pretty well in a tub or two, as well as sweet potatoes. And I might as well get a pumpkin for Halloween and try spreading the seeds out next spring.
What are you doing to lay in an extra supply of food?
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If you have any other food tips for the apocalypse (or even just temporary economic disruption, like a possible rail strike), feel free to share them down below.
Weeb Union (not my favorite Ukraine war mapper channel) is reporting a huge Ukrainian offensive just got underway in Luhansk:
Takeaways:
Not seeing any confirmation elsewhere yet. Developing…
Update: Reporting From Ukraine (which I generally trust more than Weeb Union) also reports a lot of activity in Luhansk, but with a different overall thrust and timeline.
Takeaways:
How to reconcile these reports? Both could be right, just looking at different slices of time.
Following the successful strike on the strategically important Kerch Straight Bridge, Russia responded by launching a volley of missiles into random neighborhoods in Kiev and elsewhere.
A series of deadly blasts rocked central Kyiv Monday morning, shattering months of relative calm in the Ukrainian capital a day after Russia’s leader blamed Ukraine for an explosion on a key Crimea bridge.
At least eight people were killed and 24 were injured in just one of the Kyiv strikes, according to preliminary information, said Rostyslav Smirnov, an adviser to the Ukrainian ministry of internal affairs.
The Kyiv explosions marked the start of an intensive wave of attacks on targets across Ukraine, with conflicting reports suggesting the blasts were caused by missiles or suicide drones.
Kyiv mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said in a statement on Telegram that there were “several explosions in the Shevchenkiv district — in the center of the capital.”
He later said there were “several hits on objects of the city’s critical infrastructure,” adding that there were casualties.
Lesia Vasylenko, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, posted a photo on Twitter showing that at least one explosion occurred near the main building of the Kyiv National University in central Kyiv.
Ukraine managed to hit a strategically important bridge. Russia managed to hit a pedestrian bridge.
Take that, power walkers!
Indiscriminate attacks on civilians are not only wrong and a potential war crime, but worse for Russia, they’re also counterproductive and ineffective. We’ve know since The Blitz in World War II that wanton destruction of civilian buildings and infrastructure only hardens the resolve of the targeted populace. Using up missile in pointless displays of impotent fury only makes Putin’s Russia look like even bigger losers.
As bad as the damage looked from the Kerch Strait Bridge explosion, Russia is still using the bridge:
Peter Zeihan says it’s potentially a turning point in the war:
There still seems to be some confusion over just what blew up the bridge. While truck bomb is still the most widely accepted theory, supposedly Russia scans all trucks before the enter the bridge. And Suchomimus has a video up showing something in the water just before the blast (what isn’t clear).
Finally, there are persistent reports of arrests of military personnel in Moscow. But the primary source for these reports seems to be Ukrainian, so several grains of salt are probably in order.