Another Cold Blast Heading To Texas

December 20th, 2022

Real winter weather in central Texas rarely starts around the nominal start of the season (which officially begins here in Austin at 3:48 PM tomorrow (December 21st)), but this year an arctic blast is barrelling down on us Thursday.

The Arctic air is forecast to arrive Thursday morning into the afternoon. Temperatures will drop sharply — possibly by as much as 40° in just two hours behind the frontal passage. By Thursday evening, temperatures drop below freezing then plunge into the single-digits and teens Friday morning.

I’m not yet seeing single digit forecasts on my phone app yet, but 14°F is damn cold enough.

Wind gusts of 30-40 mph Thursday night through Friday morning are likely to drop wind chills below zero in some areas — capable of causing frostbite in 30-45 minutes and likely prompting our second-ever Wind Chill Warning. The first of these warnings was issued in Feb. 2021.

With three consecutive hard freezes in our forecast Friday morning through Christmas morning, it is imperative you take steps to protect your pets, pipes, plants and people. Temperatures finally start to warm Christmas Day and the following day.

Follow the below tips from Austin Water to protect your home’s plumbing:

  1. Protect Indoor Faucets. Open cabinets beneath kitchen and bathroom sinks to allow warmer air to circulate around pipes. Be sure to remove any toxic substances located in these cabinets if there are children or pets living in the residence.
  2. Drip Only if Needed. After the measures above are taken, drip one cold-water faucet slowly if you feel your pipes may still freeze. The faucet you choose should be the one that is the greatest distance from your main shutoff valve. It does not need to be a running trickle. If you do drip your faucet, capture the water for future use.
  3. Power Outages. If you experience a power outage for more than 24 hours, stop dripping your faucets and turn off your water at the meter.

Because we’re not expected to get snow and ice, hopefully we can avoid widespread power outages this time, but if not, here’s the Austin power outage map.

With cold weather due Thursday, there’s still time to get in an Amazon order to prepare. So here (again) are a few cold weather prep items you might find useful:

  • Faucet Covers. If you’re a homeowner, you probably already have those, but if not, here they are, and they seem to work better than a rag or dripping the faucet, and neither of my faucets busted in the ice storm. That link goes to the cheap Styrofoam version, but these plastic ones look a bit bigger and stronger.
  • O’Keeffe’s Working Hands cream: I walk my dogs 2-3 times a day pretty much every single day of the year, and I found my hands getting cracked and raw in the cold, even through gloves. O’Keeffe’s Working Hands fixed the problem. I frequently give this stuff out as Christmas gifts.
  • Carmex lip balm. A small, cheap jar that solves the chapped lips problem in winter. I know some people prefer Chapstick, but to me the main result of using Chapstick is that 30 minutes later you fell a need to use more Chapstick.
  • Kerasal Intensive Foot Repair for cracked and painful feet. More info here. Podiatrist recommended!
  • De-icing spray. You can stand there for 15 minutes ineffectually scraping your frozen windows like William H. Macy in Fargo, or you can keep a bottle of this in your trunk.
  • Water leak detector: A lot of people don’t have these, but I consider them essential basic gear, as they can save you hundreds or thousands of dollars in water damage. Usual made in China caveats apply, but it’s very simple tech (two parallel wires on the exterior that water closes the circuit and sets off when wet). That link goes to a 5-pack, because I recommend putting one behind every toilet, under every sink you use, under your water heater, and next to your washing machine (I’ve had mine start rocking for an unbalanced load that pulled the drain hose loose). (There’s an even cheaper five pack from another manufacturer (also made in China) that I have no experience with.)
  • Flashlights. I have an old bulb-type Maglite, but here’s a pretty close equivalent with LEDs. As a bonus, it’s also heavy enough to conk someone out. I have flashlights in my bedroom, my kitchen and in my car’s glovebox. The highest rated flashlight on Amazon is the Streamlight 75458 Stinger DS, which is about four times as expensive as the Maglite. I assume it’s brighter and with a longer life, and maybe you have a use case that justifies the cost. And if you have flashlights, chances are you’ll also need…
  • Batteries. The Maglite takes D-Cells, and you’re going to want, at a minimum, enough to reload every flashlight twice, which should be enough to get you through a couple of evenings of power outages. Check your flashlights every six months when you check your smoke and CO detectors. Speaking of which, those and the water leak detectors take 9 volt batteries, and you want enough around to be able to change out every battery in your detectors as needed. Those links go to Duracells, which I’ve been pretty happy with. Sam’s and Lowes frequently have cheaper bulk deals, so check there if you’re out and about.
  • Gas And Water Emergency Shut Off Tool. The Orbit 26097 provides a water shutoff valve, a gas shutoff valve, manhole cover lift tool, and a rubberized grip. You need one of these for the same reason you need a water leak detector, i.e. it will greatly limit damage before the plumber gets there. One caveat: I used one last week to cut off the water in advance of a new washer being installed (just in case the ancient water valves in the laundry room started leaking) and the manhole cover part of the tool broke off when I was moving the manhole back into place. The rest is still good, but quality metal shouldn’t snap like that. I’ll have to dig out the warranty info for a replacement.
  • Sawyer Products Water Filtration System: If you’ve ever been under a water boil notice, the Sawyer system is Good Enough to get you through, even if it is a slight pain to fill and squeeze the bag enough times for my dogs and I to drink (but still less of a pain that boiling water and waiting for it to cool).
  • Duct tape is useful to have year-round, but especially during an emergency, to patch a small leak or keep something together until the emergency is over and you can replace it. Link goes to 3M all-weather duct tape, which is better than the generic stuff for outside tasks, like sealing around the edge of a faucet cover.

    • Stay warm…

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    Posted in Austin, Texas | 7 Comments »

    What If Russia’s Partial Mobilization Is Actually A General Mobilization?

    December 19th, 2022

    In a non-embedable video, the YouTuber formerly know as The Russian Dude announced that he had been called up for military service as part of Putin’s “partial mobilization” to throw more cannon fodder into the Ukrainian meatgrinder. (I’m pretty sure that’s an important decision point in why he’s now known as The Canadian Dude.)

    Oddly enough, all his male friends received conscription notices as well.

    Commenters have long stated that Putin doesn’t want to declare a General Mobilization, because under Soviet Russian law, that requires an actual declaration of war, something still lacking in Vlad’s Special Military Operation.

    Now this is not even a theory, only conjecture based on a single data point, but what if Putin is actually carrying out a General Mobilization of all eligible males of military age while calling it limited mobilization? It’s not like Putin’s war machine hasn’t already committed more heinous crimes, or that Russia has an independent press capable of calling him on it any more.

    Maybe Putin wants to roll the dice on one final spring push for Kiev, putting a million men under arms to launch a massive attack, relying on the Russian doctrine of quantity having a quality of its own to final snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

    Like I said, conjecture only, but it certainly doesn’t make any less sense than the multiple bungling stupidities Russia has committed in the war…

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    Posted in Elections, Military, Obama Scandals | 9 Comments »

    Two Juicy EU Scandals Bubble Up

    December 18th, 2022

    Two big EU scandals seem to be breaking (one the European media is all over like a winter junket to a fact-finding mission in Greece, the other they’re ignoring the way American media try to ignore any Biden family scandal), and I’m trying to figure out what to make of it all.

    One problem with such stories is that I have to refresh my memory on the labyrinth structure of EU power designed to shield the Eurocratic elite from the wrath of mere voters. This is necessary to avoid obvious goofs like mistaking the European Council with the completely different Council of the European Union. The popularly elected European Parliament is the angler-worm appendage the EU wants you to pay attention to rather than the deep state maw of the European Commission.

    So: The scandal everyone is paying attention to is Qatargate, where a rich, middling despotic gulf petrostate has evidently been hosing down the faces of eager Euro-types with bundles of unmarked bills to improve their image while hosting the quadrennial outbreak of EuroFlopBall.

    Let’s start with the summary from the source of all vaguely accurate knowledge.

    In an ongoing political scandal, politicians, political staffers, lobbyists, civil servants and their families are alleged to have been involved in corruption, money laundering and organised crime involving the states of Morocco and of Qatar in exchange for influence at the European Parliament.

    Morocco is a red herring herring here, amounting to basically one bribe to one guy.

    Qatar denies the allegations. Law enforcement authorities in Belgium, Italy and Greece seized €1.5 million in cash, confiscated computers and mobile phones, and charged four individuals with the alleged offences.

    In July 2022, the Central Office for the Repression of Corruption, a unit of the Belgian Federal Police, opened an investigation into an alleged criminal organisation. The investigation was led by the investigating magistrate Michel Claise.

    Acting on the investigation, on 9 December 2022, Belgian police executed 20 raids at 19 different addresses across Brussels in connection with the conspiracy and made eight arrests across Belgium and Italy. The homes and offices of the suspects were searched, including offices within the premises of the European Parliament buildings in Brussels. In line with the Belgian Constitution, the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, was required to return from her home in Malta to be present for the search at the home of Eva Kaili, who has diplomatic immunity as an MEP and a Vice-President of the European Parliament.

    One advantage to this particular scandal is that Eva Kaili is pretty easy on the eyes.

    Following the raids at Kaili’s home, her father was later arrested as he tried to flee the Sofitel hotel at Place Jourdan in Brussels after being tipped off about the raids. Investigators found a suitcase with “several hundred thousand euros” on his person as he attempted to flee.

    Suitcases full of cash! Your sign of a quality scandal!

    Included in the raids were locations linked to Antonio Panzeri, an Italian former MEP. Upon searching his home, police found a large quantity of cash in his “well stocked safe”.

    Let’s be fair to Mr. Panzeri: The money in his safe could be from an entirely different bribe.

    At the same time investigators raided the offices of the international NGO Fight Impunity, an organisation set up to promote the fight against impunity for serious violations of human rights and crimes against humanity, of which Panzeri is the president.

    After the conclusion of the Brussels raids, police had arrested Eva Kaili; Antonio Panzeri; Francesco Giorgi, Kaili’s husband and an advisor of the Italian MEP Andrea Cozzolino; Alexandros Kailis, Kaili’s father and former Greek politician; Luca Visentini, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC); Niccolò Figa-Talamanca, Secretary-General of the NGO No Peace Without Justice; and an unnamed assistant of the Italian MEP Alessandra Moretti. Alexandros Kailis was released from custody and Visentini was conditionally released. €600,000 in cash was reportedly found at Panzeri’s home with additional cash being found at Kaili’s father’s home, his hotel room and the home shared by Kaili and Giorgi. In total, the combined amount of cash found in the raids totalled €1.5million. Following Kaili’s arrest she was detained at the Prison de Saint-Gilles [fr] until her transfer after five days to a prison in Haren, Brussels.

    Wait, an NGO with “peace” and “justice” in its title is just a conduit for graft and bribes? What are the odds?

    No one answers the door or the phone at the offices of the two campaign groups linked to a cash-for-favors corruption scandal at the European Union’s parliament, allegedly involving Qatar. No light is visible inside.

    No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ), a pro-human rights and democracy organization, and Fight Impunity, which seeks to bring rights abusers to book, share the same address, on prime real estate in the governmental quarter of the Belgian capital.

    The heads of the two organizations are among four people charged since Dec. 9 with corruption, participation in a criminal group and money laundering. Prosecutors suspect certain European lawmakers and aides “were paid large sums of money or offered substantial gifts to influence parliament’s decisions.” The groups themselves do not seem to be under suspicion.

    Qatar rejects allegations that it’s involved. The Gulf country that’s hosting the soccer World Cup has gone to considerable trouble to boost its public image and defend itself against extensive criticism in the West over its human rights record.

    The lawyer for Fight Impunity President Pier Antonio Panzeri is not talking. He declined to comment about his client’s role in an affair that has shaken the European Parliament and halted the assembly’s work on Qatar-related files.

    Yeah, Pier Antonio Panzeri and the aforementioned Antonio Panzeri are the same guy. “Pier Antonio Panzeri (born 6 June 1955) is an Italian politician who served as Member of the European Parliament for the North-West with the Democrats of the Left, the [Italian] Democratic Party and Article One, as part of the Socialist Group, from 2004 until 2019.” A Democratic Party socialist taking bribes from foreign despots? Shocked face, what are the odds, etc.

    Now it looks like the Qatargate scandal may reach all the way to the European Commission.

    As the Qatargate scandal widens, questions are being asked as to whether its reverberations will reach the Commission, the EU’s executive branch. Recent revelations suggest the EU’s Chief Diplomat Josep Borrell could be implicated.

    Since erupting last weekend with police raids on MEPs’ homes and offices in the European parliament, the Qatargate scandal has done nothing but mushroom. What began as a criminal probe into current and former MEPs and parliamentary assistants implicated in a bribery ring aimed at burnishing the public image of the current World Cup host has widened significantly — not only in terms of the number of people involved but also the number of organizations and third countries, which now also include Morocco.

    As the scandal grows, both the Parliament and the European Commission are locked in a frantic damage control mission. European Parliament president Roberta Metsola on Thursday (15 December) pledged to unveil a “wide-ranging reform package” in January, which will include measures to bolster whistleblower protections, a ban on all unofficial parliamentary friendship groups (groups of MEPs discussing relations with non-EU countries) and a review of enforcement of code of conduct rules for MEPs.

    “Look! We’re doing something! Now please stop paying attention so we can get back to our normal anti-Democratic rent-seeking governance!”

    Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, herself no stranger to corruption allegations, both in her native Germany and in Brussels, said the following in a Monday morning press conference:

    The allegations against the VP of Parliament [Eva Kaili] are of the most concern, very serious. It’s a question of confidence of our people in our institutions, it needs highest standards. I proposed the creation of an independent ethnics body that covers all EU institutions (in March). For us it is very critical to have not only strong rules, but the same rules covering all the EU institutions, and not to allow for any exemptions.

    Von der Leyen added that the Commission is looking at its own transparency register for all logged meetings between staff and Qatari officials. That is not as comforting as it may sound given the flagrant disregard for transparency and accountability her Commission has shown in its acquisition of billions of COVID-19 vaccines.

    Oh yeah, that scandal, the one the media is a lot more reluctant to talk about: the billions pissed away buying Flu Manchu vaccines and who raked in the dough off that debacle.

    The European Public Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation into the EU’s coronavirus vaccine purchases, an announcement that will refocus attention on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s role in the matter.

    The EPPO is an independent EU body responsible for investigating and prosecuting financial crimes, including fraud, money laundering and corruption. In its announcement on Friday, the EPPO didn’t specify who was being investigated, or which of the EU’s vaccine contracts were under scrutiny.

    However, two other watchdog agencies have previously drawn attention to one particular deal involving high-level contacts between Pfizer’s leadership and von der Leyen.

    “This exceptional confirmation comes after the extremely high public interest. No further details will be made public at this stage,” said the EPPO in its short announcement.

    In April 2021, the New York Times first reported on text messages exchanged between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in the run-up to the EU’s biggest vaccine procurement contract — for up to 1.8 billion doses of BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine. The deal would be worth up to €35 billion if fully exercised, according to leaked vaccine prices.

    Obviously the idea that there was anything wrong with any Flu Maanchu vaccines is something the media will go to great lengths not to cover.

    It would be nice to think that both scandals together would cause the EU to seriously address its transparency and democracy deficits, but we all know there’s no chance of that happening…

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    Posted in Communism, Crime, Foreign Policy, video, Waste and Fraud | 12 Comments »

    Peru’s New President Is On Team Riot

    December 17th, 2022

    You may remember from all of nine days ago how lefty Peruvian President Pedro Castillo was removed from power after attempting his own autogolpe. Did that solve the political crisis?

    Eh, not so much.

    Turns out that his successor, Dina Boluarte, is also Marxist, and just like #BlackLivesMatter Democrats, doesn’t believe in letting police prevent rioters from burning shit down.

    Castillo, elected in 2021, was ousted by parliament last week after he tried to dissolve the legislature and stage a coup. This led to the ascension of his vice president, Dina Boluarte, also a Marxist, as president.

    Alarmingly, she has come out against even using rubber bullets to stop the mobs torching buildings and disrupting Peru from Lima to Machu Picchu. According to the New York Times, Boluarte has called on the minister of interior to identify the policemen “who have used these weapons that are harming our sisters and brothers.”

    These “brothers and sisters,” members of “indigenous” groups, unions, and other leftist activists, are instigated from outside through social media accounts based in the U.S., Argentina, Bolivia, and Mexico and include pro-China, pro-Russia, and pro-Iran activists. Some were also involved with our own Black Lives Matter summer of violence.

    Joseph Humire of the Center for a Secure Free Society, one of the best analysts in the U.S. following this sort of online activity, gave me a rundown of those pushing on social media the disinformation narrative that Castillo was ousted because of racism against his Indian roots. They include former Bolivian President Evo Morales, Cristina Kirchner, the recently indicted vice president of Argentina, and Gustavo Petro and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the Marxist presidents of Colombia and Mexico, respectively.

    Similarly, Douglas Farah, who also conducts investigations on illicit networks, has found that the vast majority of the millions of tweets about the riots that broke out in Chile came from Venezuela and its allies, Cuba and Nicaragua, while most anti-riot tweets were Chilean. This shouldn’t come as a surprise: Venezuela’s regime has vowed that it will use its oil money to sow this type of chaos throughout the Americas.

    Humire alerted me to influencers such as the pro-Russia activist Daniel Estulin, who actually brags in a video from Mexico that he is helping instigate the riots in Peru. Humire also reminded me that Andahuaylas, rocked by violent protests this week, is within the same region (Apurimac) where Iran has developed an indigenous network.

    I would take the Iran charge with a grain of salt, since the Andes are not a region where disgruntled Shia provide an opportunity for Iran to create networks of followers. Plus I think the mullahs have other things on their mind right now.

    The basic ingredients for stable prosperity are capitalism, democracy and the rule of law. Because all those limit Marxist Will to Power, leftwing rulers (in South America and elsewhere) seem to constantly be at war with all three.

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    Posted in Communism, Crime, Foreign Policy, unions | 3 Comments »

    LinkSwarm For December 16, 2022

    December 16th, 2022

    Democrats being soft on criminals, pedophiles and common sense highlights this week’s LinkSwarm.

    

  • Man, there sure seems to be a lot of funny number counting going on in Philadelphia.

    Regular readers are well aware that back in July, Zero Hedge first (long before it became a running theme among so-called “macro experts”) pointed out that a gaping 1+ million job differential had opened up between the closely-watched and market-impacting, if easily gamed and manipulated, Establishment Survey and the far more accurate if volatile, Household Survey – the two core components of the monthly non-farm payrolls report.

    We first described this divergence in early July, when looking at the June payrolls data, we found that the gap between the Housing and Establishment Surveys had blown out to 1.5 million starting in March when “something snapped.” We described this in “Something Snaps In The US Labor Market: Full, Part-Time Workers Plunge As Multiple Jobholders Soar.”

    Since then the difference only got worse, and culminated earlier this month when the gap between the Establishment and Household surveys for the November dataset nearly doubled to a whopping 2.7 million jobs, a bifurcation which we described in “Something Is Rigged: Unexplained, Record 2.7 Million Jobs Gap Emerges In Broken Payrolls Report.”

    Snip.

    We bring all this up again because late on Dec 13, the Philadelphia Fed published something shocking: as part of the regional Fed’s quarterly reassessment of payrolls in the form of an “early benchmark revision of state payroll employment”, the Philly Fed confirmed what we have been saying since July, namely that US payrolls are overstated by at least 1.1 million, and likely much more!

    And the correction came after the midterms! What are the odds?

  • Accused FTX crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried arrested in the Bahamas.

    The Royal Bahamas Police Force took the failed financial tech entrepreneur into custody after the U.S. filed criminal charges against him, according to a press statement. FTX, which Bankman-Fried founded, imploded in November, costing investors millions of dollars in losses. The fallen businessman has been accused of misusing customer funds deposited with FTX to artificially prop up another one of his enterprises: a crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, which he operated simultaneously while seemingly evading financial ethics scrutiny.

  • “Ukrainian Military Is Targeting Russian Fuel Supply Lines As Winter Approaches.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Did Russian forces have a torture chamber for children in Ukraine?
  • “SEC Chairman Gensler Scrubbed Evidence Of Clinton, Soros And Pelosi Meetings.”
  • Speaking of abusing children: “Former CNN Producer Pleads Guilty In Pedo Scandal. Former CNN producer John Griffin, who worked ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with Chris Cuomo, pleaded guilty on Monday in federal court to using interstate commerce to entice and coerce a 9-year-old girl to engage in sexual activity as his Vermont ski house. This is a different CNN pedophile than Jake Tapper’s former producer, Rick Saleeby, who resigned after it emerged that he solicited sexually explicit photos of an underage girl.”
  • Speaking pedophiles: “Mother of Child Rape Victim Sues Virginia Soros Prosecutor in Federal Court.”

    The mother of an 11-year-old rape victim is suing a George-Soros backed prosecutor in Virginia who let the boy’s rapist walk free, alleging the prosecutor’s actions violated the minor’s civil rights and made him fear for his physical safety.

    Amber Reel in November filed the federal lawsuit on behalf of her son after Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney Steve Descano (D.) let the rapist walk. Court filings show Descano was months late in sharing necessary evidence before a September trial, dooming the case and forcing his office to enter into a lesser plea deal with the rapist the same month. Ronnie Reel, who was released on time served, had faced life in prison for forcibly sodomizing the minor. Reel is the victim’s uncle.

    This is the second high-profile case in the last month where the Soros prosecutor freed a dangerous offender. In December, Descano struck a plea deal that would clear the record of a man who fired his gun into a crowded Virginia bar. Soros donated more than half a million dollars to Descano’s 2019 campaign.

    A grand jury had already indicted Reel in February for sodomy and aggravated sexual battery, and the case was set for trial in September. But Descano’s office didn’t share evidence with the public defender before trial, bungling Reel’s prosecution with its “woefully, woefully missed” deadlines. The case’s presiding judge said Descano’s office did a “disservice to the victim” and was “very concerning to the court.”

    Because he dodged a felony sex crime conviction, Reel won’t have to register as a sex offender and won’t be barred from holding jobs in schools or other places that would put him near children. The victim and his mother in their suit say Descano’s “deliberate indifference represents egregious conduct that is shocking to the conscience.”

    (Hat Tip: Instapundit.)

  • Speaking of pedophile friendly Democrats: “During the hearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, California [Democratic] Rep. Katie Porter asserted that the phrase “groomer” is a “lie” used to maliciously discriminate against LGBTQ+ people and make them appear to be a “threat.” “You know, this allegation of ‘groomer’ and ‘pedophile,’ it is alleging that a person is criminal somehow and engaged in criminal acts merely because of their gender identity, their sexual orientation, their gender identity.” Yes, if your “gender identity” is “I like to have sex with children,” then yes, you’re a pedophile, and if you tell elementary school children what sort of sex you have, then yes, you’re a groomer.
  • Speaking of Democrats being on the side of criminals, Oregon’s outgoing Democratic governor Kate Brown commuted the life of every death row inmate to life in prison.
  • Speaking of Democrat-run locales letting criminals walk free, a fire destroyed decades worth of NYPD-stored evidence.
  • “Federal Judge Prevents Biden’s DHS From Ending Trump’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ Policy.” Good. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Kirk Watson, the less heinous of the two remaining Democrats in the runoff for Austin mayor, defeated state Rep. Celia Israel.

    Former state Sen. Kirk Watson (D-Austin) will be the next mayor of Austin about two decades after he left that same office in the early aughts.

    He defeated state Rep. Celia Israel (D-Austin) by a slim margin after finishing second in the general election. He’ll serve as mayor for the next two years before having to seek re-election in 2024 due to redistricting.

    Watson lost Travis County, the city’s largest portion, by 17 votes while winning Williamson county by 881 and Hays County by 22. During the general and runoff races, he outspent Israel by a wide margin.

    The two candidates sparred over housing and homeless policy during the general election and the runoff. About one-third of the voting population turned out to vote in the runoff versus the November 8 general.

    Watson will take over for Mayor Steve Adler after his self-described “disruptive” tenure marked by a lingering homelessness problem, public fallout and a declining relationship with the police department, and a cumbersome and increasingly costly light rail transit project.

  • Japan buys the Tomahawk missile.

    The United States has always had kind of a friends and family plan that it sells military gear to, but it has always reserved the very top top top stuff for itself and the Brits. Well, in this calendar year we have already seen the first two exceptions to that policy being made. The United States is sending air-launch cruise missiles and nuclear-powered submarines to the Australians. And now we’re giving Tomahawks to the Japanese, giving both of these countries the ability to independently destroy China’s economic links to the wider world without any additional help from the United States. And this sudden proliferation of countries that can now bring China to their knees independently, this is arguably the biggest strategic development of the Year, even more so than the Ukraine war, because it takes what has become the world’s second largest economy and puts it completely at the mercy of the domestic politics of a third party, and now a fourth party.

  • Twitter ends their radical “Trust and Safety” Council. Good. Long overdue.
  • Oberlin College finally pays their judgment to Gibson’s Bakery. “The $25 million verdict plus interest and attorney’s fees resulted in an almost $32 million judgment, with interest running at about $4000 per day since June 2019. In all, over $36 million was owed.” Cudos to William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection for his thorough, ongoing coverage of this story from beginning to end.
  • New York City Mayor Eric Adams finally allows police to take mentally ill people off the street. Long overdue.
  • “NBC News Suspends Reporter Ben Collins Over His Elon Musk Coverage.” It seems that Collins was very, very upset that Matt Tiabbi was allowed to speak truths about twitter’s previous abuses that went against The Narrative. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit, whose tagline was “The Stig Loses His Car Keys.”)
  • Quis custodes corrumpit? “Bill Gates Donates $319 Million To Media”
  • How about “No.” Does “No” work for you? “Biden Wants $8 Billion In Taxpayer Funds To Shut Down Coal Power In South Africa.”
  • F-35B fighter crashes in the Metroplex. Fortunately the pilot safely ejected, and it appears that the airplane (which was undergoing testing for Lockheed) looks recoverable. To my untrained eye it looks like a stuck throttle.
  • “The US government is giving out free wasps.”
  • You may be cool, but chances are you’ll never be jump 100,000 feet from a ballon in space cool. Colonel Joseph William Kittinger II, RIP.
  • New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s global warming film earns all of 80 dollars per screen.
  • World’s largest free-standing aquarium didn’t.
  • “Canadian Healthcare System Introduces Punch Card Where On Your 10th Visit You Get Free Suicide.”
  • “DOJ Arrests Sam Bankman-Fried For Running Out Of Bribery Money.”

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, ObamaCare, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Uncategorized, unions, video, Waste and Fraud | 2 Comments »

    Texas Nurse Practitioner Sues VA Over Being Forced To Support Abortions

    December 15th, 2022

    Abortion (especially taxpayer-funded abortion) is one of the most sacred sacraments of the modern Democratic Party, and it thus wants to force everyone in medicine (especially Christians) to bow to its Holy of Hollies. And every time Democrats control the executive branch, they try to force their ideology down other people’s throats, so the Biden Administration has decided to use the Veterans Administration to promote its absolutist abortion position.

    One Texas nurse is having none of that.

    A Texas nurse practitioner has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Waco against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for its rule requiring its medical facilities to provide abortions and abortion counseling.

    Stephanie Carter, who has worked as a nurse practitioner at the Olin E. Teague Veterans’ Center in Temple for 23 years, sought a religious accommodation from participating in abortions.

    According to the complaint filed by religious freedom legal defense group First Liberty, Carter was told no process for such an accommodation existed.

    “The VA officials explained on October 11 that Ms. Carter would have to prescribe medications to end certain first trimester pregnancies if she did not have an approved religious accommodation,” the complaint asserts.

    Carter claims that the VA is substantially burdening her freedom to exercise her religious beliefs in violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

    Good for Carter. Also, I want to note that, 50 years ago, the phrase “VA Hospital-provided abortions” would have been inexplicable to men serving in the military…

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    Posted in Democrats, Regulation, Texas | 3 Comments »

    Tilt-Rotor, Take Two

    December 14th, 2022

    The U.S. Army has announced that it’s next helicopter isn’t a helicopter.

    The US Army awarded Textron Inc’s Bell unit with the contract to build the next-generation helicopter, ending years of fierce competition between Lockheed Martin Corp.-Boeing Co. to replace the aging fleet of Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawks by 2030.

    The Army’s “Future Vertical Lift” award went to Bell’s V-280 Valor tiltrotor aircraft, similar to the V-22 Osprey. The new aircraft can take off and land vertically like a helicopter but rotate massive props to fly like a fixed-wing aircraft at impressive speeds.

    Indeed, the specs are pretty impressive:

    General characteristics

  • Crew: 4
  • Capacity: 14 troops
  • Length: 50.5 ft (15.4 m)
  • Width: 81.79 ft (24.93 m)
  • Height: 23 ft 0 in (7 m)
  • Empty weight: 18,078 lb (8,200 kg)
  • Max takeoff weight: 30,865 lb (14,000 kg)
  • Powerplant: 2 × Rolls-Royce AE 1107F[54] turboshaft
  • Propellers: 35 ft 0 in (10.7 m) diameter

    • Performance

  • Cruise speed: 320 mph (520 km/h, 280 kn)
  • Combat range: 580–920 mi (930–1,480 km, 500–800 nmi)
  • Ferry range: 2,400 mi (3,900 km, 2,100 nmi)
  • Service ceiling: 6,000 ft (1,800 m) ; in hover out of ground effect at 95 °F (35 °C)
  • Disk loading: 16[55] lb/sq ft (78 kg/m2)

    • The cruise speed is almost twice the 175 mph of the Black Hawk it’s replacing, and significantly faster than the competing Defiant X design (265 MPH). It also has higher troop carrying capacity than the Black Hawk (14 vs. 12). “Firstest with the mostest” is still hugely important in combat. And though the V-280 carries considerably less than the V-22, it has a much longer combat range.

    Here’s a video showing the V-280 in flight, and covering some of the reasons it was selected over Defiant X:

    One of the biggest reasons is simply logging more flight time, hundreds of hours since 2017. Defiant X first flew in 2019.

    Any drawbacks? Well, tilt rotors share features of both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, so they can suffer the problems of both. The Osprey had fourteen crash or hull loss incidents (nine of them fatal), plus an additional eight non-loss incidents (with one additional fatality) for some 400 aircraft built.

    By contrast, the UH-60 Black Hawk it’s replacing has been involved in its own share of deadly accidents, but with a much larger number being built (4,000, though how many of those were in U.S. as opposed to foreign service during the period covered is unclear). All V-22 Ospreys (save 2-5 used by Japan) are used by the U.S. military.

    So expect some teething pains for the V-280…

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    Posted in Military, video | 20 Comments »

    Dear National Review: El Paso Is Not A “Town”

    December 13th, 2022

    It’s not only the liberal mainstream media that screws up through parochial ignorance; sometimes the establishment conservative media does as well.

    Today’s headline example from National Review: “Massive Weekend Migrant Caravan Overwhelms Texas Border Town.”

    The name of that border “town”? El Paso.

    You know, the 24th largest city in the United States.

    The story is otherwise solid:

    Over the weekend, a massive caravan of thousands of illegal migrants, mostly from Nicaragua, crossed the border into West Texas in a stunning surge that shocked immigration agents, neighboring towns, and state officials.

    By Monday, over 5,000 illegal immigrants had arrived at the Border Patrol’s central processing center in El Paso, Texas, officials told the New York Times. They estimated that about 2,000 people came to the U.S. each day, with the largest influx reaching 800 to 1,000 migrants on Sunday night.

    State Senator César J. Blanco, who represents the region, argued that the situation is untenable, with El Paso, a community with limited capacity, being forced to accommodate scores of migrants regularly.

    “We’re feeling it. It’s straining resources,” he told the publication, noting that El Paso has functioned as an Ellis Island but for illegal immigration. “Whether we want it or not, it is.”

    El Paso’s predicament, which included 53,000 apprehensions in October alone, is the worst among U.S.-Mexico border towns, although all are bearing the brunt of the raging border crisis. So far in 2022, there have been 2,378,944 migrant encounters along the southern border, according to immigration data.

    Homeless shelters in El Paso are flooded, as is the processing center, which typically releases the migrants into the interior with instruction to return for a future court date, which many do not oblige.

    It’s obvious that the Biden Administration wants to cram as many illegal aliens as possible into America to amnesty them as future Democratic Party voters.

    But how parochial do you have to be to call El Paso a “town”? I’m pretty sure nobody on the NRO staff would call Yonkers, NY or Worcester, MA (both considerably smaller municipalities) a “town.”

    Maybe they just listened to Marty Robbins’ “El Paso” (“Out in the West Texas town of El Paso/I fell in love with a Mexican girl”) and didn’t realize how much it had grown since the cowboy heydays…

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    Posted in Border Control, Media Watch, Texas | 6 Comments »

    Dispatches From The War Against Child Genital Mutilation

    December 12th, 2022

    For some reason, Democratic Party elites have gone all-in on forcing radical transexism down America’s throats. Fortunately, there are promising signs of widespread resistance to mutilating children for the approval of radical social justice warriors.

    First, courts blocked the Biden Administration’s creepy regulatory attempt to force hospitals to conduct child genital mutilation.

    A federal court on Friday blocked a Biden administration mandate that would force religious hospitals and doctors to facilitate gender transitions against their sincerely held moral convictions.

    The Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s decision to block enforcement of the rule on the grounds that “intrusion upon the Catholic Plaintiffs’ exercise of religion is sufficient to show irreparable harm,” the filing reads.

    Catholic nuns, clinics, a university, and hospitals were among the plaintiffs in the case, represented by the Becket Fund. The plaintiffs all provide medical care for transgender patients but refuse to provide gender-transition surgeries because they believe them to be harmful. Their grant of permanent injunctive relief from the lower court was preserved Friday.

    Friday’s ruling, which originated in North Dakota, is one of a twin set of cases challenging the Biden mandate. The second, which originated in Texas, was decided in August by the Fifth Circuit court, which also permanently blocked the rule. The plaintiffs in the Texas case included Christian medical associations of thousands of doctors who are now protected from federal encroachment into their practices.

    “We now have two different federal court of appeals saying the Biden administration is permanently blocked from forcing religious doctors and hospitals” to perform gender transitions in violation of their conscience, Luke Goodrich, attorney with the Becket Fund, said during a call with reporters.

    Litigation was first initiated in 2016 over implementation of Section 1557 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, an antidiscrimination clause that would have compelled religious medical institutions that receive federal funding to perform and cover gender transitions, according to the plaintiffs. Section 1557 prohibits a federally funded or administered health program or activity from denying benefits to an individual on the basis of sex as outlined in Title IX. The Biden administration doubled down on the 2016 principle in a revised rule.

    Second, Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky brings the wood.

    In an appearance on The Ingraham Angle, Paul raised the issue of doctors carrying out transgender surgeries on children, and the propaganda that has prompted a massive increase in Americans feeling they do not have the ‘right’ body.

    “Who is responsible for telling a four-year-old that we need to talk about their gender and whether they’re in the appropriate body?” Paul asked.

    “Who’s talking about giving picture books to six-year-olds with illustrations of surgery to remove their genitalia?” the Senator continued.

    “It’s Democrat politicians and woke left-wing people,” Paul asserted.

    “There’s not one Republican — look, Republicans are not perfect. But Republicans are not pushing your child to have surgery to remove their genitalia as early as elementary school. No Republican is pushing this,” Paul reiterated.

    “These are crazy left-wing Democrats. It was also crazy left-wing Democrats who were for the lockdown across America,” Paul continued.

    The mad enthusiasm for transexism is going to be as inexplicable to future generations as pet rocks or healing crystals.

    Except neither of those trends mutilated children for life.

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    Posted in Crime, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas | 4 Comments »

    Melitopol Strike, Black Market Stingers, And Gusts From The Fog of War

    December 11th, 2022

    It can be hard to determine the truth in any war zone, especially one like Ukraine where honest, English-speaking reporters seem to be thin on the ground. Sometimes people are trying to be accurate and get things wrong, and others fall for propaganda, like Snake Island and the “Ghost of Kiev.” (I use pro-Ukrainian examples here because most Russian propaganda has been unbelievable, clumsy, and poorly executed (and the last two apply to so many aspects of Russia’s illegal war of aggression)).

    Example the first: A commenter mentioned that Stingers sent to Ukraine had shown up on “black markets all over the world.” Possible, but I hadn’t heard anything about it. I went searching, where I found this piece:

    On September 17, 2022, a worrying claim circulated on social media: FIM-92 Stinger man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) were reportedly available for sale online in Germany.

    According to the post, which was picked up by prominent figures in Russia, authorities were alerted by a student in Bremen and “local journalists” found that the systems originated in Ukraine and were “meant for the Kharkov counteroffensive”.

    A short video was posted alongside the tweet, showing what appears to be a partially disassembled Stinger system with its Identification friend or foe (IFF) antenna missing. The feet of several people in paramilitary clothes can be seen in the footage, and a German voice can be heard in the background.

    he posts received thousands of likes and shares, including from the Deputy Representative of Russia to the United Nations Dmitry Polyanskiy, who suggested that delivering weapons to Ukraine was backfiring.

    English language coverage has not been widespread, but Russian media published numerous articles with differing variations of the claim. Some add that this is not the first time that Stingers have appeared on the European black market.

    However, many others state that weapons provided to Ukraine by NATO countries have been discovered on black markets across the world. All the articles claim that the case resulted in “a scandal” in Germany, attracting the interest of authorities, the media, and spurring discontent among its citizens.

    But further down, we find this:

    The articles and social media posts refer to German authorities having supposedly intercepted a deal and apprehending the culprits. However, no statement about such an operation has been posted by any of Germany’s law enforcement agencies.

    The posts also mention that local German journalists investigated and determined that the weapons were meant for the Ukrainian offensive. However, there is no proof that this took place, and the story was not covered by any prominent German media outlet.

    Responding to a Twitter post sharing the video, Lars Winkelsdorf, one of the leading German arms trafficking experts, dismissed the claim.

    “At the moment, nothing like that has been found by the authorities, nor have I found anything like this through my own research,” Winkelsdorf said.

    The original source of the report seems to be the Journalisten friekorps Telegram channel, which is billed as a “channel for honest journalism”.

    “Our task is to help the German state and the German people. The people must be united, Germany must be free,” the channel’s description reads.

    One of the Telegram posts state that the channel is created by the team behind Socialharmony.de, an initiative which lists discontinuing arms shipments to Ukraine and stopping support to Ukrainian refugees among its main goals.

    Conclusion:

    It can be stated, with a high degree of certainty, that the claim regarding FIM-92 Stinger MANPADS being shipped to Ukraine and found on the German black market, is false.

    The claim states that the weapon dealers were apprehended by German authorities, yet the German police denies being involved.

    The video, provided as evidence, contains a sound recording that was filmed in January 2022. The letters from Ukrainian authorities, provided as a confirmation of connection with Ukraine, also appear to be counterfeit.

    Finally, claims that the case was highly prominent and even resulted in a scandal in Germany, do not appear to hold water. This was only covered by social media channels of dubious origin and several sensationalist websites.

    So that one we can chalk up to propaganda followed by the social media game of telephone.

    The next example is from two sources on the Russo-Ukrainian War that are usually pretty solid.

    First up, Suchomimus (whose videos I’ve feature a lot here) has a report on an attack on a Russian headquarters barracks in Melitopol that may have killed some 200 officers:

    I thought I’ll take a look at last night’s strike on a Russian barracks in Melitopol. I guess most of you have seen the news by now, as this was a pretty major incident reports are saying around 200 soldiers were killed in this strike.

    Snip.

    Let’s take a look at the site itself this graphic was put together by a Twitter user TheIntelCrab. Now, a few sources online have said that the strike was of a Melitopol Christian Church. That is not exactly accurate. It was near there, but instead, it hit the area circle to the left, which was being used by the barracks.

    Here’s a screen cap:

    So it didn’t hit the church itself. Now, this is quite interesting. These photos here of some of the rooms at this place. This was a luxury resort. A few people say it was a spa.

    Suchomimus goes on to explain why such luxurious accommodations were probably used by officers. “If this was indeed officer’s accommodation, then this is a even more important strike than realized, especially for numbers of 200 gone are accurate.”

    The Guardian reports on the story, using much the same pic:

    But here’s Ukraine News TV (“Josey here”) with his daily update, including reporting various strikes in Russian occupied territory:

    At 1:38 in, he notes “explosions as well at the airport at Simferopol, so a little bit into the the middle of the peninsula.” Part of this screen cap should look familiar:

    That fire behind that distinctive gate looks awfully familiar, doesn’t it?

    CNN is also reporting the blast in Simferopol, so presumably that actually happened as well. Later in the video (starting about 7 minutes in), Josey reports on the Melitopol strikes, noting a wide range of estimates for casualties, stating “possibly 200-300.” So that’s mostly in accord.

    The most likely explanation is that Josey simply grabbed the wrong image for the Simferopol image. These things happen.

    But it’s a reminder that war news reporting (including my blogging) is an aggregation of already aggregated sources one or more steps removed from the actual front lines. Everything you see or hear about it deserves at least a basic level of judicious skepticism.

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    Posted in Media Watch, Military, unions, video | 5 Comments »

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