Important Lesson: Don’t Trust Alex Jones

October 3rd, 2022

Alex Jones is one of those gadfly media personalities that gets lumped in with regular conservative media, partial to smear said media (“Alex Jones, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, they’re all lunatics!”) and partially because sometimes Jones exposes some of the same holes in The Narrative that sane people do (Flu Manchu vaccines come to mind). He’s more of a loony libertarian fringe figure than a traditional conservative.

Jones gets lots of things wrong, and many of his ideas are crazy, as indicated by the whole Sandy Hook trial. No one should mistake his views for mainstream conservative thought. That said, I think it is a grave mistake to push Jones off social media like YouTube and Twitter. Let him be wrong, and let people point out he’s wrong.

Tyler “Hoovie” Hoover is a car YouTuber (“Welcome to Hoovie’s Garage, the dumbest automotive channel in all YouTube!”) who buys, drives, and pays to have repaired various interesting cars, some of which he later resells. I think he popped up in my YouTube feed because I watch a lot of Top Gear/Grand Tour videos.

Today’s lesson in why you can’t trust Alex Jones comes from the intersection of these two.

Act I: Hoovie goes in with a friend to buy 50% of an all-electric Ford F-150 Lightning pickup truck. Overall he seems pretty pleased with the truck, which has plenty of acceleration. Video linked rather than embedded, as most of it is peripheral to the discussion.

Act II: Hoovie tries to use the Lightning to tow an old Ford Model-A truck on a lightweight aluminum trailer, and find outs that the range while towing is absolutely horrible. “I used 90 miles of range in 30 miles!”

I wouldn’t ding a car manufacturer for towing eating up that much range in, say, a Tesla car or a Prius. But towing a trailer is one of the primary use cases for a big pickup like the Ford F-150. Moreover, it’s a use case that other large gas or diesel powered pickup trucks handle pretty well.

Act III: Alex Jones finds Hoovie’s video on the Lightning and then proceeds to Alex Jones all over it:

It’s a pretty bad look when you’re commenting on the video in real time and just making shit up that isn’t there. Hoovie didn’t say it couldn’t get above 25 miles an hour, or that it lacked torque, he said it had range problems when towing.

There are real concerns about the ability of electric vehicles to replace gasoline-powered transportation, especially under the pressure of irrational green mandates. But if Alex Jones was rational, he wouldn’t have to make up crazy shit that people didn’t say to make his point.

More Fraudsters Arrested For Stealing Taxpayer Money

October 2nd, 2022

Remember: When it seems like grant money is handed out mainly to be raked off as graft, that’s only because it frequently is.

Federal officials are calling it one of the largest pandemic fraud cases in the country —which is quite a feat considering the billions stolen from the Paycheck Protection Plan and billions more stolen in Unemployment Insurance. But here we are: 49 people have been arrested in connection with the Feeding Our Future fraud case, and the list could be growing.

According to a Fox affiliate, “authorities alleged the massive fraud scheme took at least $250 million from the federal child nutrition program — money that was intended to help feed children during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

One of the more prominent names on the list of fraudsters, Mohamed Noor, is a community journalist and owner of a media company in Minneapolis. Noor was charged earlier this week for stealing federal money meant to help fee low-income families —nice guy, Mr Noor.

Moor is the owner of Xogmaal Media Group, one of the companies that fraudulently received and misappropriated Federal Child Nutrition Program funds.

Mohamed, who’s widely known as Deeq Darajo, was trying to flee the country to avoid prosecution —luckily, he was apprehended.

From The Sahan Journal:

Xogmaal used Feeding Our Future as a sponsor to receive federal funding for meals through the federal Child and Adult Care Food Program.

Federal prosecutors say Deeq Darajo is the cousin of Abdikerm Eidleh, a former Feeding Our Future employee who federal prosecutors allege took more than $3 million in kickbacks from food sites to enroll them in the Child Nutrition Programs.

The charges say a Feeding Our Future employee expressed concern about enrolling Xogmaal in the Child Nutrition Programs in February 2021.

“We took a lot of organization [sic] that don’t work with children or are advocate, [sic] I am just realizing that now,” an unnamed employee wrote to Feeding Our Future Executive Director Aimee Bock in an email, according to the charges. “For example Xogmaal is a TV show program. They have no interest with children. These are the things we need to clean up.”

“Bock still submitted Xogmaal’s application to the Minnesota Department of Education, which administers the Child Nutrition Programs for the state, according to the charges. Soon Xogmaal claimed to be feeding 1,000 children a day, seven days a week. By April 2021, Xogmaal claimed to feed 1,500 kids a day, seven days a week, according to the charges.”

But Xogmaal wasn’t feeding any children. Instead, Xogmaal received close to $500,000 in food-aid money —$387,000 of this was sent to shell companies controlled by Abdikerm.

(Hat tip: Director Blue.)

FYI: This Mohamed Noor, Mohamed Muse Noor, does not seem to be the same as former police officer Mohamed Noor, who recently did time for manslaughter of an unarmed woman, or Democratic State representative Mohamud Noor.

You can’t tell your Noors without a scorecard.

But back to the Noor at hand, what sort of media company was Xogmaal? One focused on Somali issues, in the Somali language. Click on the contact us link, and you can see the fine attention to detail the firm displayed.

Nothing screams “quality” quite like “Lorem ipsum.”

I thought to myself “What are the odds that the people involved in this scam are making donation to Democratic candidates? I’m guessing pretty good.”

I was correct.

At least nine of the 48 people accused of defrauding the government of $250 million meant to feed hungry children have donated to Democratic officeholders in Minnesota.

The number is likely higher and Alpha News is working to confirm the identities of additional defendants.

Campaign finance records show 42-year-old Liban Yasin Alishire donated $2,500 in May of this year to the reelection campaign of Attorney General Keith Ellison.

Alishire listed Hoodo Properties as his employer, which was a shell company he created to purchase luxury items and real estate with money he stole from the government, according to an indictment.

Snip.

Liban Yasin Alishire

  • Attorney General Keith Ellison: $2,500 (5/27/22)
  • Abdinasir Mahamed Abshir

  • Sen. Omar Fateh: $1,000 (6/6/21)
  • Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey: $1,000 (7/27/21)
  • Minneapolis Council Member Jeremiah Ellison: $600 (12/20/21)
  • Asad Mohamed Abshir

  • Sen. Omar Fateh: $1,000 (6/6/21)
  • Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey: $1,000 (7/27/21)
  • Abdihakim Ali Ahmed

  • Sen. Omar Fateh: $1,000 (6/6/2021)
  • Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey: $1,000 (7/27/21)
  • U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar: $2,700 (3/31/2021)
  • Ahmed Abdullahi Ghedi

  • Sen. Omar Fateh: $1,000 (6/6/21)
  • Minneapolis Council Member Jeremiah Ellison: $600 (12/20/21)
  • Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey: $1,000 (7/27/21)
  • U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar: $2,700 (2/23/21)
  • Salim Ahmed Said

  • Sen. Omar Fateh: $1,000 (6/6/21)
  • Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey: $1,000 (7/27/21)
  • Minneapolis Council Member Jeremiah Ellison: $600 (12/20/21)
  • Abdulkadir Nur Salah

  • Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey: $1,000 (7/26/21)
  • Minneapolis Council Member Jeremiah Ellison: $600 (12/20/21)
  • Abdikadir Ainanshe Mohamud, previously served on Mayor Frey’s community safety working group

  • Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey: $1,000 (7/26/21)

    Abdi Nur Salah, former aide to Mayor Frey

  • Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey: $1,000 (7/27/21)
  • Hmm, it’s like all of them have something in common…

    If you see “community activists” committing fraud, it’s a good bet that donations to Democrats are not far behind.

    The Ukrainian Way of War

    October 1st, 2022

    This is an interesting video of Ukrainian tanks taking out a Russian strongpoint dubbed “Moscow.”

    Takeaways:

  • They had to break off the attack and return to base for more ammunition. “A tank has 22 shells, which isn’t enough for attack.” By contrast the M1A2 holds 42 rounds. The rapid depletion of ammo in the Yom Kippur War was one reason the Israelis designed the Merkava with a rear access door to allow quick ammo resupply.
  • “They didn’t expect our tanks. They thought it would be just infantry.”
  • “We used all our ammo up in two minutes.”
  • Instead of the squadron commander participating in the attack (as per Soviet doctrine), “he used quadracopter drones and could see the combat scenes and command the tanks in real time.”
  • “Our personnel worked with infantry and special forces. We cleared the way through the forest for them.” That involved clearing lots of mines and booby traps.
  • They said they cleared the way from Husarivka to Bayrak. Which means they were probably involved in the push on Lyman. Husarivka is just east of Barvinkova in the bottom left of this map.

  • As has become the norm, retreating Russian soldiers left behind buttloads of ammo. The Russians may have depleted their smart munitions, but they don’t appear to have any shortage of the dumb variety. “A 15 kilometer forest was full of empty ammo boxes.”
  • Troops breaking and retreating despite plenty of ammo suggests continuing low morale among the invading Russians (or their local conscript cannon fodder).
  • “There was good coordination between our infantry, tanks and artillery.” Classic western combined arms doctrine, something the Russians have seemed mostly incapable of pulling off.
  • Also, the Ukrainian military have reported entering Lyman:

    LinkSwarm for September 30, 2022

    September 30th, 2022

    More Democrats convicted for committing voting fraud, Russian forces are driven out of Lyman, and the Eurocrats freak out of Italy’s voters daring to disobey their wishes. Plus advice on what not to invest in.
    
    

  • Biden CDC Awarded Millions To Soros-Funded Activist Group Suing DeSantis.”

    In February, 2021, the Biden administration-run Centers for Disease Control (CDC) awarded a Soros-backed pro-migrant nonprofit $7.5 million under the guise of pandemic-related support for “LATINX ESSENTIAL WORKERS AS HEALTH PROMOTERS,” and aimed “to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and mitigate impacts among Latinx and Latin American immigrants,” according to an analysis by the Daily Caller.

    The group, Alianza Americas, is currently suing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and other Florida officials over migrant flights to Martha’s Vineyard earlier this month.

    The group has also received nearly $1.4 million from George Soros’ Open Society Network.

    Alianza Americas is “focused on improving the quality of life of all people in the U.S.-Mexico-Central America migration corridor.” The membership-based group, which Soros’ Open Society Foundations network (OSF) sent almost $1.4 million to between 2016 and 2020, was awarded a $7.5 million CDC grant in February 2021, according to a grant listing reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. -Daily Caller

    The CDC funds were distributed under a program called “Protecting and Improving Health Globally: Building and Strengthening Public Health Impact, Systems, Capacity and Security.”

    Add this to the many, many things Republicans should investigate if they gain a congressional majority.
    

  • More of that voting fraud that doesn’t exist:

    Former U.S. Rep. Michael “Ozzie” Myers, a Pennsylvania Democrat, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to deprive voters of civil rights, bribery, obstruction of justice, falsification of voting records, conspiring to illegally vote in a federal election, and orchestrating schemes to fraudulently stuff ballot boxes for specific Democrat candidates in Pennsylvania elections held from 2014 to 2018. Myers was sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond to 30 months in prison, three years supervised release, and ordered to pay $100,000 in fines, with $10,000 of that due immediately, according to a statement from U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero.

    (Previously.) (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)

  • Russian forces appear to be abandoning Lyman, which is cut off and surrounded.

  • “A right-wing alliance led by Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party” won Italy’s election and will form a new majority government.
  • Naturally, the Eurocratic elite are far from thrilled that Italians exercised unapproved voting preferences. “EU Commission President Threatens Italy On Eve Of Election, Says Brussels Has ‘Tools’ If Wrong Parties Win.”
  • Funny how they mention that some fascists were involved in founding Meloni’s party, but never mention how the Partito Democratico, the leftist and second largest party in Italy, were formerly commies.
  • Voters Widely Favor GOP Candidate in Competitive House Districts.”
  • And there’s reason to believe they’re actually doing better than that.
  • “Ninth Circuit Strikes Down California Plan to Close Prisons for Illegal Aliens.” One of President Trump’s many accomplishments was flipping the Ninth Circuit from a loony leftist laboratory to a court that actually followed the Constitution. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “This Ohio School District Is Promoting an ‘LGBTQ+ Resource Guide’ With Instructions on Sex Work, Abortions. Hilliard City School District guide also encourages students to transition gender without parental consent.” All this encouraged by the National Education Association, which evidently thinks it is perfectly fine to literally instruct your children on how to be whores. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
  • A double-dose of Glenn Greenwald:

  • Tranny turns out to be traitor.
  • Michael Avenatti Ordered to Pay Restitution to Stormy Daniels in Fraud Lawsuit.” There’s not a violin small enough.
  • Google’s Manifest V3 for Chrome is trying to kill ad- and tracking-blockers. Another good reason to use another browser.
  • Important investing tip: A single deli in rural New Jersey is not, in fact, worth $100 million. Which explains the fraud charges.
  • Speaking of bad investments, remember how growing hemp was going to make farmers rich? Yeah, not so much.
  • Since I post a lot of Peter Zeihan videos, I thought it only fair that I post this critique of Zeihan by Yaron Brook. He opines that, while Zeihan has important things to say about geography and demographics, he ignores the central role of ideas in shaping the world.
  • NFT trading volume has collapsed 97% since the January peak. I need an NFT of Nelson saying “Ha ha!”
  • Pro tip: Don’t leave your illegally modified automatic weapons in your Uber. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Skillz:

  • Zuckerbusted

    September 29th, 2022

    How it started:

    A vote-generating group funded in part by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg dumped money in eight swing states in 2020, virtually all to counties that picked President Joe Biden over former President Donald Trump in last year’s election, according to a congressional critic.

    New York Rep. Claudia Tenney, co-chairwoman of the House Election Integrity Caucus, today released new details of her inquiry into spending by the Zuckerberg-backed Center for Tech and Civic Life showing spending of $144 million — $130 million to Democratic counties and $14 million to GOP counties.

    How it’s going:

    As advertising revenue growth stalls, Meta Platforms Inc., the owner of Facebook and Instagram, told employees that it plans to implement a hiring freeze and restructure employee teams in the latest effort to trim costs, reported Bloomberg.

    A person in attendance during a company Q&A session said CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the hiring freeze as this is the latest evidence advertising revenue growth for the social media giant is slowing. There’s also the concern about waning activity among users.

    “For the first 18 years of the company, we basically grew quickly basically every year, and then more recently our revenue has been flat to slightly down for the first time,” Zuckerberg told staff Thursday.

    “I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by now, but from what we’re seeing it doesn’t yet seem like it has, so we want to plan somewhat conservatively,” he added.

    Last week, Meta began quietly cutting staff by reorganizing departments while giving ‘reorganized’ employees the ability to apply for other roles within the company, according to WSJ.

    Facebook is a garbage app that people hate but still use because lots of their friends and relatives also hate it but still use it. The interface gets worse and more user-hostile year after year. (Hint: To see most recent posts in your timeline, something they’ve taken away from the main menu because they hate users and want to shove ads down your throat, go to https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr.) Facebook has done as much as any social platform to drive Americans apart.

    Not to mention the fact that just about everyone agrees that the “Metaverse” Zucker is creating is a giant festering pile of garbage.

    That Facebook profits are declining because the administration of the senile president he helped install has driven the economy into a ditch doesn’t balance out the harm he’s done. But it’s a start.

    Bonus: This always cracks me up:

    Will Dollar-Pound Parity Unleash Weirdness?

    September 28th, 2022

    A variety of maladies (global inflation, soaring energy costs due to the Russo-Ukrainian War, and post-Brexit trade wrangles, among others) has the English pound approaching parity with the U.S dollar.

    Can the pound reach parity versus the dollar? It’s now a one-in-four chance when it comes to options pricing.

    The UK currency is heading for its biggest daily loss since early May after Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng outlined the government’s plans to stimulate the economy with tax cuts and spending. The simultaneous sharp sell off in Gilts [historical term for UK government bonds – LP] suggests that tackling inflation will be a very hard task for UK authorities and that the currency market sees no easy way out for the Bank of England.

    To attract foreign investors, a weaker pound may be the answer and that is what FX traders are betting on.

    Cable fell as much as 2.1% to touch $1.1021, the lowest since March 1985, and was at $1.1036 as of 12:38pm in London. Risk reversals, a barometer of market positioning and sentiment, show that traders see the greatest downside risks for the pound over the medium term in two years.

    According to Bloomberg’s options pricing model, the pound holds a 26% chance of touching parity versus the greenback in the next six months. That compares to a reading of 14% Thursday.

    I think the real odds are probably higher than that.

    Dollar-pound parity is something that’s never happened, with the nearest it came to some 1.05 dollars to the pound in the mid-1980s. But there’s always a first time for everything, and with the Bank of England doing more quantitative easing and the UK government going on a spending spree during soaring inflation while the Fed ratchets up interest rates, now is as good a time as any.

    Besides making imports from the UK less expensive, what effects will dollar-pound parity have on the financial world? Hard to say for sure, but my prediction is: Weird things.

    There are a variety of reasons for this, starting with the fact that currency trading is itself a weird thing. You may think “American financial houses buy pounds to purchase English goods, while UK financial houses buy dollars to purchase American goods,” but there’s a whole ecology of counter-party trades, hedging strategies, currency reserve requirements, portfolio balancing, and a host of other considerations.

    Here’s a brief video that cover some of the basics for how brokerages handle FX trading:

    That’s a fairly streamlined view, as it doesn’t cover how liquidity pools are set up, different hedging strategies, etc.

    There are even traders who specialize in just trading different duration T-Bills, selling the eight-week-out and buying the four-week-out (or vice versa) for esoteric arbitrage reasons.

    None of that will change if the market hits dollar-pound parity. So where’s the danger? That comes from the possible non-linear effects of the market doing something that a lot of algorithmic instrument designers never considered a possibility.

    For a simple example, let’s talk about the swaps cases. To summarize a whole lot of very complex cases, a whole bunch of local UK governments entered into interest rate swap agreements. Interest rate swap agreements are a legitimate hedging strategy to minimize exposure to interest rate swings, but a few municipalities saw it as a license to print money. To quote Wikipedia, the source of all vaguely accurate knowledge:

    The position of Hammersmith and Fulham London Borough Council was quite different from most of the other local authorities. From about 1985 onwards Hammersmith had entered into interest rate swap transactions on an extremely large scale. At one stage it was calculated that Hammersmith was a counterparty to 0.5% of the global trade in swaps, and 10% of the sterling denominated trade. Moreover, quite exceptionally, all of Hammersmith’s positions in the swap market were betting on a fall in interest rates. Most large participants in the swap market have their exposure balanced by taking positions on both sides and across multiple currencies, but Hammersmith was essentially repeatedly entering into one-way bets that sterling interest rates would fall; a bet that they would end up losing spectacularly when interest rates climbed from around 8 per cent to 15 per cent in the space of ten months.

    This was, to put it in technical terms, “a really fucking stupid thing to do.” The swaps cases were unwound with great expense and difficulty, and various English banks ended up taking a bath (which you know they must have regarded as some sort of diabolical violation of the natural order) after courts determined that the authorities in question didn’t have the authority under English law to enter into such agreements.

    The possibility that interests rates can rise should be an obvious one. But the idea that the pound might be worth less than the dollar is one that people have probably thought about a good deal less, since it hasn’t happened ever. It’s quite possible it hasn’t been contemplated in some percentage of the trillions in derivatives markets and hedging instruments around the world.

    For many financial systems, this is going to be an untested use case. Some systems may work just fine, others may break down, and still others may experience race conditions or cascading failures; think of the flash crash of 2010, or the 1987 Black Monday crash. Somewhere, somehow, something is likely to go off the rails.

    Hopefully, whatever does blow up won’t be big enough to take down the entire market, or at least not for long. Hopefully it won’t uncover massive problems like the 2008 subprime meltdown uncovered, and there won’t be a firm of systemic importance like AIG was there.

    Hopefully.

    Did I Get a DDos Attack From Russia?

    September 27th, 2022

    At some point during yesterday’s diagnosis of my ongoing technical difficulties, the BlueHost technician asked if 185.122.204.37 was my IP, because there were something like 30,000+ hits from it that day. I verified it wasn’t mine, and that it wasn’t Instapundit (which had linked me that day), and did a reverse DNS lookup, which brought up the following:

    IP Location: 185.122.204.37

    185.122.204.37 appears to be located in Moscow, Russia and allocated to Chang Way Technologies Co. Limited. Autonomous System Number (ASN) code for 185.122.204.37 is AS57523. IP Address local time zone is Europe/Moscow (+0300). PTR record is set to 185.122.204.37.

    That’s a very curious site to be sending me traffic, since I’m seeing none of it in my stats counter. Could I be receiving a low-grade DoS attack due to my criticisms of Putin’s war in Ukraine, or even my coverage of China’s slow-motion economic collapse, given the Chinese-sounding company? Possibly, though given BlueHost’s history, there are certainly far more prosaic explanations for my ongoing difficulties.

    Also, speaking of Internet bogusity, if you search for “Battleswarm” and some topic I’ve covered (say, “Beto”), the top links are not from my blog, but from some BS “https://jawabansmk.my.id” domain that’s scraping my content and then doing all sorts of clickjacking redirect bullshit. This may be entirely unrelated to the slowness issues and the Russian/Chinese IP above, but if you would, do a Google search “BattleSwarm” and something I’ve covered, and if that site comes up, click on those three dots next to the results that send feedback to Google to remove that result. Something like: “This is not battleswarmblog.com, this is a clickjacking malware site scraping the content of battleswarmblog.com. Please delete this domain from your listings.”

    Also, normally I like everything to go to my posts, but given the recent difficulties, please feel free to reprint this entire message when linking, so regular readers will know what’s up.

    As for a tech update on the ongoing problems, my dashboard actions are still dog slow, but the issue has been escalated.

    Technical Difficulties Again

    September 26th, 2022

    More fun with Blue Host technical support. Things are dog slow, like five minutes to bring up an edit window.

    More tomorrow.

    Abbott-O’Rourke Race Update: There Isn’t One

    September 25th, 2022

    If you’re wondering about the 2022 Texas Gubernatorial Race between Republican incumbent Greg Abbott and Democratic challenger Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, there isn’t one.

    Gov. Greg Abbott’s lead is widening over Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke, according to two polls this week that show Republicans gaining ground ahead of the November midterm election.

    This comes months after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade sent shock waves through the country and inspired a wave of left-leaning activism. The latest data indicates that energy around that ruling may be overshadowed by Republicans’ intense focus on border security, including their more recent efforts to bus migrants to Democratic-led cities.

    The Spectrum News/Siena College poll showed Abbott with a 50-43 lead over O’Rourke, and other statewide candidates had similar gaps: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was up 49-40 over Democrat Mike Collier, and Attorney General Ken Paxton had a 47-42 lead over Democrat Rochelle Garza.

    For context, a poll in November of 2014 said that Abbott only had a five point lead over Wendy Davis (the last Democratic gubernatorial candidate to make abortion the centerpiece of her campaign). Abbott ended up winning by 20 points.

    The poll also found that Texas voters consider immigration a more important issue than abortion. About 31 percent of respondents said immigration was their first- or second-highest concern ahead of the midterms, while 22 percent said the same for abortion.

    Overall, Texans overwhelmingly consider the economy and inflation their highest priorities.

    The Siena poll was conducted Sept. 14 through 18 as Abbott continues to draw national attention for busing thousands of migrants out of Texas and dropping them off in Washington, D.C., New York City and Chicago, in what he has described as an attempt to show President Joe Biden how grave the situation is at the border. The governor’s critics have characterized the program as a stunt that uses human beings as political pawns.

    “The Biden-Harris administration continues ignoring and denying the historic crisis at our southern border, which has endangered and overwhelmed Texas communities for almost two years,” Abbott said last week.

    About 52 percent of likely voters support the busing initiative, according to the Siena poll. Another 40 percent oppose the effort.

    O’Rourke’s gubernatorial candidacy was always going to be a longshot in an off-year election that was going to favor Republicans. But the disasterous incompetence of the Biden Administration, spiraling inflation, the Biden Recession, resentment of wokeness, and deeply unpopular open borders policies that have pushed more and more Hispanics to switch to the Republican Party have turned the basic headwinds of an off-year election into a howling gale that’s going to blow O’Rourke to his third high profile defeat in five years. His three point loss to Ted Cruz in 2018, in a Trump mid-year election favoring Democrats, against a lightning-rod incumbent wounded by his own high profile defeat at the hands of Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, looks like his best possible showing under any circumstances.

    I expect O’Rourke to do better than Wendy Davis did in 2014, simply because he’s a better candidate (he’s too leftwing for Texas, but he does the hard work of campaigning, for which Davis showed little inclination) and because Democrats have poured a lot of money into building election infrastructure. But like Davis, he seems to have made the foolish decision to run as the Unlimited Abortion Candidate, expecting the overturning of Roe vs. Wade to sweep him into office. The problem with that theory is that everyone who was a single-issue voter on Unlimited Abortion was already voting for Democrats, and the people who aren’t seem to care more about such trivia as “paying for food for their children.”

    O’Rourke may not even equal the 42.5% a sleepwalking Lupe Valdez garnered in 2018. My guess is that he’s going to end up with somewhere like 40-45% of the vote, another high profile flameout, and another giant bucket of Democratic donor money wasted on his campaign rather than being sent to candidates that might actually win.

    A Swimming Ratte?

    September 24th, 2022

    This video, covering a scaled down prototype of the Ultra Heavy-Lift Amphibious Connector (UHAC) craft, caught my attention:

    The UHAC drives across the water on treads that double as paddlewheel-style water propulsion.

    That video dropped this week, but most of the UHAC testing seemed to have happened back in 2014. (Another sign that the video is old is the mention of the USS Bonhomme Richard as though it were still in service, when it infamously burned up in 2020. In fact, the arson trial of Ryan Sawyer Mays, the disgruntled SEAL washout accused of setting the fire, is going on this week.)

    If the program is dead, I can understand why. The UHAC seen in the video is only one-fifth of the projected size of the final vehicle, which was supposed to be 84 ft long and 34 ft high. That’s roughly 75% as big as Nazi Germany’s contemplated but never-even-attempted Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte tank, a project remembered for being long on imagination and short on practicality. Things that large tend to be a big magnet for air and artillery targeting.

    Another thing probably dooming it: the Marine Corp decision to move away from tanks. An amphibious assault vehicle that (as per the video) can carry three M1A1 Abrams tanks probably won’t be a priority if you don’t have any in inventory.