Bill Gertz: US speeds up development of new, lighter W93 warhead for US Navy's new Columbia class boomers to help counter Chicoms' new ICBM fields

 The story is here.

The $8.1 billion Indo-Pacific Security Supplemental Appropriation for Taiwan et alia passed yesterday 385-34-1-11, all the Nays being Republicans

 The roll call vote is here.

I would have reported in real time but Blogger had a major outage yesterday afternoon lasting several hours.

Brutal video shows citizen after citizen blasting Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson to his face over illegal aliens displacing and terrorizing inner city minorities

Definitely worth a watch, here.

The guy at the end likens one party Democrat rule in Chicago to the one party communist state of China.

Impressive!

USA overwhelms China for most millionaires and billionaires, but 13,500 wealthy Chicoms fled China in 2023

The U.S. is the top country for millionaires and billionaires :

The U.S. has rapidly overwhelmed China as the world’s top spot for millionaires and billionaires, according a new report.  

There are now more than 5.5 million Americans with liquid investible assets of more than $1 million, up 62% over the past decade and well above the global growth rate of 38%, according to the 2024 USA Wealth Report from Henley & Partners and New World Wealth.

Over the past five years, the population of millionaires in the U.S. has grown 35%, nearly twice as fast as China’s. The U.S. is now home to 37% of the world’s millionaires, up from 35% in 2018.

The divergence grows even more at the top of the wealth ladder. The U.S. has 9,850 centi-millionaires — those worth $100 million or more — compared with China’s 2,352. The U.S. has about 788 billionaires to China’s 305.

“The USA remains the world’s undisputed leader in private wealth creation and accumulation,” according to the report.

Dominic Volek, group head of private clients at Henley, said the strict Covid lockdowns in China coupled with increases in its government intervention in the private sector have slowed the growth in wealth creation.

“China has certainly slowed a lot due to these elements and the U.S. has benefited,” he said.

The shift from China to the U.S. is also reflected in wealth migration patterns. A net 13,500 Chinese millionaires left China in 2023, marking a new record. The U.S. had a net inflow of 2,200 millionaires in 2023 and a projected inflow of 3,500 in 2024, according to the Henley report.

I found the source for Trump's well-founded fear of an auto industry bloodbath

 CNBC reports today:

Why a small China-made EV has global auto execs and politicians on edge :

There’s fear among global automakers that Chinese rivals like the Warren Buffett-backed BYD could flood their markets, undercutting domestic production and vehicle prices to the detriment of their own auto industries.

“The introduction of cheap Chinese autos — which are so inexpensive because they are backed with the power and funding of the Chinese government — to the American market could end up being an extinction-level event for the U.S. auto sector,” the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a U.S. manufacturing advocacy group, said in a report last month.

BYD sold 1.57 million battery EVs last year, up from just 130,970 all-electric vehicles in 2020. That sales growth was enough to surpass Tesla to become the world’s largest producer of electric vehicles in late 2023. 

The rise of BYD and other Chinese automakers led Tesla CEO Elon Musk in January to warn that Chinese automakers will “demolish” global rivals without trade barriers. ...

The company has quickly rolled out new and updated products. It’s also rapidly established manufacturing, as it has its eyes set on factories in Thailand, Brazil, Indonesia, Hungary, Uzbekistan and, potentially, Mexico. ...

Former President Donald Trump – the front-runner among Republicans in the 2024 presidential race – on Saturday suggested instituting a 100% tariff on cars made in Mexico by Chinese companies, should he be elected to a second term.

Iran's spy ship BEHSHAD still in Chicom naval base in Djibouti can't orchestrate Houthi attacks in the seas near Yemen

 

Since the US Airforce started bombing targets on Friday, Iran's recon vessel which was relaying info to the Houthis high-tailed it to the Chicom naval base in Djibouti to hide out

 

Christmas means it's time for someone to find more evidence of Chicom slave labor in a garment

 Reported here.

President Clinton signed permanent normal trade relations with China in October 2000: Any questions?

 

Lyin' commie Xi Jinpingpong is in town saying China seeks no sphere of influence lol

Massive new Chinese military capabilities built up in the South China Sea say otherwise, but the west coast tech traitors just clap, and clap, and clap some more for this guy.

Meanwhile grandpa poopy pants at the pope party had a similar, brief, and extremely unfortunate truth eruption in front of the press, calling Xi a dictator, spoiling the moment for the Chicoms.

The whole thing stinks, even after cleaning the streets in San Francisco for once, and yes, Gavin Newsom was in the middle of this. 

Chicoms give fellow traveler Gavin Newsom warm welcome

 

Josh Boswell speculates the $5.2 million discrepancy in Joe Biden's 2017-2019 income is Burisma money of which $2.744 million was used in 2017 cash purchase of Joe's beach house

 DailyMail.com has discovered that then-private-citizen Biden, who had spent virtually all his adult life in public service, bought the home for slightly under $2.75million – in cash. And making the transaction even stranger it was within weeks of a highly questionable text that Hunter had sent to Runlong 'Raymond' Zhao, an associate at Chinese oil giant CEFC asking to seal a deal worth $10 million a year. ...

Property records show Joe's six-bedroom second property was purchased on June 8, 2017 for $2,744,001 – just seven weeks before his son's shakedown messages. ...

An analysis published last year by DailyMail.com shows a $5.2 million discrepancy between his IRS filings and his Office of Government Ethics disclosures for the same period. ...

The figure is surprisingly similar to the $5 million Joe was allegedly bribed by Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner Ukrainian gas firm Burisma, according to information received by a trusted FBI informant.

The whole thing is here.

One down, over a billion to go: Happy ending story of the day

 Man flees China on water scooter, crossing 200 miles of sea to SKorea...

Nine marines of the Philippines vs. The Chicoms

Nine marines of the Philippines aboard this ship at Second Thomas Shoal contest ownership of the Spratly Islands against the Chicoms. It is the former USS LST-821, originally launched in October 1944. The Wall Street Journal has the story here.

 

 

 

Influence-peddling WhatsApp message to Chicoms from Hunter Biden in July 2017 came from his father's guest house in Delaware

 Byron York, here:

Hunter Biden wanted something from Zhao — it appears it was a payment of some sort — and he wanted it immediately. "I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled," Hunter Biden wrote. "Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father."

Shapley said the IRS team discovered the message in August 2020. Even for people who questioned the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop — and we now know the FBI had verified its authenticity in December 2019 — the WhatsApp message was worth investigating. "In August 2020, we got the results back from an iCloud search warrant," Shapley said. "Unlike the laptop, these came to the investigative team from a third-party record keeper and included a set of messages. The messages included material we clearly needed to follow up on."

No kidding. The July 30, 2017, WhatsApp message was the clearest evidence ever that Joe Biden, then the former vice president, knew about his son's business dealings. Now, maybe Hunter Biden was lying in the message. Maybe his father wasn't in the room. Maybe there's some other explanation. What was clear was that the WhatsApp message was evidence that needed to be investigated. But Shapley and the other IRS investigators soon ran into a brick wall at the Justice Department.

The IRS team wanted to execute a search warrant at the guest house and Joe Biden's house in Delaware, where Hunter Biden was staying at the time of the message. In discussions with the Justice Department, they were told that there was more than enough probable cause to get a warrant but that "optics" were a problem. A Justice Department official told them, in Shapley's words, that "a lot of evidence in our investigation would be found in the guest house of former Vice President Biden but said there is no way we will get that approved."

GOP candidate positions on Ukraine demonstrate nothing but groveling to the anti-war right

 And the kernel there is pretending things that are not true, the mark of an unserious country.

Nikki Haley is simply incoherent. She says we have to win this war, but without more financial assistance. 

“I don’t think we need to put money in Ukraine,” Haley said last week before an audience in Iowa. ... “This is not a war about Ukraine, this is a war about freedom—and it’s one that we have to win,” Haley said. “If we win this war, this will send a message to China, it will send a message to Iran, it will send a message to North Korea, it will send a message to Russia. If we lose this war… they said Poland and the Baltics are next, and you’re looking at a world war.”

Ron DeSantis pretends Russia never invaded and simply has a territorial dispute with Ukraine.

“While the U.S. has many vital national interests—securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party—becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them,” DeSantis told Fox News host Tucker Carlson this week.

And The Daily Beast isn't wrong about Donald Trump's position, who to this day touts the myth that he is some great deal-maker who can untie the Gordian Knot:

Former President Donald Trump has said he would have let Russia “take over” parts of Ukraine if he were still in the White House.

It is also the case that there is plenty of pretending on the other side, that the West wasn't responsible for the Ukrainian revolution of 2014 which ultimately provoked the current conflict.

Statesmen tell hard truths to their people. But none of ours seem capable of telling even the simple ones, including Joe Biden.

WaPo: US military fails to detect slow-moving objects like balloons because speed gate, velocity gate, altitude gate sensors and the like aren't set to detect them

 The Chicoms are obviously testing us to see what we are NOT looking for.

 

From the story here: 

The incursions in the past week have changed how analysts receive and interpret information from radars and sensors, a U.S. official said Saturday, partly addressing a key question of why so many objects have recently surfaced. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that sensory equipment absorbs a lot of raw data, and filters are used so humans and machines can make sense of what is collected. But that process always runs the risk of leaving out something important, the official said. “We basically opened the filters,” the official added, much like a car buyer unchecking boxes on a website to broaden the parameters of what can be searched.

From balloons The Chicoms get clearer pictures and intercept signals satellites otherwise cannot obtain in preparation for global conflict

 China Sends Spy Balloons Over Military Sites Worldwide, U.S. Officials Say... 

Here's hoping the new head of state of the Solomon Islands doesn't roll over and give it up to the Chicoms like the last one did Hong Kong

 

Over 7,000 Americans died liberating Guadalcanal, which just denied a US Coast Guard cutter a port of call

 The Chicoms are trying to take over.

Story.