The Donald Makes Tim Cook Do The Right Thing – Again Bob Maistros

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/12/12/the-donald-makes-tim-cook-do-the-right-thing-again/

A popular game and teaching tool in various forms and guises – “What’s Missing from this Picture?” – seems highly applicable to a Wall Street Journal report that Apple Inc. “has accelerated plans to shift some of its production outside China.” The goal: “ship 40% to 45% of iPhones from India,” with manufacturing of “products such as AirPods, smartwatches and laptops” heading to Vietnam.

It seems Apple is perturbed – and judging by CEO Tim Cook’s studied reticence, embarrassed – by goings-on at factories of Chinese supplier Foxconn.

The Journal helpfully embedded video of authorities beating workers protesting weeks of COVID-driven imprisonment in their facility, closed-off break areas, and dining halls, and carryout meals they schlepped to dormitories a half-hour walk away.  Workers jumped fences to escape.

The article also cataloged the shortcomings of Vietnam – too small population-wise to match China’s manufacturing sites with hundreds of thousands of workers – and India – patchwork regulations that “saddle (Apple) with obligations.”

And, apparently, neither offers China’s “literate and diligent workforce, political stability” and “huge local market for Apple’s products.” Per an ex-Foxconn executive, “They’re not doing high-end phones in India and Vietnam. No other places can do them.”

“No other places,” eh? Catching on to “what’s missing in this picture?” Maybe a country with traditions of large-scale manufacturing and global leadership in “high-end phone” development? High levels of literacy, and laborers clocking some of the world’s longest workweeks? Not to mention the historically “hugest” market for Apple products?

How Lawsuits Cost You $3,600 a Year A new study estimates the economic burden of the tort system at $443 billion a year, or 2.1% of GDP.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-lawsuits-cost-you-3-600-a-year-tort-system-chamber-of-commerce-institute-for-legal-reform-report-11670460820?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

We always knew trial lawyers were filling their pockets, but it’s still a surprise to learn how much they’ve been emptying ours. The total economic cost of the U.S. tort system in 2020 was $443 billion, according to a recent study by the Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform. That’s 2.1% of GDP, and it works out to $3,621 per household.

Only a small percentage of American families are involved in tort cases or class-action lawsuits in a given year, but the burden of jackpot payouts is carried by nearly everyone. The costs spread through the economy in the form of higher insurance premiums that fall on nearly every family, either directly (car insurance) or indirectly (medical malpractice or product-liability insurance).

And costs are rising. Between 2016 and 2020 the tort system grew 6% a year, the study says, more than inflation and GDP growth. Commercial liability grew the fastest, at 7% a year. Also alarming is that only half the money goes to injured parties. “We estimate that only 53 percent of the total expenditures of the tort system were paid to claimants,” the authors write. In other words, “for every dollar paid in compensation to claimants, 88 cents were paid in legal and other costs.”

The boom in tort costs is owing to the boom in litigation financing, in which investors fund lawsuits and then claim a portion of the winnings.

A Partisan Thumbs Down for Sinema’s Verity She seemed like a radical in 2002. The Democrats changed more than she did.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-partisan-thumbs-down-for-sinemas-verity-kyrsten-arizona-independent-democratic-party-intimidation-11670763136

Kyrsten Sinema didn’t always seem like a moderate. She ran for the Arizona House in 2002 as a member of the Green Party calling herself a “Prada socialist.” The next year she spoke at an antiwar rally clad in a pink tutu. Now she has left the Democratic Party to become an independent, complaining that “payback against the opposition party has replaced thoughtful legislation.”

Yet ideologically she hasn’t changed much. FiveThirtyEight.com notes that she has voted with President Biden 93% of the time. Where she departs from today’s Democratic Party is over its intolerant domination by progressives. In her 2009 book, “Unite and Conquer: How to Build Coalitions That Win and Last,” she describes how as a state legislator she came to believe that reform will stick only if it’s incremental and bipartisan. She said progressives had caught “the dread disease” of “identity politics” and wrapped themselves in the “mantle of victimhood.”

To the far left, that makes her the enemy. Last year protesters harassed her in a public rest room, and her fellow Democrats shrugged. Mr. Biden said, “I don’t think they’re appropriate tactics, but it happens to everybody. . . . It’s part of the process.”

She’s being vilified again. A headline on the leftist Daily Kos website calls her an “isolated weirdo.” The Atlantic describes her as “ideologically unpredictable and erratic.” She replies by recalling her promise to voters that “I would not demonize people I disagreed with, engage in name-calling, or get distracted by political drama.”

Know What Drives Anti-Semites Like Ye? Just Peel the Onion of the Human Psyche: Joan Swirsky

https://www.thepostemail.com/2022/12/09/know-what-drives-anti-semites-like-ye-just-peel-the-onion-of-the-human-psyche/

Certainly, the rap star and clothing designer Ye (aka Kanye West) is not stupid, as anyone who watched his interview with Tucker Carlson saw with his own eyes. He is articulate and thoughtful. He told Carlson that he was raised by a mother he loved and a father he idolized, “the most brilliant man.” His father, he proudly stated, was a member of the Black Panthers Party, a Marxist-Leninist and black power organization founded in 1966.

Before it was founded, Blacks and Jews comprised an influential alliance, with Jews contributing significant financial aid and both moral support and concrete assistance to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and many other Black organizations fighting for equality and against racism. Not to omit their collaborative efforts to enroll Blacks to vote, for which New York residents, Jewish volunteers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were savagely murdered in 1964 in Mississippi.

Yet given this history, quite familiar to Ye, he nevertheless tweeted on October 9, 2022, that his intention was to go Def Con 3 on Jewish people, which to most people meant to wipe out the Jews who so irritate and enrage him, and that includes the power that he apparently believes the Jews in his life––his managers, agents, handlers, doctors, et al––seem to have over him.

And while spewing this hatred, he also insisted that he was one of the “real” Jews, ostensibly referring to the Hebrew Israelite group  or cult or whatever it is.

Iran’s Mullahs: When Will the EU Wake Up? by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19215/iran-mullahs-when-will-the-eu-wake-up

Does the EU know that the Russian President Vladimir Putin has received huge support for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine from the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? Iran has been supplying kamikaze drones to Russia. That is why the Ukrainian foreign ministry reportedly stripped Iran’s ambassador in Kyiv of his accreditation and reduced the embassy’s diplomatic staff there.

The Biden administration is also not putting any pressure on the EU to stop its business dealings with Iran’s ruling clerics….

“Russia has used almost 4,500 missiles against us. And their stock of missiles is dwindling. Therefore, Russia went looking for affordable weapons in other countries to continue its terror. It found them in Iran.” — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Jerusalem Post, November 4, 2022.

“Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear — I fear greatly — the storm will not pass…. It will spread to the South; it will spread to the North.” — Winston Churchill, January 20, 1940.

Even though the Iranian regime has been increasing its military support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – a gift that poses a significant threat to the European Union – the EU’s appeasement policy toward the ruling mullahs of Iran barrels on.

It is shocking that the EU continues to trade with the predatory regime of Iran, openly referred to as the “world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism.” The Tehran Times bragged in a recent report that Iran’s exports to the EU have gone up “28% in 9 months on year”.

There Were 17 Americans in Russian Prisons. Only 1 Mattered to the Left Unfortunately, they’re all the wrong race, sexuality or gender. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/there-were-17-americans-in-russian-prisons-only-1-mattered-to-the-left/

Here’s another of the men whom Biden left behind to extract a black lesbian pothead who hates America because she embodies his rotten base.

 A teacher from Oakmont who’s been detained in Russia for more than a year remains in custody.

This summer, Butler native Marc Fogel was sentenced to 14 years in a maximum security prison after he was caught with 17 grams of medical marijuana for a spine condition.

The U.S. State Department had previously asked Russia to release American citizen Fogel on humanitarian grounds. Prior to that request, a group of nine bipartisan senators called on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to immediately designate Fogel as “wrongfully detained.”

Not a priority. If Marc wants to become one, he needs to claim that he changed gender, learn to play basketball and jeer the national anthem.

He’d still have to overcome the handicap of “being assigned white at birth”.

Fogel, 61, was arrested in August 2021 for possessing 17 grams of what he said was medical marijuana. The former history teacher, like Griner, was arrested in Moscow when the pot was found in his luggage.

Fogel was sentenced to 14 years in prison in June — just over a month before Griner was handed a nine-year sentence.

All The Times Twitter Execs Lied To Our Faces About Their Insidious Shadowbanning By: Evita Duffy

https://thefederalist.com/2022/12/09/all-the-times-twitter-execs-lied-to-our-faces-about-their-insidious-shadowbanning/

Remember all the times Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and top Twitter lawyer Vijaya Gadde assured us that Twitter neither shadowbans nor targets conservatives? Well, they lied. 

In the second installment of Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files,” independent journalist Bari Weiss exposed how the Big Tech company was secretly “blacklisting” conservative tweets and users by keeping “disfavored” tweets from trending and secretly hiding whole accounts or topics without users’ knowledge.

One Twitter team, the “Strategic Response Team – Global Escalation Team” (SRT-GET), was reportedly committed to censoring “up to 200 ‘cases’” per day. Victims included prominent conservatives Dan Bongino and Charlie Kirk, as well as Stanford University professor and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

Another secret censorship group, the “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support team” (SIP-PES), was responsible for the most “politically sensitive decisions.” The group included Gadde, Dorsey, trust and safety head Yoel Roth, former CEO Parag Agrawal, and others, and it was personally responsible for suppressing the viral Libs of TikTok Twitter account, among other high-profile censorship calls.

But remember when Twitter execs repeatedly insisted they didn’t engage in shadowbanning?

‘We Do Not Shadow Ban’

On July 25, 2018, Vice News reported that several prominent Republican politicians, such as Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, and Matt Gaetz, did not show up in a drop-down menu of automatically suggested searches, even when typing in the politicians’ names.

The supreme outrage of Biden’s idiotic prisoner swap with Putin By Justin O. Smith

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/12/the_supreme_outrage_of_bidens_idiotic_prisoner_swap_with_putin.html

Joe Biden, our all-American  foul-up, is holding true to his nature, as he recently made the worst deal on a prisoner swap ever on December 8, 2022, aside from Obama’s deal that swapped Bowe Bergdahl for four top Taliban jihadi terrorists, who now run Afghanistan’s government.  Seeing the public relations fantasy dance through his head and hoping to get a win that would deflect from all his administration’s miserable failures, from the economy to the border and more, Biden ordered the release of Viktor Bout, a miserable, death-dealing arms merchant who has left thousands of dead in his wake.  In exchange?  The return of Brittney Griner, a black, lesbian, anti-American, anti-God, anti-family, pot-headed basketball player, who has turned her back on America more than once.  Biden chose this swap rather than using the full weight of the U.S.’s resources to secure the release of Paul Whelan, a Marine veteran and a heterosexual male, who has spent the past four years in a Russian prison on false charges of espionage. 

Yes.  The P.R. optics heavily favored Griner over Whelan.

On December 8, the day the swap was announced, Representative Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) observed:

If [Joe Biden] is going to release a guy convicted of providing aid to a terrorist organization [and] conspiring to kill American citizens, he should have at least gotten BOTH Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan in return.

A U.S. Marine is left behind in another bad deal made by Biden.

All one is left to imagine is that the Biden regime really does want America’s enemies to win.

Calling out anti-Semitism By Josh Kantrow

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/12/calling_out_antisemitism.html

Donald Trump did himself no favors by having dinner Kanye West and Nick Fuentes. By doing so, he has opened himself up to criticism not just from the usual suspects (the Democrats and their media allies), but others as well. 

The Democrats and media, of course, are hypocrites. Very few of them ever dared to criticize Barack Obama for his 20-year friendship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, or his agreeing to meet with Louis Farrakhan, whose anti-Semitism inspired Ye. Wright officiated at Obama’s wedding. Obama sat in the pews of Wright’s church for two decades listening to his hateful statements against the United States (G-d Damn America”), and his anti-Semitism.

Further, unlike Obama, who favored the Palestinians throughout his presidency, Trump was a great friend to Israel.  After broken promises by several administrations, he moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and recognized it as Israel’s capital, acknowledged Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and tore up Obama’s terrible Iran Nuclear Deal, which was supported by the vast majority of Congressional Democrats.  Further, the Trump administration’s steadfast support for Israel led to peace agreements very few thought possible. Critically, the administration negotiated the Abraham Accords, a series of normalization agreements between Israel and its former enemies Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morroco, and Sudan.

Nor has the media criticized the fact that Democrats have elevated anti-Semites Ilhan Omar (“it’s all about the Benjamins”) and “the Squad” to positions of power. Ilhan, for example, is on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.  Omar and two other members of “the Squad,” — Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian-American woman elected to Congress, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — and 14 other Democrats refused to support a congressional resolution condemning the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. Tlaib said on the House floor. “So I can’t stand by and watch this attack on our freedom of speech and the right to boycott the racist policies of the government and the state of Israel.” Again, crickets from most Democrats and the media.

Decolonize the Green Movement! Tom Finnerty

https://the-pipeline.org/decolonize-the-green-movement/

It doesn’t take a lot of effort to find places where the Left’s rhetoric and ideals fail to align with their real-world actions. Their years of pearl clutching about election denialism after making a celebrity of election denier Stacey Abrams and, more recently, selecting election denier Hakeem Jeffries to replace Nancy Pelosi as Democratic House Leader are examples which come immediately to mind.

But there are darker examples. For instance, if you’ve spent any time in the presence of Leftist academics over the past quarter century, you have likely observed their obsession with colonial imperialism, which they contend to be among the greatest evils ever perpetuated by man. Though the major western empires were dismembered over the course of the 20th century, the Left’s fixation on imperialism is justified by the claim that that system has left indelible marks on both the imperialists and their former colonial subjects to this day. And yet, as Michael Schellenberg has pointed out, a form of imperialism is still alive and well…  and being practiced by prominent Left-leaning environmentalist governments:

The narrative is that imperialism is, by its very nature, exploitative, that it consisted of, in Shellenberger’s words, “rich nations taking raw materials from poor nations and leaving behind poverty rather than development.” While the historical reality might be more complicated than that presentation suggests, the modern day geo-political reality perfectly matches this critique. Keen-for-Green Germany is paying African nations not to use coal to help save the planet… and then using the coal itself.