What stops Yemenis from coming through the southern border to attack Americans at home?

From “Houthis Vow to Respond After U.S. Leads Strikes in Yemen” (NYT):

What stops everyone in the above photo from coming across the southern border and delivering their response to U.S. aggression here on American soil? They should immediately qualify for asylum merely by saying “I didn’t support the Houthis and they were targeting me”. Who here in the U.S. can distinguish a Houthi-supporting Yemeni from a Yemeni who doesn’t support the Houthi government?

If we’re going to have an open southern border, should we try to get along with everyone worldwide?

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Pinballnomics: How long did it take for the Limited Edition Jaws machine to sell out?

In October 2022, the James Bond 007 LE pinball machine from Stern sold out in about 45 seconds.

Let’s take the pulse of the economy by looking at Stern’s latest release: Jaws. Just after 1:00 pm on January 4, 2024:

By 1:05 pm:

It’s possible that it sold out prior to 1:05 because with the James Bond machine people reported adding it to their carts and being unable to check out.

The Jaws machine is actually cheaper than Bond was: $12,999 in 2022 dollars versus $12,999 in 2024 dollars. Bond might be considered a more desirable theme, but Jaws was designed by superstar Keith Elwin, the genius behind Godzilla (#1 on Pinside’s Top 100).

Sadly, we’re gonna need a bigger family room if we are ever to enjoy Jaws at home.

Related:

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Washington Post says Replacement Theory is false, as proved by your Muslim neighbors

A Christmas tale from the Washington Post“Young U.S. Muslims are rising up against Israel in unlikely places”:

As she watched the conflict in Israel and Gaza unfold this fall, 17-year-old Asmmaa Zaitar finally had enough. She decided to organize a protest in support of the Palestinian cause in a very unlikely place — a courthouse in Huntsville, Ala.

Initially, Zaitar, a second-generation Palestinian American, was terrified that no one would show up. Zaitar knew it was a conservative town better known for divisive debates over Confederate monuments than for protests against a war overseas.

But as the rally began, dozens of fellow Muslims, including women wearing headscarves, trickled into the town square in late October carrying signs decrying Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip. Local media showed up, and Zaitar knew she had succeeded in connecting her city — and its growing Muslim population — to a conflict halfway around the globe.

… protests in support of the plight of Palestinians are springing up, showcasing the continued spread of the U.S. Muslim population into the country’s heartland. Children of refugees from Muslim nations organized many of the demonstrations, evidence of a political awakening among a new generation of young Americans who are helping to shape U.S. public opinion in support of a cease-fire in the Middle East.

How long has the Great Replacement not been happening?

The burst of activism — which Muslim scholars said would have been unthinkable just a decade or so ago — is rooted in the broad spread of Muslim families throughout the United States.

From the first major waves of migrants to the United States in the 1970s through the 1990s, Muslims tended to cluster in just a handful of states, including New York, California and Michigan.

Like many immigrant groups, over time some moved elsewhere in search of jobs and opportunities. More recently, many new refugees from Muslim-majority nations have settled directly into states in the South or Midwest in hopes of finding more affordable housing.

A 2017 analysis from Pew Research Center estimated that 3.45 million Americans are Muslim, three-quarters of whom are immigrants or the children of immigrants. Overall, the nation’s Muslim population is far younger than the overall U.S. population, with Pew finding 35 percent of Muslims were 18 to 29 that year, compared to 21 percent of the overall population.

Using data on religious institutions gathered by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, a Washington Post analysis found that 234 U.S. counties have seen an increase in the number of Muslim congregations since 2000, representing around 7 percent of counties nationwide. In 217 counties, mosque membership doubled between 2000 and 2020. And across the nation, the number of mosques has more than doubled since 2000, according to the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a research firm that studies Muslim communities.

Was it smart for Democrats to have passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, without which only Muslims with very high levels of education and earning power would have been admitted as immigrants?

Muslim voters overwhelmingly supported Biden, and helped the Democrat carry several states including Michigan and Virginia.

Ole Miss:

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Could a white or Asian graduate in Black Studies get a job anywhere that he/she/ze/they applied?

If we look at a representative Black Studies department at a university, such as the one chaired by Prof. Dr. Dr. Maulana Karenga, Ph.D., Ph.D. at California State University, Long Beach, there is no evidence of any person identifying as “white” or “Asian” among the faculty. Here’s a poster from 2022:

What if a mediocre non-Black person with a Ph.D. in some branch of Comparative Victimhood were to apply to a department with no faculty identifying as non-Black? Would the non-Black person have to be hired in order to satisfy the university’s commitment to DEI? Or could the university say that whites and Asians in engineering and #Science balanced an all-Black Black Studies department?

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Georgia Meloni fails to stop the undocumented from migrating to/through Italy

“How Italy’s far-right leader learned to stop worrying and love migration” (Politico, August 2023):

Giorgia Meloni is presiding over a sharp spike in regular and irregular arrivals.

While Meloni has continued to take a hard line on irregular arrivals, there’s little sign it’s being effective. The number of people arriving by boat after crossing the Mediterranean has more than doubled this year, to 106,000 so far this year, compared to 53,000 over the same period last year, according to government data.

“UK migration soars to record high despite Tory Brexit promises” (Politico, November 2023):

Net migration to the U.K. has hit a new record high of 672,000, four years after the Conservatives pledged to cut it to a third of that level.

The latest figures, published by the Office for National Statistics on Thursday morning, show a significant increase on what was already a record-high of 602,000 people back in May.

The latest release — covering the 12 months to June 2023 — piles further pressure on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has promised to drastically decrease the numbers of people moving to the U.K. each year.

I can’t figure out these politicians’ strategy. They promise to reduce immigration, but then continue to offer asylum to any of 8 billion humans who choose to show up. Finally, they express surprise when some of those 8 billion humans actually do show up to claim the offer.

We are informed that Replacement Theory is a lie and also….

Meloni is presiding over a country that is economically stagnant and in demographic decline. Over the last decade, Italy has shrunk by some 1.5 million people (more than the population of Milan). In 39 of its 107 provinces, there are more retirees than workers.

It’s numbers like these that prompted Italy’s Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti to warn earlier this month that no reform of the pension system would “hold up in the medium-to-long term with the birth rate numbers we have today in this country.”

There will be no replacement of Italians in Italy. It is just that the number of Italians will be reduced while the number of non-Italians will increase.

Donald Trump, of course, famously failed to eliminate “irregular crossings” of our southern border. The Trump years did not feature the completely open border that Joe Biden runs, but the number of encounters weren’t reduced compared to the Obama administration’s record:

The European politicians can’t claim a lack of cooperation from parliament, as a U.S. president can say about Congress refusing to do his/her/zir/their bidding.

Going forward, should voters around the world simply ignore any politician who promises to reduce low-skill immigration unless the politician says “We will stop offering asylum”?

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Doubling down on DEI at MIT

A statement from the president of MIT, who recently made the news for sharing Claudine Gay’s and the Penn president’s enthusiasm from suppressing all hate speech except against the Jews:

We will soon announce a new Vice President for Equity and Inclusion (VPEI). With this new role, we have an important opportunity to reflect on and comprehensively assess the structures and programs intended to support our community and create a welcoming environment.

While we address the pressing challenge of how best to combat antisemitism, Islamophobia and hatred based on national origin or ethnicity in our community, we need to talk candidly about practical ways to make our community a place where we all feel that we belong.

Note the obligatory pairing of “Islamophobia” with “antisemitism”, as though Islamophobia were now a Homeric epithet relating to Jews. As far as I am aware, there has never been an anti-Muslim demonstration at MIT, so it is unclear why Islamophobia is relevant to the recent strife.

We were supposed to have a guest speaker today in our FAA ground school class. He’s a superstar physician, long-time pilot, jet owner, immigrant (we are assured this is a superior class of humans), and nice guy who was great with the students last year. He refused to show up this year unless Sally Kornbluth resigns (where “resigns” means “get a paycheck until death as a professor, maybe on a $1 million/year salary”).

Another interesting section of the statement, which was emailed to everyone even slightly connected to MIT:

The Israel-Hamas war continues to cause deep pain for many around the world, including at MIT, and is an ongoing source of tension in our community. Here on campus, its repercussions have pressure-tested some long-standing systems and assumptions, presenting challenges to our community and to fulfilling our mission of research and education.

Characterizing the fighting as between the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) and all of Israel fails to recognize the military contributions of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Party of Allah (“Hezbollah”), and the Gaza “civilians” who went through the border fence on October 7, raped, killed, and kidnapped, and also the Gazans, including at least one UNRWA teacher, who held hostages in their homes. It also justifies, I think, the kidnappings of and attacks on civilians that Hamas perpetrated (since these brave fighters are battling with all Israelis) as well as the continued rocket launches by Hamas against civilians in Israel.

Here’s Mariam Barghouti, a CNN contributor based in Gaza, on October 7. She was “laughing her ass off”:

A hater replied within 45 minutes:

Ms. Barghouti enjoyed a consistent Internet connection and electric power since October 7, apparently, since she kept up a steady stream of tweets. Whatever she and her fellow Gazans have suffered, though, she still has plenty of fight left in her and isn’t “crying” (like the Palestinians polled in November, who overwhelmingly supported the Oct 7 attacks). Example from January 2, 2024:

A video of Gaza civilians celebrating:

A lot of the participants in the above video don’t wear uniforms or the face masks that one sees in official Hamas videos.

In addition to the fighting being between Israel and opponents beyond Hamas, I disagree with the characterization of the current battles being a distinct “war” from the one that the Arabs, including ancestors of today’s “Palestinians”, declared against Israel in 1948. I think it is more accurate to describe what’s happening now as a “battle” in a longer-term war.

Circling back to the DEI theme, upgrading what used to be an “officer” to a “vice president” would seem to indicate a renewed and increased commitment to the race-based programs that got Harvard in trouble at the Supreme Court. When the Supreme Court says you’re violating the Constitution, that’s the time to double down?

Related:

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Why is a civilian in Gazan a “martyr” if he/she/ze/they is killed in the current battles?

We are informed that the typical Gazan has no relationship with the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It is an accident that Hamas governs Gaza, which is otherwise populated by entirely peaceful humans. At the same time, anyone in Gaza who is killed in the latest fighting has been referred to, both by Palestinians and westerners in the do-gooder industry, as a “martyr”. One wouldn’t refer to a person killed in a car accident as a “martyr”. How can someone who wasn’t in any way aiding Hamas or PIJ and who didn’t go into Israel on October 7 be characterized as a “martyr” if he/she/ze/they is, unfortunately, killed by being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

(Note that recent opinion polls show 75 percent of Palestinians supporting Hamas and 85 percent supporting PIJ.)

Here’s an example from a Norwegian do-gooder:

There is an entire Twitter account devoted to stories of peace-loving civilians who have become “martyrs”:

Note the martyr wearing a huge “PRESS” sign on his chest despite the fact that we’ve been informed since October 8 that the IDF Is specifically targeting journalists and killing them via snipers and airstrikes (example). Since journalists don’t need special outfits to do their jobs, if what we’re told about the IDF is true why are Palestinian journalists choosing to make themselves targets with huge “PRESS” signs front and back and unique blue outfits? Are they seeking martyrdom by making themselves readily identifiable from a helicopter or drone? Below a group of “PRESS”-/blue-clad figures gathered in the open where any passing helicopter or drone can see them (source). If they believe what they’ve written, i.e., that journalists are targets for the IDF, they’re endangering the huge crowd of non-journalists surrounding them.

Here’s another example and it includes what seems to be a standard phrase for Palestinians: “rest in power” (rather than “rest in peace”):

(in other words, they will keep (powerfully) fighting the hated Israelis from beyond the grave?)

Separately, could it be that Palestinians are SWATting each other? Here’s a story about a peace-loving family in Gaza with “no verified Hamas presence nearby”… “Why Did Israel Kill My Family in Gaza and Destroy My Childhood Home?” (Newsweek, December 28, 2023):

There were no armed clashes, no Israeli ground troops, and no verified Hamas presence nearby. My family, on both my dad’s and mom’s sides, come from a long line of technocratic professionals who are independent and not involved with any political party.

The death toll surpassed 31. All five of my aunts and uncles who were in the building were instantly killed. Additionally, nine children as young as three and four months old, along with their parents and almost all of my cousins were killed in the airstrike

My vocal opposition to Hamas has drawn the ire of some of the pro-Palestine community, which finds my critiques of the Islamist group untimely, undue, unhelpful, or quite frankly inconvenient to their resistance narratives.

Faulty intelligence, inconsistent rules of engagement, the use of massive ordnances in crowded and dense civilian areas, and the application of overwhelming firepower to support advancing troops are regularly causing the needless loss of Gazans’ lives.

The author says that his previous writings regarding Hamas have “drawn ire”. Perhaps his family (100+ members if 31 were killed by one bomb? (Palestinians have been the world’s most demographically successful humans since the establishment of UNRWA)) was SWATted by a fellow Palestinian who called up the IDF to say that three senior Hamas commanders were at the house that was destroyed from the air.

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Intersection of low-skill migration and school closure

Loyal readers are aware of my interests in the effect of low-skill immigration on American society and the passion of government bureaucrats for closing public schools in favor of an online school fraud. These intersected today in the Sanctuary City of New York. “NYC students forced to go remote as city houses nearly 2K migrants displaced by storm at their school” (New York Post):

Students at a Brooklyn high school were kicked out of the classroom to make room for nearly 2,000 migrants who were evacuated from a controversial tent shelter due to a monster storm closed in on the Big Apple.

The city made the move amid concerns that a massive migrant tent at Floyd Bennett Field would collapse from torrential rains and gusting winds — packing them instead into the second-floor gym at James Madison High School five miles away.

“There’s 1,900 people getting thrown into my neighborhood, half a block from where I live and we don’t know who they are,” he said. “They’re not vetted. A lot of them have criminal records and backgrounds and we don’t even know.”

How would Americans “vet” migrants? What do we know about who did what in various foreign countries?

“They told us we had to get everything out by 5 [p.m.],” gym teacher Robyn Levy said outside the school. “They sent us the email at 6 in the morning. I don’t know when we’ll be able to back.

“What I want to know is why here?” Levy said. “Why not send them somewhere where students wouldn’t be disrupted, where students learning wouldn’t be disrupted?”

Why indeed? If there are only 1,900 migrants and the majority of New Yorkers wanted the city to be a sanctuary for the undocumented, why can’t 1,900 spare bedrooms be found among the righteous?

Here’s what used to be a convenient runway…

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California continues to bleed high-income residents due to its deep dive into coronapanic

I was chatting with a software engineer who has been at Facebook (“Meta”) for about 10 years. His wife works an Excel-oriented analytics job for a company on the Peninsula. After their employers went 100-percent remote, they began spending more and more time in Hawaii. They grew to love it out there and now have purchased a family-sized house in Hawaii and are planning to move there full-time. Together they probably earn between $500,000 and $1 million/year. They’ll stop paying over $30,000 per year in property tax in California and start paying property tax on a multi-$million place in Hawaii. They’ll stop paying California income tax and begin paying income tax to Hawaii. What about schools? “The public schools in California are terrible,” said the Facebooker, “and the private schools are extremely expensive and in depressing facilities. The public schools in Hawaii might be even worse, but the private schools are cheap and they’re in beautiful natural settings between the beach and the mountains.”

This is plainly not a financially motivated move. Hawaii’s Department of Taxation proudly states that it is one of the highest tax places in the U.S.:

Hawaii has one of the highest income tax burdens of any state for all income levels

… The state ranks between first and the third place for highest income tax burden for every income level. Hawaii has the highest tax burden for very high-income taxpayers making over $500,000 filing single and $1,000,000 filing jointly, highlighting the progressivity of the state’s brackets.

In addition to paying high taxes, they’ll incur higher-even-than-California prices for many significant items.

This is a move that never could have happened, however, if California hadn’t developed a culture of maximum coronapanic, which necessarily spawned a culture of remote work.

Maybe Shohei Ohtani moving in to collect $700 million will help Gavin Newsom? ABC says he’ll likely pay California tax on only 3 percent of the headline number:

The Dodgers will pay Ohtani $20 million over the next decade, when the baseball star will be hitting and, health permitting, pitching for the National League powerhouse.

It’s the decade after that when the Dodgers will really start to pay Ohtani — $68 million per year from 2034-43. Ohtani will turn 40 in 2034, an age when most Major League Baseball players have retired. By then, Ohtani could stop playing baseball and choose not to live in California, potentially avoiding for the bulk of his salary the state’s 13.3% income tax and 1.1% payroll tax for State Disability Insurance.

With 97% of Ohtani’s Dodgers income deferred, it means California — where there is an estimated $68 billion budget deficit this year — will have to wait at least a decade before it can collect taxes on the bulk of his salary, if it can collect at all. California could collect taxes from Ohtani’s significant endorsement deals, assuming Ohtani is a California resident.

Loosely related, one of my favorite Hawaii snapshots, captured on 6×6 cm film with a Rollei.

(I personally wouldn’t want to live in Hawaii. The topography makes it mostly impossible to build standard walkable/bikeable towns and cities with a grid of roads. The typical Hawaiian island is a strip of development on a ring road and that ring road has become extremely congested. For those who love Asia, Hawaii seems like it might be a reasonable choice, but it is a 9-hour flight to Tokyo and 11 hours to Korea. You’re not going to go to Asia for a long weekend.)

Related:

  • “The wealthiest Californians are fleeing the state. Why that’s very bad news for the economy” (LA Times, December 2023): “… in the years 2015-16, an individual or couple who had moved from California to Texas reported an average income of $78,000, about the same as Texans who relocated to California. But by 2020-21, California transplants in Texas reported an average income of about $137,000, while tax returns from former Texans who moved to California showed an average income of $75,000. The income gap between those coming into California and those going out is even bigger when it comes to Florida, which, as far away as it is, has become a top five destination for emigrating Californians.”
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Should Joe Biden fund an electric food truck startup?

Our current central planners love electric vehicles. “Slow Rollout of National Charging System Could Hinder E.V. Adoption” (New York Times):

More than two years ago, lawmakers approved billions of dollars [at least $5 billion] to build out a national electric vehicle charging network in the hopes of encouraging more drivers to switch to cleaner cars. The money, included in the bipartisan infrastructure law, was intended to help assure drivers they could reliably travel longer distances without running out of power.

But a robust federal charging network is still years away. Only two states — Ohio and New York — have opened any charging stations so far.

Central planners also love asylum-seekers and other immigrants without educational credentials. One popular job for low-skill immigrants is working in a food truck.

Our HOA sometimes hires a food truck for events on the common grass field. The sound of the truck’s generator is clearly audible and it would be much nicer if the truck were powered from a big EV battery.

What if the central planners in Washington, D.C. could be convinced to ladle out the taxpayer cash to a food truck EV startup?

What are the engineering requirements? A Google search shows that 5,000 watts (roughly 44 amps at 115V) is a good ballpark for the maximum draw of a typical food truck. Maybe the average load would be 2,500 watts and that needs to be supported for at least 6 hours, which implies a 15,000 watt-hour battery (15 kWh). The standard Tesla Cybertruck has a 123 kWh battery, so that should get the food truck to the site, run for two shifts if necessary, and get the food truck home. (The Ford F150 comes in 98 and 131 kWh “usable capacity” versions.)

In addition to saving the planet and providing jobs for asylum-seekers who wish to work, the Bidentrucks would reduce the ambient noise levels in our cities, which is an important equity issue. (“Noise pollution more common in communities of color and racially segregated cities” (Harvard 2017))

Maybe this all-electric truck wouldn’t help Greta Thunberg with her #FreePalestine goal, but it could save humanity from extinction.

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