romad1

Yeah, that is part of their attempt to pay down that debt with more debt. The other part of the PRC's rapid debt accumulation effort has been their Belt and Road Initiative overseas. Saw a statistic from this website today...https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/china China is losing 2.8M people per year while the US is gaining 1.6M. While the UK is gaining 380k, while Canada is gaining 330k. Only the countries where they crap on immigrants from the poor South do we see western countries in decline.

Interesting Wall Street Journal article about PRC muzzling criticism of its economy. Per the article, Debt as ratio of GDP approaches 300% which does not match their public/propaganda statistics which places them in the normal-ish 70% range. https://www.wsj.com/world/china/xi-jinping-muzzles-chinese-economist-who-dared-to-doubt-gdp-numbers-2a2468ef That combined with rapid population decline…aye carumba!

Never that simple.

The main issue is the entanglement of the Chinese military in the deal. Nobody wants to have them hanging around your town.

Former employee of mine was a very very smart female -- very pretty too but not relevant except to say -- memorable person, who while playing in a goth metal band during the immediate post 9/11 era had her car keyed while in Quebec City. She immediately dropped the band, went to the first US city she could reach and joined the military (forgot the branch) to become a linguist/crypto person at Ft. Meade. She remains one of the most interesting brains I've ever met. The intellectual leap she made between keying of her car by French Canadians and jumping headlong into the GWOT for the next 4 years of her life was one involving a bunch of 3 body problem quality calculations I'll never quite get.

This is a very interesting development. https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2025/01/07/ford-chinese-ev-batteries-catl-marshall-megasite/77519832007/

Yeah shocker. I have never known the peoples of the Mediterranean diaspora to hold grudges. And of course my scot’s-irish in-laws just forgive and forget.

Verlander maybe…Scherzer broke it up bad with the Illitch family.

Another observation about FB: a lot of supposed military fan sites that show Chinese and Russian and weirdly enough Turkish aircraft and ships as superior to US and NATO (yes, I know Turkey is still in NATO). "Gosh, Vern... that F-35 is soops expensive we should buy that Chengdu J-20 from the Chinese instead."

I approve of this message in general. However, I view people who have low battery life on their phones as morally degenerate.

I don't get all the Texas clickbait superimposed on Michigan. Like "3 signs you are in Michigan: #1 everyone says 'y'all', #2 we all shop at Buc-es, #3 we drive in trucks". The other thing that anyone with a suspicious mind would note is a certain type of populist male/female dynamic that implies that ladies like being trad but being covertly voracious in the bedroom. I've reached a certain point in my life where I'm going to look at good looking ladies on the internet and not care unless there is an obvious malicious link behind it.

Some news about the Jack Smith report coming today.

You want better than Pampered Chef stuff?

The militia thing is all over rural America. While that is dumb and a problem because J6, etc. I think a lot of people who have firearms skills are being shifted to the left by the radicalization of the RW which moves the Overton Window. I have many veteran friends who cannot abide the Foxnewsification of things.

It would be funny if Firestone got the rights.

E.g., Nancy Mace who came in as a normie and is now just a space cadet.

Behooved MTG really is intensely fascinated by her.

Weird* how AOC is such a target for the MAGAs. She's a smokeshow and she's hardly Jane Fonda politically. *not really weird.

One needs only look at the Morningweg and Patricia Lions teams.

Having watched the Lions a lot more this season (more national games) Its amazing how bad coaching can be at this level. I watch teams making some really boneheaded decisions.

I don't want to face Vikings again. I think the rest of the NFC field doesn't scare me except i'm a little concerned how good the Commanders are going to be with Jaden Daniels next year.

⚠️ In response to Musk changing the X algorithm to deboost negative content, people asked Grok what is considered “negative” and were told: • Criticism of the government • Commentary about misinformation • Suggestion the public is being manipulated • Attacks against powerful people or institutions

OPM closed on Monday

School cancelled already for tomorrow. I would check this if you want to know if your government agency is open for business. Although i suspect they won't announce until late. https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/snow-dismissal-procedures/current-status/

DC's infrastructure is actually pretty good. All the roads are "brined" right now. The issue is really that when we get snow events they are the slobbernocker nor'easters that cycle a lot of moisture in from the ocean or this weird storm that appears to unusually wet for coming across from the West. Winter is like a month here though. We will be outdoors practicing softball by mid Feb.