Moon of Alabama- Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan
The U.S. is trying to push Taiwan to declare independence and to sucker China into some military reaction. It should take note of the fact that its other attempts to poke China have not ended well for its side.
Reuters- U.S. carrier strike group returns to South China Sea amid Taiwan tensions
Diversity on display in the Toronto area.
I’m currently in upstate New York, finishing off a dog show circuit that included Westminster Kennel Club. No, I didn’t win, but my dog looked and worked great and we left it all in the ring. I’ll be heading for home on Sunday, all 2,000+ miles of it driving solo. Ugh.
Many thanks to our guest bloggers for keeping things humming. It was a long two years away from my hobby and passion, it feels great to get off the porch and run with the big dogs again.
I spotted this in passing, it’s worth the smile.
Baseball is just the best, example 3,574,196: pic.twitter.com/1wKyKWQNWm
— MLB (@MLB) June 22, 2022
What’s everyone seeing out there?
Sensing Online- Get ready for the catastrophic DEF shortage
Unless the nation’s truckers can refill with Diesel Exhaust Fluid, the trucks will stop. Literally. DEF production and imports are about to crater and the country’s largest truck-fueling company, Flying J, has been directed by Union Pacific railroad to decrease its DEF-receiving shipments by 50 percent or be 100 percent embargoed. Unless resolved, this demand may cause countless thousands of 18-wheelers to be force-parked very soon, perhaps starting this month. That would be a very, very terrible event, because according to the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the trucking industry transports almost three-quarter of all goods shipped in the country.
There is no wand to be waved to make the DEF shortage simply disappear. But doing nothing is both reprehensible and indefensible.
Instapundit- UPDATE: A Knoxville friend writes:
“Ha, Rural King literally had pallets of 2.5 gallon DEF containers in their stores. $6.99, then $9.99. Now none. Same at Walmart. Tractor Supply etc. All of the newer ag equipment, tractor’s, combines etc require DEF. Talk about food shortages!”
We just need a hack so it’ll run without it. But EPA will probably block this. I liked it better when Atlas Shrugged was just a novel.
It’s too bad nobody warned us about this potential problem.
Oh, and it’s fundraising week over at my place.
If you’d like to help keep a blog afloat, and keep it ad-free, by all means do.
Alex Tabarrok- More Guns, Less Burglaries
From a new NBER working paper by Alessandro Acquisti & Catherine Tucker. I’ve also been struck by the fact that compared to other industrialized countries the US has low robbery rates and especially so relative to burglaries.
We arrived home yesterday afternoon from a trip to Oregon and LA for dog shows. The first photo was taken Sunday at about 3:00pm in Pomona, CA as we prepared to load the truck for home. The second, just under 24 hours later on I-15 north of Great Falls, MT as we headed for the Coutts border crossing.
A big shout out to the guest bloggers for keeping the place humming along so I could get some much needed (though exhausting) time away from politics. I’ll be back into the swing of things by tomorrow.
One of the organizers of the hate free zone, hates Jews.
During those fifteen years, we’ve chewed on many topics, from Laurie Penny’s lifestyle advice for terribly radical leftwing women, and the assorted lamentations of that same demographic, to the London riots of 2011, and the Guardian’s oddly selective agitation about litter inequality. We also marvelled at Melissa Fabello’s somewhat neurotic guide to interracial dating, witnessed the mental contortions of the scrupulously woke, and pondered the claim, by a Marxist academic, that conscientious parents reading to their own children are causing “unfair advantage” and are therefore an affront to “social justice.”
To avoid loading from Twitter, we’ve been downloading and rehosting certain videos that we think may be at risk of deletion or account suspension.
As it turns out, you folks are bringing the server down, thus the morning service interruptions. Until they make the long promised move to a new server, we’ll return to embedding these video tweets.
Many thanks to all who donated to the blog in recent weeks and years past. While the financial support is not the reason we do this, it is appreciated. Please know that I do send a thank you note to everyone who contributes, but in a few cases my emails are returned as “undeliverable” — and that’s why I’m doing so here again.
Your support is appreciated!
Old school left vs new school left.
Tara Henley- Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Some of these Jews are not like the others. From Bari-Weiss’s substack.
Gabriel Katz-On the real lessons of the Hanukkah story.
Some of the language being employed in the comments is getting out of line.
Be warned that I don’t give many warnings. Sometimes none.
For those who insist on continuing with pointless personal attacks and profanity, just know that I have the technology to click “all” on your entire history of comments here before reaching for the nuke button.
That is all.
Yes, if you found yourself this morning on that old index page with the Chinese characters in the sidebar (just old spam comments loading), you know our recurring problem recurred again this morning. Hopefully, we found a permanent fix this time. Yes, it’s as irritating as hell at this end, too. We shall see, I guess.
I’m A Twenty Year Truck Driver, I Will Tell You Why America’s “Shipping Crisis” Will Not End
Think of going to the port as going to WalMart on Black Friday, but imagine only ONE cashier for thousands of customers. Think about the lines. Except at a port, there are at least THREE lines to get a container in or out. The first line is the ‘in’ gate, where hundreds of trucks daily have to pass through 5–10 available gates. The second line is waiting to pick up your container. The third line is for waiting to get out. For each of these lines the wait time is a minimum of an hour, and I’ve waited up to 8 hours in the first line just to get into the port.
I’m back from my annual trek to Pennsylvania for the Montgomery County weekend – this time by air.
Did I tell you I hate flying with dogs? No? Well, I hate flying with dogs. I really hate flying with dogs when nobody at Air Canada can give me a straight answer, the flight is delayed and we lose an hour to make our connection, and it culminates with a flight attendant bending over our seats to advise “you’re not going to like this but your dog is still at Customs” just as the doors of the plane are about to close; followed by a subsequent last moment deplaning and an all-nighter at Toronto Pearson trying to scrounge food for a hungry dog and some sleep for myself in the wretched torture chairs they acquired from East German government surplus.
We did some good winning. Not as much as we wanted, but enough.
I need some rest, but I should be back into some sort of blogging routine tomorrow.
In the meantime, here’s a picture of “Roadie” (CanCh.Minuteman Boardwalk) when he’s not lying in a crate being hand fed a egg and cheese breakfast biscuit from Tim Horton’s.
Fun with cracks. The blank main page was redirected to an email harvester and the template was corrupted. We’ve reverted to a backup but expect further issues as we go through the process. At first glance it appears only the templates were affected but that’s an assumption of giant proportions.
If you’ve privileges on the site Kate will be in touch with you, but be proactive and change and harden up your passwords (standard rules apply: symbols, caps, etc), please don’t use the same passwords at multiple sites. Let Kate know _immediately_ if you have any issues changing your password.
Bumped for Update, from Kate: In response to some of the comments — site loading problems usually originate with the host server and are temporary, more rarely because something in the publishing software gets broken. When the day comes that I pack up the blog for good, I’ll say so on the main page. And should a terminal problem beyond my control take us down, I’ll ask Ed Driscoll to relay the information at Instapundit, and wish you all good luck in your future endeavors.
I’ve been deleting comments here and there for off-topic. While I try to keep a light hand in moderation, this is your reminder to read the post topic at least once before adding your two cents.
Go to the daily Reader Tips thread for links and topics not raised on the main page, and your telephone if you’re inclined to just chat it up with your friends.
That is all, thank you.