90 Miles From Tyranny

Monday, January 17, 2022

I Hope She Goes In There And Kicks Some Serious Ass...

Supply Chain Woes Could Worsen as China Imposes New Covid Lockdowns

Xi’an, China, during a coronavirus lockdown last month. At least 20 million people, or about 1.5 percent of China’s population, are in lockdown across the country

American manufacturers are worried that China’s zero-tolerance coronavirus policy could throw a wrench in the global conveyor belt for goods this year.

WASHINGTON — Companies are bracing for another round of potentially debilitating supply chain disruptions as China, home to about a third of global manufacturing, imposes sweeping lockdowns in an attempt to keep the Omicron variant at bay.

The measures have already confined tens of millions of people to their homes in several Chinese cities and contributed to a suspension of connecting flights through Hong Kong from much of the world for the next month. At least 20 million people, or about 1.5 percent of China’s population, are in lockdown, mostly in the city of Xi’an in western China and in Henan Province in north-central China.

The country’s zero-tolerance policy has manufacturers — already on edge from spending the past two years dealing with crippling supply chain woes — worried about another round of shutdowns at Chinese factories and ports. Additional disruptions to the global supply chain would come at a particularly fraught moment for companies, which are struggling with rising prices for raw materials and shipping along with extended delivery times and worker shortages.

China used lockdowns, contact tracing and quarantines to halt the spread of the coronavirus nearly two years ago after its initial emergence in Wuhan. These tactics have been highly effective, but the extreme transmissibility of the Omicron variant poses the biggest test yet of China’s system.

So far, the effects of the lockdowns on Chinese factory production and deliveries have been limited. Four of China’s largest port cities — Shanghai, Dalian, Tianjin and Shenzhen — have imposed narrowly targeted lockdowns to try to control small outbreaks of the Omicron variant. As of this weekend, these cities had not locked down their docks. Still, Volkswagen and Toyota announced last week that they would temporarily suspend operations in Tianjin because of lockdowns.

Analysts warn that many industries could face disruptions in the flow of goods as China tries to stamp out any coronavirus infections ahead of the Winter Olympics, which will be held in Beijing next month. On Saturday, Beijing officials reported the city’s first case of the Omicron variant, prompting the authorities to lock down the infected person’s residential compound and workplace.

If extensive lockdowns become more widespread in China, their effects on supply chains could be felt across the United States. Major new disruptions could depress consumer confidence and exacerbate inflation, which is already at a 40-year high, posing challenges for the Biden administration and the Federal Reserve.

“Will the Chinese be able to control it or not I think is a really important question,” said Craig Allen, the president of the U.S.-China Business Council. “If they’re going to have to begin closing down port cities, you’re going to have additional supply chain disruptions.”

The potential for setbacks comes just as many companies had hoped they were about to see some easing of the bottlenecks that have clogged global supply chains since the pandemic began.

The combination of intermittent shutdowns at factories, ports and warehouses around the world and American consumers’ surging demand for foreign goods has thrown the global delivery system out of whack. Transportation costs have skyrocketed, and ports and warehouses have experienced pileups of products waiting to be shipped or driven elsewhere while other parts of the supply chain are stymied by shortages.

For the 2021 holiday season, customers largely circumvented those challenges by ordering early. High shipping prices began to ease after the holiday rush, and some analysts speculated that next month’s Lunar New Year, when many Chinese factories will idle, might be a moment for ports, warehouses and trucking companies to catch up on moving backlogged orders and allow global supply chains to return to normal.

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #183

Media SILENT as Nikki Fried Claims GOP-Voting Hispanics Have "Wool Pulled Over Their Eyes"

National media prove once again that bigoted statements from candidates are acceptable so long as they are targeted at the correct minorities. The latest case in point comes via Florida Democrat gubernatorial candidate and MSNBC regular Nikki Fried.

Fried's recent interview for NPR's The "Florida Roundup" was already controversial for her wild comparison of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to Adolf Hitler, which included her wild claim that "I saw the rise of Hitler". But listen to Fried as she dismisses GOP-voting Hispanics as gullible morons who don't know who really has their best interests at heart:

MELISSA ROSS: What’s your appeal to Latin American voters? The Republican Party in the state has made significant inroads in that population.

NIKKI FRIED: And…and that is exactly the point. Is that they have had the wool pulled over their eyes about what exactly this radical right party is doing for them when the reality is it is the Democrats who are standing up for their freedoms, for their rights, for their opportunities to have success here in our state and in our country. They come here for a better way of life, and instead you have this rhetoric that is coming from the radical right of our state, especially Governor DeSantis, who is doing things that you’ll see that other countries in Latin America have done. You know, this governor has gone away from free market, attacking businesses for trying to make decisions on what they believe is right.

ROSS: You’re talking about businesses not being allowed to know people’s Covid status or mandate vaccinations. Things like that.

FRIED: Things like that, too. And he actually went off- went even further a couple of weeks ago, and had a press conference where he actually said that he is going to try and eliminate diversity and inclusion training even inside of corporations- inside of businesses. When it is the corporations who have actually been the ones who have stepped up for the last few decades, trying to make sure that there is inclusion and diversity inside of the workforce.

Per Fried's logic, Hispanics are not smart enough to easily discern that DeSantis is a Latin American-style strongman as evidenced by his unwillingness to allow schools to impose mask mandates or allow corporate HR departments to subject employees to woke propaganda and are, therefore easily manipulated into voting for Republicans via disinformation or propaganda. Now imagine the dudgeon had a Republican said anything remotely similar. The entire media apparatus would've run this story on a loop, with Univision and Telemundo putting it on their...

This Would Never Have Happened If Republican Voters In Virginia Had Listened To The Democrat Operatives Who Told Republicans That Voting Does Not Matter:

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares announced on Saturday that his office has opened an investigation into Loudoun County Public Schools.

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares announced on Saturday that his office has opened an investigation into Loudoun County Public Schools for covering up multiple allegations of sexual assaults dating back several years. The announcement came hours after Miyares was sworn into office alongside Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears.

“Loudoun County Public Schools covered up a sexual assault on school grounds for political gain, leading to an additional assault of a young girl,” he said in a statement. “Virginians have dealt with the horrific aftermath of these scandals, without understanding how or why they were able to happen. Virginians deserve answers – they want transparency and accountability.”

The new attorney general also announced that his office would be launching a separate probe into the Virginia Parole Board for purportedly breaking the law by releasing “murder[er]s, rapists, and cop killers early on their sentences without notifying the victims.”

“These investigations are not to solely go after or bring criminal charges against any one actor, but to learn what mistakes were made so that no other Parole Board or schools ever repeats them,” he said. “I now ask you for time and patience as my team begins the investigations. I am a big believer in measuring twice and cutting once, and that’s what we plan to do here.”

Miyares went on to promise transparency throughout the investigative process, saying that he “will be...

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Girls With Guns

Well, I went back to Ohio
But my family was gone

I stood on the back porch
There was nobody home

I was stunned and amazed
My childhood memories

Slowly swirled past
Like the wind through the trees

Ay, oh, way to go, Ohio