Worth Knowing, Probably Not Quite Threadworthy 12/8

[SVPete]

Now It Can Be Told...Biden and the Border

https://hotair.com/david-strom/2025/12/08/now-it-can-be-toldbiden-and-the-border-n3809638

The (NY) Times has deep pockets and deep connections in the Democratic political and policy world. Still, somehow it took until now for them to write about the fact that even before Biden was elected in 2020, his team was warning that his immigration plans would cause a humanitarian disaster. Still, Biden and his closest advisors didn't want to hear it.

They were worried that Latinos, or should I say the "LatinX" community, wouldn't want better policies.

In the weeks after Joseph R. Biden Jr. was elected president, advisers delivered a warning: His approach to immigration could prove disastrous.
...
But Mr. Biden was now president-elect, and his positions threatened to drastically increase border crossings, experts advising his transition team warned in a Zoom briefing in the final weeks of 2020, according to people with direct knowledge of that briefing. That jump, they said, could provoke a political crisis.

“Chaos” was the word the advisers had used in a memo during the campaign.

As early as August of 2020, his advisors warned of the chaos that Biden's proposals would bring, but Biden's political team thought that immigration was a distraction, and doing anything to stem the chaos might be political poison with a constituency they were determined to service.

Ironically, their failures on securing the border helped seal Biden's fate.

...a New York Times examination of Mr. Biden’s record found that he and his closest advisers repeatedly rebuffed recommendations that could have addressed the border crisis faster, and eased what became a potent issue for Mr. Trump as he sought to return to the White House and justify the aggressive tactics roiling American cities today.

Former Biden administration officials told The Times that Mr. Biden and his circle of close confidants — including Ron Klain, who was chief of staff during the president’s first two years, Mike Donilon, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and Anita Dunn — made two crucial errors.

First, they underestimated the scale of migration that was coming. Second, they failed to appreciate the political reaction to that migration — believing that stronger enforcement would alienate Latino and progressive voters, and also that a border surge would not be an important issue to most voters. Those calculations would later prove to be mistaken, with many voters, including Latinos, citing immigration as a reason for supporting Mr. Trump in 2024.

...
During his reelection campaign, Biden claimed that Trump had tubed a deal that would have reformed the immigration system, but it turns out that Biden didn't want to have anything to do with the talks because it might come up with ideas that would offend his left base.

Democrats blamed Mr. Trump for sinking the deal. But Mr. Lankford pointed to another culprit: the Biden administration’s own foot-dragging.

When negotiations had gained momentum the previous fall (2023), the White House had refused to get involved, according to Mr. Murphy and Mr. Lankford. “We don’t want our fingerprints on these negotiations,” Mr. Lankford recalled the White House telling him. Only as border crossings continued to spike did the administration relent, he said.

Trump has been in office nearly 11 months, so the NYT feels it is safe to report what was knowable to them as much as 5 years earlier. Because reporting the truth in 2020 or 2023 or 2024 would have helped the EEEeeeeee-vile Bogey-Trump. the NYT waited.

[SVPete]

It's Still Hard to Build Things in the US

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2025/12/05/its-still-hard-to-build-things-in-the-us-n3809602

The world's leading manufacturer of advanced chips is TSMC in Taiwan. Back in 2020, President Trump helped convince TSMC to make a major investment in building chips here in the US, specifically in Arizona.
...
In fact, that $12 billion investment was just the start. TSMC is now planning to spend more than 10 times that building multiple fabrication plants or fabs at the site north of Phoenix. The first of those is already opening and operational. The second has just completed construction. ..
...
Things may be ahead of schedule but this week the NY Times reported that the complexity of building these factories has turned out to be far greater than the Taiwanese company expected. It's a lengthy story but certain issues crop up repeatedly, an almost impenetrable thicket of regulations and complaints from unions.

The process that has turned a blank spot on the map into what some now call the Silicon Desert underscores a defining feature of American life: A tangle of bureaucracy often hinders ambitious visions, sowing confusion, uncertainty and delay. That tends to reinforce inertia and discourage development...

At home in Taiwan, TSMC is used to moving aggressively, gaining whatever resources, personnel and government approvals are required to propel its astonishing expansion. Yet in Phoenix, TSMC and its suppliers have wrestled with the intricacies of a different system.

They have been tripped up by a confusing process to gain permits. They have struggled to find workers with needed skills. They have contended with higher costs of doing business, succeeding through force of will and vast sums of money.

The title almost says it all. The multiple layers of gooberment, the over-lapping and conflicting bureaucracies, and various activists make creating or expanding businesses difficult in the US.

[enslaved1]

KFC Hacker ad in New Zealand removed after 65 complaints

This list article about the KFC ad and others that have been complained about is the best non-paywalled article with a picture of the "hacker" mask I could find.

As KFC pulls its controversial cyberhack ad, we look back at some of the more bizarre complaints about advertising down the years.
Made with Flourish • Create interactive content

KFC's advertisement featuring a masked Colonel-Sanders-style "hacker" prompted 65 complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), making it one of the one of the most complained about of the year.

It was accused of glorifying cybercrime, frightening kids and confusing some viewers into believing their devices had actually been tapped into. But, as KFC ultimately pulled the campaign before the ASA advanced its investigation, the authority's chair ruled the complaint was "settled".

Noteworthy because of the ad's silliness and because a small number of people whining and crying about "glorifying cybercrime" and thinking they had been hacked is the kind of "democracy" moonbats want over our media here.  But a small number of conservatives not wanting graphic descriptions of gay sex in elementary school libraries is censorship.   

Some of the other complaints are quite entertaining as well. 

[SVPete]

Libs/Progs are noteworthy for the double standards and murder of humor.