Border Invasion Validation

August 1st, 2024

Texas’ theory that the state is undergoing an illegal alien invasion, as per Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the Constitution of the United States of America, due to the Biden Administrations willfully ignoring border control laws, just got some validation from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit permitted the State of Texas’ buoy barrier in the Rio Grande to remain in an en banc ruling Tuesday night, but an ancillary opinion from Judge James Ho endorses one of Gov. Greg Abbott’s main border contentions: that the state is being “invaded” by illegal immigrants.

Overall, the court’s ruling was more procedural than substantive on the case’s full scope — that the U.S. government’s argument that the 1,000-foot stretch of water constitutes a “navigable water” under federal law is “unlikely to succeed” on its merits.

But Ho’s part-concurrence, part-dissent opinion takes a different route, fully endorsing the State of Texas’ invocation of the much-debated “invasion clause.”

Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution reads: “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”

After shrugging off, then toying with the suggestion that an invasion be declared to expand Texas’ border enforcement capabilities, Abbott gave it his full-throated backing in January.

“President Biden has instructed his agencies to ignore federal statutes that mandate the detention of illegal immigrants. The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense,” he stated.

Dozens of counties in Texas had already invoked the invasion clause, currently at least 55.

It then became one of the central contentions in the state’s legal strategy related to border security and illegal immigration.

The case for such a declaration has been made slowly over the last couple of years, including by such center-right political figures as Ken Cuccinelli, a former deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under President Donald Trump, and his new employer the Center for Renewing America.

Cuccinnelli touted the ruling, saying on social media, “This is a complete victory for the Center for Renewing America’s position that [the invasion clause] of the US Constitution provides states with a complete and unreviewable right to self-defense (called ‘non-justiciability’).”

In the 2022 gubernatorial race, former state Sen. Don Huffines and former Texas GOP chair Allen West both hit Abbott on the issue, who to that point had not endorsed the idea. Like Abbott, Attorney General Ken Paxton expressed skepticism of the concept in 2022 before becoming one of its biggest proponents.

Now, its proponents have written legal backing from the bench — implicit from the majority opinion and explicit from Ho’s.

“It is of course true that the invocation of Article I, § 10, clause 3 constitutes a non-justiciable political question; the parties agree on that, as does every member of our en banc court,” Judge Andrew Oldham wrote in his concurring opinion.

Right off the bat, the court is agreeing wholesale that it cannot determine what constitutes an invasion — throwing that jurisprudential ball back into the state’s and federal government’s court.

Legal barrier presented, meet legal barrier removed.

Then Ho goes much further, actually opining on the merits of Abbott’s invocation.

“A sovereign isn’t a sovereign if it can’t defend itself against invasion. … States did not forfeit this sovereign prerogative when they joined the Union,” Ho wrote.

“Indeed, the Constitution is even more explicit when it comes to the States. Presidents routinely insist that their power to repel invasion is implied by certain clauses. But Article I, section 10 is explicit that States have the right to ‘engage in War’ if ‘actually invaded,’ ‘without the Consent of Congress.’”

Ho cited multiple historical examples of states engaging in military action to repel foreign actors, including deploying state soldiers to the border in the 19th century to beat back bandits who’d crossed the southern border from Mexico.

An important distinction made there and applicable to today’s situation is that those bandits were not agents working on behalf of a foreign nation but were foreign individuals, just as illegal border crossers are today.

In Ho’s assessment, the distinction between a cartel actor and a run-of-the-mill immigrant matters not when evaluating the invasion clause’s application; it still counts as a state protecting itself from a foreign actor.

He also cited the U.S.’s pursuit of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa and airstrikes against Middle Eastern terrorist groups both before and after 9/11.

Few in 2020 would have thought that Democrats were so determined to open the border to an invasion of illegal aliens that federal courts would be referencing Pancho Villa’s raids in comparison, yet here we are.

“The use of military force in these contexts continues to be a matter of great controversy,” Ho continued.

“It was controversial before September 11, and it remains controversial after September 11. But that’s the point. These are political controversies, not judicial ones. Which private acts warrant military action are questions for the political branches, not the courts.”

Ho then wrote, “Supreme Court precedent and longstanding Executive Branch practice confirm that, when a President decides to use military force, that’s a nonjusticiable political question not susceptible to judicial reversal. I see no principled basis for treating such authority differently when it’s invoked by a Governor rather than by a President.”

“If anything, a State’s authority to ‘engage in War’ in response to invasion ‘without the Consent of Congress’ is even more textually explicit than the President’s.”

June border apprehensions by U.S. Border Patrol agents showed a 29 percent dip, but the monthly encounters are still in the six figures and approaching two million total for the Fiscal Year 2024. And that doesn’t include the number of “got-aways” that evaded state and federal police.

Ho continues, “To begin with, ‘there are no manageable standards to ascertain whether or when an influx of illegal immigrants should be said to constitute an invasion.’”

“It’s hard to imagine that anyone would conclude that a few border crossings would suffice to justify a military response. On the other hand, numerous officials have concluded that military action was warranted in response to bands of Mexican criminals in the 19th century and terrorist attacks in the 20th and 21st centuries. Determining where the present illegal immigration crisis falls along this spectrum is not a legal question for judges, but a political determination for the other branches of government.”

The founders crafted the constitution not just to balance the power of the three branches of government, but also to balance the power of the federal government with the states (which they intended to have more power than the federal government), and the power of individuals to oppose the state, and thus by distribution of power to different entities thwart tyranny. But I suspect even at their most cynical, the founders would never imagine that a political party would deliberately engineer the invasion of America by millions of foreigners merely for political gain…

Paxton Wrings $1.4 Billion Settlement From Facebook

July 31st, 2024

Did you know that Facebook was extracting biometric data from your images? That be because they never asked your permission. Which is why Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton just extracted a $1.4 billion settlement from them.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the largest settlement ever obtained by a single state after he alleged that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, collected Texans’ biometric identifiers without their consent.

The $1.4 billion settlement announced Tuesday stemmed from the first lawsuit ever brought under the Texas Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act, which prohibits the capturing of an individual’s biometric identification such as retina, fingerprints, or hand geometry for a commercial purpose unless the the individual is informed and provides consent prior to capture.

“After vigorously pursuing justice for our citizens whose privacy rights were violated by Meta’s use of facial recognition software, I’m proud to announce that we have reached the largest settlement ever obtained from an action brought by a single State,” said Paxton.

“This historic settlement demonstrates our commitment to standing up to the world’s biggest technology companies and holding them accountable for breaking the law and violating Texans’ privacy rights. Any abuse of Texans’ sensitive data will be met with the full force of the law.”

In a statement to The Texan, Meta said, “We are pleased to resolve this matter, and look forward to exploring future opportunities to deepen our business investments in Texas, including potentially developing data centers.”

The Meta spokesperson also noted that there is no admission of wrongdoing in the settlement agreement.

Paxton sued Meta in 2022 alleging that “Facebook engaged in false, misleading, and deceptive acts and practices in violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act.”

Moreover, the lawsuit explains that Facebook has “built an Artificial Intelligence empire on the backs of Texans by deceiving them while capturing their most intimate data, thereby putting their well-being, safety, and security at risk.”

In 2011, Facebook introduced “Tag Suggestions,” a facial recognition feature that automatically tagged people in uploaded photos without informing Texans how it worked. The “tag” feature captured “the facial geometry of the people depicted” and led to Paxton alleging this action violated Texas law, thus leading to the state suing Meta for capturing facial data without consent and the $1.4 billion settlement.

Illegally stealing information to train AI seems to be a habit with Meta, which is why they’re being sued for using pirated books to train their AI.

$1.4 billion is a lot of cheddar, even to Meta. But will it change their ways about feeding every possible scrap of information to train an AI engine deep in the bowels of some giant data center? Probably not. Just about every software tech giant has decided that AI is The Next Big Thing, and seem to be pouring more money and resources into it rather than their ostensible “core” businesses.

Of course, Facebook’s core business is selling your data to other companies, so nothing new there. And AI is probably less of a money-losing boondoggle than their crappy Metaverse VR project, which they’ve lost (at least) $21 billion on despite nobody using the damn thing.

Knowing Facebook, this time next year we’ll probably be complaining about some completely different nefarious, illegal activity they’ll be undertaking…

Did Amazon Try To Ban A 2020 Book Critical Of Kamala Harris?

July 30th, 2024

It seems you can add “Amazon” to the list of companies censoring information critical of anointed Democrats.

Caleb Maupin published a book in September of 2020: Kamala Harris & The Future of America – An Essay in 3 Parts. It sold some copies and then dropped back into that vast long tail of Amazon backstock.

Until Kamala Harris was selected as the Democratic presidential candidate. Then suddenly, Amazon banned the book for spurious reasons and refused to let it be sold.

  • It originally sold a few hundred copies.
  • Last Monday Maupin got an email from Amazon. “They said there was something with the cover that was not correct, and they said I had multiple options, one of which was to just change the cover. And so I thought, well, jeez, I don’t want to miss this moment where everyone’s talking about Kamala. So I adjusted the cover put a completely generic Bland cover and re-uploaded to Amazon. Denied. Tried it again. Denied. Tried it again. Denied.”
  • “It’s pretty clear this has been removed from Amazon. It is not allowed to be on amazon.com, despite being on there for four years. And so it appears that my book is not permitted to be on the world’s largest bookseller.”
  • “It just happens to come on the day Kamala Harris is named the presumptive nominee, and it looks like censorship to the world.”
  • When you went to the Amazon page for it, you got not the usual “out of stock” page, but a “Sorry we can’t find anything” page.
  • It covers some of Harris’ attitudes and activities as California Attorney General that are now verbotten in the Democratic Party, like building more prisons, keeping prisoners past their release date so California could enjoy using their near-slave labor, how she knew about the drug lab scandal and continued to cover it up, etc. “Over about a thousand cases are thrown out people are released from jail because Kamala Harris was caught concealing false positive drug test results.”
  • “The fact that she’s tried to reinvent herself as Miss Black Lives Matter, the spokesperson for the downtrodden and all of this, it is the most phony thing. She rose up the ranks of California’s criminal justice system in the late 1990s, early 2000s, when they were locking up people at astronomical rates.”
  • Jimmy Dore says that #BlackLivesMatter’s just came out against anointing Harris the nominee, which appears to be the case, saying the process was undemocratic. Broken clock, twice a day.
  • When leftists self-righteously denounces censorship, they only mean censorship against the left. The Twitter Files prove that the left is happy to censor dissenting voices when it suits their ends, and this is just the latest example.

    The book can be found here in digital form and here in trade paperback.

    Just before I hit publish, I checked to see what message Amazon now gives you for the book…and it appears to be available again, at least for now. So it appears they just reversed course after having gotten caught…

    Austin Electric Busses Busted

    July 29th, 2024

    Austin’s leftwing political class always wants to be at the forefront of any trendy ecofriendly or green initiative. That includes transitioning to an all-electric bus fleet. How well is that working out for them? According to this piece Dwight sent over, not so hot.

    Capital Metro is slamming the brakes on an ambitious goal of transitioning to an all-electric bus fleet, citing problems with the range of battery-electric buses.

    Austin voters were promised a transit system with exclusively electric vehicles when they authorized a tax increase in 2020 to fund Project Connect, the largest transit expansion in the city’s history. Zero-emissions buses are quieter and don’t blast hot exhaust in the faces of people on the sidewalk.

    “Honestly, we thought and hoped that the technology would progress a little faster than it has,” CapMetro CEO Dottie Watkins told KUT. “The biggest downside of a battery-electric bus today is its range.”

    Diesel buses can run from early in the morning until past midnight. A battery bus only runs about 8 to 10 hours before it needs to be recharged, creating tough logistical hurdles in scheduling routes.

    An analysis by the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) — a state-funded research agency at Texas A&M University — found battery-electric buses could only cover 36% of Capital Metro’s bus schedules.

    “If [the route] is too long, it won’t make it,” said John Overman, a research scientist with TTI. “You’re going to have to charge them mid-route or wherever it is.” Austin’s hills drain batteries faster. So does trying to cool buses in the city’s oppressive heat.

    Why rely on the opinions of experts when they’re at odds with your green fantasies?

    But range shortcomings are only part of the problem.

    Data obtained by KUT through the Texas Public Information Act revealed CapMetro’s battery-electric buses are far less reliable than their diesel counterparts. E-buses had mechanical failures on average every 1,623 miles over the last year — less than half the typical distance between failures for the fleet as a whole.

    Mechanical problems should be an area where electrical vehicles shine, as there’s so many things that can go wrong in a diesel engine. The fact they’re less reliable is a big red flag.

    Mechanical problems, coupled with challenges in procuring parts and doing repairs, mean battery-electric buses are often unavailable for service. In 2022, almost 52% of e-buses were down, on average. In 2023, the number of vehicles out for repair improved slightly to an average of just under 50%.

    “Getting the expertise up and being able to have those vehicles be as reliable as our old workhorse diesel buses have been is a challenge,” Watkins said. “It’s something that we are up to.”

    On top of range and reliability issues, both companies Capital Metro hired to build its battery-electric buses faced major financial challenges. Proterra and New Flyer blamed the problems on pandemic-related supply chain issues and inflation that drove up manufacturing costs after major contracts were signed.

    One of the two bus builders didn’t survive.

    Proterra, a company from the San Francisco Bay area, went bankrupt last year and sold off the firm in pieces to pay back debtors. The new owner of Proterra’s e-bus business — Anaheim, California-based Phoenix Motorcar — still has no battery provider or vehicle software ready to deploy, TTI’s Overman said.

    Remember Proterra? They’re the company that Biden Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm owned millions of dollars of stock in at the same time that same Department of Energy was boosting them.

    The other supplier — New Flyer — bled almost $300 million after the pandemic but appears to have staunched the wound. The Winnipeg, Canada company reported a smaller loss of $9 million in the first quarter of 2024 thanks to record-breaking order numbers.

    CapMetro is operating 23 battery-electric buses among a fleet of 402 buses, not including commuter buses or shuttle buses. Another 87 e-buses already ordered are expected to be delivered by the end of the year. Some will replace aging diesel vehicles.

    Once all the e-buses arrive, Watkins says, about a quarter of CapMetro’s fleet will be battery-powered. The agency will then “sit for a minute while we wait for the battery technology to catch up.”

    By most measures, CapMetro is a leader in the shift to an all-electric fleet. With 25% electric buses, the transit agency’s adoption rate would exceed that of countries with far more political and financial support for zero-emissions vehicles like Belgium, Norway and Switzerland.

    “China is a leader in electric bus sales, and about a quarter of the bus fleet in China is electric today,” said Elizabeth Connelly, a transportation electrification researcher at the Paris-based International Energy Agency. “So if Austin’s reaching that same level, I think it’s nothing to scoff at. I think it’s pretty impressive.”

    Knowing Chinese quality, their electric busses are probably just as unreliable.

    Santiago, Chile — considered a world leader in electric bus adoption — has 30% of its fleet running on batteries, Connelly said.

    “Reaching the 100% level can be fairly tricky,” she said. “It’s not as easy as it seems.”

    New buses ordered by Capital Metro over the next two to three years will be hybrid diesel vehicles, which are electric buses powered by an on-board diesel generator. The transit agency also wants to use federal grants to buy a small number of hydrogen fuel cell buses, an even more cutting-edge and untested technology than battery-electric buses.

    The hybrid and hydrogen vehicles would have a similar range to a diesel bus, Watkins said.

    Capital Metro announced the shift to an all-electric fleet in 2018 under then-CEO Randy Clarke. The next year, Clarke invited TV cameras to watch a demolition crew smash down an old mattress factory to make way for a bus charging yard in North Austin.

    “This is it!” Clarke exclaimed to reporters. “We’re knocking down an old facility … to build the bus fleet facility of the future.”

    Later that day, the CapMetro board followed suit, authorizing the agency’s largest electric bus purchase ever at the time: 10 vehicles from Proterra. Each bus cost more than a million dollars, almost twice as much as the diesel buses approved for purchase the same day.

    “We’re going to be able to save money, provide a better customer service and deal with climate change issues,” Clarke pledged to the board. In 2022, Clarke left Austin to lead the transit system in the Washington, D.C. area.

    Some were hesitant about betting big on emerging technology. Eric Stratton, a Williamson County representative then just four months into his tenure on the CapMetro board, wondered if Proterra would be able to stand by its relatively new product.

    “So that five years in, six years in, eight years in, [if] things start happening, we’ve got the support behind it so we can continue to maintain it. Do you all feel comfortable this is the case?” Stratton grilled Watkins, then vice president in charge of bus services.

    “Yes, that is indeed the case,” said Watkins, enthusiastic about the future of electric propulsion. “Proterra’s a very strong partner and I have no concerns at all that they won’t be able to support the bus for the full life of the bus.”

    The board gave unanimous approval to the $11 million contract. But that was just the beginning.

    In 2021, the board shoved its stack of chips on the table. Capital Metro would plop down up to $255 million for 197 electric buses. This time, the deal would be split between two manufacturers: Canada’s New Flyer and Proterra, the politically connected California firm that hosted President Biden for a virtual tour earlier that year.

    Long before CapMetro received all its electric buses, Proterra would be in a Delaware bankruptcy court chopping up the company and selling it off in pieces. Transit agencies across North America revealed private concerns in public court fillings, alleging the buses were mechanically unreliable, lost range in adverse weather and in rare cases would burst into flames.

    That surefire Biden touch at work again.

    Capital Metro admitted at the time of the bankruptcy proceedings that the shift to an all-electric fleet was hitting speed bumps.

    “The reliability of electric buses no matter the manufacturer is less than a diesel bus. I’m not going to tell you they operate as well as diesel bus,” CapMetro chief operating officer Andy Skabowski told KUT last December. “We’re going to see some vehicles that are down a little bit longer than a diesel bus.”

    In many ways, busses are a better fit for electrification than cars: Regular routes plus nighttime storage at a bus yard than can be equipped with industrial strength chargers should theoretically eliminate the range and recharging anxiety still common for many electric car owners. But poor range and lousy quality show that electric busses (at least the ones Austin bought) aren’t ready for prime time. The high environmental costs of lithium battery production means they don’t reduce those dreaded “carbon emissions” when considering the whole lifecycle of the product. And given newer clean diesel technologies, improvements in day-to-day emissions are probably pretty marginal as well.

    From light rail to electric busses, when it comes to “green” transportation initiatives, Austin seems to have a real knack for picking losers.

    Wagner Group Column Mangled In Mali

    July 28th, 2024

    The death of Yevgeny Prigozhin August of last year didn’t end the Wagner Group. The mercenary enterprise is now run by Yevgeny’s son Pavel Prigozhin, and is heavily involved in fighting for Russia’s client states in Africa.

    Remember Africa’s League of Assholes, the three Sahel nations (Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso) run by military regimes backed by Moscow mentioned in a LinkSwarm a week back? Yeah, Wagner’s fighting for them. And in Mali, a column of them using the same naked convoy tactics that have gotten so many Russians killed in Ukraine just got a bunch of them killed in Mali.

    Mali’s army and its Russian allies suffered a major setback and significant losses on Saturday while fighting separatists in the country’s north, a spokesman for the rebels told AFP.

    The West African nation’s military leaders, who took power in a 2020 coup, have made it a priority to retake all of the country from separatist and jihadi forces, particularly in Kidal, a pro-independence northern bastion.

    Wait, weren’t the French fighting Jihadis in those countries as well? Yep. It’s Africa. Jihadis tend to fight whichever government is in power if it’s not their government, and the French were fighting less as a noble western anti-Jihad enterprise than to protect their own business interests in “former” colonies. In a proxy fight between France and Russia, the French are still marginally the good guys.

    Plus: It’s Africa. There are factions within factions, and sometimes Jihadis on both sides of a conflict.

    “Azawad fighters are in control in Tinzaouaten and further south in the Kidal region,” said Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane, a spokesman for an alliance of predominantly Tuareg separatist armed groups called CSP-DPA.

    “Russian mercenaries and Malian armed forces have fled,” he added. “Others have surrendered.”

    He also shared videos of numerous corpses of soldiers and their allies.

    Here’s one showing the aftermath of the attack on the Wagner column.

    I started working on this piece late last night, and when I woke, up I found Suchomimus just up out a video on the same subject:

    He says the vehicle shown seems to be a Chinese-made MRAP. Supposedly they also took out an Mi-24 Hind helicopter, and will be transferring Wagner prisoners to Ukraine’s control.

    Back to the story:

    “The Malian army has retreated,” a local politician told AFP, citing at least 17 dead in a provisional toll.

    “The CSP people are still in Tinzaouaten. The army and Wagner are no longer there,” he said, referring to the Russian mercenary group.

    Fighting also took place further south toward Abeibara, the politician said.

    A former United Nations mission worker in Kidal said: “At least 15 Wagner fighters were killed and arrested after three days of fighting” adding that “the CSP rebels have taken the lead in what happened in Tinzaouaten.”

    Mossa Ag Inzoma, a member of the separatist movement, claimed that “dozens and dozens” of Wagner fighters and soldiers had been killed and taken prisoner.

    Fighting on a scale not seen in months broke out Thursday between the army and separatists in the town of Tinzaouaten, near the border with Algeria, after the army announced it had taken control of In-Afarak, a commercial crossroads in Kidal.

    It’s tough to say what Russia hopes to accomplish in the Sahel, other than tit-for-tat revenge against France for backing Ukraine. Knowing the French, this is just going to piss them off and make them more determined than ever to keep backing Ukraine.

    As shown throughout history, and especially from the Reagan Doctrine up through Iraq and Afghanistan, insurgencies are easy and cheap to fund, but counterinsurgencies are time-consuming, expensive, and difficult. Thus far, Russia has proven itself absolutely incapable of winning the one major war it’s embroiled in on its own borders, and all its ill-advised troop support of various African client states seems to be accomplishing is wasting time, efforts and resources it can ill afford to squander.

    Update: Geolocation in a new Suchomimus video show the Wagner column was hit 70km south of Tinzaouaten, heading south:

    He suggests the column was hit twice, in two separate ambushes, one that cause it to retreat, and the second that finished it off after they retreated.

    Andrew Schulz Roasts Kamala Harris

    July 27th, 2024

    It’s been an eventful two weeks, which makes me feel like I’ve been blogging flat out for most of them. So here’s something a bit lighter, but dealing with those heavy topics: Comic Andrew Schulz on fire going after Kamala Harris, Trump’s Secret Service detail, etc. in the first four minutes of his Flagrant podcast. It’s edgy, crass, politically incorrect, very not safe for work, and hilarious. You have been warned.

    A few tamer samples:

  • “It kind of feels like the Democrats dragged Biden’s lifeless corpse through the campaign long enough to avoid a primary so they could place whoever they wanted as the nominee, and that’s about as democratic as North Korea’s Got Talent.”
  • “I’m saying is they used a vegetable to install a plant.”
  • “Are you saying Herpes Potter [would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks] was just walking around with a loaded gun like he was on an Alec Baldwin set, carrying a fucking ladder and a rangefinder, propped it up on a building that had cops in it, positioning himself on the roof with a perfect sight line to the president and no one did anything?”
  • “It doesn’t exactly feel like a 20-year-old fetal alcohol face McLovin should be able to infiltrate the most advanced security detail in history.”
  • I’ve only watched that and a few minutes more, so I can’t comment on the rest of the podcast. Maybe it’s great, maybe it sucks…

    LinkSwarm For July 26, 2024

    July 26th, 2024

    More dirt comes out about the (intentionally?) shoddy security at Trump’s Butler rally, Netanyahu addresses congress, China bribes some Democrats, Israel hits the Houthis, Redbox users are screwed, and Sanrio upends the world with a shocking revelation. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Security at Trump’s Bitler rally was even worse than we thought.

    More whistleblowers are coming forward with damning allegations about the law-enforcement failures surrounding the failed assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump.

    Whistleblowers with “direct knowledge” of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) handling of the Trump rally in Butler, Pa., last weekend came forward to Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) alleging that the rally was a “loose” security event featuring personnel drawn from a different wing of DHS who were not trained for such an event.

    “Whistleblowers who have direct knowledge of the event have approached my office. According to the allegations, the July 13 rally was considered to be a ‘loose’ security event. For example, detection canines were not used to monitor entry and detect threats in the usual manner. Individuals without proper designations were able to gain access to backstage areas. Department personnel did not appropriately police the security buffer around the podium and were also not stationed at regular intervals around the event’s security perimeter,” Hawley wrote in a letter sent Friday to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

    “In addition, whistleblower allegations suggest the majority of DHS officials were not in fact USSS agents but instead drawn from the department’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). This is especially concerning given that HSI agents were unfamiliar with standard protocols typically used at these types of events, according to the allegations.”

  • After disastrously failing at her one job, Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle resigns.

    Embattled Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday after her refusal to answer basic questions in front of a congressional committee drew bipartisan calls for her resignation.

    Cheatle stepped down ten days after the assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump, one of the most significant law-enforcement failures in American history, and the defining moment of her law-enforcement career.

    Snip.

    At a hearing with the House Oversight Committee Monday, Cheatle brought Republicans and Democrats together in calling for her resignation. She repeatedly failed to answer basic questions about what went wrong at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pa., instead deflecting to the Secret Service’s ongoing investigation and the FBI’s separate investigation.

    Cheatle admitted the assassination attempt was the Secret Service’s most consequential failure in decades, but did not disclose much information, despite being under subpoena.

    She did not have a specific timeline of what law enforcement did after the shooter was first discovered, failed to explain why agents were not deployed onto the rooftop the gunman equipped, declined to comment on specific personnel assignments for the Trump rally, did not elaborate on why the rooftop was outside of the Secret Service’s perimeter, would not commit to firing anyone involved with the Trump rally, and deflected each time Trump’s requests for enhanced security came up.

    She did tell lawmakers that she had not visited the crime scene, nine days after Trump was wounded when a bullet grazed his right ear. After the attack, Cheatle said she called Trump to apologize.

    The Secret Service will have an internal report on what went wrong at the Trump rally in 60 days, a timeline multiple lawmakers told Cheatle is unacceptable given the intensity of the presidential campaign and America’s political climate.

  • Cheatle also helped hide Biden’s cognitive decline.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Which party threatens Democracy? It’s not the Republicans.

    Never in modern presidential history has a political party staged a veritable inside coup to remove their current president from his ongoing candidacy for his party’s nomination and reelection.

    Stranger still, the very elites and grandees, who now are using every imaginable means of deposing Biden as their nominee, are the very public voices that just weeks ago insisted that candidate Biden was “sharp as a tack” and “fit as a fiddle.” And they damned any who thought otherwise!

    They are also the identical operators whose machinations ensured that there would not be an open Democratic primary. They demonized the few on the Left who weakly challenged Biden in the primaries. Yet now they will select a replacement candidate who likely never received a single primary vote.

    Note further: Biden’s impending forced abdication is not because he is non compos mentis.

    Rather, the inside move is due to Biden’s disastrous debate exposure that confirmed his dementia could no longer be disguised by a conspiracy of leftist politicos and media.

    But far more importantly, the impetus for removal is driven by the admission that the cognitively Biden is headed for a climactic November defeat.

    Were Biden now ahead in the polls by five points, these same backroom machinists would be insisting that he was still Pericles.

    Yet now Biden is being un-personed and Trotskyized, as we prepare the new groupthink narrative of his likely surrogate—a soon to be praised eloquent, mellifluous, and articulate Cicero-Harris.

    That Biden will likely remain as president until January 20, 2025, should remind the country the Left is more worried about its own next four-year continuance in power than the fate of the country that now admittedly will be guided in the next six months by a president judged unfit by his own supporters to run for the very office that he will still keep holding.

    Further irony arises when those who, as supposedly guardians of democratic norms, pontificated to the country the last nine years about the Trump-Hitlerian threat to democracy. Yet now they so cavalierly work overtime on how:

    a) to pull off the removal of their candidate from the November ballot on grounds of senility,
    b) but not the removal of the same president from office (their own fate is more precious than our collective fate as a nation),
    c) while trying to select, rather than elect, a replace candidate,
    d) without ever offering any explanation, much less an apology, how a Democrat president from January 20, 2021, was daily declared vibrant, dynamic, and engaged but suddenly one day after June 27, 2024, was remanufactured as not?

  • This is quite a spicy accusation about the Trump assassination attempt.

    In this report on cell phone location (presumably from publicly-sourced advertising data, which should terrify you), the Heritage Foundation claims one device that regularly visited the Crooks home was tracked to DC near an FBI office.

    Also strange was the fact that a device linked to the Crooks home had visited Butler twice in the week or so before the shooting (an hour and twenty minute drive).

    Another device repeatedly visited Plymouth, Massachusetts, although how that connects to the Trump shooting is unknown.

    Going back to last August, one device visited a local gun shop (again, not suspicious for an American to visit a gun shop unless this was the visit where the AR was purchased).

    If this proves to be true link between the FBI and Crooks, the implications here are pretty frightening…

  • While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was addressing congress, the pro-Hamas Useful Idiot Brigade was busy vandalizing national monuments.

    Thousands of demonstrators filled the streets of downtown D.C. carrying signs with messages like “arrest Netanyahu” and “end all U.S. aid to Israel.” Groups waving Palestinian flags, and chanting “Free, free Palestine,” marched toward the U.S. Capitol.

    Outside Union Station, protesters removed American flags and hoisted Palestinian ones in their place. The Columbus Memorial Fountain in the circle outside the station was defaced with the words, “Hamas Is Coming,” written in red paint. Other monuments, like the Freedom Bell and various statues, also suffered damage. FOX 5’s Stephanie Ramirez says law enforcement is preparing for more possible protests Thursday.

    U.S. Capitol Police officers deployed pepper spray after they said some protesters became “violent” and “failed to obey” orders to move back from the police line.

  • Netanyahu won’t bend an inch for terrorist apologists.

    Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had harsh words for anti-Israel protesters in his Wednesday address to a joint session of Congress, slamming the activists as “useful idiots” for Iran and other bad actors even as they congregated outside the Capitol.

    “Defeating our brutal enemies requires both courage and clarity,” he said. “Clarity begins by knowing the difference between good and evil. Yet, incredibly, many anti-Israel protesters choose to stand with evil. They stand with Hamas. They stand with rapists and murderers. They stand with people who come into the kibbutzim — into the home — with the parents and the children, the two babies in the secret attic, and murder the parents, find the secret latch to the attic, find the babies, and they murder them. These protesters stand with them. They should be ashamed of themselves.”

    Netanyahu referenced the claims from many anti-Israel protesters that Hamas terrorism constitutes legitimate resistance while Israel’s retaliatory war is out of bounds.

    “They refuse to make the simple distinction between those who target terrorists and those who target civilians — between the democratic state of Israel and the terrorist thugs of Hamas,” he told the chamber.

    The prime minister stressed in his speech that anti-Israel protesters are not just opposed to the existence of the Jewish state but are anti-American as well.

    “These protesters burn American flags even on the Fourth of July.”

  • Dispatches from The Land of “Duh”: “Study Reveals That Giving Americans $1,000 Per Month Has Negative Consequences.”

    According to the 3,000-participant, three-year study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, giving people $1,000 per month increased leisure time, as recipients spent less time on sleeping, child care, community engagement, caring for others, and self-improvement.

    The study also found that recipients’ income, not including the free money, reduced their incomes significantly, as “for every one dollar received, total household income excluding the transfers fell by at least 21 cents, and total individual income fell by at least 12 cents.”

    “The takeaway from the best study done so far about UBI in the United States is that handing out money isn’t the solution to all our problems,” Daniel Di Martino, a economics researcher and graduate fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told The Center Square. “In fact, sometimes it makes things worse.”

    Or they could have read pages 150-152 of Charles Murray’s Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980 for his summary of the results of the SIME/DIME experiments, which were similarly bleak.

  • After letting camps of drug-addicted transients overrun his state for years, California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom decides that he can finally start clearing out those camps, now that he has the cover of a Supreme Court ruling.

    California governor Gavin Newsom directed state officials to remove homeless encampments across the Golden State on Thursday after the Supreme Court ruled in June that local governments have a right to ban public camping and impose fines for violators.

    Newsom announced the guidance in an executive order, advising cities to crack down on encampments on public property while providing social services and housing alternatives. The order, first reported by the New York Times, represents a sharp departure from the accommodative homelessness policies adopted by progressive state governments over the last decade.

    Note that “providing social services” means that the Homeless Industrial Complex will still be able to rake off the graft…

  • Food for thought:

    (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)

  • CBS said nearly half of Americans can’t afford healthcare, but for some reason didn’t mention ObamaCare.

    Americans spend more money on health care on a per capita basis than people in any other developed nation, yet almost half say they’ve struggled recently to pay for medical treatment or prescription drugs, according to a new study from Gallup and West Health.

    About 45% of those polled by the organizations said they’d recently had to skip treatment or medicine either because of cost or lack of easy access. Of those, about 8% said they also wouldn’t have access to affordable care if they required it today, a group that Gallup and West Health termed ‘cost desperate.’

    Snip.

    The Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, became law back in 2010, and President Obama promised Americans that his legislation would “reduce the costs of health care” and that “families will save on premiums.” He said Americans could even keep their doctors and health plans – over and over again, in fact.

    Instead, here’s what Obamacare did, according to America First Policy Institute:

    • Premiums have increased by 80%.
    • From 2010 to 2023, the average premium for family coverage increased 80%, from just over $13,000 to nearly $24,000.
    • Total healthcare costs for a family of four now exceed $30,000 per year — increasing from $18,000 per year when Obamacare was passed.
    • Deductibles have increased over 50% since Obamacare was implemented in 2013.
  • Speaking of Obama, he officially endorsed Harris, which presumably puts a surprise Michelle Obama nomination at the convention off the table.
  • “US Subsidiary Of Chinese EV Manufacturer BYD Donated Hundreds Of Thousands To Democrats.” Because of course they did.

    Well you can add this to a list of reasons Democrats just can’t seem to stomach Elon Musk any more.

    The U.S. subsidiary of Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BYD and its top executive, Stella Li, have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates and organizations over the past decade.

    A review of federal and state political spending records by the Daily Caller News Foundation reveals these contributions.

    They found that between 2020 and 2023, BYD and Stella Li contributed over $40,000 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

    Additionally, they have invested more than $30,000 into organizations supporting President Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign.

    BYD, the world’s largest EV producer, was recently banned by Congress from selling batteries to the Pentagon due to security concerns, according to Bloomberg News.

    The report says that between 2018 and 2023, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom received about $60,000 from Li and BYD USA. Newsom faced criticism for awarding BYD a $1 billion no-bid contract for protective equipment during the pandemic and later test-drove a BYD vehicle in China in 2023.

    Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa received over $10,000 from Li for his unsuccessful 2018 gubernatorial campaign, while the California Democratic Party got about $19,000 from Li and BYD USA between 2018 and 2020.

    In 2015 and 2016, BYD USA and its executives donated over $11,000 to Michael Antonovich, former Chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, who often supported BYD-friendly initiatives.

    Additionally, BYD USA contributed $25,000 in 2018 to Californians For Safe, Reliable Infrastructure, a group opposing Proposition 6, which aimed to repeal a gas tax.

    In 2017 and 2018, BYD USA and Stella Li donated over $19,000 to Los Angeles City Councilman Kevin de Leon. De Leon, then President pro Tempore of the California Senate, praised BYD at a 2017 ribbon-cutting for its Lancaster manufacturing facility, emphasizing the company’s role in job creation.

  • “Why the Democrats can’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together.”

    There’s an old saying in politics that “personnel is policy” which refers to a lot more than just having someone competent in the job. It’s a reflection that politics is about coalitions – building them and maintaining them. The coalition members get their cut of the government largess, and pay for it with loyalty to the guy at the top. If they’re not loyal, he gives them their pick slip and they lose the largess.

    This was actually Trump’s biggest mistake when he was president, not filling the Federal Government with his coalition. In his defense, he was in the middle of a Republican civil war, where there were multiple factions and multiple coalitions.

    That’s exactly what the Democrats face now, and why they can’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together. Because there are multiple coalitions, whoever emerges on top won’t know if he (she?) can trust these coalitions because they aren’t his coalitions. They might be able to be integrated into his coalition, given time, but time is exactly what the Democrats do not have right now.

    It takes time to forge a governing coalition – just look at any parliamentary system: when the government is stable it is because the governing coalition is solid. Ministers can issue policy with a reasonable expectation that it will be supported and carried out by the coalition members. When the governing coalition is unstable, chaos results. Orders get ignored or slow walked or subverted because the Minister no longer has the loyalty of the coalition members.

    Eventually a leader emerges who can attract key talent from outside coalitions and integrate it into his. This will involve rewards like positions in the bureaucracy or some such – featherbedding is the name of this game. But until this all gets sorted out and the new coalition is filled with people who think they’re better off with the new leader than without, nothing is going anywhere.

    Even worse, there will always be serious back stabbing between different coalitions. Trust is not a virtue most politicians hew to, and quite frankly until they are in a position to remove perks as well as give them, they would be a fool to trust just about anybody.

    Some day a leader will emerge to stitch together the various coalitions that make up the Democratic party. It won’t happen in the next 100 days, sure as God made little green apples.

    The biggest implication of this is that it will be much more difficult for the Democrats to “fortify” the upcoming election via 2020-style shenanigans. Sure, the party bosses will want to, but how much do they trust the other coalitions to support them? Would other coalitions even go so far as to rat them out (with plausible deniability, of course) – leading to various party elders behind bars. That certainly would make it easier for other party elders to construct a winning coalition once they’ve taken out some of the competition.

  • Althouse: “Joe Biden seems bereft of the ordinary tools of human interchange.”
  • “Visibly Angry Kamala Harris Lashes Out At Israel After Netanyahu Meeting.” Of course she did. How dare Israel defend itself when she needs to suck up to all those pro-Hamas voters Democrats insisted on importing to Michigan?
  • Dispatches from the Biden Recession: Commercial real estate bond default rates hit “8.7% in 2024, nearly three times higher than two years ago.”
  • More shenanigans in Democrat-controlled Fulton County, Georgia: Nearly all of Fulton County Housing Authority board resigns over “accusations of money mismanagement, sexual harassment, and other issues.”
  • “Judge Rules for Musk’s SpaceX in Lawsuit Against National Labor Relations Board.” “Members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and administrative law judges (ALJ) employed by the board, are likely unconstitutionally protected from removal by the president, according to U.S. District Judge Alan Albright.”
  • Israel hits the Houthis. Looks like Israel is kicking just about all Iran’s catspaws in the nuts…
  • Ukrainian drones hit Tuapse oil refinery and Morozovsk air base.
  • They also hit Millerovo air base.
  • Some 200 dead in Bangladesh over government attempts to impose a hiring quota system.
  • France’s rail network paralyzed by coordinated arson attacks just as the Olympics begin.
  • Instagram Censors Team USA Rifle Shooter Ahead Of Paris Paralympics.”
  • Pro-Hamas organizer runs Jewish Voice for Peace Twitter account.
  • “Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and local law enforcement officers arrested 50 Houston-area residents Wednesday in relation to a fraudulent bail bond scheme that allowed suspects accused of violent crimes to remain on the streets of the city. The arrests reignited criticism of Harris County’s criminal justice practices and prompted calls for closer scrutiny of bail bond providers.”

    According to an indictment filed with the federal court, beginning in 2021 defendants working for or with AABLE Bonds of Houston created or co-signed fraudulent bond agreements that allowed non-qualifying suspects to obtain pre-trial release.

    “An integral part of the criminal justice system, as old as the system itself, is the bail bond – a device that allows defendants temporary release while awaiting trial by guaranteeing future court appearances,” said U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani in a statement. “Honesty in the underwriting of those bail bonds is essential to ensuring compliance and protecting the community. However, this indictment alleges employees of AABLE Bonds and many others conspired to violate that trust.”

    In addition to the 50 arrested, officials are seeking three fugitives: Tawana Jones, 44, Pamela Yoder, 60, and Amir Khan, 60.

    The U.S. Attorney’s Office stated that co-conspirators allegedly emailed or submitted falsified co-signer financial reports via electronic communications. The office noted that the government and insurance agencies rely on these financial reports to enter into third-party agreements known as surety bonds.

    Most of the 53 co-conspirators are charged in connection to alleged conspiracy to commit wire fraud, while AABLE Bonds CEO Sheba Muharib is charged with affecting persons engaged in the business of insurance.

    The 11 named criminal defendants who obtained release under the allegedly fraudulent enterprise include Curtis Holliday, who has pleaded guilty to killing his wife and stuffing her body in a freezer. Another is the man who shot to death 17-year-old David Castro as the teen rode in a car with his family after an Astros baseball game in 2021.

    David’s father Paul Castro noted on social media that Muharib had bonded out his son’s killer on a discount bond, but he also pointed to the role played by Harris County Justice of the Peace Angela Rodriguez.

    “Remember that Judge Angela Rodriguez voted to renew Muharib’s bond license after Muharib showed herself to be a danger to our community,” wrote Castro.

    Muharib has been the focus of investigations for several years. Her brother Wisam Muharib provided bail to a murder suspect who was later charged in the murder of Harris County Constable Deputy Omar Ursin.

    Andy Kahan, Victim’s Advocate for Crime Stoppers of Houston, emphasized during a press conference Thursday that there were victims impacted by the fraudulent releases of suspects.

    During the press event, resident April Aguirre said that after the man charged in the shooting death of her nine-year-old niece Arlene Alvarez was released on a bond by AABLE Bonds, her family became suspicious of some local bail bond companies.

    Aguirre, Castro, and others worked with elected officials to change Harris County’s rules in 2022 to require that suspects charged with violent offenses pay at least 10 percent themselves to ensure release from jail, but during a press conference with Crime Stoppers of Houston, she said they suspected fraud was continuing.

    “Murderers were still getting out on discounted bonds,” said Aguirre. “So, we started making complaints to the bail bond board and to our federal partners asking for help. We didn’t know what we were dealing with, and we could never have imagined how large this is.”

    “But I can say one thing, we need to stop making money off dead children and we need to stop making money off of homicide victims. This should not be a lucrative business, it’s sick.”

    Mario Garza, President of the Professional Bondsman of Harris County, said that there were bondsmen who followed the rules and helped support the criminal justice system but lamented that what was supposed to be a partnership between bondsmen and elected judges had broken down.

    “Judges used to take that discretion seriously,” said Garza. “What we have is what’s morphed out a soft-on-crime criminal justice system that’s allowed a company like this to do what they’ve done.”

    Kahan expressed concern that bail bond companies elsewhere may be operating similar schemes.

  • Cann’s files for Chapter 11 and will be closing 9 Texas stores, including one in Austin. When I was getting ready to move into my house in 2004, they were one of the stores I thought about buying appliances from, but people told me they hated dealing with Conn’s, so I ended up buying them from Lowes.
  • “Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley who was blocked from the Twitter account of the University of Oregon’s Division of Equity and Inclusion after tweeting ‘All men are created equal.'”
  • Unclear on the concept: “California judge says school was justified in punishing 7-year-old who said all lives matter because ‘she’s too young to have First Amendment rights.'”

  • Southwest Airlines avoided the CrowdStrike outage because it runs Windows 3.1 and Windows 95.

  • Intel says it’s software, not hardware that is causing its latest generation of chips to fail. “Our analysis of returned processors confirms that the elevated operating voltage is stemming from a microcode algorithm resulting in incorrect voltage requests to the processor.” OK, microcode is embedded in the heart of the chip, but can be updated, which means that it doesn’t require expensive mask fixes.
  • The CDC is trying to keep people from importing dogs into the U.S.. This is going to impair the efforts of many dog rescue groups. A bipartisan group of senators is opposing. “The unprecedented requirements included in the final rule, such as the six-month minimum age requirement for dogs to enter the United States and the need for a microchip before a rabies vaccination and additional documentation and certification would create significant barriers to low-risk entry from Canada into the United States and have a disproportionate effect on border communities in our states.”
  • Everyone who “purchased” a movie from Redbox is now screwed because now that Redbox is bankrupt it turns out they’ve got nada.
  • If I’m reading between the lines here, Social Justice Warriors seized control of the Romance Writers of America, blew it up when they got caught, and left the organization $3 million in debt.
  • “Judge Refuses To Dismiss Trump Defamation Lawsuit Against ABC, Stephanopoulos. On Wednesday, a federal judge rejected a motion by ABC News and George Stephanopoulos to dismiss the defamation lawsuit filed against them by former President Donald Trump.”
  • Gina Carano’s lawsuit against Disney moves forward.
  • Hello Kitty is not a cat and doesn’t live in Japan.

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • It begins.
  • If you have a spare $40,000 lying around, you can bid on the Necronomicon from Evil Dead II.
  • “Secret Service Director Resigns In Disgrace For Failing To Assassinate Trump.”
  • America Just Kinda Curious If President Alive.”
  • “Aides Struggling To Figure Out How To Break The News To Biden That He Dropped Out.”
  • Party Cheating In Primary Election Promises They Will Definitely Not Cheat In General Election.”
  • “Entire Microsoft Network Goes Down After Greg Removes USB Device Without Clicking ‘Eject’ First.
  • No one expects…spinning Ninja dog!

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • I’m still between jobs, so hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    Reminder: Kamala Harris Is Just The Worst

    July 25th, 2024

    Now that most prominent Democrats have dutifully lined up behind Kamala Harris as their 2024 presidential candidate, let’s have a roundup that confirms what regular blog readers already know: Kamala Harris is just the worst.

  • We should all rejoice that Democrats are stuck with Harris, as she’s the next best thing to running against Biden’s ambulatory corpse.

    Short of Joe Biden staying in the race while exemplifying the energy and lucidity of an empty bag of Lay’s Sour Cream and Onion potato chips on the floor of a basement frat party, “passing the torch” to Kamala Harris is the best thing Republicans could have wished for — and simply “the next worst thing” for Democrats who, in their hail mary hour, reached into their quiver and pulled out the political equivalent of a Fran Drescher laugh track on repeat.

    The entire party all of a sudden throwing their endorsement behind a woman who polled worse than a quart of cottage cheese that was left to sit in the sun for six months during the 2020 primary exemplifies the point I made a month or two ago when I argued that politicians have a talent for making the worst possible decisions.

    Not only did Tulsi Gabbard publicly humiliate Kamala Harris on the debate stage during the 2020 primaries, but both polling and the results of Harris’ campaign forced us to one conclusion: most Americans find Harris detestable. And, in 2024, there doesn’t seem to be any indication that this attitude has changed.

    I can’t describe the pleasure I get from watching the stupid decisions the Democratic party makes—namely, selecting Kamala Harris based on her gender and race to be Vice President of the f*cking United States —come back to bite them in the ass.

    The fact is that if Harris was not vice president, she would never be next in line to be the Democratic nominee. She was picked to be vice president only because Joe Biden made his selection based on race and gender hustling, completely ignoring the fact that nobody seemed to like Harris and she doesn’t appear to have the brain torque necessary for the job.

    By circumventing an actual legitimate selection process for Vice President, which should always boil down to a meritocracy as one of the most important positions in the world, Democrats planted a political seed in a pile of horse manure that has now blossomed into poisonous, cackling political fungus. And by moving Kamala Harris into position to be the next Presidential nominee, the party is officially taking the first bite of the fungi they began growing on the dung heap four years ago.

    Beyond identity politics coming back to bite Democrats, the Harris pick makes no obvious sense because she is easily tethered and tied to the horrific last four years President Biden had in office. We are voting to “continue to be burdened by what was”, to use the parlance of Kamala’s time.

  • VP Kamala Harris Had 92% Staff Turnover During Her First Three Years.

    Under Kamala Harris, the Office of the Vice President has been called a “revolving door,” a “staff exodus” of key aides “heading for the exits.”

    That’s not hyperbole from the national media. Our auditors at OpenTheBooks quantified an extraordinarily high 91.5-percent staff turnover rate. We used U.S. Senate disclosures to conduct our investigation and those databases can be downloaded below.

    Elected in November 2020, Harris took the oath of office in January 2021. As of March 31, 2024, only four of the initial 47 staffers from the first year are still employed – consistently and without interruption – by the Vice President.

    Furthermore, the turnover chaos isn’t getting better. In the trailing 12-month period, 24 staffers left — that’s almost half the employees.

    The “top-to-bottom dysfunction” that The Atlantic referenced in October 2023 is shown in the reported payrolls that we captured.

    “In her first year and a half as vice president, Harris saw the departure of her chief of staff, communications director, domestic-policy adviser, national security adviser, and other aides,” the magazine wrote.

    If only that was all who left.

    The semi-annual Report of the Secretary of the Senate, among other things, lists the names, titles and salaries of staff in the Office of the Vice President (OVP).

    In the most recent publishing through March 31, only four staff from the original 47 listed in the 2021 report remained consistently employed and are among the office’s 50 current staff members.

    The Kamala Harris Fabulous Four – here are the names, titles, employment date, and salaries of the four employees most loyal to Kamala Harris:

    • Yael S. Belkind has been assistant to the chief of staff since Jan. 20, 2021, earning $85,924;
    • Nasrina Bargzie was associate counsel since Feb. 10, 2021, now is deputy council, taking home $118,066.
    • Oludayo O. Faderin was associate director from July 2021, then became deputy director of west wing operations, making $85,924.
    • Olivia K. Hartman was hired in August 2021 as advance coordinator and became deputy director of scheduling, making $94,750.
  • Remember how everyone was saying that only Harris could use money raised for Biden? Trump’s lawyers say “Not so fast!

    Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers on Tuesday filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission arguing that Vice President Kamala Harris cannot legally gain control of nearly $100 million donated to President Joe Biden by changing the name of his campaign committee.

    “This is little more than a thinly veiled $91.5 million excessive contribution from one presidential candidate to another, that is, from Joe Biden’s old campaign to Kamala Harris’s new campaign,” Trump general counsel David A. Warrington wrote in a complaint obtained by The Daily Wire. “Contributions by federal candidate committees to other federal candidates are limited to $2,000.”

    “Kamala Harris is in the process of committing the largest campaign finance violation in American history and she is using the Commission’s own forms to do it,” the complaint alleges.

    Candidates for office must create a campaign committee which includes their name, and file a statement of candidacy designating that committee as their fundraising vehicle. Harris did neither. Instead, on Sunday, the campaign treasurer “amended” Biden’s statement of candidacy to swap his name with Kamala’s, and pointed to Harris for President as her committee, using the same ID as the Biden for President committee. It also filed amended paperwork changing the name of that committee.

    “There is no provision in federal campaign finance law for Kamala Harris to take over Joe Biden’s candidacy now by quite literally attempting to become him via an amendment… and making off with all of his cash,” Trump’s lawyers say. “Ms. Harris’ actions constitute a massive excessive contribution from Biden for President to Ms. Harris.”

    With few exceptions, a campaign committee can only be linked to one candidate. Harris’s name has appeared on the Biden committee’s forms since 2020, but Trump’s lawyers argue that does not entitle her to the funds. Had Harris dropped off the ticket to challenge Biden for the presidential nomination, they note, she would not have been able to claim half of the campaign’s war chest.

    “If the Commission were to deem Joe Biden to have ended his candidacy before transferring his campaign funds to Kamala Harris, then this only creates another violation. Federal candidates are prohibited from keeping contributions for elections in which they do not participate,” the complaint said.

    Trump’s lawyers accuse Harris and committee treasurer Keana Spencer, who is in charge of submitting forms to the FEC, of committing “an attempted fraud on the Commission and should be referred to the Department of Justice for investigation and prosecution” as “a conspiracy to obstruct the lawful functions of the United States.”

  • “Democrats’ enjoyment of the Kamala Harris campaign’s ‘new car smell’ may prove short-lived, as a brand new poll shows the vice president trailing former President Trump by a whopping 11 points among likely voters — matching up even worse than President Biden, who trailed by 10.”
  • A thread covering some of Kamala’s greatest hits. Like this:

  • You know who else doesn’t trust Kamala Harris? Democrats.

    This is going to sound immodest,” Kamala Harris told an interviewer in the summer of 2019, “but I’m obviously a top-tier candidate.” That, she said, was why she drew so much fire from her fellow Democratic presidential candidates. But her face-saving appeal did not explain why she wilted in the face of those attacks, made a hash of her campaign, and ultimately dropped out of the race before a single primary vote was cast. Harris’s aborted presidential campaign clarified for Democrats what Republicans already knew — that the former California senator cannot live up to the standards her image-makers set for her. Contrary to the story Democrats are about to try to sell to the public, Harris’s party has never regained confidence in her abilities.

    The trouble signs were apparent early in the vice president’s tenure. Just six months after she was sworn in, sources in Harris’s orbit began telling anyone willing to listen that her office was “not a healthy environment.” She was accused of refusing to read her briefing materials only to turn around and “berate employees” whom she accused of being responsible for her embarrassing unpreparedness. By the summer of 2022, 13 senior Harris staffers had left for greener pastures.

    The chaos unfolding behind closed doors reinforced the impression she cultivated in public as a maladroit executive. The revolt of the staffers coincided with a one-on-one interview with NBC News reporter Lester Holt, in which Harris defended her failure to visit the rapidly deteriorating Southern border by laughing awkwardly while insisting she hadn’t “been to Europe” either. “I don’t understand the point you’re making,” Harris insisted. No one else appeared similarly perplexed.

    As New York Times reporter Astead Herndon later detailed, Harris and her allies were so demoralized by the vice president’s faceplant that she withdrew from the public spotlight. “Over the following year, Harris traveled less often,” he reported, “and she mostly avoided further media interviews, preferring friendly settings like The View and a show on Comedy Central hosted by Charlamagne tha God.”

    “Whatever happened to Kamala Harris?” Los Angeles Times columnist Mark Barabak asked in late 2021. Barabak attributed Harris’s disappearing act to the demands of the vice presidency and the Biden team’s allergy to the “merest hint of personal ambition” shown by the president’s subordinates. But as CNN reported at the time, Harris was being managed by the White House in ways her supporters bitterly resented.

    “Many in the vice president’s circle fume[d]” over the degree to which Harris was “being sidelined,” the dispatch revealed. “The vice president herself has told several confidants she feels constrained in what she’s able to do politically.” Indeed, Harris was “perceived to be in such a weak position” that Democrats had begun to wonder aloud why the White House would allow the vice president to “become so hobbled in the public conscious” — the assumption being that this was done to Harris rather than something she did to herself.

    After spending the first two years of the Biden administration waiting without reward for the competent campaigner Democrats had been promised to emerge, Harris’s allies began to show their impatience. The “painful reality” of Harris’s vice presidency, Times reporters wrote in early February 2023 after speaking to “dozens of Democrats,” was that “she had not risen to the challenge of proving herself as a future leader of the party, much less the country.” These sentiments were not confined to Harris’s embittered rivals within her own party: “Even some Democrats whom her own advisers referred reporters to for supportive quotes confided privately that they had lost hope in her.”

    Democratic leaders soon moved on Harris in a scaled-down version of the very putsch that finally rid them of Joe Biden. In January 2023, Senator Elizabeth Warren was asked if Biden should keep Harris on the ticket in 2024. “I really want to defer to what makes Biden comfortable on his team,” Warren replied. The remark was described as “pretty insulting” by Harris’s staff, and Warren made multiple efforts to apologize to the vice president for her flippancy. But if Warren’s remarks betrayed her doubts about Harris’s political acumen, those doubts weren’t hers alone.

    In September of that year, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper pressed former House speaker Nancy Pelosi for her thoughts on Harris’s potential. “Is Vice President Kamala Harris the best running mate” for Biden, Cooper asked. “He thinks so,” Pelosi replied curtly. In turn, influential House Democrat Jamie Raskin was asked the same question, and he, too, attempted an evasive maneuver. “That’s President Biden’s choice,” Raskin finally said when pressured for a definitive answer. “Raskin, after receiving backlash, later went on a different network to clarify his support,” Herndon noted.

    Today, for want of any realistic alternatives, Democrats are stuck with Harris at the top of the party’s ticket in November. But for all the party’s public displays of bravado, Democrats appear to understand that the vice president needs to operate in a rigidly structured environment . . . or else. “Harris has been cautious and reluctant to participate in events that weren’t tightly controlled,” Axios reported on Monday. For example, when Harris was invited to attend a 2022 dinner at the house owned by the former owner of the Atlantic, David Bradley, Harris was so beset with anxiety that “her staff held a mock dinner beforehand,” with her staffers “playing participants.” The preparation must have proven insufficient because, in the end, Harris declined to attend.

    Say what you want about Trump, but he’s never been afraid to attend a dinner party.

  • Don’t forget that Harris had a huge roll in the wave of crime now engulfing California.

    As attorney general, it was her job to give propositions appearing on the ballot accurate titles and explanatory summaries. In order to fool the voters into passing Proposition 47 — decriminalizing crime — and Proposition 57 — allowing the release of thousands of violent criminals — Harris intentionally lied to the voters about what these laws would do.

    Proposition 47 basically turned every crime into a “misdemeanor.” Grand theft, commercial burglary and possession of illegal narcotics — all misdemeanors.

    Theft of anything worth less than $950 — even theft of a gun — became a misdemeanor, no more consequential than a waiter giving a straw to someone who didn’t ask for one. As Californians have since learned, that $950 cap does not include the tens of thousands of dollars required to repair smashed car windows, store fronts or display cases.

    As a result, smash-and-grab robberies have become the new sport in the Golden State, leaving entire inner-city neighborhoods without a pharmacy. The police don’t even respond to thefts of less than $950. Retail stores have to keep their entire inventory under lock and key, including ordinary items, like shampoo and toothpaste — and those are the ones that aren’t closing permanently. San Francisco’s landmark Union Square shopping district is now plastered with “For Lease” and “Going Out of Business” signs. Roughly 50% of all videos on the internet are clips of California “teens” dashing out of upscale stores with armloads of stolen goods — Gucci, Prada, Burberry, Luis Vuitton.

    Last year, Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco topped the list of the U.S. cities with the most retail theft, according to the National Retail Federation. A fourth California city, Sacramento, came in at No. 7. These days, when a customer tries to actually pay for something, the cashier calls the manager.

    The shoplifting is so pervasive that, earlier this year, a Target shoplifter strolled out of the store right past Gov. Gavin Newsom. During a CNN report on the rash of thefts in San Francisco, three shoplifters hit the CVS as they were filming.

    Also good for business: Tourists are warned not to rent cars, because they’ll only be broken into. Drug addicts clog the sidewalks, writhing in their own needles and fecal matter.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • A greatest hits package of her willing to endorse every bit of leftwing idiocy to come down the pike, including defunding the police:

  • And a greatest hits compilations of some of her most cringe-worthy speaking moments:

  • Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is also not a fan:

  • As California attorney general, she refused to reduce prison populations by releasing non-violent offenders, despite a court order.
  • She’s lazy and not very bright:

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Let’s also not forget that she’s a liar, even about trivial crap:

  • You know how Democrats crowed about that one poll that showed Harris was leading Trump? Yeah, they oversampled Democrats, just as you would expect. Always check the crosstabs…
  • It sounds like the Democratic Media Complex (including Axios, GovTrack and Wikipedia) are trying to whitewash Harris’ record even as we speak. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • MSNBC did a focus group of Wisconsin women and, boy, did it not go well for her.

    “How do you perceive Vice President Harris compared to President Biden in terms of competency and experience?” Jordan asked.

    One woman said she believes Harris is “worse” while another said, “She doesn’t even know what’s going on at the border. That’s what she was supposed to be doing.”

    Jordan asked when the group believes the United States will have its first woman president.

    “When there’s a competent one,” a different voter said.

    Another voter said, “I don’t get a good feel for her” while a voter named Mary said, “I think she’s an idiot.”

    Jordan asked Mary why she feels this way about Harris.

    “Because she hasn’t done anything in the time that she’s had. We don’t know anything about her as far as her three years so far in the White House. She’s not real smart.”

  • I can’t find a full video of that, just this snippet:

    Either MSNBC or YouTube (or probably both) sure doesn’t want you to find that interview…

  • Grant For Social Justice Org For Illegal Aliens = Widespread Child Sex Abuse

    July 24th, 2024

    In addition to setting the stage for amnesty to create more Democratic Party voters, the Biden Administration’s aiding and abetting an illegal alien invasion of the southern border has allowed leftwing social justice organizations to rake in billions of dollars in federal subsidies to house, feed, etc. those same hordes of illegal aliens.

    One organization that took federal money was Austin-based Southwest Key, an organization that claims to be on the frontier of social justice, and now they’re accused of allowing wildspread child sex abuse to flourish on their watch.

    Disturbing allegations are detailed in a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) against a large Texas-based nonprofit organization tasked and funded by the federal government for years with housing unaccompanied minor children (UMC) who are not legally present in the country.

    According to data from the Congressional Research Service, the number of UMCs entering the United States has spiked to record numbers in recent years, with 2021 and 2022 seeing over 140,000 UMCs annually — one of many elements of the ongoing crisis at the southern border.

    The lawsuit explains that UMCs are children largely from Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and all over the world who arrive at the U.S. southern border alone, with no parent or legal guardian. Immigration authorities turn the UMCs over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).

    ORR then uses grant funding, usually by hiring nonprofit housing organizations, to provide shelter care for the UMCs in the “least restrictive setting possible” and that “will be in the best interest of the child.”

    In this case, one of those nonprofits is Austin-based Southwest Key, which from 2015 to 2023 received $3 billion in federal grant funding and operates 29 facilities in Texas, Arizona, and California, housing 6,350 children.

    The DOJ said during this timeline, multiple Southwest Key employees subjected children as young as 5 years of age to “repeated and unwelcome sexual abuse, harassment, misconduct, and hostile housing environments.”

    The suit further details allegations that the children were victims of sexual abuse, rape, and inappropriate touching. The perpetrators employed by Southwest Key took advantage of the multiple vulnerabilities to carry out their crimes, such as language barriers.

    The DOJ also said that despite Southwest Key knowing their employees were harming the children in their care, they did nothing, violating the federal Fair Housing Act.

    Graphic details are included in the lawsuit, including how one of the workers sexually abused a five-year-old girl and an eight-year-old girl at the facility in El Paso, and kept them silent about their abuse by threatening to kill their families if they told anyone.

    Pages of the lawsuit lay out in horrific detail similar instances occurring at Southwest Key facilities across Texas.

    Remember how “kids in cages” under the Trump Administration (never mind that it started under Obama) was the Worst Thing Ever? So instead of cages, illegal alien children now have to endure rape at the hands of those paid to take care of them.

    Funny how social justice Democrats have shifted their focus to the homeless and illegal aliens, two constituencies among the least able to complain that they’re being abused, or that promised services aren’t being delivered, making it all the easier to siphon off allocated funds for graft.

    And illegal alien children are the least capable of complaining of all…

    Has Josh Shapiro Already Been Anointed Kamala’s Veep Pick?

    July 23rd, 2024

    It’s obvious that someone is scripting the Democratic Party’s dance steps through this eventful two weeks, from Biden stepping down to Kamala’s ascension to the party dutifully falling in line behind her. I wonder if those same powers behind the throne have already anointed Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate.

    This has been a suspicion since his name first appeared among the likes of Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer (and 2020 retreads like Elizabeth Warren) as a possible replacement for Slow Joe at the convention. After all, male, pale and Jewish hardly fits the profile of the intersectionality-obsessed and Hamas-besotted cadres of the Party’s rank and file, and he’s only been governor since 2023. I also noticed a whole lot of media outlets had “Is Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro going to be Kamala’s running mate” pieces cued up and ready to go within an hour of the “Biden’s out” announcement.

    But look at this Google trending chart I constructed.

    Since it was announced that Biden was dropping out of 2024 Presidential campaign, it looks like Shapiro has been the most searched name among veep possibilities. Certainly being governor of a must-win swing state for Democrats must have something to do with it. Maybe they feel that Shapiro can keep the race close enough in Pennsylvania that the 3 AM drops of ballot fraud won’t seem so obvious.

    Also, it appears that Democratic megadonor Alex Soros is a fan of Shapiro’s.

    If Shapiro is the party’s pick, it will only add fuel to the theory that the Soros clan is the one actually pulling the Democratic Party’s strings…