Soros Prosecutors = Paradise For Sex Traffickers

January 17th, 2024

It isn’t just petty criminals and the psychotic that soft-on-crime, Soros-backed DAs have opened the door for. It’s also made blue cities paradise for sex traffickers.

While politicians call attention to January as Human Trafficking Awareness Month, a Texas mom wants to make lawmakers aware of how the state’s justice system is failing victims like her daughter.

Her daughter’s sex trafficking case made international headlines in April 2022 when the teenager was sexually assaulted and forced into prostitution after disappearing from a Dallas Mavericks game.

She’s now safe, but her parents remain frustrated that Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot failed to prosecute a suspect linked to the trafficking who was charged with sexually assaulting the 15-year-old girl.

Creuzot, as you may remember, owes his office in good measure to the $400,000 George Soros-related entities donated to his campaign in 2022.

“As a mom and as a woman, this is a hill I’m willing to die on,” the victim’s mother told Texas Scorecard.

She called the months since her daughter’s traumatic experience a “rollercoaster” and blames missteps by Dallas police and Creuzot’s office as well as “loopholes” in state law for allowing the man, who her daughter says raped her, to go free.

The victim, who lives in North Richland Hills, went missing from the American Airlines Center while attending a basketball game with her father. He raised the alarm after she went to the bathroom and didn’t return.

Surveillance video showed the victim leaving with Emanuel Jose Cartagena.

Ten days later, she was recovered in Oklahoma City after a private investigator, recommended to the girl’s parents by friends, found online photos advertising her for sex.

Local police immediately arrested three suspects and charged them with human trafficking, conspiracy, and computer crimes. Multiple people involved in the sex trafficking ring were eventually charged and sentenced in Oklahoma, but neither Cartagena nor other men seen on the Dallas surveillance video were found at the Oklahoma crime scene.

Nine months later, in January 2023, Cartagena was arrested and charged in Dallas with sexual assault of a child.

The victim told police Cartagena had sexually assaulted her in Dallas before she was taken to Oklahoma.

On October 30, 2023, a Dallas County grand jury no-billed Cartagena, meaning jurors did not see sufficient evidence to prosecute him for the crime.

“I was astounded,” said the mom.

The trafficking victim’s mom recounted multiple missteps by Dallas police and prosecutors.

First, she said the Dallas Police Department refused to let her husband file a missing persons report. Police classify older missing teens as “runaways,” she said, even though they are under the age of consent. They told the family to file a report with their local police, 40 miles away from where their daughter disappeared.

“That’s an enormous problem,” she said.

While Dallas PD idled, the private investigator tracked down her daughter “within a matter of hours” by searching online ads.

She said once her daughter was recovered, Dallas officials declined an invitation from authorities in Oklahoma to come up and gather information that could help with their investigation.

Ahead of the grand jury hearing the case, the victim’s mom said her lawyer offered the Dallas prosecutor more documentation about her daughter’s case, but the prosecutor refused, saying, “If I need it, I’ll subpoena it.”

She also said her daughter, who was too young to consent to sex, picked Cartagena out of a lineup as the man who raped her. Yet the grand jury still sided with Cartagena, and he went free.

“At the end of the day, take out all the trafficking stuff, how does that happen?” she asked.

After the grand jury no-billed Cartagena, she said Creuzot told her that prosecutors had followed “office policy” by not recommending an indictment and he would not re-present the case with the additional evidence.

It sounds like Creuzot’s office didn’t get an indictment because they didn’t want to get an indictment.

A Dallas Morning News opinion piece published this month says Cartagena has a history of promoting and compelling prostitution of minors and cites two Harris County cases in 2015 and 2016.

Prior bad acts are generally inadmissible as evidence, but the victim’s mom says Creuzot knew, or should have known, that Cartagena has a history of sexually exploiting children and recommended an indictment.

“The guy who did this had done it before and will probably do it again,” she said.

“I’m not done fighting,” she added. “I can’t let this go.”

The victim’s mom said, “Aside from the goodness of God, we wouldn’t have my daughter. We are lucky. My daughter is safe,” she added. “But we are not the norm. What about all the other victims?”

She noted that Texas is second in the nation for sex trafficking, behind New York, with Dallas and Houston as hot spots.

“It’s not just due to the state’s size,” she said. “It’s our laws and loopholes that go in the criminals’ favor.”

A 2016 study found that 79,000 minors were victims of sex trafficking in Texas. Child sex trafficking has continued to grow as traffickers use the internet to exploit children for money.

It probably doesn’t help that the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation Anti-Trafficking Unit (ATU) was so badly run that it was disbanded earlier this year.

But it sounds like Emanuel Jose Cartagena would be behind bars right now were Creuzot and his fellow Soros-backed prosecutors not so intent on keeping him on the street.

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Posted in Crime, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 11 Comments »

Pro-Palestinian Makes Scene At Abbott Event, Finds Out What “Don’t Mess With Texas” Means

January 16th, 2024

More and more, social justice types are finding out that the general public simply isn’t willing to put up with their obnoxious “protest” actions anymore.

Especially in Texas.

One of the usual Lilly-livered pro-Palestinian sorts crashed a Greg Abbott event to protest Israel pounding the snot out of Hamas. He quickly found out why you don’t mess with Texas.

A pro-Palestine heckler attempted to disrupt Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s address in Collin County, Texas but was swiftly drowned out by the crowd’s boos.

The heckler was grabbed and forced out of the event by the audience, with several people wearing cowboy hats seen escorting him out.

The incident occurred during a campaign gathering for Abbott’s re-election.

Note: The next Texas gubernatorial election isn’t until 2026. Abbott is getting quite the jump here.

“Grabbed and forced out” is a nice way to put it. He got manhandled.

If you make an ass of yourself, disrupting private events you’re not invited to or blocking traffic in the road, don’t be surprised when people get physical with your ass.

Playtime is over.

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Posted in Social Justice Warriors, Texas, video | 8 Comments »

Snowpocalypse Not: 2024 Edition

January 15th, 2024

Since there’s not enough reporting of the negative case, I just wanted to report that power is not out in Austin right now.

A powerful cold front (that much talked-about “polar vortex”) rolled into the state over the weekend and dropped temperatures here in central Texas into the high teens. Anyone who remembers the ice storms of 2021 and 2023 knows that this is potentially a recipe for widespread power outages.

That does not appear to be the case this time. ERCOT is reporting enough supply to meet demand.

Austin Energy’s outage map currently shows 5 outages and 38 customers without power. Which is, in a city as big as Austin, statistical noise.

Likewise, the state outage map shows no widespread outages, with the biggest being some 8,000+ customers (among 2,000,000+) for Oncor (Dallas Metroplex).

Maybe ERCOT was better prepared this time. Or maybe it was the fact this system didn’t bring nearly the amount of freezing rain and snow we saw in 2021 and 2023. Or maybe it’s just the widespread arboreal destruction we saw in 2021 and 2023 means that the overwhelming majority of trees and limbs likely to take out power lines have already been cleared out.

In related news, HEB was supposedly picked clean of the usual emergency staples (bread, milk, etc.) this weekend, but in my trip today, the bread aisle was mostly full, with just a few empty shelf spots, and the rest of the store seemed similarly well-stocked. (Save the cheese and luncheon meat case, but a sign said that was a freezer issue.)

Here in Austin, it’s supposed to be in the teens until midweek, then fluctuate between just above to just below freezing through the weekend. here’s hoping the power stays on all through that.

And here, for prepping and filthy lucre purposes, is my most recent prepping supply list.

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Posted in Austin, Texas | 8 Comments »

What Changed Jordan Petersen’s Mind

January 14th, 2024

Here’s a short, interesting interview segment of Jordan Peterson with Dave Ramsey talking about why he stopped being a socialist, and how conservatives have trouble articulating their principles.

  • “I was very young, when I was 16, 13 to 16, I worked with a Socialist Party in the province of Alberta, which is where I grew up. I was fortunate enough to know the leader of the Socialist Party in in my home province of Alberta, who was the only opposition member of parliament in the whole province. It was like 36 conservatives and one socialist, and the only reason the people in my home district voted for this man was because he was a good man. He was a labor leader, and most of the socialists at that time in Canada were former labor leaders, and they did stand at least in part for the genuine interests of the working class.

  • “I worked with them for a few years, and I got disenchanted, in part, because when I went to the conventions of the party, I met the radical types, and they were the same as they are now. I thought ‘What the hell’s up with you people? You’re just bitter and resentful.'”
  • “You claim to be caring for the poor but that’s just a lie. You’re just bitter and resentful.”
  • “So that set up cognitive dissonance in my imagination. I thought, well, if this end of the political distribution has the moral upper hand why the hell is it producing all these resentful activists?”

  • I served on the Board of Governors of this little college that I went to, Grand Prairie Regional College. And all of the people who were on the board were people, I presume, people like you. They were all owners of small businesses, and they’d been successful. And the towns that I grew up in in Northern Alberta were, like, 50 years old. You know, they’d just been scraped out of the prairie. It was the last of the frontier. And everyone there was an immigrant, so most of the people who had started these small businessmen were immigrants who came there with nothing and built something. And even though I didn’t share their political views, I found them individually admirable. And I also found that the same applied to the small businessman that I worked for at that point. I thought “Well, you’ve actually done something with life.” And there’s a solidity there, a productive solidity exactly. And so it was at that point that I realized I didn’t know anything, and just stopped working on the political front.

  • “I realized that it was the people who had built productively that had the moral upper hand. They might not have been very good at expressing their ethos, intellectually or explicitly, but in terms of their character, they had they had established a victory.”
  • “I think this is actually the problem on the conservative front broadly across the world. They’re people of solid character, but they’re not good at articulating the foundations of their ethos, and then when the radical leftists come along and take them apart ethically, they don’t know what to do.”
  • “Someone comes up to you on the street and says ‘Justify marriage!’ and you think, well, I thought we sorted that out like 25,000 years ago. You don’t know what to say, you have no idea how to justify marriage.”
  • Discussion of Christmas tree symbolism (light of Christ in the darkest time of the year) snipped.
  • “When you’re married, you’re acting out a very deep ethos as well, and you don’t know what it is, but everyone’s agreed on it. And a lot of your conservative virtues are things that everybody’s already agreed on. And so when an intellectual comes along and says justify that, you don’t know what the hell to say, and then you can be picked apart.”
  • Same thing for the profit motive. “If you’re generating profit, it’s obviously the case that that can be used by you for narrow personal reasons, right? You can buy a you can buy a yacht and fill it with supermodels and cocaine if you want. But people don’t.”
  • “We’re in a situation where you probably do have to learn to articulate it. Because what’s happening is that that central ethos, that traditional ethos, even voluntary exchange, it’s under such vicious attack that if you don’t learn to defend it and articulate it, it’s going to be taken from you.”
  • “The problem is, you probably have something better to do. But it is doesn’t matter, because at the moment if you abdicate that responsibility, then the radicals are going to take it.” As they did in education.

    • Food for thought…

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    Posted in Social Justice Warriors, video | 11 Comments »

    Busting F-35 Myths

    January 13th, 2024

    Lockheed Martin just assembled the 1,000th F-35, making it one of the most widely produced and successful modern fighters ever. Here’s a pretty good video busting various myths about the F-35.

  • “There are more F-35s in the world today than there are all other stealth aircraft ever built by all nations combined.”
  • “There are more F-35s on the deck of the USS Tripoli in this single picture than there are stealth fighters in all of Russia.” Eh, supposedly Russia has managed to finally get 20 Su-57s into service, which matches the 20 plane test deployment of the F-35Bs to the Tripoli. But it’s Russia, so several shakers of salt are in order.
  • “The F-35 lightning II is the seventh most widely operated fighter on the planet. This program began with nine nations involved in its development, but today its list of buyers has stretched all the way to 17.”
  • “In the past last few years, F-35s have accumulated some 773,000 hours in the sky spread out across 469,000 sorties.”
  • The F-35 had a troubled development cycle, but pilots love the finished product.
  • They “make older fourth generation fighters significantly more capable just by flying nearby, thanks to their incredible degree of sensor fusion and the data they can securely transmit to other aircraft flying in the vicinity.”
  • Myth #1: “All they do is crash.” “This is an excellent example of a combination of recency and availability biases. F-35s seem as though they crash often because there are so many of them in the sky on on any given day.”
  • “The truth is, the F-35 is actually the safest modern fighter ever developed. If you go back and look at the crash data of the F-35 during its first 12 years of service, as compared to the A-10, F-15, F-16 or F-22, you’ll find that the F-35 has a significantly better track record.”
  • “By this point in the A-10 service life, 9% of its airframes had already been lost in accidents. By this point in the F-16’s, that number was 13%. But today, the F-35’s loss rate is about 1%.”
  • Myth #2: “The F-35 is too expensive top operate.” “There really used to be something to this. As recently as 2016, it was reported that F-35s cost an average average of about $67,000 per hour to operate.”
  • The Air Force and Lockheed Martin have been driving this number down. By “2023, that operating cost had been reduced by more than 80%, down to right around $28,000 per hour. That’s only a little bit more than an F-15.”
  • Myth #3: “The F-35 can’t dogfight.” “First of all it probably shouldn’t. It was designed to operate like a sniper.”
  • “Most of the claims that say it can’t dogfight stem from a 2015 report published by War is Boring about an F-35a squaring off in a duel against a block 40 F-16d, and in that fight the F-16 definitely came out on top.” The problem is, the F-35 in that match was literally the second F-35 ever built.
  • “It didn’t have the vast majority of combat systems F-35s fly with today, including the helmet and electro-optical targeting system that allows F-35 pilots to target enemy aircraft without having to point the nose of the jet directly at them, as well as the F-35’s radar absorbance skin that would limit the F-16’s ability to get a radar lock on its opponent.”
  • “And to make matters even worse, that particular F-35 was flying with software restrictions on board that prevented the pilot from pushing the airframe too hard, limiting it to under 7g maneuvers, a restriction the F-16 obviously didn’t have.”
  • “The F-35 was forced to fly with both wings tied behind its back and it ended up losing against one of the most prolific dogfighters in history.”
  • “Most pilots say they’d still rather avoid that by taking out the enemy before they ever even know it’s there.”
  • Myth #4: “The U.S. has already spent more than $1.7 trillion on the F-35.” That’s only the projected cost over the entire lifetime of the program.
  • Myth #5: “The F-35 has abysmal readiness rates.” There’s some truth to this, as readiness rates sit at 55%. But a big reason is the F-35 repair depot infrastructure hasn’t been fully built out yet. That’s supposed to be finished in 2027. “At which point the F-35’s readiness rates are expected to jump across the force to just about comparable with the F-15 and F-16.”
  • It’s not all roses: The F-35 has significant delays and cost overruns for the Tech Refresh 3 upgrade. “That will provide a 37-fold increase in onboard computing power 20 times the onboard data storage, and new double redundant display processors with five times the power to give the pilots far more situational awareness than ever before.”
  • “And Tech Refresh 3 is really just an appetizer that will lead to the Block 4 upgrade, which will be such a massive massive increase in capability that I have long argued the Block 4 F-35 deserves its own designation.”
  • “This new version of the F-35 will have a newer, even more advanced onboard radar that’s rumored to use Gallium Nitride transmit and receive modules that will dethrone the F-35’s current AN/AGP-81 radar as the most advanced and powerful radar ever affixed to a fighter.”
  • Plus new weapons and a bump from four to six internal weapons slots.
  • “Air Force secretary Frank Kendall has already stated plainly that in the future Block 4 F-35s will be flying with their own AI enabled drone wingmen, just like the sixth generation fighters in development today, Meaning the F-35 really will be a bridge to the sixth generation of fighter.” As in everything related to AI, the devil is in the details.

    • Like other modern fighter development programs, the F-35 has had its teething problems, but there’s no nation in the world that wants to face one in combat…

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    Posted in Military, video | 10 Comments »

    LinkSwarm For January 12, 2024

    January 12th, 2024

    Superman gets tired of Iran’s catspaws tugging on his cape, the Biden Recession has both inflation and budget deficits soaring, another polar vortex barrels down on Texas, and the crazy-eyed girlfriend of a corrupt Democrat shows up on the Epstein list. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • The Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen just had to keep fucking around, so now they’ve found out.

    The U.S. and Britain launched air strikes in Yemen on Thursday in response to the Iran-backed Houthis’ recent attacks against vessels in the Red Sea.

    The strikes came hours after White House national-security spokesman John Kirby called on the Houthis to “stop these attacks” and warned that the group would “bear the consequences for any failure to do so.”

    The militants have launched 27 attacks on vessels in the Red Sea since November 19, the U.S. military said earlier on Thursday. The group says the attacks are in protest of the Israel–Hamas war.

    The retaliatory strikes targeted a source of the group’s attacks, Bloomberg News reported, noting that heavy explosions were seen in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa and the port city of Al Hudaydah. The attacks were carried out with support from Australia, the Netherlands, Bahrain, and Canada, while the U.K. contributed aircraft.

    President Biden confirmed the strikes in a statement on Thursday evening, explaining that the action was “in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea — including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history.”

    “These attacks have endangered U.S. personnel, civilian mariners, and our partners, jeopardized trade, and threatened freedom of navigation,” he said, noting that more than 50 countries had been impacted by the attacks on commercial shipping, while crews from more than 20 countries have been threatened or taken hostage in acts of piracy.

    “More than 2,000 ships have been forced to divert thousands of miles to avoid the Red Sea — which can cause weeks of delays in product shipping times. And on January 9, Houthis launched their largest attack to date — directly targeting American ships,” Biden said.

    Suchomimus has taken a break from his Ukraine war work to do a video on the strike:

    Plus another one on the locations hit:

    Is there a Habitual Linecrosser video for this strike? Yes, yes there is:

  • The Biden Recession bites even deeper, with higher inflation and record food prices. And those are just the official numbers. Food inflation seems a hell of a lot higher than official numbers are letting on…
  • Plus the U.S. budget deficit soared 50% in December.
  • Trump prosecutor Fani Willis hired the married man she was committing adultery with to help prosecute Trump.

    Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis appointed a former romantic partner to lead the prosecution against the former president and his associates, a former Trump campaign official and co-defendant alleged in a court filing late Monday.

    “The district attorney and the special prosecutor have been seen in private together in and about the Atlanta area and believed to have co-habited in some form or fashion at a location owned by neither of them,” the court document submitted by Michael Roman’s legal representatives argues. Roman served briefly as a special assistant and researcher to President Trump.

    The submission does not offer any explicit proof of the DA’s connection to special prosecutor Nathan Wade, but instead claims “sources close to both the special prosecutor and the district attorney have confirmed they had an ongoing, personal relationship.” Wade was paid over half a million dollars throughout his involvement in the Trump election-interference case, which Willis has overseen and authorized.

    How long until the radical left argues that it’s perfectly normal with elected black female Democrats like Fani Willis and Kamala Harris to commit adultery with other Democrats to further their career, and it’s just those right-wing troglodytes who are hung up over it?

  • “Ex-girlfriend of disgraced NJ Sen. Bob Menendez took part in orgies with Jeffrey Epstein and victim Virginia Giuffre.” Before dropping one of those “that’s hot” comments, you might want to look Bob’s dirty, dirty girlfriend with her crazy, crazy eyes. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • And speaking of hoes, has feminism and “hoeflation” destroyed the west?

    It’s a problem in the western world that is rarely discussed in the media beyond puff-piece articles and glancing polls that avoid connecting the dots. The precipitous decline of dating, committed relationships and marriage along with a flatline in population in the past couple decades in the US is treated as a novelty issue rather than the threat to the stability of civilization that it actually is. History shows that without the traditional family structure, numerous ugly societal consequences follow.

    One could argue, though, that the situation is far worse than that. We may be heading into a future where families become a novelty, and many argue that the root cause is feminism and the hyperinflated delusions of progressive women.

    In order to understand the problem we have to look at the stats.

    More than 50% of American women are still childless by age 30. By age 35 fertility goes into steep decline with women having a 15% chance of becoming pregnant, and a less than 5% chance of motherhood at age 40. Meaning, the best window of opportunity for women to find a compatible partner and build a family is in their 20s.

    Feminists argue, though, that this is the time in a woman’s life when they should be building a career and having fun. Family life, they say, is an artificial prison “created by the patriarchy” in order to oppress the fairer sex. Corporate media and Hollywood entertainment often reinforce this narrative and encourage unrealistic life goals.

    The propaganda has generated what many refer to as the “Female Happiness Paradox.” Surveys show that increased power, job access and responsibility for women in society since the 1970s has also led to a diametrically opposed decline in overall happiness for those same women. The correlation suggests the exact opposite of what feminism originally promised and that the ideology has been a net negative.

    Though some will argue that a general decline in economic conditions is the real cause, surveys show that women have suffered a far more pronounced drop in happiness compared to men. Meaning, men were already acclimated to the struggles of the workaday world and their roles as providers and protectors. Women were happy until they joined men in the trenches.

    For men, the reaction has been to back away from the dating scene and the double standards involved. Over 63% of men under the age of 30 are now single; that’s up from 51% in 2019. The majority of single men say this is by choice and that they are seeking to avoid relationships altogether. Why? The consensus appears to be that modern western women cost too much money and cause too much trouble.

    Fear of failed marriage is one aspect that has the younger generation of men on edge, with family courts still largely in favor of women in divorce settlements and child custody. This is one reason why marriage rates have declined by 60% since the 1970s. However, the obstacles go well beyond divorce and into a new culture of female entitlement.

    The word on the street is “Hoeflation”: The dramatic increase in cost for men today to maintain a relationship with a woman while the quality of women continues to go down. That is to say, it is an increase in female expectations vs what they bring to the table in a relationship.

    In other words, women of the past used to have something to offer beyond sexual companionship, from greater femininity, greater potential for motherhood, less combativeness and narcissism, as well as a superior ability to raise children and maintain a home. Such traits are highly attractive to men even after 60 years of widespread feminism, but are seen as non-existent among women under 30 in 2023.

    It should be noted that “Hoeflation” seems to be directly linked to progressive influences, and not all women fall into this category. Unfortunately, around 71% of young women identify with progressive beliefs, as opposed to young men who are only 53% progressive. It should also be noted that progressive today means something a lot different from what it meant in the 1990s (progressive now means woke, or extreme leftist cultism).

  • Taiwan is having a presidential election.
  • Speaking of “too damn much foreign news this week,” Ecuador has exploded in a drug war.

    Terrified journalists being forced to kneel in a TV studio by gunmen pointing high-powered weapons at their heads as the cameras rolled, police officers pleading for their lives after being kidnapped on duty.

    The scenes which have unfolded in Ecuador show the extent to which this once peaceful haven in Latin America has descended into violence.

    Snip.

    Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, has ordered the armed forces to restore order in the country after days of unrest which saw two gang leaders escape from jail, prison guards held hostage, and explosive devices set off in a number of cities across the country.

    In the most dramatic attack, a group of armed men forced their way into the studios of TC Television in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, and tried to force one of the presenters to read out a message live on air.

    The gunmen were eventually overpowered by soldiers and have been arrested but the live footage of the stand-off between the hooded men and the armed forces while TC staff cowered on the floor has terrified Ecuadoreans.

  • “Ohio House Votes to Override DeWine’s Veto of Bill Banning Child Gender Medicalization.” An Ohio senate vote on overriding the veto is scheduled for January 24. Second Amendment victory: ” In Stunning About-Face, 9th Circuit Prohibits California from Banning Concealed Carry in Public Places.”

    From the court’s Order Granting Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction:

    California will not allow concealed carry permitholders to effectively practice what the Second Amendment promises. [The new law’s] coverage is sweeping, repugnant to the Second Amendment, and openly defiant of the Supreme Court. The law designates twenty-six categories of places, such as hospitals, public transportation, places that sell liquor for on-site consumption, playgrounds, parks, casinos, stadiums, libraries, amusement parks, zoos, places of worship, and banks, as “sensitive places” where concealed carry permitholders cannot carry their handguns. SB2 turns nearly every public place in California into a “sensitive place,” effectively abolishing the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding and exceptionally qualified citizens to be armed and to defend themselves in public.

    Slowly but surely, Bruen is stopping the gun grabbers dead in their tracks.

  • “Director of ‘Bronx Rises Against Gun Violence,’ Caught With Illegal Guns, Sentenced To Prison…Michael Rodriguez, 49, the now-former director of “Bronx Rises Against Gun Violence” was sentenced to ten years in state prison following his arrest last summer on drug and gun charges.”
  • Rand Paul declares himself Never Nikki.
  • Our government in action: “Big Gov’t Raids Small Amish Farmer Who Refuses To Participate In The Industrial Meat/Milk Complex.”
  • “‘A Significant Shift’: Blue Collar Democrats Switching To Republican In ‘Deep Purple’ Pennsylvania.”

    Nearly 59,000 registered Pennsylvania Democrats left the party in 2023; that makes more voters than fans needed to fill the capacity of the Franklin Field Football Stadium at the University of Pennsylvania.

    Of those nearly 59,000 who left the Democratic Party, 36,950 switched to the Republican party, and 21,644 switched their party affiliation to “other,” the category the Pennsylvania Department of State uses in its data to cover parties such as Green and Libertarian.

    “As the Democrat Party tilts further to the progressive left, more historically traditional, working-class families are moving to the Republican Party, both in terms of how they vote and how they’re registered,” conservative political strategist Charlie Gerow told the Epoch Times.

    Faster, please.

  • That’s one reason why Democrats want to put an abortion referendum on the ballot in November to drive Democrat turnout. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Scary traffic controller incompetence via Instapundit:

    DTO is the airport for Denton, Texas, a college town northwest of Fort Worth.

  • “Georgia Tech researchers claim they have created ‘the world’s first functional semiconductor made from graphene.’ Importantly, the research team’s epitaxial graphene is claimed to be compatible with conventional microelectronics processing methods and is thus a realistic silicon alternative. Moreover, this refined material achieves a desirable band gap for electronics applications and has latent potential for future quantum computing devices.” Higher band gap is necessary for switching a circuit from on to off; it’s what puts the “semi” in “semiconductors.”
  • The upper Midwest needs to get ready for the cicadapocalypse.

    Billions of insects are predicted to burst out of the ground in the United States during late spring, in an event which hasn’t happened for more than 200 years.

    The red-eyed, winged insects called periodical cicadas, emerge in 13 to 17-year cycles and are completely harmless.

    In 2024, two of these groups – called Brood XIII (meaning 13) and Brood XIX (19) – are predicted to burst from the ground together for the first time since 1803.

    The US states of Wisconsin and Illinois will be mainly affected as billions of the bugs making a loud clicking noise will fill the air, cover branches, sign posts and pavements for about a month later this year.

    Interesting how the BBC feels it has to explain what Roman numerals mean…

  • “Three Austin Police Department (APD) SWAT officers have been cleared by a Travis County grand jury following a deadly shooting last year.” As well they should be. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Another day, another machete wielding lunatic keeping Austin weird. Steve Adler may be out of office, but his legacy lives on…
  • “Scooter injuries nearly tripled across the U.S. from 2016 to 2020, with a concurrent increase in severe injuries requiring orthopedic and plastic surgery over the same period.”
  • The Texans host a playoff game tomorrow after winning three games each in the previous two seasons. But ESPN hates rookie quarterback phenom C. J. Stroud giving all the glory to God.
  • Darth Hoodie leaves the Patriots. Plus…
  • Nick Saban retires. That’s a lot of turnover among legendary winners in one week…
  • Echo: “When it comes to casting roles like this, you usually have to choose between fighters who can’t act, or actors who can’t fight. But unfortunately, Alaqua Cox can’t seem to do either…Because she can’t speak, she really needs to sell the performance with her body language and facial expressions. The problem is, she doesn’t seem to have any.”
  • “Alabama man strips buck naked, cannonballs into Bass Pro Shop aquarium, knocks himself unconscious.”
  • “History Made As United Airlines Reveals First All-Dachshund Flight Crew.” It really would be an adorable way to die…

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Budget, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Regulation, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, video | 5 Comments »

    The Illegal Alien Bus War

    January 11th, 2024

    Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s strategy of bussing illegal aliens to sanctuary cities is having its desired effect, namely sharing the pain of the Biden Administration’s refusal to enforce border controls with the blue cities that encourage such behavior.

  • By declaring themselves a “sanctuary city,” New York brought this catastrophe on themselves. Here’s New York’s Democratic governor Kathy Hochul rhapsodizing about all those “benefits” illegal aliens would bring New York City:

    As you know, the Statue of Liberty is inscribed. It says “Give me your tired, you’re poor, your huddled young [sic] masses yearning to be [sic] free/The wretched refuse to [sic] a teeming shore.” That statement encapsulizes our values. We want people to come here, despite where they came from from, where despite the circumstances that drove them to this country, into this state, we see, say, you are welcome here. We are welcome with open arms, and we’ll work to keep you safe. We’ll not only house you, but we’ll protect you. And the richness of the culture and the diversity and the food and the restaurants that we know are going to be coming, uh, because of these efforts are, are are beyond measure. It’s just, it’s an extraordinary part of our story and it’s woven into the story of New York and it makes us more vibrant.

    That “vibrant” includes higher crime rates, soaring budgets and kicking Americans out of their schools and dwellings to make room for the illegal aliens Democrats are desperate to flood the country with. And since when did anyone, illegal alien or otherwise, have a right to free housing at the taxpayer’s expense?

  • So too says New York City Democratic mayor Eric Adams: “New York City is the welcoming mat for the entire globe.”
  • Nate the Lawyer: “So the city of New York wanted migrants? Texas and Arizona sent them migrants.”
  • Abbott: “It was just Texas and Arizona that bore the brunt of all of the chaos, and all the problems that come with it. Now the rest of America is understanding exactly what is going on.”
  • Nate the Lawyer: “So we’re all on the same page. New York: ‘We love migrants, we want migrants, we need migrants.’ Texas and Arizona: ‘We have millions of migrants, we’ll send them to you, then, since you want the migrants.’ And now all hell is broken loose in New York and they don’t want the migrants anymore.”
  • Adams has declared a state of emergency, saying the city is burning through $1 billion this fiscal year on illegal aliens, leaving no funding for other issues.”
  • Adams: “If these Trends continue we will be over 100,000 in the year.” Aw, you didn’t seem worried about millions flooding into Texas, but 100,000 arrive in the city you welcomed them into and it’s the end times.
  • Adams: “This issue will destroy New York City. Destroy New York City.” Then shouldn’t you repeal the sanctuary city law?
  • Now Hochul is saying don’t come to New York City.
  • Nate the Lawyer: “New York City has decided to pass laws and regulations to close its own border to stop migrant buses from coming into the city and even going as far as to sue the bus companies to stop them from bringing migrants into the city.”
  • “Why is it good enough for New York to close their, border but not good enough for the country to close their border? It’s almost like they’re saying ‘We’re okay with the migrants coming into the country and being someone else’s problem but they can’t come to New York.” That’s exactly what they’re saying: “Illegal alien costs for thee, but not for me.”
  • Some weather discussion snipped.
  • They pushed illegal aliens into a school for shelter and sent the kids home. “That has a lot of parents fighting mad.”
  • Without schools as babysitters, parents have to stay home.
  • “Migrants are literally killing each other to stay in the shelters.”
  • “The immigration system is is destroyed it’s messed up, and I am extremely happy that the liberals in the Northeast are experiencing the fruits of their labor…They begged for migrants, they wanted migrants, and it was all great to have an open border policy when you didn’t have to pay for it. Now they have to pay for it.”
  • As previously reported, there are long dates for court waits for “asylum seekers.”
  • “I think that more and more and more migrants should go to New York, and then hopefully the Democrats will realize that, hey, just allowing millions of people to come across the border isn’t really a great idea, because we can’t take care of it.”
  • “And I also want to hammer home the point that it was all great when it was someone else’s problem, but it’s horror show, it’s a state of emergency, it’s immoral when it’s their problem.”

    • Indeed.

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    Posted in Border Control, Democrats, Texas, video, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 12 Comments »

    How Corruption Hollowed Out China’s Military

    January 10th, 2024

    When Russia launched its illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine in 2022, many Russian units were shocked by how badly supplied and equipped they were, with Putin cronies supplying expired food and lots of spare parts and equipment seemingly stolen or sold off. Dictatorships lack checks and balances, and without them, corruption tends to become endemic.

    Now news has come to light that the same thing appear to have happened in China.

    US intelligence indicates that President Xi Jinping’s sweeping military purge came after it emerged that widespread corruption undermined his efforts to modernize the armed forces and raised questions about China’s ability to fight a war, according to people familiar with the assessments.

    The corruption inside China’s Rocket Force and throughout the nation’s defense industrial base is so extensive that US officials now believe Xi is less likely to contemplate major military action in the coming years than would otherwise have been the case, according to the people, who asked not to be named discussing intelligence.

    The US assessments cited several examples of the impact of graft, including missiles filled with water instead of fuel and vast fields of missile silos in western China with lids that don’t function in a way that would allow the missiles to launch effectively, one of the people said.

    I’ve got to say, trying to get away with graft in your nation’s nuclear forces is a pretty bold move. On the other hand, if China ever tried to use them, there’s such a high chance all military leadership would be incinerated by America’s much better equipped and maintained nuclear forces, so maybe they figured they’d never be held to account.

    The US assesses that corruption within the People’s Liberation Army has led to an erosion of confidence in its overall capabilities, particularly when it comes to the Rocket Force, and also set back some of Xi’s top modernization priorities, the people said. The graft probe has ensnared more than a dozen senior defense officials over the past six months, in what may be China’s largest crackdown on the country’s military in modern history.

    One wonders what other areas of China’s military capabilities have been degraded thanks to corner-cutting and corruption. Looking at the rest of China: Maybe all of it?

    All this leads me to a pretty on-point Habitual Linecrosser:

    I’ve wrote about how the Pakistani ISI were backing the Taliban for over a decade, for all the good it did…

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    Posted in Communism, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Military | 14 Comments »

    Scenes From The Cyberwar In Ukraine

    January 9th, 2024

    The front lines in Ukraine have been static for the last few months, with Russia grinding away in Avdiivka to little effect and Ukraine having failed to effect further advances. However, there are a few snippets of interest from the ongoing cyberwar, on both sides. I thought it worth taking a look at.

  • First, Russia claimed a successful, long-running penetration of Ukrainian a telecom service.

    Over nearly a decade, the hacker group within Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency known as Sandworm has launched some of the most disruptive cyberattacks in history against Ukraine’s power grids, financial system, media, and government agencies. Signs now point to that same usual suspect being responsible for sabotaging a major mobile provider for the country, cutting off communications for millions and even temporarily sabotaging the air raid warning system in the capital of Kyiv.

    On Tuesday, a cyberattack hit Kyivstar, one of Ukraine’s largest mobile and internet providers. The details of how that attack was carried out remain far from clear. But it “resulted in essential services of the company’s technology network being blocked,” according to a statement posted by Ukraine’s Computer Emergency Response Team, or CERT-UA.

    Kyivstar’s CEO, Oleksandr Komarov, told Ukrainian national television on Tuesday, according to Reuters, that the hacking incident “significantly damaged [Kyivstar’s] infrastructure [and] limited access.”

    “We could not counter it at the virtual level, so we shut down Kyivstar physically to limit the enemy’s access,” he continued. “War is also happening in cyberspace. Unfortunately, we have been hit as a result of this war.”

    The Ukrainian government hasn’t yet publicly attributed the cyberattack to any known hacker group—nor have any cybersecurity companies or researchers. But on Tuesday, a Ukrainian official within its SSSCIP computer security agency, which oversees CERT-UA, pointed out in a message to reporters that a group known as Solntsepek had claimed credit for the attack in a Telegram post, and noted that the group has been linked to the notorious Sandworm unit of Russia’s GRU.

  • But pro-Ukrainian hackers have managed to strike back, by breaching a Russian Internet provider.

    The pro-Ukrainian hacker group Blackjack is claiming that it breached a Moscow internet provider to seek revenge for a Russian cyberattack on Ukraine’s largest telecom company, Kyivstar.

    The attack on M9com was carried out in cooperation with Ukraine’s security forces (SBU), said a source in Ukraine’s law enforcement agency who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly about the incident.

    There isn’t much information available about the attack, and the SBU’s role in the operation. Hackers said Monday on their Telegram channel that they will reveal more details soon. So far, the only confirmation of the incident they have provided includes screenshots of the allegedly hacked systems of the internet provider.

    The group also published some of the data obtained during the hack on a darknet site accessible via the Tor browser.

    The time frame of the attack on M9com is unclear, but as of the time of writing, the allegedly hacked website is up and running. There has been no mention of the operator’s shutdown in the Russian media or on its official website. The company has not replied to requests for comment.

    This is not the first time Ukrainian civilian hackers have allegedly cooperated with security services to attack Russian organizations. In an incident publicized in October, two groups of pro-Ukrainian hackers and the SBU claimed to have breached Russia’s largest private bank, Alfa-Bank.

  • Ukrainian hackers also announced that they hacked Russia’s tax systems.

    The Ukrainian government’s military intelligence service says it hacked the Russian Federal Taxation Service (FNS), wiping the agency’s database and backup copies.

    Following this operation, carried out by cyber units within Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence, military intelligence officers breached Russia’s federal taxation service central servers and 2,300 regional servers across Russia and occupied Ukrainian territories.

    The breach led to all compromised FTS servers being infected with malware, as well as the hacking of a Russian IT company that provides FNS with data center services.

    The attack also reportedly resulted in the complete deletion of configuration files crucial for the functionality of Russia’s extensive taxation system, wiping out both the main database and its backup copies

    As Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) says, the repercussions of the cyberattack have been severe, causing a breakdown in communication between Moscow’s central office and the 2,300 territorial departments that also got hacked in the attack.

    It has led to a virtual collapse of one of Russia’s vital governmental agencies with a significant loss of tax-related data, according to GUR, as well as tax data-related internet traffic across Russia falling into the hands of Ukraine’s military hackers, as The Record first reported.

    If this is true, it will take quite some time to get tax collections up and running again. And the inability to collect taxes will severely hamper Russia’s ability to finance the war.

  • Speaking of the Alfa-Bank hack, just recently Ukrainian hackers announced that they made all their data available online.

    The Ukrainian hacker group Kiborg has made the entire client base of the Russian Alfa Bank publicly available.

    Kiborg hackers, acting in collaboration with NLB hackers, gained access to the customer database in October 2023 and exposed information about 44,000 customers.

    The database contains information on the names, dates of birth, phone numbers, cards and accounts of 38 million unique individuals and legal entities.

    The Vazhnyye Istorii (Important Stories) website clarified that this includes over 24 million customer accounts and over 13 million more data on legal entities.

    • Both sides have struck cyberblows against the other, but Ukraine seems to have done more damage to Russia than vice-versa this week.

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    Posted in Global Warming, Military | 4 Comments »

    Did Israel Just Declare Victory Over Hamas?

    January 8th, 2024

    Three months in, reporting on the Israel-Hamas War has been notably poor, focused on playing up Israel-inflicted casualties and hyping the possibility of a wider two-front war with Hezbollah rather than concrete information on whether Israel is achieving military objectives or not.

    So it would be easy to miss this announcement that “IDF says it has completed the ‘dismantling of Hamas’ military framework.'”

    The Israel Defense Forces claimed on Sunday that it has “completed the dismantling of Hamas’ military framework” in the northern Gaza Strip, hitting hundreds of targets and taking out key leaders of the terrorist group.

    In an assessment of the first three months of the war between Israel and Hamas, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesperson, said Israeli forces have met their goals through airstrikes, ground operations and intelligence gathering in the primary objective of eliminating Hamas.

    The Israel Defense Forces claimed on Sunday that it has “completed the dismantling of Hamas’ military framework” in the northern Gaza Strip, hitting hundreds of targets and taking out key leaders of the terrorist group.

    In an assessment of the first three months of the war between Israel and Hamas, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesperson, said Israeli forces have met their goals through airstrikes, ground operations and intelligence gathering in the primary objective of eliminating Hamas.

    Among the Hamas commanders eliminated was Ahmad Randor, Hagari said, showing what he said was a photograph of Randor sitting with his command echelon in a bunker 40 meters, or about 131 feet, underground.

    “We have completed the dismantling of Hamas’ military framework in the northern Gaza Strip and will continue to deepen the achievement, strengthening the barrier and the defense components along the security fence,” Hagari said.

    More:

    The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) announced on January 6 that it “dismantled” the 12 Hamas battalions in the northern Gaza Strip. IDF officials added that they have dismantled Hamas’ “military framework” in the northern Gaza Strip. An Israeli Army Radio defense correspondent reported on January 6 that Israeli forces no longer permanently operate in the entire area of the northern strip and have moved to the border with Israel. IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said on January 6 that the IDF would focus on the central and southern parts of the Gaza Strip and strengthen defenses along the Israel-Gaza Strip border fence. These announcements are consistent with the IDF stating that it would establish a security buffer zone in the northern Gaza Strip in the third phase of its operations. This third phase also involved Israeli forces conducting raids against Hamas compounds, destroying tunnels, killing remaining fighters, seizing intelligence and military equipment. CTP-ISW assessed on December 22 that, in Hamas’ Northern Strip Brigade and Gaza City Brigade, three battalions are combat ineffective, eight are degraded, and one is combat effective.

    ISW goes on to warn that Hamas has not been completely destroyed and will likely reconstitute itself. But that’s pretty much standard operating procedures for transnational jihadist terror organizations.

    No one questioned the IDF’s ability to ability to dismantle Hamas. Israel has one of the most modern, disciplined, technically savvy and motivated armed forces in the world. (Having enemies who literally call for the complete extermination of the Jewish race is a powerful motivator.) Hamas, on the other hand, is a terrorist organization whose main skills seem to be raping and murdering civilians and building tunnels. The only question was whether the the feckless, Iran-dealing Biden Administration and it’s Obama foreign policy retreads would be able to pressure Israel into halting before the job was done. That appears not to be the case.

    Another sign that IDF has succeeded is the distinct lack of apparent Hamas activity in Gaza.

    Today’s Livemap snapshot shows one rocket strike into Israel and one dead Al Jazerra journalist in Gaza. There’s precious little sign of any organized, robust Hamas military resistance left in Gaza.

    Nor are there any signs of Hezbollah “opening up a second front.”

    Though Hezbollah evidently launched rockets at an Israeli base this weekend, right now they’re only firing off the occasional mortar. Rockets and mortar attacks like this are just common terrorist pinpricks, and do not constitute anything like a “second front.” Meanwhile, Israeli planes are hitting Hezbollah positions with impunity.

    What constitutes victory for the Israeli government? It took fourteen years after the end of Operation Cast Lead for Hamas to reconstitute itself. Assuming the Shia fundamentalist government remains in power in Iran (which in turn depends on how badly American Democratic Administrations want to prop it up), then maybe we can look forward to a similar period of relative peace on Israel’s southern front.

    And presumably Israel won’t be caught asleep at the switch again the next time Hamas stages a big attack.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Military | 14 Comments »

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