School District by School District, Critical Race Theory Is Being Defeated

August 25th, 2022

Time and again, when ordinary parents have a chance to weigh in on Critical Race Theory or transsexual madness (or any other racist/Marxist/social justice warrior/victimhood identity politics agendas), they reject them soundly. This week, we have multiple example from two different states.

In Texas, two different north Texas school districts have tossed critical race theory into the trash where it belongs.

On August 22, two Dallas-Fort-Worth area school districts made significant changes to their standards of instruction and education materials.

Keller ISD, accused last week of banning the Bible and “The Diary of Anne Frank,” adopted new content guidelines to evaluate books available in their schools’ libraries.

The guidelines prohibit texts that contain “sexually explicit conduct,” “descriptions of sexual abuse,” and “Illustrations of nude intimate body parts.”

The policy passed 4 to 2 with one abstention. President of the Keller ISD school board Dr. Charles Randklev gave the opening remarks at the meeting.

“The media has done an absolutely terrible job covering what is happening in Keller ISD,” he addressed the crowd.

“For the record, Keller ISD has not banned the Bible or Anne Frank.”

“Sexually explicit obscene content has no place in our schools. The new Keller ISD Board of Trustees and the district has acted decisively to protect our children from pornographic material.”

Dozens of people gave testimony at the meeting that lasted for hours. Detractors claimed that the content guidelines were overly vague and could lead to more books being banned than necessary.

During the Keller ISD meeting, Grapevine-Colleyville ISD was embroiled in its own discussion over the adoption of new district policies.

Part of the measure is similar to the Keller ISD book review policies aimed at eliminating “pervasively vulgar and obscene” books from their schools.

Regarding changes to curricula, the policy asserts, “The District, including its teachers and administrators, shall not teach, instruct, advocate, promote, or discuss any ideas, beliefs, or concepts that have any connection or are otherwise consistent with so-called ‘Critical Race Theory’ (CRT) or ‘systemic discrimination ideologies.’”

Outside of CRT restrictions, the policy also restricts transgender athletes’ participation in UIL sporting events and prohibits the “promotion of gender fluidity.”

CRT and tranny madness both on the dust heap. I call that a Win/Win.

Speaking of winning, a lot of that also happened in Florida.

Florida flipped multiple major school boards from liberal to conservative Tuesday evening, continuing a nationwide trend of parents taking back control of public schools.

Florida school board elections have been a major political battleground this cycle, with big names like Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Rep. Byron Donalds (R) making endorsements and joining the campaign trail.

While primary elections occurred in Florida, New York, and Oklahoma Tuesday, Florida has general elections for school boards, meaning the winners will be the official members of the boards.

Many of the winning candidates have been endorsed by the 1776 Project PAC, an organization that has been instrumental in flipping school boards from liberal to conservative across the country.

“We saw massive election victories all throughout the state of Florida tonight,” 1776 Project PAC founder Ryan Girdusky told Breitbart News Tuesday. “It shows the desire of parents and residents across the country for some normalcy in our education system, and that means pushing against transgender ideology, critical race theory, critical gender ideology, and equity which destroys merit in education.”

“The 1776 Project PAC hopes to take these successes across the country,” he said.

Sarasota County

The Sarasota County School Board flipped from a 3-2 leftist majority to a 4-1 conservative majority.

All three conservative candidates — Bridget Ziegler, Robyn Marinelli, and Timothy Enos — won their elections to flip the board.

Each was endorsed by the 1776 Project PAC and Gov. DeSantis.

Clay County

The Clay County School Board now has a 3-2 conservative majority after three conservative candidates won their elections.

Erin Skipper, Michele Hanson, and Ashley Gilhousen won their seats — all of whom were endorsed by the 1776 Project PAC.

This school board has been the subject of much controversy, with recent testimony from father Wendell Perez telling the Florida surgeon general that Clay County Public Schools secretly starting “transitioning” his 12-year-old daughter without his knowledge.

Perez’s daughter was called a male name and pronouns. She soon afterward attempted suicide in her school’s restroom.

There’s nothing like the righteous fury of a parent finding out their child is being groomed.

Duval County / City of Jacksonville

The Duval County School Board, which also encompasses the City of Jacksonville, also flipped conservative Tuesday evening.

DeSantis-backed candidates Charlotte Joyce and April Carney won their seats — Joyce was reelected and Carney defeated incumbent Elizabeth Andersen. Both candidates were also endorsed by the 1776 Project PAC.

As Breitbart News reported, Andersen had been caught in the past few weeks using racially charged language against black parents in her school district, calling those who disagreed with her publicly “tokens.”

Miami-Dade County

The Miami-Dade School Board was flipped conservative Tuesday as well, making it the largest school district in the country with a conservative-majority board.

Roberto Alonso and Monica Colucci won their elections, both of whom were endorsed by the 1776 Project PAC and Gov. DeSantis.

Martin County

The Martin County School Board has flipped conservative with all three 1776 Project PAC-endorsed candidates winning their seats.

Christina Li Roberts, Jennifer Russell, and Amy Pritchett will now sit on the board.

That’s a whole lot of school boards flipping in a short period of time.

As San Francisco’s school board election showed, Critical Race Theory and radical transexism are political losers every time parents get a chance to vote on them. If I had guess, I’d have to say wokeness in general is one of the big reasons (though far from the only one) that blacks and Hispanics are abandoning the Democratic Party in droves.

Now conservatives just need to take the time and make the effort to oppose social justice lunacy everywhere across the country.

(Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

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Posted in Elections, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 3 Comments »

Ukraine’s Attrition Strategy

August 24th, 2022

A lot of questions have popped up about the much-talked about Ukrainian counteroffensive for Kherson, among the biggest of which is “Where is it?”

Anders Puck Nielsen, a military analyst at the Royal Danish Defence College, has some answers. What Ukraine is doing right now is not a traditional counteroffensive, but a prolonged attrition strategy to degrade Russian logistics and forces.

Some takeaways:

  • Usually you want some level of operational secrecy, but Ukrainian officials have been talking up the “Kherson Offensive” since at least June.
  • “I think it was meant as a kind of trap. It was not enough for Ukraine to liberate Kherson, but they also wanted to take out a lot of Russian soldiers in the process.”
  • “This area west of Dnipro is probably the one area in the whole operational theater where Ukraine has all the advantages, and Russia has all the disadvantages. So it is better for Ukraine to fight as many Russians as possible in this area than it is to fight them later on somewhere else.”
  • Putin was faced with withdrawing or reinforcing. “And of course Putin was not going to give up Kherson without a fight, so Russia started pouring reinforcements into the area.”
  • The phrase that describes Ukraine’s strategy is “accelerated attritional warfare.”
  • Ukraine’s strategy: “To cause the Russians to have as many casualties as possible rather than defending specific pieces of terrain. And then what we see around Kherson is that Ukraine has figured out a way to accelerate that attrition among the Russians by luring them into a trap where they send reinforcements into an essentially undefendable area.”
  • So the frontline isn’t moving, but “the Ukrainians expect them to run out of supplies eventually, and then it will be easy.”
  • “I talked about the bridges, and how Ukraine can target the Russian logistics by destroying the bridges. And I also talked about how this war seems to have entered into what can be called the third phase of the war.”
  • Phase 1: Russia invades, tries to take Kiev, and fails, because their logistics suck. Advantage Ukraine.
  • Phase 2: Russia grinds out gains in Dobas, with logistics adequate to the task. Advantage Russia.
  • Phase 3 (current): Ukraine starts degrading vulnerable Russian forces in the south. “So they are going very hard after the Russian logistics systems. And that is what the attacks in Crimea and other places long behind the frontlines are about.”
  • “But the point of the attacks is exactly to make the Russian logistics as complicated as possible. To make the supply lines as long as they can possibly be. Because Russia now has to pull the ammunition depots even further away from the frontline, and they have to use trucks instead of railroads and stuff like that.”
  • “And the supply lines in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts are actually beginning to look very much like they did in northern Ukraine in phase one of the war.”

  • “That accelerated attrition [and] the sustained attacks on the Russian supply lines will mean that Ukraine can be in a pretty good position after the battle of Kherson. They will have all the territory west of the Dnipro. And it will be very easy to defend afterwards, because Russia is not going to come back across the river once they have lost that foothold. And then Ukraine will have freed up all those forces from the Kherson area that they can redeploy for a new counteroffensive somewhere else. So that could for example be an attack from the north down toward the Melitopol area. And Russia would be in a really tough position for such a fight. Because they don’t have more forces they can move from the Donbas area, because they already did that for the battle for Kherson. And they don’t have good logistics because Ukraine will have been hitting the infrastructure for months.

    • Conclusion: There’s no guarantee of Ukrainian success, but it’s hard to see what Russia can do to counter this strategy. “After that Ukraine will redeploy and make a new counteroffensive somewhere else. Perhaps a Christmas offensive or something like that.”

    Winter offenses are always a hard sledding in this part of Europe, but the rest of his analysis accords pretty closely with what we’ve been seeing.

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    Posted in Military, unions, video | 21 Comments »

    State of Texas Lowers Boom On Harris County Over Police Defunding

    August 23rd, 2022

    It looks like the Democrats running Harris County are finally going to face some consequences for defunding law enforcement.

    Texas Comptroller Glen Hegar has ruled that Harris County reduced funding for some law enforcement agencies and will be subject to sanctions under a new state law enacted last year.

    According to a letter addressed to Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, House Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont), and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, Hegar said that his ruling is in response to complaints filed by Constables Mark Herman (Pct. 4) and Ted Heap (Pct. 5) regarding funding changes last year and in a proposed budget for next year.

    One of the key allegations Hegar is investigating is the county’s move to take away more than $3 million in so-called “rollover funds” from constables’ offices. Last year, commissioners voted 3 to 2 along party lines to remove these funds from the eight elected constables as well as the district attorney’s office, based on a recommendation from County Administrator David Berry.

    Hegar notes that the proposed budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 will reduce funding to the constables’ offices by over $12 million as compared to Short Fiscal Year 2022, which covers March through September of this year. Although the county appears to be revising the proposal, they are still poised to reduce overall funds for constables by $3 million.

    “The budgeting practices of Harris County may not provide the Constables Office with full authority to expend their allocated budget to meet public safety needs,” wrote Hegar.

    Signed by Abbott last year, the state’s “Back the Blue” legislation punishes cities or counties with populations of greater than 250,000 people if they reduce allocations for police, by either freezing property taxes or forcing cities to revisit any annexation done in the last 30 years.

    Thus, Hegar writes, if Harris County proceeds with the constable’s budget as proposed “without obtaining voter approval, the county may not adopt an ad valorem tax rate that exceeds the county’s no-new-revenue tax rate.”

    Snip.

    Last week, Hidalgo and County Commissioner Adrian Garcia (D-Pct. 2) held a press conference to tout increases in “public safety spending” that included non-traditional expenditures such as $1.5 million for public Wi-Fi, $8.4 million for new trails, and $50 million to address blight and add sidewalks and street lights.

    With the possible exception of streetlights, none of that makes anyone safer, but does provide nice conduits of graft to shovel to left-wing cronies via rigged bidding contracts (a Hidalgo specialty). We know from an in-depth dive into the Austin defund effort’s Reimagining Public Safety document that letting leftwing activists steal money from police funding to line their own pockets is one of the primary goals of the “defund the police” movement.

    The interesting thing about this ruling is that, compared to Austin’s defunding push, Harris County’s defunding efforts were relatively modest at-the-margins stuff. No showy reductions in headcount or refusals to let new cadet classes move forward, just a quick raid to hoover up some loose cash from the constables while no one was looking. That this was enough for Hegar to drop the hammer indicates that defunding the police is a dead letter in Texas.

    Does this mean the state government can nail Austin for their much more egregious defunding efforts? Probably not. The worst of that happened in 2020, while the law wasn’t passed until 2021. So unless the Austin City Council stupidly tries to stick their hand in the APD cookie jar again, I doubt they can be held to account for that under this law, unless they try the same trick again. On the other hand, time has proven again and again that there are few limits to Austin City Council stupidity…

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Texas | No Comments »

    New PayPal Walmart Phishing Scam Making The Rounds

    August 22nd, 2022

    There’s a new phishing scam making the rounds. I’ve received examples of this one twice myself over the last week, and since it’s a lot more sophisticated and polished than the average email phishing scam, I think it’s worth taking a look at.

    Scammers are using invoices sent through PayPal.com to trick recipients into calling a number to dispute a pending charge. The missives — which come from Paypal.com and include a link at Paypal.com that displays an invoice for the supposed transaction — state that the user’s account is about to be charged hundreds of dollars. Recipients who call the supplied toll-free number to contest the transaction are soon asked to download software that lets the scammers assume remote control over their computer.

    KrebsOnSecurity recently heard from a reader who received an email from paypal.com that he immediately suspected was phony. The message’s subject read, “Billing Department of PayPal updated your invoice.”

    While the phishing message attached to the invoice is somewhat awkwardly worded, there are many convincing aspects of this hybrid scam. For starters, all of the links in the email lead to paypal.com. Hovering over the “View and Pay Invoice” button shows the button indeed wants to load a link at paypal.com, and clicking that link indeed brings up an active invoice at paypal.com.

    Also, the email headers in the phishing message (PDF) show that it passed all email validation checks as being sent by PayPal, and that it was sent through an Internet address assigned to PayPal.

    Both the email and the invoice state that “there is evidence that your PayPal account has been accessed unlawfully.” The message continues:

    “$600.00 has been debited to your account for the Walmart Gift Card purchase. This transaction will appear in the automatically deducted amount on PayPal activity after 24 hours. If you suspect you did not make this transaction, immediately contact us at the toll-free number….”

    As always, look at every message from any financial institution as a potential phishing attack, so never click on links sent in email. Use your regular browser login to see if it’s a real issue, and if it’s a phishing scam, be sure to report the email in question.

    Let’s be careful out there…

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    Posted in Crime, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »

    Another Day, Another Murderer Out On Bond

    August 21st, 2022

    The soft-on-crime policies enacted by the Democrats who run Austin and Travis County have degraded the quality of life for law-abiding Austinites. And for many the consequences of putting convicted felons back out on the street without bail has been deadly.

    The suspect in an August 6 Austin homicide was out of jail on personal bonds in two different counties for multiple felony charges when he shot two men, killing one and paralyzing the other.

    Shots were fired after a fight broke out in a parking lot on E. 7th Street in Austin, right across the street from the ARCH homeless shelter downtown. Dionysius Thompson was killed, and Josh Noriega was left paralyzed.

    The suspect is Nathan Nevah Ramirez, charged with murder and aggravated assault.

    Ramirez fled the scene but was later identified by another individual involved in the scuffle and HALO surveillance cameras as having been present when shots were fired. Ramirez allegedly shot both Thompson and Noriega.

    Police arrested him an hour later that day at his apartment, where he was found with a loaded Glock 22, 2.5 ounces of marijuana, 44 grams of cocaine, about $8,000 cash, and a box of .40 caliber bullets. Ramirez was charged with another unlawful carrying of a firearm count along with possession of a controlled substance.

    In a sane county, being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm should be an immediate tip back to the slammer under Sec. 46.04 of the Texas penal code.

    He has since been charged with first-degree felony murder and second-degree felony aggravated assault.

    On August 8, before he was arrested for the shooting-related charges, Ramirez was released on personal bond for the charges of unlawful carrying of a weapon and felony possession of a controlled substance from two nights before.

    Two days later, Austin Police Department (APD) ballistics analysis positively identified Ramirez’s pistol had fired the rounds. U.S. Marshalls arrested him later that day.

    Ramirez had been out of jail in Travis County since he was granted personal bond on May 27, 2022 for the June 2021 charge of unlawful possession of a firearm. Ramirez had been on the lam since the incident last year until he was arrested on May 26, 2022.

    Austin Municipal Court Associate Judge Stephen Vigorito granted the bail on the condition that Ramirez not possess any firearms or engage in criminal activity. His pretrial for that charge is set for August 26.

    During the bond proceeding, he was given “indigent” status, a metric by which the Austin municipal court prioritizes personal and low cash bonds to poor offenders.

    While judges set bond, the Austin City Council passed a policy directing the municipal court to prioritize reduced bond for indigent defendants in 2017 and fired judges who disagreed.

    Additionally, after winning office in 2020, Travis County District Attorney José Garza released relaxed bail and sentencing guidelines that his office would recommend to the bench in criminal proceedings.

    Garza’s tenure has been a boon to felons seeking to continue their criminal activity while out on bond, but a disaster for law-abiding Austinites, especially those who don’t want to be murdered.

    Among those items is the emphasis placed on a presumption of release with “least restrictive conditions necessary” for higher-level felonies.

    Garza’s policies, the attempt to turn Austin into a Mecca for drug-addicted transients, and the Austin City Council’s refusal to fund adequate staffing levels for the Austin Police Department have all contributed to making Austin radically less safe than it was just four years ago.

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Texas | 11 Comments »

    Crimea Booming Continues

    August 20th, 2022

    Previous stories on Ukraine hitting Russian military bases in Crimea have focused on the possibility of long-range missile strikes. As those strikes have continued, it’s now proven that some have been carried out by drone, and others appear to be the work of Ukrainian special forces or resistance fighters hitting the Russian deep behind the front lines.

    None of these is good news for Russia.

    Ukraine used a drone to hit the headquarters of the Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol:

    Some takeaways:

  • It was a hit, not a drone shoot-down.
  • “The new Black Sea commander was there. There are some reports saying it’s his first day in office. So, welcome to the new job, Chuck.”
  • I assume he’s referring to Viktor Nikolayevich Sokolov.
  • Appears to be a Mugin 5 Chinese drone.
  • The author thinks that a number of Ukrainian special forces might be operating drone from a point inside Crimea.
  • He says another possibility is it’s controlled via repeaters across the Black Sea, but I don’t see why you couldn’t also control it via satlink from orbit.

    • Ukrainian forces also hit the nearby Belbek Airbase:

    More targeted Russian military infrastructure:

    Those attacks at Timonovo and Stary Oskol Airfield happened in Russia proper, not occupied Ukraine.

    The Wall Street Journal has a Crimea 101 explainer up:

  • Russia used Crimea as a huge staging area for the southern part of the invasion.
  • Right now Ukraine is seeking to degrade Russian forces rather than battle them directly. “A thousand stings from a bee.”
  • Airfield strikes have forced Russia to move planes out of Crimea.

    • Despite air superiority, Russia clearly doesn’t have the manpower, organization and equipment to protect their rear echelon from ongoing supply and infrastructure attacks. This exacerbates Russia’s well-documented logistics problems, especially given the Russian doctrinal preference for smaller numbers of support personnel maintaining fewer, larger supply depots.

    All that would tend to argue against Russia gaining much further territory in what remains of the summer.

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    Posted in Media Watch, unions, video | 5 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for August 19, 2022

    August 19th, 2022

    Greetings, and welcome to a Friday LinkSwarm…on Friday! What are the odds?

  • More dispatches from the Biden Recession: “Homebuyers are GONE.” Home sales are cratering nationally, companies that bought up lots of properties are slashing prices, and the number of homes being built is also cratering.
  • From the same guy: The 10 locations housing prices will crash the most. #5? Austin. “This is a market in absolute free-fall.” I know prices in my neighborhood have probably lopped off a good $100,000 or so, forcing me to rely on my vast book holdings to remain a millionaire…
  • Are we witnessing an end to the tranny pander panic?

    The other day, I saw on Twitter someone saying that they are a good liberal and all that, but they are really worried about what they’re seeing regarding the emerging culture of the medical and teaching professions encouraging children to transition to the opposite sex. “But,” said this person, “I don’t want to surrender to a moral panic.”

    I submit to you that a moral panic is precisely the correct response to this egregious phenomenon. That is, what is happening is so hideous, and so widespread, and the reaction by most people to this point has been so muted to non-existent, that if you are not panicking, you are not paying attention.

    Most people are not on Twitter, and if you’re one of these people, you may not be aware of the extent of the insanity. The media are not covering it, of course. It falls to badasses like Matt Walsh, Chaya Raichik (who runs the Libs Of Tik Tok account), Christina Buttons, and Chris Elston, the guy who runs the Billboard Chris website and Twitter account, to sound the alarm.

    The things they document are not nut-picking (the practice of finding extreme weirdos, and falsely using them as an example of the whole). They are completely mainstream. These are things that, if we had a functional media instead of a Narrative-massaging industry, would be widely reported, and discussed intensely.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Libs of TikTok on how the radical social justice groomer left wants to sever the connection between parents and children.

    The Left’s agenda to groom your children has taken another turn. Various states across America have begun implementing laws and policies to allow children to make healthcare decisions without a parent or guardian’s consent — and the medical industry is promoting it. Many of these states are using these new laws to allow for drastic medical decisions to be made without parental consent including hormone therapy, gender reassignment surgery, and medicated mental health treatment.

    In Washington, children as young as 13 are now allowed to undergo gender reassignment surgery and other questionable medical treatments without parental consent.

    One Washington dad alleged in a viral TikTok video that a school gave his 15-year-old child antidepressants without informing him. Sounds completely insane and illegal, right? Well . . . it sounds that way, but it isn’t. Under Washington law, this is 100% legal and is allegedly being carried out by schools.

    New York has hopped on the bandwagon of removing parents from the treatment room as well. New York-Presbyterian recently sent out emails to their patients explaining that accounts for 12-17-year-olds must be updated to reflect the adolescent’s personal email address as the primary contact as New York State law allows children “to keep their sensitive medical information private and to consent to some of their own medical treatment.”

    Twelve-year-old children will now have the ability to be the primary decision-maker for many of their medical treatments and procedures. Children will also have the ability to completely revoke medical record access for their parents or guardians. 12-year-old children who can barely do their own laundry now have authority over their healthcare.

    Snip.

    One concerned parent in Kennebunk, Maine shared photos with us of a medical questionnaire for patients 12 years of age and older which read “To be filled out by patient only.” The questionnaire included questions about sexuality, asking children what gender they’re attracted to, and if the child has ever been in a romantic relationship or had sex. Separate questions ask the children if they’ve ever had questions about their gender identity and what their preferred pronouns are.

    The parent spoke to me regarding the questionnaire and stated her child was given the forms right after he turned 13. Naturally, her son was uncomfortable and confused by the questions and asked his mom for help. However, the mom claims the doctor made her leave the room and refused to allow her to be present while her son was answering the questionnaire.

    Why would a doctor need to secretly know the sexual preference and gender identity that a 13-year-old child claims without his mom present? Why would any child be required to share answers to all these invasive questions and bar any parental involvement?

    It’s not just Maine, Arizona, New York, and Washington — the removal of parents from important decisions in their children’s lives is becoming a nationwide policy trend aggressively pushed by the Left.

  • Given how much Libs of TikTok has uncovered of the groomer agenda, it’s no wonder that Facebook has banned her:

  • “Austin Fire Department Chaplain Fired over Blog Post Objecting to Males in Women’s Sports.” No surprise to followers of Austin politics, given the way their union has been taken over by the radical left.
  • Related: “Twitter Is Objectively Pro-Groomer.”
  • “Sanctuary cities not enjoying actually being used as sanctuaries.”

    To the great consternation of liberal Democratic mayors in the northeast, the governors of Texas and Arizona continue to send busloads of illegal migrants to New York and Washington to lessen the burdens on their states and draw more attention to the Biden border crisis. This has put the municipal governments of these self-defined sanctuary cities in a bit of a tough position politically. They are supposed to represent bastions of hope for the migrants and freedom from the “oppression” of ICE and the Border Patrol. But now that the migrants are arriving in larger numbers and doing so in a very public way, it’s becoming clear that this is a problem that the mayors were not prepared to handle. As Charles Lipson explains in Newsweek today, these so-called sanctuary city claims were clearly more of a case of virtue signaling than anything else, but when the cost of invoking such policies began to rise, the backlash came quickly.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • New Minnesota union contract requires laying off teachers based on race rather than ability or seniority. Can you say illegal? (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
  • Longtime CNN anchor, leftwing tool and known potato Brian Stelters had his show cancelled and was laid off. There’s not a violin small enough.

  • How the left abandoned Salman Rushdie.

    I still don’t understand Obama’s deep infatuation with Iran’s mullahs, or why he sent them pallets-full of currency, or why he desperately wanted to get nuclear technology to Iran. But I suspect his enthusiasm for providing nuclear technology to Iran was in equal proportion to his enmity toward Israel.

    So how was the American left supposed to keep championing Mr. Rushdie when Barack Obama, their Lightbringer, was such a fan of the mullahs who wanted Rushdie dead? Barack Obama had taken American tax dollars and sent it to the mullahs so that they could then turn around and use that money to pay the bounty to whomever successfully pulled off the fatwa against Rushdie. To stay true to Obama, America’s liberal elites had to now ally themselves with the men trying to murder Rushdie.

    Conservatives, of course, always supported Rushdie’s right to free speech and always decried the fatwa on him. But for those who matter most in elite society, the fatwa now reflected poorly on Rushdie, not those who imposed the fatwa.

    Rushdie was abandoned by the left, because they were now aligned with the mullahs who wanted him dead.

  • Over in London, unions are working on their Winter of Discontent cosplay by launching a Tube strike.
  • Families are getting the hell out of north Portland due to the huge increase in drug-addicted transients ts infecting their neighborhood. This is your city on social justice.
  • Turkey’s wild and crazy president Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues his innovative “lower interest rates during hyperinflation” gambit. Result? The Lira has crashed to an all time low.
  • Remember San Angelo police chief Tim Vasquez, who accepted bribes via gigs for his Earth, Wind & Fire cover band Funky Munky? Well he just got sentenced to 15 years in the slammer. I guess he’s no longer a shining star…
  • Also on the crime beat: Charges filed in Whitey Bulger whacking. “Fotios Geas, Paul J. DeCologero and Sean McKinnon have been charged with crimes related to the murder of Whitey Bulger.”
  • New York Times decides it can’t run an editorial by a black Republican senator unless it gets the permission of the white Democratic majority leader first.
  • More New York Times editorial judgment on display: “NYT Cuts Ties With Reporter Who Called For ‘Killing,’ ‘Burning’ Jews ‘Like What Hitler Did.’” The surprise is that they actually fired her. How do you think that conversation went? “Sure, lots of us have called for death to the Jews, but the ‘burning’ part just crosses the line…”
  • Boom:

  • “20-Year-Old Student Acquires 6% Of Bed Bath & Beyond, Makes $110 Million In 3 Weeks.”
  • Annnnnd….then he dumped it all.
  • “You’ll never catch me alive, coppers!”

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Foreign Policy, Media Watch, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, Uncategorized, unions, video, Waste and Fraud | 7 Comments »

    Joe Rogan Interviews Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon On Trump Raid

    August 18th, 2022

    Joe Rogan and Seth Dillon have thoughts about the FBI’s raid on Trump’s house.

  • Dillon: “They just poured rocket fuel in his engine.”
  • Rogan: “I think the goal was to knock him out of the 2024 elections.”
  • Rogan has some degree of skepticism that there was actual classified information seized, but not nearly as much as he should.
  • Dillon: “They want to find something, anything, that they can use to prevent him from running again.”
  • Rogan: “They’re using the FBI in a way that they would never use it against Hillary Clinton and they’re going after him in a way they would never go after Ghislaine Maxwell’s client list.”
  • Dillon: “If you’re gonna be selectively enforcing laws like that, and just turn a blind eye to Hillary deleting emails that have been subpoenaed, [or turning] a blind eye to Hunter Biden, trying act like this is not a story until you’re forced to admit that it is. It’s the double standard.”
  • Rogan on Ron DeSantis: “The left still hates him but they don’t hate him the same way they hated Trump. They try to, but he’s more reasonable. He’s very, like, level in the way he talks about things.”
  • Rogan: “Tump’s a character, right? Like part of what he’s doing he’s like doing comedy. It’s like he’s doing stand-up when he’s up there. I mean, when he makes fun of Biden and makes fun of other people. He’s doing fucking stand-up, he really is, and he kills.”

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    Posted in Crime, unions, video | 4 Comments »

    Blog Outage Update

    August 17th, 2022

    Yesterday afternoon, BattleSwarm went down with 500 errors. Contacting Bluehost, they said it was a problem with an old stats plugin. When I went into my dashboard to fix this, surprise! Nothing worked! And the blog was still down hard.

    After two round-and-round chat sessions with Indian technical support personnel using vague screen replies, the problem still wasn’t resolved, and they told me it was a server-wide problem affecting many people. And indeed, I’m evidently not alone in having a problem with BlueHost.

    Also, this notice from https://www.isitdownrightnow.com doesn’t exactly suggest a company brimming with confidence.

    Right now, the blog appears to be up, though with the characteristic slowness and dropped connections during editing that seem common this year. I have not received the email that the second Indian technical support guy promised would be sent when things were resolved.

    Hopefully it will stay up long enough to update some plugins…

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    Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

    More Russian Bases In Crimea Go Boom

    August 16th, 2022

    Looks like more Russian bases in Crimea are blowing up despite being hundreds of miles from the front lines.

    First up: France 24 reports explosions on a base in NE Crimea:

    Caveat: The video map calls the location Mayskoye, which isn’t in Crimea, but across the Kerch strait in Russia proper. Later, they show a tweet with the location as Dzhankoi, which matches up with the location shown on the map.

    More video, where you can see subsequent munitions explosions, and which says that Mayskoye is 14 miles from Dzhankoi:

    I assume that the Crimean Mayskoye is a local town or subdivision too small to show up in Google Maps.

    There are also reports of explosions on the Russian-occupied airfield near Simferopol.

    The Russian mass media report of clouds of black smoke over the military airfield in the village of Hvardiiske, Simferopol district of Russian-occupied Crimea.

    Source: Kommersant publication with reference to local residents, Christo Grozev, head of Bellingcat on Twitter

    Details: Local residents also confirm that clouds of black smoke are seen above the airbase in Hvardiiske.

    According to them, several explosions were heard earlier on the territory of the military base.

    According to the source, local military departments and law enforcement agencies assume it could be an attack by a small unmanned aerial vehicle that hit an ammunition storage.

    Supposedly this is video of the explosion. Usual caveats apply.

    And this is supposedly video of Russians lining up to leave Simferopol following the strikes:

    A few takeaways:

  • The size of the explosions suggest that Ukraine continues to receive good location intelligence about Russian military infrastructure and ammo dumps.
  • From the beginning of Russia’s invasion to last week, reports of major Ukrainian strike on Crimea were all but non-existent. Since then we’ve had several. Clearly Ukraine sees a new need and/or ability to strike these farther targets.
  • This may be an attempt to cripple Russian supply lines and air support in support of Ukraine’s slow-developing Kherson counteroffensive.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Military, video | 2 Comments »

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