Kristi Noem’s Tranny Pander

March 23rd, 2021

Last year, when South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem was keeping her state open despite pushes for endless lockdowns from the MSM, there was lots of talk about her as a dark horse 2024 Presidential candidate among conservative activists. Well, that talk is dead following her caving in to the radical transsexual lobby by using a technical veto on a bill prohibiting men from competing in women’s sports that she had previously promised to sign:

On Friday, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem balked on signing House Bill 1217 when the bill to promote fairness in women’s sports crossed her desk. But instead of vetoing the legislation, Noem returned the bill to the House with what she called “recommendations as to STYLE and FORM.” The Republican governor’s spin, however, cannot withstand scrutiny—most specifically her claimed reasoning for removing collegiate athletics from the bill’s protections.

As finalized by the South Dakota legislature, Section 1 of H.B. 1217 provided that athletic teams and sports in the state, including at institutions of higher education, must be expressly designated as male, female, or coeducation. It also stipulated that teams or sports designed as female must be “available only to participants who are female, based on their biological sex.”

After promising to sign H.B. 1217, Noem instead took to Twitter on Friday to state why she had changed her mind and instead returned the bill to legislators for modifications. Noem elaborated on her reasoning in a letter to legislators.

Snip.

The most striking changes Noem demanded, however, came in her insistence that the legislature strike collegiate athletes from the bill’s protection and eliminate Section 4’s promise of a remedy to girls and women harmed in a violation of the bill, or who were retaliated against for complaining about violations of the law. Let’s break these changes down a bit, because they render the entire proposal meaningless.

As drafted by the South Dakota legislature, Section 1 of the bill mandated that athletic teams or sports, at the elementary, secondary, and collegiate level, designated as female be “available only to participants who are female, based on their biological sex,” as verified by the students’ parents (or, if they are over 18, the student), based on “genetics and reproductive biology.” Then, in Section 4, the South Dakota legislature created a “cause of action,” or a right to sue, entitling students deprived of athletic opportunities or otherwise harmed as the result of a Section 1 violation to sue the school.

In other words, Section 1 demanded schools—including colleges—limit women’s sports to women. If an education institution violated that mandate and allowed a male student to join a female team, Section 4 provides that a female athlete injured by that violation could sue the school and obtain an injunction to prevent a continued violation and damages to remedy the harm.

Section 4 added a second protection for South Dakota student athletes: It also protected students from retaliation if they report violations of the act to a school representative, athletic association, or a state or federal governmental entity with oversight authority. Thus, for instance, if a female basketball player complained to an athletic department that a coach had allowed a male athlete to join her team, and the school responded by banning the complaining student from school-sponsored sports, the female student would be entitled to sue the school for retaliation.

In sending the bill back to the state legislature, Noem made two requests related to these interrelated provisions: She excluded collegiate athletes from the bill’s coverage and then directed the legislature to strike, or delete, Section 4 in its entirety.

In other words, Noem asked the South Dakota legislature to amend Section 1 so that the bill applied only to elementary and high school student athletes, while then denying those students any remedy for violations of the law. All that would remain, then, if the state legislature adopts Noem’s amendments, would be these two sections.

Snip.

Noem’s explanation would lead one to believe that H.B. 1217 conflicts in some way with the governing regulations of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and that if the bill became law, South Dakota collegiate athletes would be barred from competing in NCAA events and tournaments.

To the contrary, NCAA regulations provide that if a male competes on a female team, that makes the team a “mixed team,” which is ineligible to compete for a women’s NCAA championship. The NCAA does, however, allow a male “student-athlete being treated with testosterone suppression medication for Gender Identity Disorder or gender dysphoria and/or Transsexualism,” to compete on a women’s team after “completing one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment.”

However, nothing in this NCAA policy requires a college or university to treat a male student-athlete as female. Given the number of religiously affiliated colleges and universities participating in NCAA sports, any such mandate would face tough opposition and likely be unworkable.

The NCAA also does not ban collegiate athletes from events or championship competitions if their schools do not allow transgender athletes to compete on teams of the opposite sex. That is why, when Idaho passed a bill last year similar to the bill pending in South Dakota, nothing of the sort happened to Idaho.

So not only is Noem surrendering on issue she promised to fight for, she’s preemptively surrendering on behalf of an institution that itself hasn’t yet surrendered.

Reality is not optional. Defending the reality of biological sex is not a hill that can be surrendered to radical social justice, especially since the overwhelming majority of Americans agree with conservatives. If Noem is unwilling to fight for that hill because it gives Chamber of Commerce RINOs a case of the vapors, then she isn’t the leader Republicans need.

Project Veritas On Biden’s Border Crisis

March 22nd, 2021

I’ve been meaning to write more about the Biden Administration’s burgeoning border crisis. The problem has been which of the firehoses of information about that clustermuck did I want to dip into.

Fortunately, Project Veritas is dropping their own series of videos from the border starting today.

Among the tidbits from inside the holding facility: 50 coronavirus-positive detainees and daily sexual assaults.

Also: The Biden Administration has already spent $86 million to house illegal aliens in hotels.

As usual with Project Veritas, there’s probably worse to come…

Democrats Push “Drive Plastic Manufacturing To China” Act

March 21st, 2021

Congressional Democrats are offering up a bill whose effects will be to destroy the American plastics industry and drive manufacturing to China:

Republican lawmakers are raising concerns that provisions in the sweeping climate bill from top House Democrats would stifle the plastics industry.

One late addition to the nearly 1,000-page piece of legislation, known as the CLEAN Future Act, is meant to curb greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution emitted from the petrochemical facilities that produce plastics or the raw materials used to make plastics.

Most significantly, the bill would impose a temporary pause on air pollution permits needed for approval of new plastics production facilities.

The legislation also directs the Environmental Protection Agency to issue new greenhouse gas and air pollution controls for these facilities within three years, including requiring plastics production plants to use zero-emissions power and improve emissions monitoring.

Buy into our green energy graft or we won’t let you do business.

The EPA regulations must also require any permit for a plastics production facility to be accompanied by an “environmental justice assessment,” which would include consulting with the people who live in the region where the facility would be located, according to the bill.

Pay off our social justice warriors or we won’t let you do business.

Several Republicans, during a legislative hearing on the bill Thursday, argued it would dampen the plastics industry at a time when the pandemic exposed a need for more plastic materials for personal protective equipment such as masks and gloves.

Rep. David McKinley, a West Virginia Republican, asked whether the Democrats’ bill would preclude the opening of new facilities such as an under-construction ethane cracker plant being built by Shell near Pittsburgh or a similar plant planned for eastern Ohio.

“Yes, I believe that language would jeopardize future investment into those types of facilities,” said Kevin Sunday, director of government affairs for the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, in response to McKinley’s question.

Sunday added that beyond PPE, plastics are also used to weatherize homes and can be found in automotive devices, recreational equipment, and even components used to transport and store the coronavirus vaccines.

Plastics are basically in every part of the American economy, from cars to medicine to semiconductors to clothing. As the biggest petrochemical producing state, Texas would be badly hurt by such regulation, but so would Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey and Illinois (among many others).

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Texas Republican, questioned whether the provisions targeting plastics production would have any measurable benefit on curbing emissions or reducing plastic waste in the oceans.

“I take that cotton bag to Whole Foods, I do, but I know it’s virtue-signaling,” Crenshaw said during the hearing. He suggested that the bulk of the plastics waste in the oceans can be traced back to Asian countries and that the United States isn’t as big a piece of the problem.

Of course, this bill wouldn’t stop anyone from opening plastics plants in China, where environmental regulations are far more lax. If this bill passes, opening a plastics plant in China may indeed require less money in bribes for communist party officials than opening one in America would require in crony capitalist payoffs to Democratic Party toadies. So the end result will be more global pollution and fewer American jobs.

This is yet another area where Democrats’ rent-seeker behavior will harm the American economy to ensure that their own palms are greased. One hopes there are still enough Democratic senators willing to listen to major employers in their states to vote down this naked attempt to tank a vital sector of the American economy.

(Hat tip: Director Blue.)

Stairs 3, Biden 0

March 20th, 2021

For the rest of us it’s Spring, but for Biden it’s fall:

Anyone can stumble on a stairway; very few people will stumble three times climbing the same set of stairs.

Remember when Biden made fun of Trump walking carefully down a ramp? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

So when is Saturday Night Live going to rehire Chevy Chase to play Joe Biden the way he played Gerald Ford? Chase is one year younger than Biden. (Of course, we all know the answer to that: Never. Because SNL hates making fun of Democrats. And Lorne Michaels hates Chase. Plus, at age 77, I doubt Chase is doing many pratfalls these days…)

Now some tweets:

LinkSwarm for March 19, 2021

March 19th, 2021

Greetings and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Our garbage elites are among the many continuing themes…

  • Why the Texas energy crisis has greens so scared:

    Last month, President Biden signed a series of executive orders undermining fossil fuels, on the grounds the “climate crisis” forced his hand. “We can’t wait any longer. We see with our own eyes. We know it in our bones. It is time to act.”

    Within days, most of the country was seeing “with our own eyes” and feeling “in our bones” a cold wave so severe that five million people lost electricity and, in a special irony, nearly half of the ballyhooed wind turbines in Texas, which had risen to supply 23% of her energy, were left frozen (and inoperable).

    This constituted a double whammy to the huge global warming establishment. First was the cold, when the “science” had confidently predicted a steadily warming Texas. Second was the failure of renewables, vastly exacerbating the problems for the energy grid.

    Within hours the mainstream media had risen to the challenge. Journalists employed their familiar word games, quickly substituting “climate change” for global warming. Readers might be a tad confused if they read “The brutal cold striking Texas is emblematic of a world facing more unpredictable weather due to the rising impact of global warming” but substitute “climate change” for the last two words and presto, the sentence works. To be sure, that’s only because “climate change” is a meaningless term.

    Snip.

    For the global warming establishment, the disastrous performance of renewables was more upsetting than the cold spell itself. The New York Times, in a lengthy article on the Texas energy blackout (Feb. 16) simply ignored the freezing wind turbines while Bloomberg buried a mention. When other media outlets took notice, it was generally to minimize the role of the turbines in the energy shutdown, putting most of the blame anywhere and everywhere else. ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, responsible for managing the electric grid, weighed in to support the minimizers, putting most of the blame on gas generators.

    Snip.

    Why does the media (and entire global warming establishment) find it so important to blame global warming for the current cold spell? Why is it so important to exonerate green power for the debacle in Texas? The inhabitants of this country, from kindergarten on, are being indoctrinated to believe in the supposed existential crisis of a warming planet. Evidence that cooling means warming has to be quickly marshaled lest the public come to credit its lying eyes and, a terrifying prospect, start to question the unfalsifiable dogma it has been told is “rock solid science.” It might even ridicule the now decades old claims by climate scientists, like David Viner of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia that snow would all but vanish in a few years.

    If the public could be reassured that the cold spell was merely another manifestation of global warming, believers in the prevailing doomsday scenarios would have their faith reinforced and possible doubters derailed before their doubts crystallized.

    As for deflecting blame from green power, this is a crucial moment in the battle to phase out fossil fuels. The Biden administration talks of mandating a total reliance on renewables within a few decades. The public must consider this a promising goal, offering a better life. If people decide it means unreliable energy, sitting in the cold and dark for days or weeks, energy prices through the roof (the price of gas rose by 100 times in Texas at one point), they may clamor to prevent an existential crisis around the corner in preference to avoiding one forecast in a far future by unproven computer models.

    Most worrying to climate elites, people are angry. In Texas, reporters found the man in the street incredulous that in the number one energy producing state, he was not only without electricity and heat but without safe drinking water. The media, so heavily invested in global warming, recognizes it is essential that the average citizen “seeking answers” find a target for his wrath. Heaven forfend that he should blame the media, politicians, even the scientific community, for foisting man-made global warming on him, with its insistence that man must change the climate by substituting unreliable renewables for tried and true fossil fuels.

    And so the media fastens on “safe” villains.

    

  • Remembering the the Russian conspiracy hoax:

    That the entire Russiagate storyline itself was a fraud and a farce is conclusively demonstrated by one decisive fact that can never be memory-holed: namely, the impetus for the scandal and subsequent investigation was the conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign had secretly and criminally conspired with the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election, primarily hacking into the email inboxes of the DNC and Clinton campaign chief John Podesta. And a grand total of zero Americans were accused (let alone convicted) of participating in that animating conspiracy.

    The New York Times’ May, 2017 announcement of Robert Mueller as special counsel stated explicitly that his task was “to oversee the investigation into ties between President Trump’s campaign and Russian officials” and specifically “investigate ‘any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.’”

    The related secondary media-created conspiracy theory was that the Kremlin clandestinely controlled U.S. political institutions by virtue of sexual and financial blackmail held over President Trump, which they used to compel him to obediently obey their dictates. “I don’t know what the Russians have on the president, politically, personally, or financially” was the dark innuendo which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her media allies most loved to spout. “Prestige news” outlets created their own Q-Anon-level series of art designed to implant in Americans’ minds a slew of McCarthyite imagery showing the Kremlin (or an iconic Moscow cathedral they mistook for the Kremlin) having fully infiltrated Washington’s key institutions.

    But that all came crashing down on their heads in April, 2019, when Mueller announced that he was closing his investigation without charging even a single American with the criminal conspiracy that launched the entire spectacle: criminally conspiring with the Russian government to interfere in the election. Again: while Mueller — like so many Washington special counsels before him — ended up snaring some operatives in alleged process crimes committed after the investigation commenced (lying to the FBI and obstruction of justice) or unrelated crimes (Manafort’s financial sleaze), the 18-month aggressive, sprawling investigation resulted in exactly zero criminal charges on the core claim that Trump officials had criminally conspired with Russia.

    If that were not sufficient to make every person who drowned the country in this crazed conspiracy theory feel enormous shame (and it should have been), the former FBI Director’s final Report explicitly stated that “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election.” In many cases, the Report went even further than this “did not establish” formulation to state that there was no evidence of any kind found for many of the key media conspiracies (“The investigation did not identify evidence that any U.S. persons knowingly or intentionally coordinated with the IRA’s interference operation”; the “evidence does not establish that one campaign official’s efforts to dilute a portion of the Republican platform was undertaken at the behest of candidate Trump or Russia”; “the investigation did not establish that [Carter] Page coordinated with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election”). The Report also barely even dignified let alone confirmed the long-standing, utterly deranged Democratic/media conspiracy theory that the Kremlin had taken over U.S. policy through blackmail.

    For a few weeks following the issuance of the Mueller report, Democrats and media figures gamely attempted to deny that it obliterated the conspiracy theories to which they had relentlessly subjected the country for the prior four years. How could they do otherwise? They staked their entire reputations and the trust of their audience on having this be true. To avoid their day of reckoning, they would hype ancillary events such as Paul Manafort’s conviction on unrelated financial crimes or Michael Flynn’s guilty plea for a minor and dubious charge (for which even Mueller recommended no prison time) or Roger Stone’s various process charges to insist that there was still a grain of truth to their multifaceted geopolitical fairy tale seemingly lifted straight from a Tom Clancy Cold War thriller about the world’s two largest nuclear powers.

    But even they knew this was just a temporary survival strategy and that it was unsustainable for the long term. That the crux of the scandal all along was that key Trump allies if not the President himself would be indicted and imprisoned for having conspired with the Russians was too glaring to make people forget about it.

    That was why former CIA Director John Brennan assured the MSNBC audience in March — just weeks before Mueller closed his investigation with no conspiracy crimes alleged — that it was impossible that the investigation could close without first indicting Trump’s children and other key White House aides on what Brennan correctly said was the whole point of the scandal from the start: “criminal conspiracy involving the Russians . . . . whether or not U.S. persons were actively collaborating, colluding, cooperating, involved in a conspiracy with them or not.” Brennan strongly insinuated that among those likely to be indicted for criminally conspiring with the Russians were those “from the Trump family.”

    As we all know, literally none of that happened. Not only were Trump family members not indicted by Mueller on charges of “criminal conspiracy involving the Russians,” no Americans were. Brennan believed there was no way that the Mueller investigation could end without that happening because that was the whole point of the scandal from the start. To explain why it had not happened up to that point after eighteen months of investigation by Mueller’s subpoena-armed and very zealous team of prosecutors, Brennan invented a theory that they were waiting to do that as the final act because they knew they would be fired by Trump once it happened. But it never happened because Mueller found no evidence to prove that it did.

    In other words, the conspiracy theory that the media pushed on Americans since before Trump’s inauguration — to the point where it drowned out most of U.S. politics and policy for years — proved to have no evidentiary foundation. And that is one reason I say that the sectors of the media pretending to be most distraught at the spread of “disinformation” by anonymous citizens on Facebook and 4Chan are, in fact, the most aggressive, prolific and destructive disseminators of that disinformation by far (nor was it uncredentialed YouTube hosts, Patreon podcasters or Substack writers who convinced Americans to believe that Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear weapons and was in an alliance with Al Qaeda but rather the editor-heavy prestige outlets such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, NBC News and The Atlantic).

    

  • More on the same theme:

  • Democratic Milwaukee County Judge Brett Blomme arrested on child pornography charges.

    Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Brett Blomme was arrested Tuesday on tentative charges of possession of child pornography, the state Department of Justice announced.

    Blomme, 38, was taken into custody by special agents with the state Division of Criminal Investigation “following an investigation into multiple uploads of child pornography through a Kik messaging application account in October and November 2020,” according to a statement.

    Snip.

    Before being elected, Blomme was the head of the board of zoning appeals for the City of Milwaukee, appointed to the post by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, and head of the Cream City Foundation, which provides grant money to LGBTQ groups in the Milwaukee area.

    A longtime LGBTQ activist, Blomme previously was director of major gifts at the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin for 18 months, following a stint at the Madison City Attorney’s Office. From 2011 to 2015, he practiced criminal defense with the State Public Defender’s Office.

    Missing from that piece: Blomme is a big wheel in the Milwaukee Democratic Party:

    Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Brett Blomme, who was charged Wednesday with seven counts of possession of child pornography, is a popular and influential figure among elected Democrats in Milwaukee. A very close ally of the city’s longtime mayor, Tom Barrett, Blomme was supported and endorsed by nearly every major Democrat and left-wing group involved in Milwaukee politics when he ran for a seat on the court last year.

    “I support Brett because, like me, he is committed to making Milwaukee a better place for all of us,” said U.S. Congressman Gwen Moore when she endorsed Blomme’s judicial run last winter. “Brett is the change we need to help fix our broken criminal justice system.”

    Blomme called this a “key endorsement” that helped propel him to a win over incumbent Paul Dedinsky. Blomme was seated on the bench in August and was serving in Children’s Court at the time of his arrest.

    He was also a sponsor of “Drag Queen Story Hour.”

  • “Police arrest 37 in child sex trafficking operation” in Phoenix.
  • 75% of Americans support voter ID. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Democrats are getting ready to shove a huge tax increase down America’s throat. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • 21 states, lead by Texas and Montana, sue the Biden Administration over the illegal cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline.
  • Our garbage ruling class:

    On this particular evening, my wife and I found ourselves at a roundtable with the CEO of a large hotel chain on our left, and a large communications conglomerate on our right. The Republicans, we’re often told, are the party of the rich and famous. Yet nearly everyone assembled at this dinner simply loathed Donald Trump. He was the focus of nearly every conversation. And then the hotel CEO announced, ‘Trump has no idea how much his policies are hurting business. I mean, we can’t keep people for $18 an hour in our hotels. If we’re not paying $20, we’re understaffed. And it’s all because of Donald Trump’s immigration policies.’ Let’s pause for a second to appreciate one of the wealthiest men in the world complaining about paying hard-working staff $20 an hour. The only thing he was missing was the Monopoly Man hat and cane. His argument, while vile, was at least intellectually honest: ‘Normally, if we can’t find workers at a given wage, we just get a bunch of immigrants to do the job. It’s easy. But there are so few people coming in across the border, so we just have to pay the people here more.’ This is why the American labor movement opposed immigration expansion for much of the past century—until recently, when many labor unions decided that being woke took priority over protecting workers. My wife is not a political person, and I’ve never seen her as animated by a conversation about politics as she was at this ‘masters of the universe’ dinner. ‘OK,’ she told me later. ‘I can understand why you can’t stand these people.’… Nearly every major business and financial leader in this country is a supporter of the Democratic Party. They love illegal immigration for the simple reason that their livelihoods are subsidized by illegal immigration—while illegal aliens themselves are subsidized by the taxpayer. It’s a redistribution scheme from the poor to the rich.

  • Houston police chief Art Acevedo leaving for Miami. As Dwight notes: “He decided to leave town before he got run out on a rail behind the narcotics scandal.”
  • Suspect in Murder of Houston Police Officer Released on Bond as Departing Police Chief Denounces Harris County Judges.”
  • “To defeat woke tyrants, the rest of us must treat them like the monsters they are.”

    Most Americans hate woke politics — and most minorities don’t share “woke” priorities. Indeed, according to pollster David Shor, woke excesses are causing black voters to flee the Democratic Party. Despite endless charges of “racism,” former President Donald Trump took the biggest share of minority voters of any Republican in my lifetime.

    Woke tyrants ride high, even so; according to a Cato/YouGov poll, 62 percent of Americans self-censor their political expression. Only a tiny minority of consumers care about Mr. Potato Head’s toxic masculinity, about “Aunt Jemima” as a brand or about the #MeToo aggressions of Pepé Le Pew. Yet corporations, universities and governments rush to placate that minuscule slice of the population, trashing large chunks of our culture in the process.

    It’s happening not because anybody voted for it, but because a small but determined and vicious minority is bullying people to go along, relying on cowardice and groupthink to achieve ends that could never happen via majority vote: How do you think Dr. Seuss would have done in a referendum?

    Snip.

    They need to be deprived of the thing that is most important to their self-image: moral credibility.

    The woke think of themselves — and want everyone else to think of them — as deeply moral. If they have a flaw, it’s that they just care too much. They’re too idealistic, too empathetic, too eager to make the world a better place.

    That’s bulls–t (pardon my French, Pepé!). If you look at what they do, rather than what they say about themselves, it quickly becomes obvious that the woke are horrible, awful people, and they should be treated as such and reminded of this whenever they raise their head.

    Historically, it’s not the good guys who are out burning books and censoring speech. It isn’t the caring, empathetic people who try to destroy lives based on something someone said years ago, often while young, often taken out of context. It isn’t the good guys who take undisguised glee at the ruining of lives, families and careers.

    You know who does these things? Horrible, awful people. Selfish people. People with serious mental and emotional problems who seek some sort of vindication for their deficient characters by taking power trips while imposing suffering on others.

    Treat these tyrants as what they are: awful people who shouldn’t be listened to and who need to work hard on joining the better half of the human race. And remind them of it, over and over. Because it’s true.

  • “A recent mathematical model has suggested that staying at home did not play a dominant role in reducing COVID-19 transmission.”
  • “Austin, Travis County Sued by Texas Attorney General for Refusing to Rescind Mask Mandate.”
  • “In California, Your Church or Your Small Business Still Receives the Hammer of the State, While Grammy Entertainers Party Without Penalty.” It angries up the blood it does….
  • Speaking of lunacy California’s government imposes on its citizens: “California Curriculum Leads Kids in Chant to Aztec God of Human Sacrifice.”
  • An ad, but a sobering one:

  • Speaking of Google competitors, JavaScript creator and Mozilla founder Brendan Eich is working on a new privacy-focused search engine.
  • 76-year old Asian woman kicks the ass of would-be assailant. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • A collection of Home Owner’s Association horror stories. (Hat tip: 357 Magnum.)
  • 1. Drive loaner Beamer to bank. 2. Rob bank. 3. Try to use money from bank robbery to buy Beamer.
  • High flying lawyer and Democratic Party fundraiser Tom Girardi marries trophy wife. Result? Bankruptcy:

    When Joe Biden came to Los Angeles to raise money for his presidential campaign, Tom Girardi filled a dining room at the Jonathan Club with wealthy attorneys. . . . The 2019 breakfast fundraiser at the private downtown club was in many ways the end of an era. By the time Biden was elected last fall, Girardi’s life and legal empire were unraveling. His wealth, once estimated north of $250 million, has vanished and with it his reputation as one of the nation’s most connected and respected lawyers. With Girardi facing bankruptcy, divorce and a criminal investigation, his days as a political insider and power broker appear over. For decades, though, politicians were happy to take his money and put up with his requests for something in return. Along with his family and employees, Girardi contributed more than $7.3 million to candidates.

    If you study the pathetic tale of Girardi’s downfall — the Los Angeles Times ran a 4,000-word story about this shabby tragedy in December — you realize that the primary source of his problems was his third wife, a blonde bimbo gold-digger more than 30 years his junior. A native of Atlanta, Erika Chahoy moved to New York as soon as she turned 18.

    To underwrite his new wife’s musical career, Girardi set up a Ponzi scheme. Also this: “Although Girardi was in the midst of an acrimonious dispute over dividing assets with his second wife, he opted not to sign a prenuptial agreement.” Oh, she also released a song called “Xxpen$ive” and starred in Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. And then filed for divorce.

    “Twenty years ago, Tom Girardi was worth more than $50 million, and now at age 81, he’s on his way to bankruptcy and disbarment.

    He will probably die in prison. Way to go, top Democrat donor!”

  • Former NBA player Shawn Bradley paralyzed after being hit by a car while riding his bike. Because a 7’6″ guy riding a bicycle is evidently really hard to see. And for old times sake:

  • One of the most amazing guitar solos you’ll ever hear. And it’s by the guy who doesn’t have the guitar:

  • Heh:

  • “Biden Says Mask Wearing Must Continue Until Everyone Has Learned Complete Obedience To Government.”
  • David Hogg’s pillow company seems to have already failed.

  • Whoa.
  • 7 Simpsons characters in 35 seconds.
  • Speaking of The Simpsons, did you know that the pilot for Leave It To Beaver had different cast members for almost everyone except Jerry Mathers and Barbara Billingsly? And that the Eddie Haskell-esque role of Frankie was played by none other than Harry Shearer?
  • “Woman Who Thought Being A Princess Was Too Hard Wants To Run For President.”
  • Our betters explore fashion:

  • Check it out, the funk soul brother:

  • Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick On Biden’s Border Crisis

    March 18th, 2021

    President Donald Trump had implemented effective polices to control the flow of illegal aliens coming across the border, so naturally Slow Joe had to undo that so as to amnesty more future Democrats.

    Here Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick on the border crisis:

    “We were able to relax under the Trump Administration because he actually did his job and we were in good shape on the border, before Biden got elected. We were in good shape. The protocols were working, keeping the asylum seekers in Mexico.”

    “This is not a crisis, this is a full-blown disaster that they’ve created.”

    “What they need to do is close the border. It’s wide open.”

    “This is the worst I’ve seen.”

    “President Biden is no more than a prop of the left. He has no idea what’s going on down there.”

    State Department Lead Investigator Says Flu Manchu Escaped From Lab

    March 17th, 2021

    Seems like a whole lot of well-informed people keep thinking the thought that our kowtowing media keeps telling us we’re forbidden to think:

    The US State Department’s former lead investigator who oversaw the COVID-19 task force into the origins of the virus believes SARS-CoV-2 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and may have been the product of bioweapons research, according to Fox News.

    “The Wuhan Institute of Virology is not the National Institute of Health,” David Asher – now a senior fellow at the Hudson institute – told Fox News in an interview, adding: “It was operating a secret, classified program. In my view, and I’m just one person, my view is it was a biological weapons program.”

    Asher has long been a “follow the money” guy who has worked on some of the most classified intelligence investigations for the State Department and Treasury under both Democratic and Republican administrations. He led the team that uncovered the international nuclear procurement network run by the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, AQ Khan, and uncovered key parts of North Korea’s secret uranium enrichment. He believes the Chinese Communist Party has been involved in a massive cover-up during the past 14 months. -Fox News

    “And if you believe, as I do, that this might have been a weapons vector gone awry, not deliberately released, but in development and then somehow leaked, this has turned out to be the greatest weapon in history,” Asher told a Hudson Institute panel discussing the origins of the pandemic. “You’ve taken out 15 to 20 percent of global GDP. You’ve killed millions of people. The Chinese population has been barely affected. Their economies roared back to being number one in the entire G20.”

    According to Asher – who interfaced with the Chinese government as the State Department’s lead representative during the 2003 SARS outbreak – the CCP’s behavior surrounding COVID-19 reminds him of criminal investigations he’s overseen.

    “Motive, cover-up, conspiracy, all the hallmarks of guilt are associated with this. And the fact that the initial cluster of victims surrounded the very institute that was doing the highly dangerous, if not dubious research is significant,” he said.

    One wonders who it was that first gave the MSM their marching orders: “Never say ‘China virus!’ Never say that it might have come from the giant viral lab researching coronavirus in the same city it originated in!” The fact that they continue to label this very logical inference a “conspiracy theory” after Trump has left the White House suggests a desperate need to please China among our so-called media elites.

    Texas Legislature Considers Statewide Camping Ban

    March 16th, 2021

    So tremendous is Austin City Council stupidity that the Texas legislature is considering a statewide camping ban:

    In a not-so-subtle broadside against its capital city, the Texas legislature will consider legislation to ban camping in public places and creating a criminal offense for violation of it.

    Austin’s national renown for its live music has been all but supplanted by the notoriety for its homeless situation — featuring a nebulous inverse relationship between music venues still operating and tent encampments dotting the roadside.

    The city’s camping and laying ordinance rescission of July 2019 created an impassioned reaction from Austin citizens across the political spectrum. But the city council has remained largely resolute behind its policy.

    Reinstatement of the camping ban will appear before voters in May, but it will effectively become a formality if state Republicans have their way.

    Two bills to explicitly ban public camping statewide have been filed. Rep. Giovanni Capriglione’s (R-Southlake)House Bill 1925 and Sens. Dawn Buckingham (R-Lakeway), Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston), and Charles Schwertner’s (R-Georgetown)Senate Bill 987.

    “A person commits an offense,” the identical bills read, “if the person intentionally or knowingly camps in a public place without the consent of the officer or agency having the legal duty or authority to manage the public place.”

    It establishes a Class C misdemeanor for violation of the law, which is a fine-only charge.

    The bill carves out the ability of a state agency to establish designated camping areas, like Camp R.A.T.T. located near the Highway 183-Ben White Boulevard intersection.

    It would also explicitly prohibit contradictory local orders, stating, “A local entity may not adopt or enforce a policy under which the entity prohibits or discourages the enforcement of any public camping ban.”

    If this passes and makes it to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk, I would fully expect him to sign it:

    Hopefully both this and the May 1st ballot initiative will both pass. (Did you notice that Texas Supreme Court forced a minor change in the ballot wording?)

    Only the Austin City Council and their hard-left enablers think lifting the camping ban has been anything but a disaster for Austin:

    In other Austin homeless news:

  • Nine days ago, a fire in a homeless camp damaged a Ben White to I-35 flyover.
  • A lawsuit has been filed to stop the NW Austin homeless hotel sale:

    A lawsuit has been filed against the City of Austin in an attempt to stop the sale of the Candlewood Suites hotel, which the City intends to convert into a supportive housing facility for Austinites experiencing homelessness.

    Lawyer and Hampton Inn and Homewood Suites CFO Rupal Chaudhari said her “Chaudhari Partnership” business filed the suit on Thursday, seeking injunctive relief, monetary relief and a declaratory judgment preventing the finalized purchase “without proper notice and compensation for the loss of value of its properties and easement.”

    “The City has engaged in a regulatory taking, constitutional due process violations and is in violation of deed restrictions on an easement jointly held with Chaudhari Partnership,” Chaudhari said in a release.

    Candlewood Suites is located near State Highway 45 and U.S. 183 in Austin and partially in Williamson County. It is adjacent to Chaudhari’s business.

    Williamson County leaders have said they were caught off guard when they learned the Austin City Council was even considering buying Candlewood Suites to house the homeless at the end of January.

    Commissioners asked Austin councilmembers to delay the purchase and vote by six months so they could have more time to work with Austin leaders and discuss the matter.

    But on Feb. 4, the Austin City Council bought Candlewood Suites for up to $9.5 million, making it the fourth hotel Austin plans to use to house the homeless. The City is now in a 90-day due diligence period.

    In addition to Thursday’s lawsuit, Williamson County commissioners gave the green light to their general counsel to start interviewing law firms last month, propelling the county toward a lawsuit against the City of Austin, including the potential involvement of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

    “Negotiating in secret, never engaging citizens and taxpayers until the deal is essentially complete, disregarding community feedback and taking a pre-determined vote – that is not how any trustworthy City or organization operates,” Chaudhari said. “Their behavior and current process is more than unprofessional – it’s irredeemable.”

  • Maintaining public order to secure the life, liberty and property of citizens is one of the first duties of government. The Austin City Council and Mayor Steve Adler have not only ignored this duty in repealing the camping ban in 2019, they’ve actually gone out of their way to subvert it. It’s high time both Austin citizens and the legislature reign in their madness.

    I Have Now Added and Activated WP Fastest Cache for BattleSwarm

    March 15th, 2021

    Instapundit readers have been complaining that they get 404 errors when Instapundit links a post. So I’ve been meaning to put up caching software for quite a while now. But since all caching software reviews said things like “Awesome! Really speed up my blog!” (98%) and “It completely destroyed my blog and erased everything!” (2%), I wanted to export/back up my blog and then do a complete backup of my Mac in Time Machine. Unfortunately, my old backup HD flaked out late last year, replacements were back-ordered for a while, and the first two replacements HDs I picked up also flaked out. (I am hoping that this new 5 TB Seagate portable external hard drive remains error free.)

    With all those safe-keeping measures in place, I have finally installed WP Fastest Cache. Let me know below if the site seems faster, or if you’re still getting errors.

    So let’s post some random content to test the new cache. Since Bill Burr trended last night over his appearance at the Grammys (which evidently still exist) triggering the usual suspects, here’s a short NSFW video where he take on political correctness:

    And here are some tweets on the subject:

    Non-cached tweets are evidently something that really soaks up the bandwidth, so let’s see if WP Fastest Cache fixes the problem.

    Blogroll Additions

    March 14th, 2021

    The Sunday after they’ve sucked an hour out of our lives seems like a good time to do a Blogroll update.

  • 357 Magnum: Solid gun and politics blog that’s been sending some traffic my way.
  • Austin Network: Good Austin news source, including a lot about the Austin City Council-created “Let’s make Austin bumsville” homeless crisis.
  • New Discourses: James Lindsey’s ongoing, in-depth dissection of social justice warrior thinking and tactics.
  • Not The Bee: I already had The Babylon Bee in my blogroll, but their non-satirical sister site is also proving an essential source as well.
  • The Texan: Daily Texas news source. Not free, but worth the modest monthly fee if you’re interested in Texas news and want to avoid subsidized the MSM.
  • I also pruned a few dead links or blogs that hadn’t been updated in three years…