The Coming Collapse Of Venezuela

June 13th, 2024

Here’s Peter Zeihan to state what conservatives knew a decade ago: Venezuela is headed for collapse.

It’s just over 6 minutes long, so even though I’ve excerpted it, you might want to watch all of it to listen for the one word Zeihan doesn’t say.

  • “Under 20 years of ridiculous mismanagement and theft by the governments of Hugo Chavez and now Nicholas Maduro, the state’s broken.”
  • “Basically we’ve had two decades of the governing authorities literally stealing everything that wasn’t stripped down, and then getting a wrench and getting a lot of the stuff that was stripped down [I think he means “strapped down”], to the point that they simply didn’t just confiscate materials they stripped it of equipment and melted it down or sold it for parts and there’s really nothing left.”
  • “So the country that used to have the highest educational levels in Latin America, the country that used to have the highest standard of living and the most cultural achievement, is now teetering on the verge of being a broken state, a failed state.”
  • “Roughly 1/3rd of the population that has out migrated since uh the last 6-7 years.”
  • “In calendar year 2022 and calendar year 2023, the Biden Administration did a partial lifting of sanctions on the regime, basically saying that if you start working in the direction of free and fair elections, we will allow investment to come in to stabilize the energy sector and get some more oil out of the ground. Uh, we’re going to trust your word for it, and then we will reassess when we get closer to elections in 2024.”
  • I bet everyone reading this can figure out exactly how well that worked out. “We’ll just take your word that your three card monte game is on the level.”
  • Chevron came in and got oil output up to a million barrels a day.
  • “But in the last several weeks it’s been clear that the government of Maduro has no intention of having real elections.” You don’t say. What you mean is “It’s been clear for decades that Venezuela’s socialist thugs have never had any intentions of holding free elections.” Only and idiot would think otherwise.
  • But the Biden Administration is doing everything it can to increase oil production in the rest of the world to help Biden’s reelection chances, while supressing oil production at home. “There’s a lot of things about that that are inconsistent.” You don’t say.
  • Oil production is now under three-quarters of a million barrels and falling.
  • “The really high-end stuff, the stuff that was part of the outcome of Venezuela being such a successful state, left a long time ago, and in bits and pieces ever since the the middle management and the secondary skill set and now there’s really nothing left.”
  • “People like to talk about the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians coming, in but they don’t have any experience in this sort of oil patch, so we are probably going to see a collapse of what’s left of the output this year and early in the next year.”
  • “One of the many, many, many, many, many mistakes that Chavez and Maduro made is they hated the United States so much, and their spending was so crazy, that they started pre-selling their oil specifically to China and to a lesser degree to Russia. ‘We’ll take X number of billions of dollars from you now and we will pay you back with raw crude in the years to come.’ Well, what that means is that the Venezuelans are already not getting money from the oil that they produce.”
  • “So we are going to see this collapse, and as that happens, the ability of getting even a modicum of foreign currency to pay for the 80% of their food that they now import because they destroyed their agricultural sector is on deck.”
  • “So the famines of the past, the dislocations of the past, the migrations of the past these have all just been the appetizer course, and over the next very few years we’re going to see the full collapse of Venezuelan society.”

    • Leave it to the Biden Administration to enable foreign leftist enemies for temporary political gain.

    Did you notice the word missing from Zeihan’s analysis?

    That word is socialism.

    For well over a decade, conservatives have been talking about how Venezuela’s socialist rulers were ruining their country, up to an including zoo animals starving to death because there was no food to feed them. All while the useful idiots on the American left like Michael Moore insisted that Venezuela was building a socialist paradise.

    The only thing we learn from history is that not one enthusiast for socialism will learn from history.

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    Posted in Communism, Economics, Foreign Policy, Social Justice Warriors | 8 Comments »

    Federal Judge Slaps Down Biden Tranny Title IX Rewrite

    June 12th, 2024

    Another week, Texas legal victory over the Biden Administration’s radical social justice regulatory overreach.

    Attorney General Ken Paxton announced today that a federal court has vacated the controversial Title IX guidance nationwide.

    The ruling included a permanent injunction against its enforcement against Texas and its schools.

    The Biden administration’s 1,500-page rewrite of Title IX added “gender identity” as a protected class and would force K-12 schools to allow boys into girls’ facilities and activities. Schools that refused were threatened with loss of federal education funds.

    In response to the rewrite, Gov. Greg Abbott instructed the Texas Education Agency to ignore the new Title IX rule. He later directed all public universities to also ignore the rewrite.

    Meanwhile, Paxton sued to stop enforcement of the new rule.

    “Joe Biden’s unlawful effort to weaponize Title IX for his extremist agenda has been stopped in its tracks,” said Attorney General Paxton Tuesday. “Threatening to withhold education funding by forcing states to accept ‘transgender’ policies that put women in danger was plainly illegal. Texas has prevailed on behalf of the entire Nation.”

    According to the court order, “Rather than promote the equal opportunity, dignity, and respect that Title IX demands for both biological sexes, [the DOE’s] Guidance Documents do the opposite in an effort to advance an agenda wholly divorced from the text, structure, and contemporary context of Title IX. Not to mention, recipients of Title IX funding—including Texas schools—will face an impossible choice: revise policies in compliance with the Guidance Documents but in contravention of state law or face the loss of substantial funding.”

    Not to mention being divorced from basic biological reality. If the cells in a person’s body contain XX chromosomes, that person is female. If those cells contain XY chromosomes, then that person is male. No amount of legislation or regulation will ever change that basic reality, no matter how hard the party insists that you must affirm that 2+2=5.

    “Thus, to allow [the Biden Administration’s] unlawful action to stand would be to functionally rewrite Title IX in a way that shockingly transforms American education and usurps a major question from Congress,” wrote U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor. “That is not how our democratic system functions.”

    There’s more meat worth quoting in the ruling.

    Multiple Texas laws and school policies implicate the concept of sex in the educational context. The Texas Education Code prohibits school districts from allowing “a student to compete in an interscholastic athletic competition sponsored or authorized by the district or school that is designated for the biological sex opposite to the student’s biological sex.” TEX. EDUC. CODE § 33.0834. The Board of Trustees for independent school districts “have the exclusive power and duty to govern and oversee the management of the public schools of the district.” Id. § 11.151(b). Pursuant to that oversight power, Texas school districts promulgate additional policies on related issues that mirror § 33.0834. These school districts receive federal funds.

    These additional district-specific policies take various forms. For example, some Texas school districts—such as Frisco ISD, Grapevine–Colleyville ISD, and Carroll ISD—mandate that schools within their respective districts maintain separate bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers based on biological sex. These school districts also prohibit the assignment of bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers based on subjective gender identity. Consistent with the biological reality of sex, Carroll ISD precludes district employees from “requir[ing] the use of pronouns that are inconsistent with a student’s or other person’s biological sex.

    “The biological reality of sex” is precisely what the left has declared war on.

    As part of the radical left’s war against Christianity and the nuclear family, the social justice-infected Democratic party has decided to make pandering to confused and mentally ill men a higher priority than protecting actual women. Despite how deeply unpopular this anti-reality position with the American public, conservatives were initially slow to take up the fight against it, either cowed by histrionic emotional arguments (“If you deny transexualism, you’re literally forcing them to kill themselves!”) or an inability to believe that the something so brazenly absurd is real and not some sort of elaborate joke. But when the Biden Administration tries to rewrite Title IX, a law written to protect women, by executive fiat to mean the exact opposite of the statutory language in order to protect men pretending to be woman at the expense of actual women, then we have to assume that they are very serious indeed.

    Texas is fortunate to have a governor and attorney general who are not afraid to fight against the Biden Administration’s war on reality.

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    Posted in Democrats, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 4 Comments »

    Travis County Assistant DA Arrested For Aggravated Assault With A Deadly Weapon

    June 11th, 2024

    This is just a weird story.

    Travis County Assistant District Attorney Joe Frederick was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after threatening to shoot his roommate, according to the arrest affidavit.

    The affidavit says that a guest was visiting Frederick on Friday afternoon, June 7, at his apartment in west Austin. According to the documents, Frederick had been having difficulty streaming pornography on the TV in his apartment, and asked his roommate to fix the issue.

    So here’s a 51 year old Assistant DA, who’s worked in the DA’s office for 17 years, he lives in an apartment with a roommate, and his idea of entertainment for a visiting guest is to stream pornography. Which he evidently has trouble viewing, so he demands his roommate help fix the issue.

    A whole bunch of things don’t seem to be adding up here.

    According to the court documents, after the guest left, Frederick accused his roommate of making “googly eyes” at the guest, suggesting jealousy. This upset his roommate due to him feeling like he was being called a “hoe.”

    Does rather sound like a gay lover’s spat than an ordinary roommate fight, doesn’t it?

    This escalated into an argument and an exchange of insults; the roommate tried to knock over a TV stand but was stopped by Frederick. The roommate then went back into his bedroom and locked the door to avoid further conflict.

    Frederick attempted to force his roommate’s bedroom door open, damaging the door while doing so. Eventually, the roommate opened the door to use the bathroom, finding Frederick standing in the hallway pointing a gun at him.

    Here’s where Frederick not only violated Jeff Cooper’s rules, but kicked it up into clear felony territory.

    According to the affidavit, the roommate reported that Frederick made statements to him saying “Get away from me” and “You’re a danger to yourself and everyone around you.” The roommate went to the bathroom, observing Frederick going inside of his (the roommate’s) bedroom and closing the door.

    The affidavit says the roommate then opened his bedroom door, pushing Frederick backwards. The roommate reported that Frederick raised the revolver and pointed it at his roommate’s face, saying “I’ll shoot you.” The roommate then began to record Frederick’s actions.

    The affidavit says that the video footage shows Joesph holding the revolver while walking around the living room area, telling his roommate to “Get the f— out.” It also says that Frederick is heard accusing his roommate of pushing him, and that the gun is self-defense.

    Police recovered the revolver as they investigated the incident. The affidavit says the revolver was fully loaded.

    No injuries were reported.

    The 51-year-old Assistant District Attorney was booked into the Travis County jail at 3:49 a.m. on Saturday, June 8. His bail was set at $10,000.

    Frederick is out of jail as of Sunday, June 9.

    None of this is what I would classify as “normal behavior.” I’m guessing intoxicating substances may have been involved.

    What is it about that Travis County DA’s office that drives people mad? First Rosemary Lehmberg drives around with an open bottle of vodka, now this. (Current Soros-backed hard left DA Jose Garza entered office already mad.)

    Is Frederick a Democrat? Well, his LinkedIn page says he was “Intern, Michael Madigan Speaker of Illinois House of Representatives” back when he was in college, and Michael Madigan is not only a Democrat, he remained Illinois Speaker until 2021, was widely perceived to run “The Combine,” one of the most corrupt political machines in America, and goes on trial for federal racketeering charges later this year. But Frederick’s intern job was all the way back in 1995, so maybe it’s wrong to assume his political affiliation from that. People generally don’t spend 17 years in the DA’s office if their goal is political power.

    I wonder if the charge will get pled down, as so many felon charges do under Garza’s soft-on-crime regime, or if they’ll move the trial to another county.

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats | 15 Comments »

    Adobe Just Wants Unlimited Use Of Everything You Create

    June 10th, 2024

    Adobe has just changed the terms for subscription applications like Photoshop. Nothing big, just a demand of unlimited use of everything you ever create, forever. Oh, and you’re locked out of your existing work until you agree.

    A change to Adobe terms & conditions for apps like Photoshop has outraged many professional users, concerned that the company is claiming the right to access their content, use it freely, and even sub-licence it to others.

    The company is requiring users to agree to the new terms in order to continue using their Adobe apps, locking them out until they do so …

    Adobe says that its new terms “clarify that we may access your content through both automated and manual methods, such as for content review.”

    The terms say:

    Solely for the purposes of operating or improving the Services and Software, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free sublicensable, license, to use, reproduce, publicly display, distribute, modify, create derivative works based on, publicly perform, and translate the Content. For example, we may sublicense our right to the Content to our service providers or to other users to allow the Services and Software to operate with others, such as enabling you to share photos

    If you’re using our tools, we get unlimited rights to anything you ever created on our tools for any purpose forever, plus we get to sublicense them. It’s as if Microsoft announced that it was publishing Joe Schmoo’s Misery II: Misery Harder because Stephen King agreed to the license agreement for Word 4.0.

    Designer Wetterschneider, who counts DC Comics and Nike among his clients, was one of the graphics pros to object to the terms.

    Here it is. If you are a professional, if you are under NDA with your clients, if you are a creative, a lawyer, a doctor or anyone who works with proprietary files – it is time to cancel Adobe, delete all the apps and programs. Adobe can not be trusted.

    But don’t worry! It gets worse! You can’t access your server-stored work or even uninstall the app until you agree to the term!

    Concept artist Sam Santala pointed out that you can’t raise a support request to discuss the terms without first agreeing to them. You can’t even uninstall the apps!

    I can’t even get ahold of your support chat to question this unless I agree to these terms beforehand.

    I can’t even uninstall Photoshop unless I agree to these terms?? Are you f**king kidding me??

    But don’t worry! Adobe has “clarified” that they’re really not going to steal your content, despite the terms and conditions clearly giving them the permissions to do precisely that. They also swear up and down that they’re never, ever, ever going to use your work to train AI on, despite the fact that we all know that’s exactly what they’re doing.

    All of this points out how stupid it is to rely on a subscription model for your software.

    Is there a Louis Rossmann rant on the subject? Yes. Yes there is.

  • “When you are at the mercy of connecting to somebody else’s computer to use your software, this means that your data can be held hostage and they can change the terms on you at any time.”
  • He states he feels anything he’s published on the Internet is fair game for training AI. But: “I do not want Adobe’s machine learning algorithms going through my personal private content. When I have something in my drawer, that belongs to me. That is not for anybody else to learn from.”
  • “If you have a halfway finished creative project, you are literally not able to access it unless you agree to terms and conditions that allow their machine learning algorithms to go through all of your private fucking library. You rapist pieces of shit!”
  • “The problem with having your data on somebody else’s computer is that they can roofy you anytime they want and get access to it.”
  • “Where on this page does it say that if you don’t want us to access your data, that you can grab all your data out of there and cancel? Does it say that? No, it says you either accept and continue you take the roofy or you don’t get access to any of your stuff ever again.”

    • Until Adobe actually changes the terms and conditions to provide the narrow permissions they claim they actually need (like the ability to create thumbnails), no one should agree to their terms. And not allowing someone to retrieve or delete their data without agreeing to draconian terms and conditions first is unconscionable extortion.

    Expect lawsuits.

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    Posted in Media Watch, video | 17 Comments »

    NYTimes Hacked, Source Code Stolen

    June 9th, 2024

    This seems like a story that should be getting a lot more coverage: The New York Times was evidently hacked and hundred of gigabytes of their source code released.

    An anonymous hacker has claimed to have leaked 270 GB of internal data and source code from The New York Times (NYT) on the controversial image board 4chan.

    The leak, reportedly containing over 5,000 repositories and 3.6 million files, was published on June 6, 2024. It has since raised widespread concern and speculation about the potential implications for the historic news organization.

    The hacker, who has not been identified, posted a magnet link to the files on 4chan, encouraging users to download and share the data. According to the hacker, the leaked collection comprises uncompressed tar files with fewer than 30 encrypted repositories.

    The leaked data reportedly contains a variety of source code, including the blueprints of well-known games like Wordle, email marketing campaigns, and ad reports. The hacker’s message was signed “With love from /aicg/,” a nod to a 4chan community.

    While the leak’s legitimacy has not been independently verified, cybersecurity experts and media outlets have expressed serious concerns. The Register reported that it had seen a list of files in the purported leak but had not confirmed their authenticity.

    Bryan Lunduke of The Lunduke Journal (who’s covered leaked/hacked material like this before) downloaded the files. He says they’re 334GB worth of files (maybe the size discrepancy is zipped vs unzipped) and thinks they’re real.

  • This dropped June 6.
  • “We are talking about a 334 gigabyte archive containing supposedly 3.6 million and some change files, individual source code files. Massive. Off-the-charts massive.”
  • He though it might just be every New York Times story ever published, but it doesn’t appear to be. Nor does it look like an email server dump.
  • “This is massive. It almost is making my brain hurt simply going through all of this.”
  • “I went through it. I read a bunch of it in depth. When I say a bunch of it, I mean I spent a long time on it and barely made a dent.”
  • “It truly does look to be over 3 something million source code files.”
  • “The first things I looked through were tremendously boring. It was just stupid JavaScript files dealing with Markdown.” JavaScript is a front-end programming language used for performing a huge variety of tasks in your browser. Markdown is an HTML-like text markup language used as a basis for rendering documents in a variety of different formats (standard web page, phone webpage, PDF, online help, etc.
  • A lot of it appears to be internal website documents.
  • “It’s from a wide variety of stuff. I mean it’s all over the map. We’re talking onboarding documents and technical documents, hiring documents, switchboard documents, user attribute documents, a huge amount of documentation.”
  • Plus actual source code for iOS and Android applications.
  • Lunduke explains legal doctrine on leaked materials and reporting, saying he didn’t commit any crime to obtain the material, which should legally put him in the clear for talking about material therein relevant to the public interest. Normally I’d point out “Hacking is wrong, mkay,” but New York Times has itself published hacked/leaked/stolen material itself at least as far back as The Pentagon Papers, so this is a case of biter bit.
  • “There a reasonable assumption that publishing some of this leaked material would be of the public interest…There are a number of policies and other interesting things in place documented within this material that could be of the public interest.”
  • “This does appear to be real. I cannot fathom how all of this could have been created if it wasn’t real.” I am inclined to agree. But! It’s important to note that a real archive can be salted with false information for a variety of nefarious purposes, so caveat lector.
  • “It is an absolutely monstrous amount. Simply searching through it and scanning it is insane. There are over 5,000 individual mini-archives within this link each one appears to represent an individual source code repository, or at least a folder or subfolder within source code repositories.” He says it appears to be just the latest snapshot, and not all the versions you would find in a source code repository like GitHub.

  • The time stamps on the files look recent.
  • “Man, there’s some funky things going on here.”

    • I am most interested in how internal policies codify/enforce woke social justice priorities, if there are any special instructions for covering Donald Trump (or other Republicans), racial preferences in hiring policies, etc.

    I’m hoping for some juicy revelations…

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    Posted in Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, video | 7 Comments »

    Surviving D-Day Ships

    June 8th, 2024

    Since I didn’t do a separate post on the 80th anniversary of D-Day, here’s a Mark Felton video that covers ships from Operatune Neptune, the naval portion of D-Day, that have survived.

  • Operation Neptune was “under British control, commanded by Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey, the man who had been responsible for the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940.”
  • “Can you imagine the size of the force of ships required to land over 150,000 British, Canadian, American and French troops on five different beaches? It was almost 7,000, from huge battleships to tiny landing craft.”
  • “Britain supplied 892 warships out of the 1,213 involved, and 3,261 landing craft out of a total of 4,126.
  • Brits crewed many landing craft carrying American soldiers to the beach.
  • “112,113 Royal Navy personnel served on D-Day, plus 25,000 British members of the Merchant Navy, with the United States Navy providing the second biggest contingent: 52,889.”
  • The invasion fleet was split into the Western Naval Task Force under U.S. Admiral Alan G. Kirk, supporting Omaha and Utah beaches, and the Eastern Naval Task Force, under British Admiral Sir Philip Vian, covering Gold, Juno and Sword beaches.
  • Minesweeping operations began even earlier than the landings.
  • The landing was originally scheduled on June 5, but had to be delayed due to bad weather.
  • HMS Medusa arrived at the beach 12 hours before the US Landings began to “act as a marker to show the entrance to a narrow channel to be swept by mine sweepers.” “HMS Medusa still looks exactly the same as she did during World War II, having been extensively restored and carefully looked after, and she could be found today at Haslar Marina in Crossport in Hampshire.”
  • “Today only one D-Day veteran minesweeper still exists, USS Threat, and incredibly she is still serving in her original role, though no longer with the United States.” She was sold to Mexico, and currently serves as to Mexico where she currently serves as the ARM Francisco Zarco.
  • The destroyer USS Laffey screened for German ships on D-Day, and performed some shore bombardment on June 8-9. She’s preserved as a museum ship in South Carolina.
  • And yes, everyone’s favorite Gangsta Battleship is covered.

    The bombarding forces flagship of Omaha Beach still survives: The battleship USS Texas. An old ship in 1944, Texas dated from around 1912, a dreadnaught battleship of the old school. In World War II she had been pressed into convoy escort duties in the Atlantic, and shore bombardment during the Operation Torch landings in North Africa in 1942. She had been modified over the years, and her systems upgraded, and her ten 14 inch guns gave her a formidable hitting power, able to pulverize targets over 20 miles away. On D-Day, Texas was assigned to provide fire support to the Western half of Omaha Beach, where the US 29th Infantry Division was landing, and Pointe du Hoc, in support of the 2nd Ranger Battalion.

    The Texas recently underwent extensive restoration. Dwight has more details.

  • The Royal Navy light Cruiser HMS Belfast also carried out shore bombardment, and survives as a museum ship on the Themes.
  • A surviving Liberty Ship, SS Jeremiah O’Brien, was not only preserved, it carried American veterans across the Atlantic to participate in the 50th Anniversary commemoration, and today she remains fully seaworthy.
  • Various other, smaller ships (tank landing craft, light ships, and a German patrol boat) have survived in various roles and in museums.

    • As the largest conflict in human history passes out of living memory, so much of what was common knowledge of that conflict fades into obscurity. People still know Omaha Beach from Saving Private Ryan, but if you were to ask today’s college students “What is the significance of the names Gold, Juno and Sword?”, I venture that most wouldn’t know the answer.

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    Posted in Military, Texas, video | 10 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for June 7, 2024

    June 7th, 2024

    All those “new jobs” created in the Biden Recession have gone to illegal aliens, two Trump court cases appear to be in the process of derailment, more Hunter Biden shenanigans come to light, a whole lot of anniversaries this week, and a chance to own the Ark of the Covenant! It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • This should make even more people with Joe Biden’s illegal open border policy: “All Jobs In The Past Year Have Gone To Illegal Aliens.”

    The first Wall Street analyst daring to point out that the employment emperor is naked, is Standard Chartered’s global head of macro, Steve Englander who in a note titled simply enough “Immigration leading to labor-market surge” [writes] that according to his estimates “undocumented immigrants account for half of job growth in FY24 so far” (the actual number is far higher but we understand his initial conservatism), and adds that “asylum seekers and humanitarian parolees explain the surge in undocumented immigrants” before concluding that the continued rise in EAD approvals likely will extend strong employment growth in 2024. In other words, “strong employment growth” for American citizens, always was and remains a fabulation, and the only job growth in the US is for illegals, who will work for below minimum wage, which also explains why inflation hasn’t spiked in the past year as millions of illegals were hired.

  • Does a mistrial loom in the Trump kangaroo court case? Seems like a juror celebrating a guilty verdict before the trial was over on Facebook is yet another reason to throw out the conviction…
  • Speaking kangaroo Trump prosecutions, the Georgia Court of Appeals has ordered that case halted until the Fani Willis conflict of interest issue is resolved.
  • In other court news, in Hunter Biden’s defense just blew up.

    Hunter’s defense, carefully crafted by attorney Abbe Lowell during his opening statement on Tuesday, was blown up by the testimony of an ex-girlfriend and ex-wife who described the extent of Hunter’s crack-cocaine usage around the time he purchased a firearm in October 2018 — and by the salesman who sold Hunter the gun he allegedly lied in order to purchase.

    Hunter is facing two federal charges related to his allegedly lying about his drug addiction on a gun-purchase background-check form and he faces a third charge for allegedly possessing the firearm while addicted to crack cocaine. Hunter pleaded not guilty to the charges last year and faces up to 25 years in prison.

    Most of the day was taken up by testimony from Hunter Biden’s ex-girlfriend Zoe Kestan, a woman who dated Biden from roughly December 2017 to November 2018, despite being half his age at the time.

    Prosector Leo Wise conducted a lengthy direct examination of Kestan accompanied by pictures from her cellphone to corroborate her recollection of events.

    Wise and Kestan seemed to get into a rhythm throughout the direct examination, as Kestan recalled large events and small details from her time with Hunter Biden. Kestan remembered exact dates and named the various hotels they stayed at during their time together.

    Each time Kestan described an experience with Hunter Biden, Wise asked her if Hunter Biden smoked crack at their hotel or Airbnb, and Kestan always replied affirmatively.

    “Every 20 minutes or so,” Kestan said of Hunter Biden’s crack habit during one of the hotel stays. She noted that he smoked crack less frequently in public, and she never noticed a change in his demeanor when he smoked.

    Wise shared photos from Kestan’s cellphone showing drug paraphernalia scatted around the bathrooms and tables of their lodgings. One of the images appeared to show Biden in a hotel bathtub holding a crack pipe in the wee hours of the morning. When Wise showed the images, Kestan easily pointed out the drug paraphernalia and explained to the courtroom how the various materials were used to cook and consume crack.

    Biden allowed Kestan to withdraw cash from his account when he needed to spend it on drugs, she recounted. Kestan stated the names of drug dealers and described the drug transactions she saw at the hotels and other locations.

    Kestan’s testimony and the images allowed Wise to establish that Hunter was smoking crack in September 2018, following his late August rehab stint in Malibu, Calif. She said Biden smoked crack every 20 minutes at a Malibu house he rented, and she did not remember Biden discussing his rehab stint during her time at the house in September 2018.

    Wise closed the direct examination by introducing a lengthy text message Biden sent her in December 2018 lamenting how he would always be a drug addict and his attempts to get sober failed.

    And this is “the smartest guy” Joe Biden knows…

  • Also from Hunter’s weapons case, he was caught on tape bragging about how he could score crack in Timbuktu. Which is a neat trick, since it’s an Islamic majority city in Mali, Africa, and is currently under siege by Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin, a jihadist organization which has incorporated elements formally loyal to both al Qaeda and the Islamic State. To be fair to the crackhead, he apparently said this before the siege was imposed last year…
  • Also, I would like to apologize to readers for not knowing about the siege and doing at least a LinkSwarm post to it. So much news, so little time..
  • “Seven Indicted in Houston Public Corruption Scheme.”

    On Friday, Mayor John Whitmire and outgoing Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced seven people have been indicted for 14 public corruption felonies ranging from abuse of official capacity to tampering with evidence. The charges are related to a scheme surrounding the City of Houston’s water repair contracts.

    Patrece Lee, the lead defendant, and a former city employee, had access to $80 million of city funds for emergency waterline repair.

    In the Summer and Fall of 2022, Lee was in a position to recommend vendors for contracts with the City of Houston public works department to repair the water lines. Lee allegedly made agreements with companies to have them hire her as a “consultant” to receive a kickback in exchange for expedited payments and bigger contracts. She also targeted less experienced companies and offered her services to help them “get paid faster, or to get bigger and better contracts in the future” as well.

    Lee allegedly received roughly $320,000 in payments from that scheme and then steered contracts to a company owned by her brother, allowing them to be paid more than $400,000 of which she immediately transferred $380,000 to her own company. The total amount she stole from the city was $700,000.

    “The cooperation that we’ve received from this administration stands in stark contrast to the last seven years,” said Ogg.

    The issue was uncovered during Mayor Sylvester Turner’s administration. However, he planned to have it handled as an internal civil or administrative matter rather than refer it to the district attorney for criminal prosecution.

    If Kim Ogg would actually go after government corruption (and real criminals) while she’s a lame duck DA, that would be a nice silver lining to the clouds of Houston/Harris County’s soft on crime Democratic leadership.

  • Methodist Church loses one million congregants in a single day.
  • The Houston conman who pretended to be a rabbi. “The man accused of spending $15,000 on a dead woman’s credit card has a long history of fraud, according to police, court records and his family. Police say Dustin Mitchell, who goes by Dustin Cohen, posed as a Rabbi, lawyer and possibly a cop to defraud people. They also say they think he spray-painted anti-semitic vandalism on his own truck.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Ukrainian drone hits Novoshakhtinsk Oil Refinery. Again. And this time they hit the distillation tower.
  • Modi’s BJP party loses an absolute majority in Indian elections.
  • Evidently the Chinese are paying the Houthis protection money for safe passage.
  • “Anti-Israel Protesters Arrested at Stanford after Breaking into President’s Office, Injuring Officer.” Throw the book at them.
  • ConocoPhillips purchases Marathon Oil for $22.5 billion.
  • “California fish taco chain Rubio’s Coastal Grill files for bankruptcy after minimum wage law cripples business.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Closer to home, it looks like central Texas locations for Red Lobster are now in danger of closing. (Hat tip: Also Dwight.)
  • Thieves in California are planting hidden cameras to case homes.
  • Swatter sentenced.
  • Beware of “Title Pirates” selling land they don’t own.”
  • Some Texas locales are using automatic license plate readers. Seems like there are some big privacy and due process concerns.
  • Complain about Hamas sexual violence in Canada? Enjoy your pink slip.
  • Critical Drinker confirms that The Acolyte is the idiotic woke garbage we all knew it would be.
  • More signs of Hollywood’s severe downturn: five Alamo Drafthouse location in north Texas have closed and the franchise partner has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
  • Everyone Draw Mohammed winner Bosch Fawstin was let go from his position at the Freedom Center, so if you ever wanted to buy any of his stuff, now would be a good time.
  • A lot of notable anniversaries this week. It was the 80th anniversary of D-Day…
  • …the 82nd anniversary of the Battle of Midway…
  • …the 50th anniversary of 10 Cent Beer Night…
  • …and the 20th anniversary of Killdozer. The event, not the great Theodore Sturgeon short story or the medicore TV movie made from it.
  • Speaking of D-Day, Biden just plagiarized Reagan’s speech.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • And did Biden drop a load in his pants at the Normandy commemoration?
  • Yotta: “Oh, did we say we’re a savings app? Actually, we’ve decided to become a casino app.”
  • China’s tallest waterfall is fed by pipes.
  • Crazy British inventor Colin Furze has ridden on a wall of death and built a drift trike. So now he’s riding a drift trike on a wall of death.
  • How Hitler’s cloak ended up being worn by a housewife in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
  • Who wouldn’t like to own the actual Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost Ark? Though it might have brought more money before Disney decided to ruin the franchise…
  • “No Foul Called After Caitlin Clark Crushed By Anvil.”
  • 10 New ‘Star Wars’ Characters Coming To Disney+. Including C-3PLGBTQ, Admiral Allahu Akbar and Jar Jar Kinks…

    The Internet was way ahead of the curve on this one.

  • Surrogate Mom Level: Grand Master.

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    Posted in Democrats, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud | 7 Comments »

    Paxton Takes On Big Data

    June 5th, 2024

    Texas Attorney general Ken Paxton is launching a new initiative to protect data privacy.

    Attorney General Ken Paxton announced today the launch of a new major initiative to protect citizens’ sensitive data from unauthorized exploitation by tech companies and artificial intelligence.

    The initiative was launched under the umbrella of the Attorney General Office Consumer Protection Division and established a team for “aggressive enforcement” of state privacy laws. It will also “ensure companies respect Texans’ privacy rights and safeguard their personal data.”

    According to a press release from Paxton’s office, the data protection team is set to be one of the largest privacy law enforcement teams in the entire United States.

    “Any entity abusing or exploiting Texans’ sensitive data will be met with the full force of the law,” said Paxton. “Companies that collect and sell data in an unauthorized manner, harm consumers financially, or use artificial intelligence irresponsibly present risks to our citizens that we take very seriously.

    “As many companies seek more and more ways to exploit data they collect about consumers, I am doubling down to protect privacy rights,” he continued. “With companies able to collect, aggregate, and use sensitive data on an unprecedented scale, we are strengthening our enforcement of privacy laws to protect our citizens.”

    Specifically, the new team will focus on enforcing the Data Privacy and Security Act, the Identify Theft Enforcement and Protection Act, the Data Broker Law, the Biometric Identifier Act, the Deceptive Trade Practices Act, and federal laws such as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

    “Texas has been a national leader in advancing conservative technology policy, and this initiative is the perfect complement to legislative wins in recent sessions as it will ensure Texas has the expertise and firepower to enforce laws that protect consumers and hold Big Tech accountable,” said David Dunmoyer—the Texas Public Policy Foundation Better Tech for Tomorrow campaign director.

    “Big Tech companies have gleefully flouted laws like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act for years, and in the absence of meaningful federal action, this initiative demonstrates Texas’ willingness to once again step into the breach and fight on behalf of Texans,” he continued. “This initiative will only further cement Texas’ national leadership in this space.”

    This is the latest development in Texas’ efforts to crack down on data privacy infringement. In mid-summer of last year, Gov. Greg Abbott signed the Texas Data Privacy & Security Act into law.

    The law applies to primarily businesses and entities who conduct business in the state of Texas or produce a product consumed by Texans, process or engage with the sale of personal data, and who are not considered “small businesses” unless the business has its hand in transactions of personal data.

    That enforcement effort sounds both needed and deserved, but the question is how you enforce those laws when they cows have not only left the barn, but have been sucked down and sliced up into thousands of vast international data farms far beyond the regulatory reach of the state of Texas.

    Big data lives and breathes on personal data that you’ve agreed to give up in variegated clauses scattered throughout the sprawling text swamps of terms and conditions for online sites you use for free.

    Have a Facebook account? Congratulations! Every bit of information you’ve shared with Facebook (your friends network, your interests, the sports teams you follow, the foods you favor, etc.) is now available to every partner of Facebook. And everyone partners with Facebook. If they have your email address or your phone number, they have your data.

    Ditto Google, with the additional proviso that Google has sucked up and cataloged pretty much every public database in the world, plus every single search query you’ve launched, ever, and every web page you’ve ever viewed through Chrome.

    Ditto Microsoft, for LinkedIn (yes, Microsoft bought LinkedIn), Windows, Explorer, Edge, Bing, etc.

    Ditto Twitter for everything you’ve ever tweeted or liked there.

    Ditto Sony, whose PlayStation Network data got hacked.

    Ditto Apple, though they seem to have better privacy protection provisions than most, mainly because they make their money off hardware. This doesn’t make them the good guys, just the least bad buys.

    Even Samsung sucks down data to target ads at you.

    And don’t forget state, location and federal government entities, whose data security is probably several orders of magnitude worse than the tech giants.

    Given that there’s so much personal data out there, so much legally acquired, how do you go about putting the genie back in the bottle? It’s a near impossible task, given that the tech giants not only hire armies of lawyers to defend themselves from lawsuits, but also lobbyists to write laws protecting them from said lawsuits.

    One place to start: Joining in a lawsuit where Facebook’s parent company Meta actually used stolen data to train AI, namely using a giant database of pirated books without paying authors. Paxton’s office could join one of the lawsuits against Meta, or file a new one on behalf of Texas authors whose work was used without compensation.

    Catching a tech giant with their pants down while actually breaking the law may give Paxton leverage to address other privacy concerns, and possibly the chance to do some eye-opening discovery…

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    Posted in Media Watch, Texas | 2 Comments »

    How Did So Many Sex Offenders Get Jobs In Texas Schools?

    June 4th, 2024

    Both Texas Scorecard and The Texan have done good work highlighting a disturbing reality: Numerous public school teachers of all grade levels have been arrested for sex offenses, many involving children.

    I’ve been running several of these in LinkSwarms, but Texas Scorecard has featured a number over the last week:

  • “Former Texas Teacher Gets 30 Years in Prison for Producing Child Porn.”

    A former Texas teacher received the maximum sentence of 30 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to producing child pornography—specifically videos showing her performing sexual acts on a prepubescent child.

    Sonya Conchita Murillo, 33, was a substitute teacher for the Marfa Independent School District in West Texas.

    Murillo was arrested in June 2023 on federal sexual exploitation of children charges, a month after her boyfriend was arrested on similar charges. She has been held in federal custody without bond ever since.

    The former teacher pleaded guilty in January to one count of production of child pornography; four additional counts were dropped.

    “The fact that the judge delivered the maximum allowed 30-year imprisonment to this defendant for producing child pornography, is indicative of the utterly horrendous predatory acts Murillo committed,” said U.S. Attorney Jaime Esparza in a Justice Department statement.

    Murrillo’s one-time boyfriend Patricio Javier “PJ” Serrano, a youth softball coach in Marfa, was arrested in May 2023 for possessing child sexual abuse materials featuring images and videos of prepubescent boys.

    While investigating Serrano, authorities found at least eight Snapchat videos of Murillo performing sexual acts on a boy who was 3 to 5 years old, according to an affidavit filed in the case.

    If you had done this on a 3-5 year old 40 years ago in west Texas, I strongly suspect you’d get a bullet in the back of your head and a shallow grave, no law enforcement involvement required.

  • Judge Rejects Immunity Claim of Lorena ISD Principal Who Ignored Teacher’s Sexual Abuse of 5-year-old Student.

    A federal judge has rejected an immunity claim by a Central Texas school administrator accused of facilitating a male teacher’s molestation of a 5-year-old female student in 2020-21.

    The judge found that Lorena Primary School Principal April Jewell’s lack of action to protect pre-K children from a teacher’s sexual abuse “shocks the conscience.”

    According to a lawsuit filed last year by the victim’s parents, Jewell ignored months of warnings from multiple school employees about inappropriate behavior by the teacher, Nicolas Scot Crenshaw, toward two of his female students.

    Crenshaw eventually pleaded guilty to multiple counts of aggravated sexual assault of a young child and other sex crimes against the students and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

    Jewell kept her job as the school’s principal, shocking many parents who say the ordeal has shattered their trust in the local school system.

    In a May 20 report to U.S. District Judge Alan Albright, Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Manske rejected Jewell’s claim to qualified immunity and recommended that her motion to dismiss the parents’ case against her be denied.

    Parents of the victim, identified as Jane Doe, are suing April Jewell and Lorena Independent School District for failing to protect their then 5-year-old daughter from months of sexual abuse by pre-K teacher Nicolas Scot Crenshaw during the 2020-21 academic year.

    Crenshaw was a long-term substitute teacher at Lorena Primary School, where Jewell was—and still is—the principal.

    At the beginning of the school year, Crenshaw shared a class with another teacher.

    According to court documents, in January 2021 teachers and other school staff began reporting to Jewell about Crenshaw’s inappropriate behavior with Jane, which included him lying under a blanket with Jane during nap time and frequently placing her on his lap or having her straddle him.

    An aide even gave Jewell photos of Crenshaw’s suspicious behavior, but she was reprimanded by Jewell for taking the pictures.

    What principled principal would receive repeated reports of a teacher creeping on young children and go “Nah, it’s fine?”

  • Texas Charter School Teacher Charged with Sexually Assaulting Student.

    A Texas charter school teacher is in jail after being accused of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old student. The visiting international teacher had been reprimanded and then fired for placing his hands on students, but the school later rehired him.

    International Leadership of Texas teacher Jose Adrian Hernandez Grimaldo, 46, was arrested last month and charged with one count of aggravated sexual assault of a child, a first-degree felony punishable by 5 to 99 years in prison.

    At the time of the alleged assault, Hernandez Grimaldo taught at the ILTexas K-8 school in College Station. He later transferred to the school’s Lancaster K-8 campus where he worked at the time of his arrest.

    According to an arrest report from the College Station Police Department, the female victim alleges the teacher attacked her in a bathroom in February 2023. She told police he threatened to kill her if she told anyone about the attack.

    Hernandez Grimaldo denied the allegations, but according to a report by KBTX, he failed a polygraph test.

    ILTexas Superintendent Eddie Conger confirmed in a statement Friday that, as a result of the arrest, Hernandez Grimaldo was terminated from ILTexas on May 24.

    The ILTexas statement included a timeline of Hernandez Grimaldo’s employment with the school system.

    Hernandez Grimaldo, who is in the U.S. on a teaching visa, was hired in August 2022 to teach Spanish at ILTexas’ College Station K-8 campus. According to the timeline, he cleared a standard background check and additional security clearance from the Department of Homeland Security.

    I hardly think we need to be importing child molesters from other countries. We seem to have quite enough trouble with the home-grown variety.

    He was placed on administrative leave and reprimanded in October 2022 for putting his hands on a student.

    In March 2023, Hernandez Grimaldo was terminated from ILTexas following more complaints about him touching students.

    He then filed a grievance and the district overturned his termination in May 2023.

    “We can’t hire this guy! He had multiple complaints that he was molesting students!” “But wait! He filed a grievance! We have to hire him back so he can molest more children!”

    Sounds like the person in charge of managing the grievance process also needs to be fired.

    The teacher was offered a transfer and began working at ILTexas Lancaster K-8 in August 2023.

    In September 2023, a parent reported to the ILTexas College Station principal that inappropriate sexual interactions took place between their then-6th-grade student and Hernandez Grimaldo.

    He was again placed on administrative leave in October 2023.

    Superintendent Conger said ILTexas investigated but was unable to substantiate the sexual assault claims. Hernandez Grimaldo was reinstated as a teacher at ILTexas Lancaster K-8 in January 2024.

    The superintendent said ILTexas filed “required reports with the local police department, Department of Family and Protective Services within 48 hours of initial notice, and the State Board of Education as appropriate.”

    Just how many sexual assault claims are needed until a charge is considered “substantiated?” People were willing to give Bill Cosby the benefit of the doubt when it was one or two women accusing him, but the scale tipped well before the 60 or so who eventually came forward. Grimaldo should never have been put back into a position to molest children after the initial charges.

  • Let’s end with a teacher sex offense much lighter than molestation, but still amazingly stupid, namely taking explicit videos of herself in the classroom that were uploaded to social media.

    A Houston-area elementary school teacher filmed sexually explicit videos of herself while on campus, and community leaders are demanding that her teaching certificate be revoked.

    Adrienne Harborth was a music teacher at Gray Elementary in Lamar Consolidated Independent School District in Fort Bend County near Houston.

    Harborth can be seen in two videos shaking her bare breasts and buttocks while in a classroom and a bathroom at the school. Harborth’s school ID badge with her name printed on it is also visible.

    [Blinks] This is not exactly what people think of when discussing the perfect crime. I think the Babylon Bee would reject the ID badge detail in one of their stories. “Nah, too heavy handed.”

    Censored versions of the videos, first posted by Grizzy’s Hood News under the title “Teacher Gone Wild,” have gone viral on the internet.

    My cousin told me about Grizzy’s Hood News a while back. Basically a Houston woman went “OK, I’m gonna start my own news web page,” and now she breaks a lot of news that seems too spicy for mainstream Houston media. That “Teacher Gone Wild” video is no longer up, but, having watched a bit of it, I can assure you that you didn’t miss anything…

    Harborth has since told Texas Scorecard she filmed the videos on the weekend, not during school hours, and that an ex-boyfriend released the videos as revenge porn.

    “I want to shoot a nude video of myself. I know! I’ll go down to my school and wear my name tag! That can’t possibly backfire on me!”

    Shooting a nude video of yourself is a pretty stupid thing to do, especially if you’re not a porn star. While people may be inclined to forgive such a thing if it was a mistake made in youth (say, drunk college girls on spring break), doing it at your place of work is going to be a firing offense pretty much everywhere, but especially at a public school.

    • Texas Scorecard has a Bad Apples tag for such incidents, and an interactive map of incidents at the bottom of the relevant news stories that I don’t see a way to embed or link to directly.

    I am not so naive as to believe we’ve never had sex offenders as teachers before the 21st century, but when one seems to pop up every week in Texas, there’s a problem. (I’m also willing to bet that the problem is actually worse per capita in blue states.) Something has certainly changed in society, and new “pedo friendly” element seems to have entered political discourse in western society, from Jeffrey Epstein to Salon to Germany decriminalizing child pornography, today’s leftwing elites can’t seem to help being soft on child rape.

    Texas citizens need to demand better screening by schools, and swifter action when sex offenders are discovered.

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    Posted in Crime, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 16 Comments »

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