Post-Election LinkSwarm For November 7, 2024

November 7th, 2024

Fallout from Trump’s decisive victory over the Obama Machine continues to land fast and heavy. So let’s do a roundup before the Friday LinkSwarm gets unwieldy.

  • Harris officially conceded. In a sane world, this would be the end of Democrats “we have to keep Trump out of office by any means necessary” efforts, but alas, the TDS-wrecked Democratic Party is far from sane…
  • David McCormick Wins Pennsylvania Senate Seat, Ousting Longtime Incumbent Democrat Bob Casey.” Casey’s team says they still think they can win, so don’t put it past Pennsylvania Democrats to “discover” a whole bunch of “uncounted” ballots…
  • Tablet’s Park MacDougald calls Trump’s win a landslide.

    For months now, they have been saying that mainstream pollsters and pundits predicting a Harris victory were full of it. They were right. The late Harris surge in the polls was a mirage. The stories that recently appeared in outlets such as Politico about massive last-minute swings to Harris among independents, Hispanics offended by a comic’s Puerto Rico joke, and educated women—all of it was bullshit, invented out of whole cloth by Harris campaign operatives and repeated by journalists such as Jonathan Martin as if it were fact. In the end, none of it was real. The election wasn’t even close.

    How did Trump do it? We’ve seen some suggestive exit polls showing, for instance, Trump winning more than 40% of the Jewish vote in New York City; that sounds right, but we’d caution that exit polls are notoriously unreliable. County data, on the other hand, is rock-solid…

    To put that in simple terms: Pretty much the entire country shifted toward Trump. That includes deep-blue strongholds. The New York Post reported Wednesday morning that Harris was leading New York by a little more than 11% with 95% of votes counted—the worst performance by a Democrat in the Empire State since Michael Dukakis in 1988. Trump cracked 30% in New York City—also the best performance by a Republican since 1988, driven by a 35% improvement in the Bronx relative to 2020 and improvements of 20% and 16.5% in Manhattan and Queens, respectively. Finally, Trump blew the doors off of several heavily minority counties across the country, flipping Florida’s Osceola County (home to a large Puerto Rican population) and Texas’s 97% Hispanic Starr County. He won the latter by nearly 16% after losing it by 5% to Biden—a 21-point swing in four years. It was, as Ryan Girdusky observed on X, the first time Starr County had voted for a Republican since 1892.

    We’ve seen some talk of a “realignment election,” with the Republicans broadening their appeal among the multiracial working class while the Democrats become more entrenched in affluent white suburbs. We’ll have to wait for more detailed demographic breakdowns to say for sure, but what the above table suggests to us is something different: a “whole of society” (to borrow a term) rejection of Kamala Harris and her party. Punchbowl’s congressional reporter, Max Cohen, cited a Democratic House source this morning who summed up the result nicely: “This was a total and complete repudiation of the Democratic Party. People are not buying what we’re selling. Period.”

  • “This was a marriage gap election, not a gender gap election.”

    Now that we have the election results, it appears that the gender gap actually shrunk.

    In 2020, President Joe Biden won women by a 15-point margin, 57% to 42%. This year, Vice President Kamala Harris won women by a much smaller 8-point, 53% to 45% margin.

    But while the gap between men and women actually shrank this year, another gap widened. In 2020, married voters narrowly chose President Donald Trump by a 7-point, 53% to 46% margin. This year that margin grew to 13 points at 56% to 43%.

    For all the talk of Trump’s problem with women, Trump actually won married women by three points, 51 to 48. To repeat, Trump won a majority of not just married white women, but a majority of all married women.

    Trump also handily won married men 60-38 and he even eked out a victory among unmarried men 49-47. Where Trump got crushed was among unmarried women, who chose Harris (who didn’t get married until age 50, by the way) by a 60-38 margin.

  • Republicans trimmed the Democratic advantage in Harris County. Harris won Harris County by 5 points, but four years ago Biden won it by 12. Likewise, Ted Cruz lost Harris County (where he lives) by 9 points, but in 2018, the year of Betomania, he lost it by 17 points. As I keep reminding people, Harris County was a competitive Republican county not that long ago, and Bush43 won it in 2004.
  • Speaking of Harris County, Houston voters actually turned down a $4.4 billion HISD bond package.
  • Well, this is mighty curious, isn’t it?

  • …or C.) Call voters racist and sexist?

  • California Voters Overwhelmingly Say ‘No’ to Soft-on-Crime Policies and Prosecutors.”

    Voters in the state [reversed] course after previously supporting a measure that lightened penalties for theft and otherwise gutted crime-control efforts in this state. California Proposition 36, also known as the “Allows Felony Charges and Increases Sentences for Certain Drug and Theft Crimes” measure, passed with over 70% of the vote.

    Proposition 36 would walk back much of the decade-old Proposition 47, turning some theft misdemeanors into felonies, requiring a warning about a possible murder charge for selling or providing drugs, and creating a new “treatment-mandated felony,” according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.

    …[T]he Family Business Association of California has called Proposition 47 “catastrophic” for the state, saying homelessness has gone up by 51% and smash-and-grab crimes have cost businesses nearly $9 billion a year. It says Proposition 36 will fix a loophole in Proposition 47 that allows thieves to take less than $950 in property from different stores and remain a misdemeanor.

    Under Proposition 36, theft would be classified as a felony offense if the suspect has two or more past convictions for certain theft crimes, such as shoplifting, burglary and carjacking. The sentence would then be up to three years in county jail or state prison.

  • A leftwing initiative to impose rent control on all of California backfires spectacularly.

    With 51 percent of the vote reported, Proposition 33—which would have repealed all state-level limitations on local rent control policies—is capturing the support of just 38 percent of voters. The New York Times is declaring the initiative done and dusted.

    This is the third failed ballot initiative sponsored by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) that would have loosened or repealed California’s state-level limits on rent control. Prop. 33 could also be the AHF’s last ballot initiative.

    That’s thanks to the apparent (narrow, but not yet confirmed) victory for Proposition 34, which would effectively prevent AHF from spending money on political activism.

    Prop. 34 requires beneficiaries of federal discount prescription drug programs to spend 98 percent of their revenue on direct patient care.

    AHF benefits from just such a federal program that requires pharmaceutical companies to sell their drugs at discounted rates to hospitals and other organizations that primarily serve low-income patients. Those discount drug–buying organizations are then allowed to bill federal insurance programs like Medicare and Medicaid the standard reimbursement rates for those drugs.

    The AHF has benefited handsomely from this program through its network of discount pharmacies serving AIDS patients. It has spent the proceeds on the heterodox pet causes of AHF President Michael Weinstein, which includes supporting rent control policies.

    This deserves a Nelson.

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • And the beat goes on. “Leftist Arrested for Threatening to Kill Trump and Conservative Christians if Trump Wins.” “Isaac Sissel, a 25-year-old from Ann Arbor, Michigan, has been charged by the Department of Justice following an online threat of political violence.”

    https://thetexan.news/elections/2024/voters-resoundingly-reject-4-4-billion-bond-for-houston-independent-school-district/

  • Rasmussen crows about getting things right, including trump winning the popular vote. “What you probably heard on the media, over and over again like a mantra, is that Donald Trump has a hard ceiling at 47%. No, he’s been at 49% this entire time. Turns out Kamala Harris is the one with the ceiling. And the reason that it came out that way is because all of their polls are bogus, they’re leftward leaning, they always show that Donald Trump has a favorability disadvantage.” Also:

    This is the shill period right here. Boom! All of a sudden Trump dropped a point when Kamala Harris went in the race. It’s like everybody gave her a shove to get her over the starting line, and then they massively shift left. They shilled for Harris all fall, and then right at the end they decided ‘Well, it’s time to save our credibility,’ and Trump, look at that, all of a sudden Trump got this great momentum. Where’d it come from? Oh, he never lost it. This is all fake all here this whole period, and Trump was actually up in the national popular vote and nobody said sorry.

  • “Fort Bend County Commissioner Meyers Defeats Democratic Challenger Indicted Over Faked Racist Messages. Democratic candidate Taral Patel, who faces nine criminal charges, took 41 percent of the vote.”
  • America Unburdens Itself From What Has Been.”
  • “Kamala Calls For Peaceful Transfer Of Power To Adolf Hitler.”
  • “Not One County?”

    November 6th, 2024

    OK, I should probably be napping rather than posting again, but wow, this is an amazing little nugget displaying just how inept a candidate Kamala Harris was (or how huge the fraud was in 2020).

    CNN anchor Jake Tapper is going viral for his stunned reaction early Wednesday when told that Vice President Kamala Harris had failed to outperform President Biden’s 2020 results in a single state.

    Tapper asked CNN chief national correspondent John King to pull up a graphic showing in which states Harris had gotten at least 3% more votes than Biden had in the last election — just to be presented with a gray map reflecting her failure even in that.

    “Holy smokes!” Tapper gasped. “Literally nothing?”

    “Literally nothing,” King confirmed.

    The slide, which would have lit up states where Harris outperformed Biden by 3% or more, was instead completely gray.

    “Literally not one county?” Tapper asked again, still sounding shocked in the footage, which was viewed more than 5 million times in just one clip shared on X.

    King then changed the map to show counties instead of states and noted that Harris only outperformed Biden by 3% in a meager 58 counties.

    “So in counties, in 58 counties,” King said. “We just showed Donald Trump was over a thousand counties of the 4,600 counties and townships across America.”

    He continued, “There might be more out here on the West Coast, possibly one or two more as they finish the count here, but in the states that matter — again, I just showed you all those Trump counties — in one county in battleground Pennsylvania, she’s outperforming President Biden by 3% or more.”

    So Harris did outperform Biden.

    In 58 counties.

    Nationwide.

    Finally, Trump Wins Beyond The Margin Of Fraud

    November 6th, 2024

    There were apparently no broken water pipes, no 3 AM ballot drops, no other shenanigans so widespread and outlandish that they were able to undo what amounts to a small red wave.

    Donald Trump has finally won a Presidential election beyond the margin of fraud. Final polls had Trump winning in all the swing states, and it looks like he won all seven: Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada. Sometimes Minnesota was included in the list of swing states, but Harris did manage to hold onto that (so I guess the Walz pick did accomplish something). It even looks like Trump will handily win the symbolic popular vote, the first Republican to do so since George W. Bush in 2004.

    Republicans have retaken control of the Senate, knocking off Democratic incumbents in Ohio and Montana, picking up West Virginia from the retiring Joe Manchin, will likely pick up Pennsylvania, and currently hold a razor-thin edge in Nevada. Unlike 2016 and 2020, this year Trump had some modest coattails.

    House control is still too close to call. Republicans have thus far flipped four House seats, while Democrats have flipped three.

    In Texas election news, Ted Cruz was handily reelected over Democrat Colin Allred, Republicans gained one state senate seat and two state house seats. Republicans also swept Texas Court of Appeals races.

    This was a very solid win for Trump, but not a GOP landslide on the order of 1984 or 1994. But it does show signs of being a realigning election, with Trump continuing to increase his shares of black and Hispanic voters, as well as working class voters of all stripes.

    I should be ecstatic. Actually, I’m more tired and relieved, since it seems like I’ve been running flat out the last two weeks, so I’ll make this short.

    Tomorrow we’ll examine whether Democrats have learned anything from this defeat, or if they’re even capable of learning…

    Election Day LinkSwarm: Joe Rogan Endorses Donald Trump

    November 5th, 2024

    Today’s election day! Get out and vote if you haven’t already!

    Here’s a small LinkSwarm of election items.

  • Anyone paying attention should have seen this coming: Joe Rogan endorses Donald Trump for President.

    Following an awesome 2.5 hour podcast with Elon Musk, Joe Rogan announced his endorsement of Donald Trump.

    In a post on X dropping the podcast, Rogan said of Musk “He makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way. For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump.”

    Trump thanked Rogan:

    Nuggets from the interview:

    Musk and Rogan discussed how an influx of illegal migrants to swing states followed by some sort of amnesty program would turn the country into a one-party state.

    Rogan and Musk both note they were formerly Democrats…

  • The Georgia Supreme Court quashes a plan to cheat with late ballots in one county. “The Georgia Supreme Court ordered the Cobb board to keep separate the absentee ballots of those voters that are received after the deadline on election day but before November 8 in a secure, safe, and sealed container separate from other voted ballots,’ WSB reported. ‘The court also ordered the board to notify the voters by email, text, or public announcement of the change,” the report continues. At this point, all votes will need to be in by 7 p.m. on Election Day.'” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Los Angeles voters have a chance to oust Sores-backed prosecutor George Gascon. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Finally, New York Times tech workers are going on strike. Having a unionized workforce just keeps earning dividends…
  • 2024 Pre-Election LinkSwarm

    November 4th, 2024

    Tomorrow it’s finally election day, so here’s a small pre-election LinkSwarm:

  • “Fifth Circuit Ruling Restores the ‘Day’ to Election Day. Court finds federal law requires mail ballots to arrive by Election Day and preempts state laws to the contrary.”

    A ruling by a federal appellate court returns the “day” to Election Day in at least three states including Texas.

    The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion Friday that federal law requires mail ballots to arrive by Election Day and preempts any state laws to the contrary.

    Opinions issued by the Fifth Circuit set precedent for the states of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, but the court’s ruling is expected to have national impact.

    The Republican National Committee and Mississippi Republican Party sued in January to challenge a Mississippi law that counts mail-in ballots that arrive up to five days after Election Day.

    Mississippi changed its election laws during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic to extend the acceptance period for absentee ballots.

    “Federal law requires voters to take timely steps to vote by Election Day. And federal law does not permit the State of Mississippi to extend the period for voting by one day, five days, or 100 days,” stated Circuit Judge Andrew Oldham, writing on behalf of a three-judge panel:

    If only we could get blue states outside the Fifth Circuit to obey those guidelines…

  • Final poll shows Trump ahead in every swing state.
  • Watch the opponent, not the polls.

    Presently, the Democrat nominee’s presidential bid exemplifies why understanding what a campaign is doing is the best barometer of how a candidate is performing with the electorate—not a poll.

    On the micro-level, one can view the Harris campaign’s targeting of individual constituencies, which have traditionally comprised integral parts of the Democrat coalition. From young African-American men to Hispanics to Arab-Americans to Jewish-Americans, the Harris campaign’s assumed, almost unanimous, and necessary support has been lacking. As a result, we see not only an increase in her campaign’s messaging to these constituencies, we see the surreal hectoring of young black males—and males, in general—by surrogates, such as the Obamas. Asking voters to support your candidate indicates your campaign is okay; urging voters to support your candidate indicates your campaign is troubled; criticizing voters as not being “man” enough to vote for your candidate indicates your campaign is cooked. Other targeted messages abound within the Harris campaigns, including the emphasis on increased federal spending within the African-American community (in one of the most patronizingly racist appeals imaginable); abortion (though it is hard to imagine those who believe abortion is the overriding issue not already voting for the vice president); and the big lie about “Project 2025” being Donald Trump’s post-election agenda—all of which are designed to unite and rally a presently eroding and unenthusiastic Democrat voter base.

  • Democrats undermined by radical agenda. If Kamala Harris loses, she can reflect on her party’s mania for progressive ideas on immigration, policing and race.”

    t wasn’t so long ago that progressives were riding high in the United States. Their radical views set the agenda and tone for the Democratic Party and, especially in cultural areas, dominated discourse. Building in the 2010s and cresting at the start of this decade with the Black Lives Matter protests and the heady early days of the Biden administration, few of their ideas seemed off the table.

    Defund the police and empty the jails? Sure! Abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and decriminalise the border? Absolutely! Get rid of fossil fuels and have a Green New Deal? Definitely! Demand trillions of dollars for a “transformational” Build Back Better bill? We’re just getting started! Promote DEI and the struggle for “equity” (not equal opportunity) everywhere? It’s the only way to fight privilege! Insist that a new ideology around race and gender should be accepted by everyone? Only a bigot would resist!

    In reality, a lot of these ideas were terrible and most voters outside the precincts of the progressive left itself were never interested in them. That was true from the get-go but now the backlash against these ideas is strong enough that it cannot be ignored. As a result, politics is adjusting and the progressive moment is well and truly over.

    Astute observers on the left acknowledge this, albeit with an undertone of sadness. So how did the progressive moment fall apart? It is not hard to think of some reasons.

    Loosening restrictions on illegal immigration was a terrible idea and voters hate it. When Joe Biden came into office, he immediately issued a series of executive orders loosening the rules for handling illegal immigrants, a move that was applauded by progressives.

    The predictable result was a surge in illegal immigration and the diffusion of these immigrants into overburdened cities, which caused a spike in negative sentiment towards Democrats for letting the situation get out of control. This has resulted in huge advantages for Donald Trump and the Republicans that have continued even as the Biden administration moved in mid-2024 to tighten the border and Kamala Harris runs commercials promising to be tough on border security.

    The Democrats should have seen this coming. Polling over the years has consistently shown overwhelming majorities in favour of more emphasis on border security. And now voters are increasingly open to draconian restriction measures. An astonishing 62 per cent of voters in a June CBS News survey supported starting a “new national programme to deport all undocumented immigrants currently living in the US illegally”. Progressives’ failure to understand this reality is a big reason why the progressive moment is over.

    Promoting lax law enforcement and tolerance of social disorder was another terrible idea and voters hate it too. In the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, the climate for police and criminal justice reform was highly favourable. But Democrats blew the opportunity by allowing the party to be associated with unpopular slogans like “defund the police” that did not appear to take public safety concerns seriously. Democratic non-white and working-class voters tend to live in areas that have more crime and are therefore unlikely to look kindly on any approach that threatens public safety.

    A survey conducted for my new report with Yuval Levin, Politics Without Winners: Can Either Party Build a Majority Coalition?, confirmed the strength of these sentiments. By 73 to 25 per cent, voters backed keeping police budgets whole in the interests of public safety over reducing them and transferring money to social services.

    Among non-white working-class voters there was a 30-point margin against reducing police budgets, which ballooned to 50 points among moderate to conservative working-class non-whites, the overwhelming majority of this demographic. By contrast, white college-grad liberals favoured reducing police budgets by 20 points. That tells you a lot.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Democrats are the party of voter fraud: “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has confirmed that hundreds of noncitizens are on Iowa’s voter rolls. And yet, incredibly, the DHS refuses to share who these individuals are with state officials.” Let’s hope its only hundreds…
  • Trump’s closing argument:

  • Trump is winning the Minnesota cookie count two to one.
  • Diddy’s Ex-Girlfriend Urges Americans To Trust Her Judgment.
  • If you haven’t already voted early, be sure to locate your voter registration card and get ready to go off to the polls tomorrow.

    Biden Administration Working Overtime To Embed As Many Illegal Aliens In America As Possible Right Up To Inauguration Day

    November 3rd, 2024

    Whatever the true reason behind the Biden Administration’s decision to import millions of illegal aliens into America, they seem deeply intent on carrying it out despite widespread opposition from American citizens, even working overtime on it, right to the bitter end.

    The Biden-Harris administration has authorized massive overtime so Department of Homeland Security agents can grant temporary status to as many illegal immigrants as possible before a new president is inaugurated, a Homeland Security agent told The Daily Wire.

    “Jason” — an alias given to the agent, who spoke to The Daily Wire on the condition of anonymity, said supervisors have told workers in recent weeks that they should aim to clear the backlog of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) applications within 120 days. Doing so would allow these illegal immigrants to live and work in the country, and shield them from deportation for two years. The department is offering 30 hours of overtime per pay period to expedite processing of the immigrants, who come from countries including Haiti, Venezuela, and Lebanon.

    The Department of Homeland Security would not confirm or deny the allegation, or explain its motives. But the unprecedented number of TPS applicants — and the mandate to process them quickly — has put pressure on agents to approve applicants rather than investigate them further or deny them, Jason said.

    “It’s much easier to approve a case than to deny a case,” he told The Daily Wire. “Denying it comes with a lot of writing and approvals from supervisors.”

    The Biden administration insists that those approved for TPS status have been vetted. But Jason said vetting is really just box checking — literally. Jason said he wakes up in the morning, shuffles into his living room, and begins clicking buttons to approve the migrants each day, sometimes working late into the night to accrue overtime hours.

    “I just think the general public should know: I couldn’t tell you if the people we are approving are criminals or not, theres no way to know unless they admit to it,” he said. “The U.S. government isn’t calling up Haiti and saying is this person a criminal?”

    Illegal immigrants who have been granted TPS are largely vetted by government agents who work from home, never talk to the applicants, and often simply check to see whether the applicant admitted to committing crimes. There is no opportunity to ask applicants follow-up questions, evaluate their mannerisms for suspicious activity, or hear a story first-hand to assess for credibility.

    Snip.

    According to DHS data covering the nine months between October 2023 and June 2024, 98% of processed applicants were approved, while only 2% were denied. Remaining pending were 344,000 cases, mostly from Venezuela.

    TPS applicants must fill out Form I-821, which asks them if they have ever been arrested, and to provide their own court records showing the offense if so. It also has them check “yes” or “no” to 41 questions such as if they have ever committed “Any particularly serious crime committed either in our outside the United States”’; if they have ever “participated in the persecution of any person on account of race”; and if they are “now engaged in activities that could be reasonable grounds for concluding that you are a danger to the security of the United States.”

    The form also asks if applicants are “now trafficking in any controlled substance,” whether they plan to “violate any law of the United States relating to espionage,” and if they have ever been involved in “killing any person.”

    “I’ve never denied someone because they put yes on a criminal question,” Jason said. “They don’t do that.”

    Bonus: “Last month, DHS said it plans to add some 11,000 illegal immigrants from Lebanon — the country from which Hezbollah has launched attacks on Israel — to the list.”

    Did anyone ask the American people whether they wanted to import illegal aliens from Lebanon into their communities? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

    But it’s not just DHS that’s involved in importing illegal aliens into America, it’s also the State Department.

    The Center for Immigration Studies recently hosted a panel discussion on components of border security that are often overlooked: those carried out by the State Department.

    Philip Linderman, a retired State Department senior foreign service officer, explained that most people focus on the role of the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement when discussing border security yet overlook other border security components that require action from the State Department.

    Linderman also explained that several offices under the State Department’s control are involved in developing and implementing immigration policy, including the Bureau of Consular Affairs and the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration.

    He said that a new president must install a new secretary of the State Department that aligns with his goals.

    Snip.

    “It’s just astounding that the State Department administers these visa programs really without much accountability whatsoever for our quality control or analysis to see whether they’re doing a good job,” explained Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at CIS and a panelist in the discussion.

    President Trump will have to make a lot of key personnel decisions correctly to restore border enforcement in his second term…

    Election Shenanigans From Travis County Dems

    November 2nd, 2024

    The People’s Republic of Austin is a deep blue dot in the midst of deep red Texas, and Democrats are ramping up election shenanigans to keep it that way.

    Local GOP Sues Travis County Over Election Staffing

    According to the Travis County GOP, 41 percent of locations on Election Day lack any Republican poll workers.
    …UPDATE: The Travis County Republican Party has appealed to the Texas Supreme Court after the 3rd Court of Appeals dismissed the lawsuit as moot.

    A lack of Republican election staffers, despite the county party having submitted over 900 names to the local election office, has caused the Travis County Republican Party to take drastic action.

    According to a press release, the Travis GOP filed an emergency petition against the county elections division for refusing to staff polling locations with Republicans.

    The filing alleges “the Travis County Elections Department ignored repeated requests from TCRP for polling location staffing, only delivering the information just four days before the start of early voting. The received information shows a severe lack of Republican presence at Early Voting and Election Day polling locations.”

    According to the GOP, 24 percent of early voting locations have no Republican election judges, and 50 percent have no Republican election workers. For Election Day, 41 percent of locations lack any Republican poll workers.

    The Texas Election Code requires polling locations to assign someone from the other major party as the alternate judge if they assign someone from one major party as the presiding judge.

    “It is totally unacceptable that large portions of our county have no Republican election judges assigned, despite our providing far more than the number of available workers needed,” said Travis County GOP Chair Matt Mackowiak. “As long as I am TCRP chair, we will hold local government accountable when they violate our rights and risk election integrity. This is an egregious example, and we look forward to our day in court.”

    Of course, pulling this sort of election shenanigans so close to the election gives very little time to correct the abuse. Here’s hoping the Texas Supreme Court comes back with some form of injunctive relief to have Republicans monitoring election day…

    LinkSwarm For November 1, 2024

    November 1st, 2024

    Happy Day of the Dead, AKA All Saints Day!

    We’re in the last stretch of the 2024 campaign, Joe Rogan did a great interview with J. D. Vance, all sorts of sketchy voting problems surface, IDF dirtnaps another Hamas terrorist scumbbag, Nvidia replaces Intel, and influencers prioritize selfies over survival. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Joe Rogan did a really great interview with J.D. Vance. The Trump interview was good, but Trump did his usual looping and weaving thing. Vance comes across as not only smart and confident, but seems (unlike Kamala Harris) extremely comfortable in his own skin.
  • “Pennsylvania: Fraud scheme involving 2,500 voter registrations found in Lancaster County.”

    A large number of suspicious voter registration applications were dropped off at the county elections office near Monday’s deadline, county officials said. An investigation by the district attorney’s office found incorrect addresses, false identification information, false names and names that did not match Social Security information.

  • Shenanigans: “Kentucky County Clerk Confirms Voting Booth ‘Glitch’ Shifted Trump Votes To Kamala.”
  • A victory. “Supreme Court Allows Virginia to Remove Noncitizens from Voter Rolls before Election.”
  • More States Join Fight Against Biden-Harris Lawsuit Preventing Removal of Non-citizen Voters.”
  • Colorado secretary of state Jena Griswold, the same official who tried to kick Trump off the ballot, “inadvertently” leaked voting machine passwords in public spreadsheet.”
  • Trump leads in every swing state.
  • More Biden-Harris economic magic: “US Manufacturing Survey Hits 16-Month-Lows.”
  • “The Harris Campaign Is Testament to the Toxicity of Woke Politics.”

    We’ve passed the peak of woke politics in the U.S., and the Harris for president campaign is the leading indicator.

    Of all the things that Kamala Harris wants you to know about her — that she grew up in a middle-class family, that she’s not Joe Biden, that she has a “to-do list” for the American people — perhaps foremost among them is that she’s not woke.

    She doesn’t have any rote line asserting this, but achieving distance from the fashionable left-wing politics that defined the Trump years and their immediate aftermath motivates much of what she says and does.

    That Harris now feels compelled to disavow so many of the ideas that she once embraced is powerful testament to their political toxicity.

    An idea has won or lost in American politics when both parties favor or oppose it, or simply don’t want to fight over it anymore. Ronald Regan’s economics truly prevailed when the Democratic Party, via Bill Clinton in the early 1990s, accepted his basic approach. Gay marriage won politically when Republicans decided to stop talking about the issue.

    By this standard, woke attitudes and policies are in marked decline, and Kamala Harris is Exhibit A.

    Except for her abortion radicalism, she’s turned her back on much of what she once professed to believe or sympathize with.

    Defund the police? Absolutely not.

    Abolish ICE? No way.

    DEI? Haven’t heard of it.

    Medicare for all? That was a long time ago.

    The Green New Deal? Let’s not get carried away.

    She has backed off her extravagant positions on the trans issue and the border. She now insists that rather than pushing the envelope on either, she simply wants to follow the law. You could be forgiven for thinking the only pronouns she knows are she/her and he/him.

    Harris doesn’t bring up identity politics at all. Not only does she not talk about the once-ubiquitous concepts of white privilege or “equity,” she doesn’t even talk about breaking the glass ceiling or the history-making nature of her candidacy. Listening to her campaign, you’d have no idea that the twin -isms, racism and sexism, have been consuming obsessions of the Left for years now.

    But if she gets elected, just like Obama, she’ll abandon all of her moderate positions and rush back to her radical roots.

  • Harris campaign pulls $2 million in ad money out of North Carolina.
  • “Donald Trump says he’ll task Elon Musk with auditing the entire federal government.”

    Former President Donald Trump says that if reelected, he’ll create a government efficiency task force — and that Elon Musk has already agreed to lead it. During a speech in New York on Thursday, Trump said the new efficiency commission would conduct a “complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government” and make recommendations for “drastic reforms.”

    I hope Musk gets out a big axe and that the Trump Administration actually balances the budget. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)

  • The Green New Scam is dying. Color me skeptical as long as there’s graft to rake off…
  • Speaking of which: “Up to $41 billion in World Bank climate finance unaccounted for, Oxfam finds.” This is my shocked face.
  • Who watches the watchmen? “Eagle Pass Detective Sentenced to 10 Years for Hiding Illegal Aliens in Rental Properties. Hazel Eileen Diaz ran stash houses for a human smuggling organization.”
  • Al Qaeda just killed 600 civilians in Burkina Faso.
  • Analysis shows that Israel hit Iran’s former nuclear weapons test and missile production facilities.
  • Another Hamas bigwig dirtnapped:

    The IDF eliminated Hamas’s National Relations head Izz al-Din Kassab on Friday in Khan Yunis, Gaza, who was also one of the last remaining members of the terrorist organization’s political bureau still inside the Palestinian enclave.

    The strike that killed Kassab was completed based on IDF and ISA intelligence. His assistant Ayman Ayesh was also killed in the strike.

    He was also responsible for Hamas’s relations and cooperation, whether strategic or military, with other terrorist organizations within the Gaza Strip such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Ukrainian drones hit Spetznaz Special Forces University in Chechnya.
  • The IRS is still retaliating against the Hunter Biden whistleblower.
  • Poland shuts down a Russian consulate citing sabotage.
  • The rise and fall of China’s “mistress villages.” Bonus: The Hong Kong businessmen who used to keep mistresses in Shinjin are now evidently buying houses for a new generation of them in the Rowland Heights area of Los Angeles…
  • Another day, another released illegal alien killing an American citizen in a DUI.
  • Rapper and big money Cook County Democratic Party donator Lil Durk, AKA Durk Devontay Banks, has been arrested in a murder-for-hire scheme against a fellow rapper. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Sewage explosion turns Moscow into a literal shit show.
  • TGI Fridays closes 49 locations. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • In their ongoing quest to make YouTube completely unusable, they’re thinking of removing date, time and view counts.
  • Texas A&M sticks their money in Commie Chinese companies.

    Records show the investment arm of two major Texas universities bought shares in more than 50 Chinese companies.

    On September 23, the American Accountability Foundation exposed how the University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Company’s asset managers advanced leftist ideology through their shareholder resolutions.

    On October 17, UTIMCO President and CEO Richard Hall told state senators that he was “not happy with those votes” and the firm “would do better.”

    However, a deeper dive into the records AAF acquired also revealed concerning investments. According to records, UTIMCO has invested money in Chinese companies.

    UTIMCO allocated some of its assets to the following entities: Connor, Clark & Lunn Investment Management, JP Morgan Asset Management, and Acadian Asset Management. The three asset managers participated in shareholder votes in China-based companies, revealing the UTIMCO investments in these businesses.

    In October 2023, Connor, Clark & Lunn participated in a shareholder vote for Topsec Technologies Group, a China-based cyber security company. Reuters reported that Topsec provides “network security products, big data products, and cloud services to customers in various industries such as government, finance, operators, energy, health, education, transportation, and manufacturing.”

    There were shareholder votes for Huaneng Power International, Inc., a power company that boasts of being “one of the largest listed power producers” in China. Their parent company is China Huaneng Group Co., Ltd., which owns more than 50 percent of HPI shares. According to their website, the company is “a key state-owned company established with the approval of the [China] State Council.”

    In December 2023, the management company Connor, Clark & Lunn Investment Management voted 19 times for electing various individuals as directors or supervisors of the Chinese company.

    Snip.

    AAF records showed other investments into China by UTIMCO fund managers, including BOE Technology Group Co., Ltd., Haier Smart Home Co., Ltd., Opple Lighting Co., Ltd., and LONGi Green Energy Technology Co., Ltd.

  • Teacher certification cheating ring exposed.

    A million-dollar cheating ring resulted in at least 210 unqualified teachers, including two sexual predators, receiving teacher certifications. The ring was exposed this week after the Harris County District Attorney’s Office filed charges against five individuals involved.

    The alleged ringleader is Vincent Grayson, the head boys basketball coach at Houston’s Booker T. Washington High School.

    Also charged are Tywana Gilford Mason, the teacher certification test proctor; Nicholas Newton, an assistant principal who served as the proxy test-taker; Darian Nikole Wilhite, another proctor; and LaShonda Roberts, an assistant principal at Yates High School who helped recruit would-be teachers.

    All are charged with two counts of engaging in organized criminal activity.

    Allegedly, candidates seeking certification would pay Grayson $2,500. He would then give a 20 percent portion to Gilford Mason, who would then allow Newton to sit for the test under the teacher’s name. The candidates would be given a testing time and location by Gilford Mason, then show up, sign in, and leave. Newton would then arrive and take the test for them.

    And now the unqualified teachers who got in on this scheme are out there teaching children…

  • Sony shuts down studio that released disastrous $400 million woke shooter Concord.

  • Speaking of which, Dragon Age: Veilguard has an unskipable cutscreen that lectures you on pronouns.
  • Dropbox lays off 20% of global workforce.
  • Big news for your portfolio: “Nvidia To Replace Intel In The Dow Jones Industrial Average.” Nvidia has certainly been on a tear as of late, but if Intel hadn’t screwed up their sub 10nm process, this wouldn’t be happening.
  • It would take a heart of stone not to laugh. “These influencers refused to wear life jackets on a yacht because it would ruin their selfies. They drowned when their boat sank.”
  • Jazz Shaw, RIP.
  • Wizards of the Coast is trying to rip off artist Donato Giancola.
  • Though Halloween is over, this is horrifying enough.
  • Speaking of Halloween, you can find all the Halloween posts on my other blog here.
  • “In Devastating Blow To Democrats, Supreme Court Rules In Favor Of Following The Law.”
  • “Trump Holds Most Ethnically Diverse, Pro-Israel Nazi Rally In History.”
  • Ghost dogs!

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Texas Buys More Land To Build Border Wall

    October 31st, 2024

    Sometimes, if you want something done right, you just have to do it yourself. That’s Texas, faced with the lawbreaking refusal of the Biden-Harris Administration to secure the border. As such, they’re buying their own border land to build their own border wall.

    The Texas General Land Office has acquired a 1,400-acre ranch along the Rio Grande, which the state will use to build a wall along the Texas-Mexico border.

    Earlier this week, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham revealed that the GLO has acquired the ranch in Starr County—a border county 105 miles away from Laredo. The area, located in the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Sector, has seen the highest levels of illegal alien crossings.

    Buckingham said that the Texas Facilities Commission—tasked with building the border wall—requested the property. With the purchase of the ranch, the GLO now owns two pieces of land, totaling more than 4,000 acres, in Starr County along the border.

    “For too long, the federal government has abdicated its job to secure our southern border – endangering Texans by allowing hundreds of thousands of unvetted illegal migrants to stream across our porous border. This mass negligence and refusal to enforce the law is downright sinister. As Land Commissioner, tasked with overseeing thirteen million acres of state land, I will not idly stand by and let this dereliction of duty affect the lives of hard-working Texans,” said Buckingham.

    This is why I am stepping up and acquiring this 1,402-acre property in the heart of the border crisis. The General Land Office works for the people of Texas, and our agency will take matters into our own hands and partner with the State of Texas to secure this section of Starr County by building a fortified 1.5-mile wall.

    That’s a good start, but we’re obviously going to need many more wall segments than that.

    Buckingham also revealed that state employees have already been out to the property with bulldozers and she believes construction of the wall will begin soon.

    Additionally, Buckingham explained that there have been massive amounts of human trafficking on the property. She said that the acquisition included trees that served as “rape trees”—which are used by human traffickers to display women’s undergarments as trophies after an assault.

    “It’s at an area of great impact, it’s in an area where we see lots of people coming across all of the time, not only seeing the people coming across, but seeing those women and children who are abused and victimized. We’re seeing drugs. We’re seeing weapons. We’re seeing all kinds of things coming across this particular part of the border,” explained Buckingham.

    “So we think that this barrier, this wall that the Texas Facilities Commission will build, will help to control that traffic and hopefully shut it down.”

    Given the huge increase in illegal alien crime and disorder that the Biden-Harris decision to import millions of illegal aliens in to the country has had, Texas has been forced to go to unusual lengths to secure the life and property of it’s citizens against the illegal invasion.

    If Trump is elected again and the federal government starts enforcing its constitutional duty to secure the borders, then Texas can once again starting working with the federal government to enforce the law.

    Don’t Stick Your Dick In Commie

    October 30th, 2024

    There’s an old saying about dating: Don’t stick your dick in crazy. Maybe there needs to be a new saying for today’s Democrats: Don’t stick your dick in commie.

    It seems that Minnesota governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz (who is, we must remind you, absolutely not gay) once had an affair with the daughter of a top Chinese communist official.

    With a week to go before the election, October surprises are expected. Several have been aimed at Trump already, and they’ve been quickly debunked. But today, the Daily Mail has a juicy story about Kamala Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, and, in the interest of fairness, we’re reporting on it so you can decide if it has any merit.

    According to the report, Walz had a secret romance with the daughter of a high-ranking Communist Party official during his 1989 teaching stint in China. Jenna Wang, now 59, recounts how Walz wooed her with thoughtful gifts and late-night encounters in his modest staff accommodation at Foshan’s No. 1 High School in Guangdong Province.

    The couple naturally kept their relationship under wraps, aware that public displays of affection were off-limits given Wang’s father’s powerful position in the Chinese Communist Party, which forbade relationships with Westerners. But behind closed doors, their bond grew as they shared tea, George Michael songs (hilarious), and quiet moments together, fueling the then 24-year-old Wang’s dreams of marriage and a fresh start in the United States.

    George Michael songs. Remember: Tim Walz is not gay! Stop thinking that.

    But color me just a tad skeptical that the daughter of a high ranking Chinese communist official would find a life with Tim Walz an attractive option. The communist princesses and princelings, especially in the Deng Xiaoping/Jiang Zemin era, would have been groomed for important CCP positions or high-paying positions in the newly liberalized private sector. Now ordinary Chinese girls of the era would probably flock to the chance to escape China by marrying an American, because of all the poverty ($307 per capita GDP in 1989) and Communism, but a communist princess? I seriously doubt it.

    No proposal was forthcoming from the future Minnesota governor, however, and the shame of being treated ‘like a prostitute’ eventually left Wang feeling angry and suicidal, she claims.

    ‘Tim was very passionate and very romantic. I can still remember dancing with him to our favorite song, Careless Whisper,’ she told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.

    ‘The fact we couldn’t touch or kiss in public just made it all the more exciting and intense when we were finally alone.

    ‘We were deeply in love and I wanted to marry him and start a family. When it didn’t happen, I felt very unhappy and sad. Tim’s behavior was very selfish.’

    Yeah. I bet.

    Of course, Waltz isn’t the only Democrat to play Hide The Very Small Pickle with a Chinese commie. California Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell famously played bang bang with Fang Fang. Fang Fang also slept with at least two mayors who evidently haven’t been identified, but since she traveled in Democratic circles, I bet they were Democrats too.

    Of course, those are only the ones we know about. I’m sure a lot more Democrats have done so, and just haven’t been caught yet.

    Don’t stick your dick in commie. A few minutes (or perhaps second) of pleasure shouldn’t outweigh a lifetime of shame…

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)