George Soros Trying To Buy More Texas Elections

January 23rd, 2024

George Soros has set his sights on Texas yet again.

Newly released campaign finance reports show George Soros in the top ten political donors in Texas.

Texas’ latest campaign finance reports show liberal billionaire George Soros has been pouring money into political action committees rather than funding candidates directly.

Soros contributed a total of $2,562,000 across several PACs between August and December 2023, making him one of the top 10 contributors in Texas.

Receiving over a million dollars from Soros, the Texas Majority PAC boasts the motto “let’s turn Texas blue.” The organization seeks to elect statewide Democrat officials by researching the most effective strategies to accomplish this goal.

Texas Organizing Project PAC received a quarter of a million dollars from Soros. Placing their mission’s emphasis on black and Latino voters, TOP focuses on reaching the minority communities in Texas to shift the state’s political leaning. However, TOP has also been linked in recent years to bailing out hundreds of inmates with severe criminal records.

After TOP was linked to Soros in the past, former candidate for Harris County Judge Alexandra Mealer posted on social media, saying “TOP works year around to elect candidates in favor of dismantling the criminal justice system so no surprise on [Soros donation].”

Soros also contributed to the Hidalgo County Democrat Party, which aims to emphasize elections at all levels rather than only those on a larger scale.

CTX Votes, Dallas County Democratic PAC, Cameron County Democratic Party Executive Committee, and Planned Parenthood Texas Votes PAC all listed Soros as a top contributor, with CTX Votes and Cameron County receiving over 94 percent of their total contributions from Soros.

In addition, Soros was in the top 10 contributors for both First Tuesday and the Texas Justice & Public Safety PAC.

One particularly interesting race is that for Harris County DA, where’s backing a primary challenger to incumbent Kim Ogg, whom he had previously supported.

Vying for her third term as Harris County district attorney, Kim Ogg faces a challenge in the Democratic primary from a former prosecutor who is backed by Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo and groups funded by billionaire criminal justice reform donor George Soros.

Ogg’s challenger, Sean Teare, worked for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office (HCDAO) until February of last year, most recently as head of the Vehicular Crimes Division. After announcing his candidacy, his campaign raised $785,000 in the first six months of 2023, while Ogg trailed behind at $56,000. According to the most recent campaign finance reports, Ogg took in $282,000 compared to Teare’s $279,000 in the second half of the year.

Official campaign finance reports also show that Teare is receiving assistance from the Texas Justice and Public Safety PAC, a political action committee that has received most of its funding directly from Soros. The PAC, which previously supported the campaigns of Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza and Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot, provided polling services to Teare.

Teare’s reports also show coordination with the Texas Organizing Project, a criminal justice reform group that often posts bail for suspects and supports candidates who will work to end the cash bail system.

On the campaign trail, Teare has criticized Ogg for “weaponizing the DA’s office” against political opponents.

After an investigation into an alleged bid-rigging scheme for a COVID-19 vaccine outreach contract in 2021, a Harris County grand jury issued felony indictments for three of Hidalgo’s staffers, which Teare and Hidalgo have blamed on Ogg.

A day after news broke in November 2023 that the Texas Rangers had issued new search warrants related to the case, at a press conference Hidalgo accused Ogg of leaking the warrants to the media. She also used the press conference, which took place on county property and was live-streamed on the Office of the County Judge’s official social media accounts, to announce her support for Teare, which drew a new criminal complaint and an ethics complaint against Hidalgo.

For more on ethics complaints against Hidalgo, see here. And here. And here. And here. And here.

In an interview with FOX 26 Houston this week, Ogg lambasted Teare for not revealing that after leaving his post at the HCDAO he went to work for the Cogdell Law Firm, which represents Hidalgo’s indicted former staffer Alex Triantaphyllis. According to Ogg, Teare was still a senior staffer at the HCDAO at the time prosecutors were building the cases against Hidalgo’s staff.

“The notion that I should turn a blind eye simply because it was committed by a Democrat is not just offensive. It’s dangerous,” said Ogg.

That is, in fact, exactly what Soros-backed social justice tools expect

Teare’s campaign website features Hidalgo’s endorsement along with those of state Rep. Gene Wu (D-Houston) and a group of Harris County Democratic Party (HCDP) precinct chairs.

On the Republican side, Dan Simons seems to be running for DA, but his campaign doesn’t have a website up yet. An odd decision, since he filed fr the race over a month ago and primary day is less than two months out.

Having seen the devastating toll letting a Soros-backed DA run your county has taken on Harris County thanks to high levels of violence from criminals put back on the street, you would think the Harris County GOP would be doing more to make sure it doesn’t happen again…

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Posted in Austin, Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Supreme Court, Texas, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Putin Wants Alaska Back. Also, People In Hell Want Icewater

January 22nd, 2024

“I’ll take Absurd News for $200.”

Russia laid the groundwork for expanding its soft power across North America and Asia with a new executive order signed by Vladimir Putin last week.

The new order provides funds for the search, registration and legal protection of Russian properties abroad, including land and buildings located on the territory of the former Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.

Among the areas affected by the new decree is Alaska, which was sold to the United States in 1867 and still has communities with close ties to Russia.

Central and Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and large parts of Asia were once part of the former empire.

However, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) notes that “it is not clear what Russia’s current or historical assets consist of.”

This first of what promises to be multiple Nelsons

You may remember that America bought Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million in 1867.

A second Nelson, because one simply wasn’t enough.

Evidently Putin’s continuing inability to conquer Ukraine, a former vassal state laying right next door, wasn’t enough of a humiliation for him, and he needs to pretend he can go toe-to-toe with the world’s only hyperpower to reclaim the 49th state over a century-and-and half old case of buyer’s seller’s remorse.

Another Nelson, just because.

Let’s, for the moment, set aside the distinct possibility that this declaration of suzerainty over former Soviet states not only implicitly threatens the Baltic Nations, but also Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan.

Basically, all the Stans.

Still, the “just wants to watch the world burn” part of me wants to see Pooty-Poot’s Russia try to conquer Alaska, if only because the American reaction to whatever half-assed misexpedition across the Bearing Strait Russia is able to launch might result in the complete seizure of the Kuril-Aleut oil fields in far eastern Siberia. Indeed, I imagine that it wouldn’t even be a week before American air power completely wrecked the fragile Transiberian Railway and Highway, making Russian forces in the far east completely SOL. At that point, an American air and sea bridge from Alaska would still provide more reliable logistical support than Russia’s long, primitive and fragile Transiberian transport network.

One wonders what purpose these vainglorious, unenforceable pronouncements are meant to serve. It’s like an eight year old building a pillow fort in the middle of the living, loudly proclaiming “Better not come in here! It’s my fort!” Only for his mother to ignore it and pick up the couch cushions because The Price Is Right is on.

Maybe no other reason than puffing up Putin’s fragile ego.

Perhaps Putin should limit himself to one unwinnable “Special Military Operation”” at a time…

A final Nelson. For emphasis.

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Posted in Communism, Foreign Policy, Military | 24 Comments »

And Just Like That, The 2024 Republican Presidential Primary Is Over

January 21st, 2024

Well, that was quick.

Ron DeSantis dropped out of the presidential race Sunday afternoon and endorsed former president Donald Trump, announcing the suspension of his embattled campaign in a video posted to social media just two days before the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary.

DeSantis’s departure comes days after his allies began making calls to top donors asking whether the candidate should drop out ahead of the New Hampshire primary.

The campaign continues to tell reporters that their candidate will stay in the race through South Carolina, force rival and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley to drop out should she lose her home state, and hopefully go toe-to-toe with Trump in the event that she drops out.

But behind closed doors, DeSantis allies are of course mindful of the fact that the Florida governor continues to poll in the single digits in New Hampshire compared with Haley, who is still polling behind Trump but is gaining on him in some surveys. As recently as Tuesday, one day after DeSantis finished roughly 30 points behind first-place finisher Donald Trump in Iowa, the campaign insisted that DeSantis still had a path forward to the nomination.

No one outside of the MSM and desperate NeverTrumpers give a rat’s ass about Haley.

On paper, DeSantis should have been a formidable candidate. The popular governor of a large, thriving state, DeSantis had more impressive credentials than Trump when it came to fighting wokeness, pulling it out root and branch in Florida institutions.

But his campaigning has, alas, been anything but impressive. Indeed, he never gained any traction and all the media attention as the “Trump alternative” has been lavished on Haley.

Usually second place in Iowa is quite a respectable showing (Trump himself came in second to Ted Cruz in 2016, and Ronald Reagan to George H. W. Bush in 1976), one that punches your ticket to later primaries, usually to at least Super Tuesday. But Trump won an absolute majority in Iowa, something that hasn’t happened for a non-incumbent in the last half century. (Maybe longer; online records before that seem spotty.) DeSantis and his team seem to have figured, I think correctly, that he had no path to the nomination.

At this point, Trump looks poised to win every primary on the schedule, including Nikki Haley’s home state of South Carolina, where he currently leads her by 35 points.

Now the only question is whether the NeverTrump rump (and I include National Review here) will swallow both their pride and their shame at refusing to fight over the stolen 2020 election and embrace the overwhelming choice of the Republican Party base, or will they go hunting for another Egg McMuffin to prop up in a desperate bid to spoil Trump’s election chances?

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Posted in Economics, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors | 15 Comments »

Two Ukrainian Bradleys Wreck Russian T-90M

January 20th, 2024

The Bradley Fighting Vehicle is an infantry fighting vehicle armed with a 25mm Bushmaster autocannon that first entered service in 1981. The T-90M is Russia’s most modern fielded main battle tank (we’re not counting the still-in-development T-14 Armata), armed with a 125mm main cannon, and on paper should make mincemeat of a Bradley if it meets one in combat.

That’s not what actually happened in Ukraine. Video shows two Bradleys, each engaging a single Russian T-90M (though serially rather than in parallel), and they absolutely wreck the Russian tank.

If you just want the close-in money shot, here’s closer footage from later in the fight:

For the longer 10 minute engagement, here’s another video, which includes the end where you see the T-90Ms turret go into autorotation and the tank drive uncontrollably into a tree.

“This shows a big failure in Russian tactics here. This T-90M was operating on its own with no support from other vehicles such as BMPs, and no infantry support.” We’ve seen a whole lot of this in the last year or so of the war: atomized encounters that show no real combined-arms use on either side.

Give Ivan his due: The Russian tank took a tremendous pounding, but stayed mobile until the very end. Other videos show three crew members staggering away from the tank after the engagement.

Those 25mm tungsten depleted uranium rounds are no joke, and we have multiple reports as far back as Desert Storm of them penetrating earlier Soviet armor.

(I’ve been having hosting problems, so I’m going to publish this sucker before another problem crops up…)

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Posted in Military, video | 20 Comments »

LinkSwarm For January 19, 2024

January 19th, 2024

Trump wins Iowa (and picks up Ted Cruz’s endorsement), Democratic party popularity becomes ever more selective, Hunter Biden’s laptop confirmed as Hunter Biden’s laptop (not that we ever had any doubt), two shithole countries exchange airstrikes, and a science fiction legend dies. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Donald Trump won the Iowa Caucuses in convincing fashion, winning 51% of the vote. Ron DeSantis came in second with 21%, and MSM-and-Never Trump darling Nikki Haley pulling in 19%, and Vivek Ramaswamy a distant 4th with 7.6%. (Ramaswamy then endorsed Trump.) The most satisfying part of this result is seeing the Hindenburg of Haley puffery crash and explode.
  • Ted Cruz has endorsed Trump. “‘I’m a big believer in letting democracy play out,’ Cruz said. ‘I’ve got to say Trump’s victory was across the board. He won 51 percent of the vote. He won 98 of the counties. Congratulations to President Trump on that dominating victory.'” Despite DeSantis many strengths as a governor, he did not run a good campaign. And remember, Cruz actually beat Trump in Iowa in 2016, and ran a competitive campaign into May. That’s not going to happen this year. Trump seems likely to win all the primaries in every state.
  • “Americans Identifying As Democrats Hits Record Low.”

    A Gallup poll released on Friday reveals that a record low percentage of Americans who identify as Democrats in 2023 hit a record low, when independent ‘leaners’ are excluded.

    Just 27% of Americans self-identify as Democrats, the smallest figure in the party’s history according to the survey. That said, self-identifying Republicans also hit 27%, though it did not mark the lowest figure in the party’s history – which was in 2013 when just 25% of Americans identified as such. The previous low for Democrats was in 2017 and 2015 at 29%.

    Independents, meanwhile, take the cake – with 43% of Americans identifying as such.

  • “Jim Jordan Demands Answers After Biden Admin Caught Flagging “MAGA” And “Trump” To Track Political Opponents’ Financial Transactions.” This is the sort of thing EFF used to freak out over, but refuses to do so now that it’s targeted at Republicans…
  • “Oregon cannot trace $426 million in Covid money.” Of course not. But I bet a lot of friends of powerful Oregon Democrats made out very well indeed…
  • Not that any of us ever had any doubt, but DOJ confirmed that the “Laptop from Hell” is in fact Hunter Biden’s laptop, and that they knew that all along:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Things that make your blood boil: “Texas man arrested in connection with videos showing seven men who sexually assaulted toddlers at a public mall.”

    A Texas man is in federal custody after the FBI linked him to videos from the dark web depicting group sexual assault on toddlers in a mall.

    Arthur Hector Fernandez, 29, was arrested Dec. 18, 2023 in Kingwood, TX as the result of a Dec. 14 criminal complaint filed in federal court in Houston, records show.

    The FBI were led to Fernandez as a suspect after viewing videos of an assault of a three-year-old child; a relative of the child “recognized the bracelets an individual in the video was wearing as belonging to Fernandez.”

    Hanging’s too good for him…

  • Speaking of child sex offenders, director of California LGBTQ+ center busted in child sex sting.

    The executive director of the Rainbow Resource Center, a prominent LGBTQ+ support center based in Modesto, has been identified as one of 17 men apprehended on suspicion of attempting to engage in sexual activities with a minor.

    The revelation was first reported by the Modesto Bee.

    Gerad Slayton, 42, was taken into custody during a sting operation organized by the Turlock Police Department, targeting individuals believed to be seeking illicit encounters with minors. Slayton, recently appointed as the executive director of the Rainbow Center, a local nonprofit dedicated to providing resources for LGBTQ+ individuals across all age groups, faces allegations of pursuing sexual activities with minors.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Special Incompetence Unit.

    Rape kits that should have been analyzed by the NYPD but were left in storage at hospitals across the city are now part of a sprawling Department of Justice probe into the department’s Special Victims Division, The Post has learned.

    The revelation comes after The Post revealed the snafu, which meant that an unknown number of cases were not fully investigated, victims didn’t get justice, and countless rapists could be roaming free.

    (Hat tip: 357 Magnum.)

  • Pakistan and Iran have traded airstrikes in each other’s territory. “The unprecedented attacks by both Pakistan and Iran on either side of their border appeared to target Baluch militant groups with similar separatist goals. The countries accuse each other of providing a haven to the groups in their respective territories.”
  • Crazy doppelganger murder trial begins.
  • The Disney magic seems to extend everywhere. “Pixar is planning on MAJOR layoffs this year, up to 20% of employees could be dismissed.” Under Jobs it made money hand over fist, but after Disney went woke it’s produced one flop after another.

  • Speaking of layoffs, Sports Illustrated lays off everybody. Wait, you mean putting fat women and trannys on the cover of your swimsuit issue and fluffing Colin Kaepernick weren’t tickets to success? Who knew?

  • Emmy Award show rating hits all time low.
  • Science fiction legend and personal friend Howard Waldrop died over the weekend. Howard was one of the greatest short story writers the field has ever produced. Since you can’t make a living from short stories, Howard was never far from penury, and he spent six months living in a spare room in my house. Pretty much everyone in the field loved him, and he will be missed.
  • Also dead this week: PDQ RIP.
  • “If you give a 19-year-old millions of dollars and international fame, you’re going to end up with Caligula like 90% of the time.”
  • TIAA Bank Field send out query as to how Jacksonville Jaguar fans enjoyed the Wild Card game they never hosted after they missed the postseason:

  • “New Film Adaptation Of ‘1984’ To Feature Big Brother As The Good Guy.”
  • “FBI Warns Of Extremist MAGA Plot To Go To A Polling Location And Vote For Preferred Candidate.”

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, ObamaCare, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, unions, Welfare State | 3 Comments »

    Post Office Firearm Ban Found Unconstitutional

    January 18th, 2024

    We have another firearms law found unconstitutional in the wake of Bruen, but this one has a significant difference.

    On Friday, January 12th, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle ruled that a United States law prohibiting people from possessing firearms while inside of a post office goes against their constitutional rights.

    According to Fox News, Judge Mizelle, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, cited a 2022 landmark United States Supreme Court decision that expanded gun rights when she dismissed part of an indictment charging a postal worker with illegally possessing a gun in a federal facility.

    That landmark case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, recognized a person’s right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense and established a new test for assessing firearms restrictions, noting it must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

    The indictment against the postal worker, Emmanuel Ayala, was brought forth because of the Smith & Wesson 9mm gun that he kept in a fanny pack with his concealed carry permit. Ayala framed his case around the Bruen decision, arguing that the prohibition against guns in a federal postal facility is “unconstitutional” as applied to him because the “historical record does not support a law banning firearms in post offices.”

    Mizelle noted that the United States’ response to Ayala’s claim was that the “Second Amendment allows it to punish the bearing of arms inside any government building.” The United States specifically deemed a post office as a “sensitive place,” claiming that such a designation means the government can “ban the carrying of firearms while not violating an individual’s Second Amendment rights” and is “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

    Mizelle rejected that claim, writing, “[Bruen] requires the United States to present historical support for § 930(a)’s application to Ayala, which it fails to do. Post offices have existed since the founding, as have threats to the safety of postal workers and the public entering those locations. Yet the historical record yields no ‘distinctly similar historical regulation addressing’ those safety problems by regulating firearms in post offices … Bruen deems this absence strong evidence of the statute’s unconstitutionality.”

    Mizelle sided with Ayala is his claim that the law prohibiting guns in a federal postal facility was unconstitutional, writing, “I dismiss the § 930(a) charge because it violates Ayala’s Second Amendment right to bear arms.”

    Snip.

    In her decision, Mizelle stated that federal law did not ban guns in government buildings until 1964 and in post offices until 1972. She said there is no historical practice dating back to the 1700s that justifies the ban. The judge said allowing the federal government to restrict visitors from bringing guns into government facilities would allow it to “abridge the right to bear arms by regulating it into practical non-existence.

    The big difference here is that previous anti-gun laws overturned in the wake of Bruen have been state laws, but this one is a federal law. Perhaps one slipped by while I wasn’t looking, but I believe that this is the first federal law overturned in the wake of Bruen.

    Decision by decision, the Second Amendment is slowly being restored to its proper place in American jurisprudence.

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    Posted in Guns, Regulation | 9 Comments »

    Soros Prosecutors = Paradise For Sex Traffickers

    January 17th, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Surveillance video showed the victim leaving with Emanuel Jose Cartagena.

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

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

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

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

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

    “I was astounded,” said the mom.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    January 16th, 2024

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

    Especially in Texas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Playtime is over.

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

    Snowpocalypse Not: 2024 Edition

    January 15th, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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    Posted in Austin, Texas | 8 Comments »

    What Changed Jordan Petersen’s Mind

    January 14th, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

    • Food for thought…

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