Fallout from the House speaker’s race, Biden busted for mishandling classified files, more blue state teachers raping their students, Cadillac’s EV breaks into double digit sales, and the Imelda Marcos disco musical! It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Kevin McCarthy finally wins Speaker of the House race on 15th vote after offering concessions to the House Freedom Caucus.
How is McCarthy doing? Early signs are encouraging. “The House of Representatives passed a new rules package Monday that overhauls the way it functions by putting up more barriers to congressional spending and creating a more deliberate process for passing legislation, which were key demands of the more conservative members of the Republican Party.” (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) used Thursday morning’s press briefing to criticize the Department of Justice’s handling of the issue.
“They knew this happened to President Biden before the election, but they kept it secret from the American public,” McCarthy told a scrum of reporters on Capitol Hill.
Chicago Board of Education Inspector General Will Fletcher reported 470 sexual complaints against Chicago Public School employees from students in 2022.
“The report details students being abused, groped, groomed, assaulted and threatened by school officials.
“One investigation found a former Junior ROTC staff member had sex with a 16-year-old high school student for a year. When he learned there was an investigation, the staff member threatened to kill the girl and her family if she cooperated with investigators.”
The teachers’ union in Chicago, Randi Weingarten’s American Federation of Teachers, so praised by Joe Biden, has done nothing and said nothing about it so far as I can tell, and I did look, focusing instead on promoting critical race theory into the school system. Left unsaid is that the union ensures that firing any of these teachers involved in this activity is virtually impossible. Chicago’s public schools’s firing rate of bad teachers owing to their union membership, as of a few years ago, is 0.1%.
What’s vivid here amid all this widespread predatory behavior from the teaching classes, which like Harvey Weinstein, are prolific campaign donors to Democrats, is that the low outrage factor stands in sharp contrast to the sexual abuse scandals of the Catholic Church, which was ordered by courts to pay billions in reparations to the victims, has seen its leaders publicly apologize for the abuses, and has many programs now to prevent child abuse by perverts in authority. This activity was evil and inexcusable and rightly punished.
As for the more widescale abuse now seen in Chicago’s public schools, along with comparable scandals in the Los Angeles public school system, and other bad cases in New York and other blue cities, well, crickets. The perversion has gotten out of control in Chicago and the story barely makes the national news.
How Biden’s inflation is destroying family budgets:
The reality of the inflation report for American families – year-over-year real wages have been negative for 21 straight months. pic.twitter.com/1Bh4DNqZBF
A federal appeals court on Friday struck down the Trump-era ban on bump stocks, a firearm accessory that enables a semi-automatic gun to shoot at an increased rate of fire.
In a 13-3 decision, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans held that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), acting under “tremendous” public pressure, short-circuited the legislative process by approving a rule to define bump stocks as “machineguns,” which are illegal to possess. The court said ATF did not have the authority from Congress to do so.
This is what a real pro-natalist policy looks like: “Hungary addresses falling birthrates by exempting moms under 30 from income tax for life.” More:
Hungary has taken several measures in recent years to encourage its citizens to have more children, including three years of paid parental leave and state-funded daycare.
The country previously suspended income tax for moms with four or more children, but this new policy specifically encourages women to have children sooner, which in the long run means a higher likelihood of having more children overall.
Israel hit Syria again, and I heard just about nothing about it. Ukraine has really pushed Syria out of the headlines.
Speaking of Ukraine, Russia has largely captured the salt mining town of Soledar, though at a high cost in man. And good luck checking those hundreds of miles of salt tunnels for partisans…
“Tesla plans Houston-area expansion with large new industrial site in Brookshire…Little is known about Tesla’s plans, but the Fortune 500 company signed a lease late last year for about 1.03 million square feet at 111 Empire West, part of the 300-acre Empire West Business Park in Brookshire.” A bold move, considering how radically car sales have dived this year.
Other EVs update: “GM delivers record Cadillac Lyriq deliveries in Q4 – 12 per month.”
“David Byrne, Fatboy Slim Disco Musical ‘Here Lies Love’ Sets Broadway Debut. The musical, which has had a long journey to Broadway, centers on the life of Imelda Marcos, the former first lady of the Philippines.” They say the mirror ball shine bright on Broadway… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
“Joe Rogan interviews Peter Zeihan” is obviously irresistible catnip for me, as any regular readers recognize. It’s like Rogan is reading my blog! (Joe, you should totally interview me! I’m a great speaker, I’m local, I can bring my dogs over to play with Marshall, and I can tell you what doing standup comedy was like in Houston in the 80s…)
I don’t have the entire interview, because Spotify, but there are some big, interesting chunks I found on YouTube. Many cover ground familiar to BattleSwarm readers.
First up: Zeihan explains his theory on why the Russo-Ukrainian War was inevitable because they had to get across Ukraine to plug defensive gaps, and that Russia had to do it in advance of a demographic death spiral.
Caveat: I’m not sure the “plugging the gaps” theory explains the invasion any better than old fashioned Russian chauvinism; how dare those lowly Ukrainians resist being incorporated into glorious Russia?
Next up: Will Russia use nukes? Zeihan thinks it unlikely.
“We’re not just providing the Ukrainians with the weaponry and the ammo, we’re providing them with the intelligence and most of the steps of the kill chain. Without that, the weapons are of limited usefulness, especially at long range, and the Ukrainians have no desire to rupture that relationship.”
“The Russians are relatively casualty immune. They fight in an area where they fight with numbers. They’ve never been technologically advanced versus their peers, they’ve always just thrown bodies at it. So there has never been a conflict in Russian history where they have backed out without first losing a half a million men. We’re at about a hundred thousand now. We have a long way to go before the Russian military breaks.” (I think he’s forgetting the Russo-Japanese War, where they got their asses kicked but lost a whole lot less than half a million men. Maybe he implied European war, and ignored a lot of minor ones following the Russian revolution, and ignored anything before the Russian Empire…)
We don’t how many Ukrainian civilians the Russians have slaughtered; maybe 250,000. “If you think of things like Bucha and Izyum, German radio intercepts told us as far back as May that there were at least 70 places behind Russian lines that had suffered massacres [like] Bucha, and when we’ve had additional liberations since then, it corroborates that general assessment.”
“The Russians are fighting so badly, they’re doing much worse than the Iraqis did in 1992.”
“Russia has always been poorly managed and authoritarian, but under Putin it’s taken a much darker turn because of the nature of the end of the Cold War.” Yeah, no. Putin is not a “darker” authoritarian than Stalin.
On Putin’s paranoia, isolation, and possible illness. Plus a bit about gay demons.
“We’re now in an environment that between the terminal demographic structureof the Soviet/Russian system, and Putin’s personal paranoia. So he’s gone through and purged what was left of the KGB, FSB, of anyone who has personal ambitions to succeed him. We’re left with an entire political elite of only about 130 people, and Putin has removed anyone who has leadership ambitions.”
“Any sort of leadership talent has left, or been killed.”
“When it came to the Kherson offensive, and it became clear that there was more going on than just NATO weapons, the Ukrainians actually knew what they were doing, they changed the the line from that these are all Nazis to these are actually gay demons.” (Rogan: “What???”)
“This is the official line right now that ‘We have homosexual demons fighting us in Ukraine.'” (I’m going to guess that it’s not the line, but just the latest in a firehose stream of ever-more-risible excuses for failure that no one pays any serious attention to, just like whatever Baghdad Bob spit out in 2003.
“The guy who’s in charge of the Orthodox Church is a Putin crony.”
“We’ve got a Jewish Nazi gay demon.”
On Putin having cancer and/or Parkinson’s: “He’s clearly on steroids, but that could mean a whole lot of things…He looks very, not just flushed, but puffy, and that’s that’s kind of a classic too many steroids in your system issue.”
“There was this great piece that came out that I saw last week, where it was all the propaganda shots that he’s taken with, like, the soldiers mothers, and on the front, and with the tech people, and in the, intelligence and it was like the same twelve people were in every single shot, just in different outfits and even with those people he’s wearing his ballistic vest.”
“He’s clearly unhealthy.”
“He’s got the shakes, that’s one of the reasons [for the] Parkinson’s analysis.”
“The Ukrainian propaganda guy has been saying that there’s a coup underway since March…I wouldn’t put too much into that.”
Rogan: “What a fucked-up situation.” Zeihan: “For the Europeans who have been dealing with the Russians for three centuries, this is kind of par for the course.”
I’ve got at least four more videos to go, so let’s break this post into two parts.
Life expectancy in the United States last year dropped to its lowest point in a quarter century, and it’s not all because of Covid.
Last year saw a 5% decline in life expectancy for Americans, dropping to under 77 years of age.
And while some experts want to try to tie the drop to Covid-19, the numbers reveal that there’s much more at work here than people being killed by the China Virus. There’s another epidemic that is killing Americans at an alarming rate: The Opioid Epidemic.
From the Wall Street Journal:
Covid-19 was the third-leading cause of death for a second consecutive year in 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday, and a rising number of drug-overdose deaths also dragged down life expectancy. Overdose deaths have risen fivefold over the past two decades.
The death rate for the U.S. population increased by 5%, cutting life expectancy at birth to 76.4 years in 2021 from 77 years in 2020. The CDC in August released preliminary estimates demonstrating a similar decline. Before the pandemic, in 2019, life expectancy at birth in the U.S. was 78.8 years. The decline in 2020 was the largest since World War II.
While the drop coincides with the Covid pandemic, the increased numbers aren’t caused by the disease alone.
The leading cause of death in the US is still heart disease and cancer.
Then there’s the opioid epidemic.
The country during the pandemic has recorded more than 1.2 million excess deaths, which is a measure of all deaths beyond prior-year averages and can represent both undercounted Covid-19 deaths and collateral damage from other causes, including more overdoses. The CDC put the final count for 2021 overdose deaths at about 106,700, a record that is 16% higher than the prior year. The final count differs from a preliminary count for last year that topped 108,000 because the CDC in its final counts doesn’t include overdose deaths that occurred among non-U. S. residents.
Opioid deaths increased because of lockdowns.
People locked in their homes are more likely to have heart disease.
Thousands and thousands and thousands of people missed cancer screenings and got lesser treatment thanks to lockdowns.
As we covered here at NTB recently, the excess deaths we are seeing aren’t because of Covid, but the lockdowns.
n August of this year, I reported that Moderna is suing Pfizer and BioNTech for infringing patents that are key to Moderna’s mRNA technology platform that was used to develop the covid vaccine.
In response, Pfizer has now countersued Moderna.
The ongoing legal battle now sees Pfizer and its partner BioNTech reject its rival’s claims it copied the shot.
Pfizer has accused Moderna of rewriting history, and dubbed its lawsuit ‘revisionist history’.
Manhattan-based Pfizer requested from a federal court in Boston that Moderna’s lawsuit be dismissed.
Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, fired back at Moderna on Monday in a patent lawsuit over their rival Covid-19 vaccines.
They are seeking dismissal of the lawsuit in Boston federal court and an order that Moderna’s patents are invalid and not infringed.
We need effective biotech companies that are not infected by politics or social justice. Unfortunately, those don’t appear to be the companies we have.
Pfizer asserts their vaccine technology was arrived at through independent research.
Everything you need to know about the motives and methods of the 21st-century Left can be learned from studying 20th-century Communism. What Mises said about Marx and Engels, and the ad hominem quality of their rhetoric — slander and insults, rather than actual arguments — was even more true of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, et al. Having once seized power, the Bolsheviks immediately proceeded to suppress all potential rivals. Within a month, they established the Cheka (predecessor of the NKVD and, later, the KGB) and appointed Felix Dzerzhinsky as its leader. Eight months later, the Red Terror began in earnest, and within a matter of weeks, the Bolsheviks had summarily executed more victims than were sentenced to death in the entire preceding century by the Tzarist regime
Snip.
The other day I wrote a piece about how the Left can’t argue anymore. My thesis was pretty simple: because they have owned the cultural means of production so long they have lost the need for or ability to argue things logically.
I still believe that. Having rarely been exposed to a conservative argument that [they] haven’t been able to dismiss merely through repeated ridicule the Left pretty much only engages in ad hominem attacks. Even very smart prominent Lefties . . . seem incapable of doing much more than insulting their opponents any more. It all boils down to Bad Orange Man or MAGA simps. . . .
But I ran into a slightly different perspective on the matter while cruising Twitter, and I think it deserves consideration: sometimes, at least, the person throwing out an absurd take isn’t actually hoping to convince you of anything. They are, rather, trying to discredit the source and do nothing more. The ad hominem attack is the only point — to destroy the credibility of their opponent, without actually convincing you of any particular argument.
Thus the need to label anything that refutes The Narrative as “disinformation.”
State Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Midlothian) filed proposed legislation to prohibit state tax dollars from being used to pay for gender modification procedures.
House Bill 1029 states, “No funds authorized or appropriated by State law shall be expended for any gender reassignment.”
“Just as the Hyde Amendment, which has enjoyed bipartisan support for almost 50 years, bans tax dollars from funding abortions, I’m proud to file a bill which protects Texans from being forced to pay for their neighbor’s sex change,” Harrison said in a statement. “Irrespective of how anyone views these procedures, it should be uncontroversial that tax money should not fund them.”
Harrison added that the bill was filed in response to a statement made by President Biden’s Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra that public money should be used to provide these procedures to those who want them.
On the same theme: “Kristi Noem’s Health Department Fires Transgender Group Ahead of ‘Gender Summit.'”
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, directed her state Department of Health to terminate a contract with The Transformation Project, a transgender activist group that is hosting a “Gender Identity Summit” next month, after The Daily Signal drew the governor’s attention to the summit and the group.
“Gov. Kristi Noem is reviewing all Department of Health contracts and immediately terminated a contract with The Transformation Project,” Ian Fury, Noem’s chief of communications, told The Daily Signal on Friday. “The contract was signed without Gov. Noem’s prior knowledge or approval.”
Fury sent The Daily Signal a copy of the document dissolving the state contract.
“South Dakota does not support this organization’s efforts, and state government should not be participating in them,” Noem told The Daily Signal in a statement provided by Fury. “We should not be dividing our youth with radical ideologies. We should treat every single individual equally as a human being.”
Fury said that The Transformation Project had not complied with its state contract. The organization had failed “to submit required quarterly reports for two consecutive quarters,” among other violations.
All funding to any radical social justice group should be cut, and the people responsible for funding them fired for cause.
The very progressive and liberal nation of Sweden is showing that they still have at least a little bit of common sense in health leadership.
Sweden has decided to cut ties with WPATH, the World Professional Association of Transgender Health because they’re a bunch of activists.
Swedish health authorities have officially broken ranks with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) with the announcement that gender clinics will no longer be attempting to perform experimental sex changes on under-18s but will instead offer “psychological support to help youth live with the healthy body they were born with.”
According to an article published in the Swedish medical journal Läkartidningen, new guidelines will be published before the end of the year advising against puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery for under 18s. This is in direct contrast with the WPATH Standards of Care 8 (SOC8) released earlier this year which advises affirmation and medical intervention as the first line of treatment for gender-confused minors.
Sweden is rejecting these recommendations because it’s clearly an extreme measure to do sex change operations on minors.
However, the Biden admin has told us that they’re totally on board with the radical recommendations.
I’m shocked, shocked to discover that two-time loser Democrat Stacey Abrams is bad with money.
Despite surpassing her 2018 fundraising record, Stacey Abrams’s 2022 Georgia gubernatorial campaign fell into deep debt due to reckless expenditures, according to staffers and operatives who worked on the failed campaign.
The campaign still owes more than $1 million to vendors, Abrams campaign manager Lauren Groh-Wargo confirmed to Axios.
Some of the campaign’s lavish expenditures included the rental of a home near Piedmont Park in Atlanta, which Abrams envisioned as a “hype house” for TikTok videos but which was ultimately underutilized, staffers told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Some aides occupied the empty large house as a work space. It can now be rented for $12,500 a month, the publication noted.
The campaign’s youth outreach strategy also proved pricey. Against the better judgement of many staffers, who found the idea irresponsible, Abrams launched a pop-up shop and “swag truck” to hand out merchandise, such as T-shirts and hoodies.
Abrams burned through cash on polls that ended up being inconsequential and consultants whose contributions were unclear, staffers also said.
Many employees in the campaign were given generous salaries compared to other candidates’ teams. For example, the campaign advertised paid canvasser jobs at $15 an hour, higher than the typical rate, according to a Georgia Tech blog discovered by the Journal-Constitution.
Benefitting from glossy, identity-focused coverage, Abrams brought in nearly $98 million as of early November. Yet, her campaign nearly ran out of money in the final stretch. Most of the 180 full-time staffers who worked for her were told they’d receive their last paycheck just a week after Election Day, according to Axios.
YouTube has banned the official Pornhub account, which boasted more than 900,000 followers, after repeated violations.
The platform’s move comes in the wake of other Big Tech companies, like Meta/Instagram and TikTok, removing such accounts. Other corporations, like Visa, Mastercard, Roku, Comcast, Unilever, Kraft-Heinz, and PayPal, have also cut ties with Pornhub.
“Upon review, we terminated the channel Pornhub Official following multiple violations of our Community Guidelines,” YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon said, according to Variety. “We enforce our policies equally for everyone, and channels that repeatedly violate or are dedicated to violative content are terminated.”
MindGeek, Pornhub’s parent company, has been hit with multiple lawsuits from survivors of child sex trafficking who claim videos of their abuse were platformed on the pornographic site.
A ban on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices within institutions of higher education has been filed in the Texas House.
State Representative-elect Carl Tepper (R-Lubbock) filed House Bill (HB) 1006 that requires higher education institutions in Texas to “foster a diversity of viewpoints [and] maintain political, social, and cultural neutrality.”
The teeth of the bill command these universities to “demonstrate a commitment to intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity” by eliminating DEI offices or anything like them “beyond what is necessary to uphold the equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
It also allows anyone to bring forth civil action against an entity for violation of the prohibition, something Tepper confirmed was modeled after a similar mechanism within the Texas Heartbeat Act.
Additionally, the definition of “expressive activities” protected under state law is expanded to include “published or unpublished faculty research, lectures, writings, and commentary.”
Tepper told The Texan, “These offices have been out of control for a while now and people are getting really frustrated with them.”
Two big EU scandals seem to be breaking (one the European media is all over like a winter junket to a fact-finding mission in Greece, the other they’re ignoring the way American media try to ignore any Biden family scandal), and I’m trying to figure out what to make of it all.
One problem with such stories is that I have to refresh my memory on the labyrinth structure of EU power designed to shield the Eurocratic elite from the wrath of mere voters. This is necessary to avoid obvious goofs like mistaking the European Council with the completely different Council of the European Union. The popularly elected European Parliament is the angler-worm appendage the EU wants you to pay attention to rather than the deep state maw of the European Commission.
So: The scandal everyone is paying attention to is Qatargate, where a rich, middling despotic gulf petrostate has evidently been hosing down the faces of eager Euro-types with bundles of unmarked bills to improve their image while hosting the quadrennial outbreak of EuroFlopBall.
In an ongoing political scandal, politicians, political staffers, lobbyists, civil servants and their families are alleged to have been involved in corruption, money laundering and organised crime involving the states of Morocco and of Qatar in exchange for influence at the European Parliament.
Morocco is a red herring herring here, amounting to basically one bribe to one guy.
Qatar denies the allegations. Law enforcement authorities in Belgium, Italy and Greece seized €1.5 million in cash, confiscated computers and mobile phones, and charged four individuals with the alleged offences.
In July 2022, the Central Office for the Repression of Corruption, a unit of the Belgian Federal Police, opened an investigation into an alleged criminal organisation. The investigation was led by the investigating magistrate Michel Claise.
Acting on the investigation, on 9 December 2022, Belgian police executed 20 raids at 19 different addresses across Brussels in connection with the conspiracy and made eight arrests across Belgium and Italy. The homes and offices of the suspects were searched, including offices within the premises of the European Parliament buildings in Brussels. In line with the Belgian Constitution, the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, was required to return from her home in Malta to be present for the search at the home of Eva Kaili, who has diplomatic immunity as an MEP and a Vice-President of the European Parliament.
One advantage to this particular scandal is that Eva Kaili is pretty easy on the eyes.
Following the raids at Kaili’s home, her father was later arrested as he tried to flee the Sofitel hotel at Place Jourdan in Brussels after being tipped off about the raids. Investigators found a suitcase with “several hundred thousand euros” on his person as he attempted to flee.
Suitcases full of cash! Your sign of a quality scandal!
Included in the raids were locations linked to Antonio Panzeri, an Italian former MEP. Upon searching his home, police found a large quantity of cash in his “well stocked safe”.
Let’s be fair to Mr. Panzeri: The money in his safe could be from an entirely different bribe.
At the same time investigators raided the offices of the international NGO Fight Impunity, an organisation set up to promote the fight against impunity for serious violations of human rights and crimes against humanity, of which Panzeri is the president.
After the conclusion of the Brussels raids, police had arrested Eva Kaili; Antonio Panzeri; Francesco Giorgi, Kaili’s husband and an advisor of the Italian MEP Andrea Cozzolino; Alexandros Kailis, Kaili’s father and former Greek politician; Luca Visentini, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC); Niccolò Figa-Talamanca, Secretary-General of the NGO No Peace Without Justice; and an unnamed assistant of the Italian MEP Alessandra Moretti. Alexandros Kailis was released from custody and Visentini was conditionally released. €600,000 in cash was reportedly found at Panzeri’s home with additional cash being found at Kaili’s father’s home, his hotel room and the home shared by Kaili and Giorgi. In total, the combined amount of cash found in the raids totalled €1.5million. Following Kaili’s arrest she was detained at the Prison de Saint-Gilles [fr] until her transfer after five days to a prison in Haren, Brussels.
Wait, an NGO with “peace” and “justice” in its title is just a conduit for graft and bribes? What are the odds?
No one answers the door or the phone at the offices of the two campaign groups linked to a cash-for-favors corruption scandal at the European Union’s parliament, allegedly involving Qatar. No light is visible inside.
No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ), a pro-human rights and democracy organization, and Fight Impunity, which seeks to bring rights abusers to book, share the same address, on prime real estate in the governmental quarter of the Belgian capital.
The heads of the two organizations are among four people charged since Dec. 9 with corruption, participation in a criminal group and money laundering. Prosecutors suspect certain European lawmakers and aides “were paid large sums of money or offered substantial gifts to influence parliament’s decisions.” The groups themselves do not seem to be under suspicion.
Qatar rejects allegations that it’s involved. The Gulf country that’s hosting the soccer World Cup has gone to considerable trouble to boost its public image and defend itself against extensive criticism in the West over its human rights record.
The lawyer for Fight Impunity President Pier Antonio Panzeri is not talking. He declined to comment about his client’s role in an affair that has shaken the European Parliament and halted the assembly’s work on Qatar-related files.
Yeah, Pier Antonio Panzeri and the aforementioned Antonio Panzeri are the same guy. “Pier Antonio Panzeri (born 6 June 1955) is an Italian politician who served as Member of the European Parliament for the North-West with the Democrats of the Left, the [Italian] Democratic Party and Article One, as part of the Socialist Group, from 2004 until 2019.” A Democratic Party socialist taking bribes from foreign despots? Shocked face, what are the odds, etc.
As the Qatargate scandal widens, questions are being asked as to whether its reverberations will reach the Commission, the EU’s executive branch. Recent revelations suggest the EU’s Chief Diplomat Josep Borrell could be implicated.
Since erupting last weekend with police raids on MEPs’ homes and offices in the European parliament, the Qatargate scandal has done nothing but mushroom. What began as a criminal probe into current and former MEPs and parliamentary assistants implicated in a bribery ring aimed at burnishing the public image of the current World Cup host has widened significantly — not only in terms of the number of people involved but also the number of organizations and third countries, which now also include Morocco.
As the scandal grows, both the Parliament and the European Commission are locked in a frantic damage control mission. European Parliament president Roberta Metsola on Thursday (15 December) pledged to unveil a “wide-ranging reform package” in January, which will include measures to bolster whistleblower protections, a ban on all unofficial parliamentary friendship groups (groups of MEPs discussing relations with non-EU countries) and a review of enforcement of code of conduct rules for MEPs.
“Look! We’re doing something! Now please stop paying attention so we can get back to our normal anti-Democratic rent-seeking governance!”
Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, herself no stranger to corruption allegations, both in her native Germany and in Brussels, said the following in a Monday morning press conference:
The allegations against the VP of Parliament [Eva Kaili] are of the most concern, very serious. It’s a question of confidence of our people in our institutions, it needs highest standards. I proposed the creation of an independent ethnics body that covers all EU institutions (in March). For us it is very critical to have not only strong rules, but the same rules covering all the EU institutions, and not to allow for any exemptions.
Von der Leyen added that the Commission is looking at its own transparency register for all logged meetings between staff and Qatari officials. That is not as comforting as it may sound given the flagrant disregard for transparency and accountability her Commission has shown in its acquisition of billions of COVID-19 vaccines.
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation into the EU’s coronavirus vaccine purchases, an announcement that will refocus attention on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s role in the matter.
The EPPO is an independent EU body responsible for investigating and prosecuting financial crimes, including fraud, money laundering and corruption. In its announcement on Friday, the EPPO didn’t specify who was being investigated, or which of the EU’s vaccine contracts were under scrutiny.
However, two other watchdog agencies have previously drawn attention to one particular deal involving high-level contacts between Pfizer’s leadership and von der Leyen.
“This exceptional confirmation comes after the extremely high public interest. No further details will be made public at this stage,” said the EPPO in its short announcement.
In April 2021, the New York Times first reported on text messages exchanged between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in the run-up to the EU’s biggest vaccine procurement contract — for up to 1.8 billion doses of BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine. The deal would be worth up to €35 billion if fully exercised, according to leaked vaccine prices.
Obviously the idea that there was anything wrong with any Flu Maanchu vaccines is something the media will go to great lengths not to cover.
It would be nice to think that both scandals together would cause the EU to seriously address its transparency and democracy deficits, but we all know there’s no chance of that happening…
You may remember from all of nine days ago how lefty Peruvian President Pedro Castillo was removed from power after attempting his own autogolpe. Did that solve the political crisis?
Castillo, elected in 2021, was ousted by parliament last week after he tried to dissolve the legislature and stage a coup. This led to the ascension of his vice president, Dina Boluarte, also a Marxist, as president.
Alarmingly, she has come out against even using rubber bullets to stop the mobs torching buildings and disrupting Peru from Lima to Machu Picchu. According to the New York Times, Boluarte has called on the minister of interior to identify the policemen “who have used these weapons that are harming our sisters and brothers.”
These “brothers and sisters,” members of “indigenous” groups, unions, and other leftist activists, are instigated from outside through social media accounts based in the U.S., Argentina, Bolivia, and Mexico and include pro-China, pro-Russia, and pro-Iran activists. Some were also involved with our own Black Lives Matter summer of violence.
Joseph Humire of the Center for a Secure Free Society, one of the best analysts in the U.S. following this sort of online activity, gave me a rundown of those pushing on social media the disinformation narrative that Castillo was ousted because of racism against his Indian roots. They include former Bolivian President Evo Morales, Cristina Kirchner, the recently indicted vice president of Argentina, and Gustavo Petro and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the Marxist presidents of Colombia and Mexico, respectively.
Similarly, Douglas Farah, who also conducts investigations on illicit networks, has found that the vast majority of the millions of tweets about the riots that broke out in Chile came from Venezuela and its allies, Cuba and Nicaragua, while most anti-riot tweets were Chilean. This shouldn’t come as a surprise: Venezuela’s regime has vowed that it will use its oil money to sow this type of chaos throughout the Americas.
Humire alerted me to influencers such as the pro-Russia activist Daniel Estulin, who actually brags in a video from Mexico that he is helping instigate the riots in Peru. Humire also reminded me that Andahuaylas, rocked by violent protests this week, is within the same region (Apurimac) where Iran has developed an indigenous network.
I would take the Iran charge with a grain of salt, since the Andes are not a region where disgruntled Shia provide an opportunity for Iran to create networks of followers. Plus I think the mullahs have other things on their mind right now.
The basic ingredients for stable prosperity are capitalism, democracy and the rule of law. Because all those limit Marxist Will to Power, leftwing rulers (in South America and elsewhere) seem to constantly be at war with all three.
Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! I still haven’t had time to wrangle all those Twitter revelations into a coherent article, so that will have to wait for another post.
How different it feels this time around. Broadcasters are lustily cheering anti-lockdown protesters in China. Members of Congress offer unqualified support. President Joe Biden, although more guarded, is sympathetic.
No Western politician, as far as I can see, is insulting the protesters. They are not dismissed as selfish or sociopathic, nor as dupes of conspiracy theories. Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) captured the mood: “To the people of China — we hear you and we stand with you as you fight for your freedom.”
Broadcasters and columnists who spent 2020 calling anti-lockdowners kooks and criminals are now uncomplicatedly applauding their Chinese counterparts. They see ordinary people standing up against an authoritarian government the anti-COVID policies of which were crushing liberty.
So, what changed? Perhaps pundits tell themselves that the disease is less virulent now, or that vaccination has altered the balance of risk, or that, in some other way, Beijing’s crackdown is less proportionate than those of 2020. But none of these explanations stacks up.
Yes, the coronavirus became less lethal. All viruses that spread through human contact eventually become less lethal because they have an evolved tendency to want to keep their hosts up and active and therefore more infectious. For this to happen, they require a critical mass. Enough people need to be incapacitated or killed by the original version to give milder strains an advantage. And, yes, the vaccines helped, too.
But the trade-offs are essentially the same in China today as they were three years ago — coronavirus deaths versus other deaths. The current unrest was sparked by a fire in Xinjiang, which was allowed to become needlessly deadly because the authorities were following COVID protocols. In other words, they were elevating COVID above other forms of harm.
Most countries did the same in 2020 with, as we now see, disastrous results. The lockdowns did not just cause an economic meltdown from which we will take years to recover. They also failed on their own terms. They killed more people than they saved.
Guess which developed country had the lowest excess mortality between 2020 and 2022. Go on, have a guess. That’s right. Sweden, which refused to close shops or schools or to impose a mask mandate, saw cumulative excess deaths rise by 6.8%, the lowest figure in the OECD. By way of comparison, the equivalent figures were 18% in Australia, 24.5% in the U.K., and 54.1% in the U.S.
“Loudoun County Fires Superintendent over Handling of Sexual-Assault Cases. The Loudoun County school board fired Superintendent Scott Ziegler in a closed-door meeting Tuesday night after a special grand jury released a report blaming the district for failing to escalate cases of student sexual assault in 2021.” The black-pilled who proclaim that electing Republicans is useless aren’t considering the Glenn Youngkins of the world.
he Washington Post announced in October that it was welcoming a new communications chief. The paper’s official announcement lauded Kathy Baird, a veteran of Nike and the public relations giant Ogilvy, as a “key strategic partner” positioned to “realize our ambitious vision for the publication.”
It also noted her membership in the “Rosebud Sioux Tribe” and service on the board of IllumiNative, which it described as “a nonprofit working for accurate and authentic portrayal of Native people.”
That’s one way to put it. IllumiNative is a self-described “racial justice organization” funded by a dark money behemoth that encourages elementary school students to fight for Democratic Party initiatives like universal health care. Its purpose is similar to various far-left activist groups, focusing on “breaking through systems of white supremacy” and “grassroots organizing,” according to IllumiNative’s website.
Argentina’s Vice President (and former President, and former First Lady) and leftwing Paronist Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is sentenced to six years of corrupt fraud.
Paralympian: “Hey, can I get a wheelchair ramp?” Veterans Affairs Canada: “Are you sure you wouldn’t like assisted suicide instead?” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
“Suspended Smith County Constable [Curtis Harris] Found Guilty of Theft, Official Oppression. Since his indictment, the 34-year-old Democrat has been jailed for violating the conditions of his bond and removed from office by a judge.” Smith County is in northeast Texas, and the biggest city is Tyler. Not to be confused with Deaf Smith County, which is completely different…
Great Pyrenees watchdog fights off 11 coyotes, killing eight. Good boy! I didn’t realize there were coyotes in Georgia, but evidently they’ve been extending their range from the southwest.
Peru’s Congress on Wednesday voted to remove President Pedro Castillo after he attempted to dissolve the legislative body following their third attempt to remove him from office.
Lawmakers voted 101-6 with 10 abstentions to remove Castillo from office for reasons of “permanent moral incapacity.”
I love the phrase permanent moral incapacity. If it caught on here, half of our political class would be forcibly retired.
Vice President Dina Boluarte was quickly sworn in to replace Castillo. The 60-year-old lawyer took the oath of office and became the first female leader in Peru’s history.
Her swearing-in capped hours of uncertainty as both the president and Congress appeared to exercise their constitutional powers to do away with each other. She said her first order of business would be to address government corruption.
Peru President Pedro Castillo announced the dissolution of congress and called for legislative elections to draft a new constitution hours before an impeachment debate, greatly escalating a political crisis and putting the Latin American nation’s democracy under threat.
“We took the decision of establishing a government of exception toward reestablishing the rule of law and democracy,” Castillo said in a televised speech Wednesday, adding that the incoming congress will draft a new constitution within nine months. “From today and until the new congress is established, we will govern through decrees.”
“Government of exception” is an awful fancy way of saying “dictatorship.”
Castillo’s move was met with nationwide protests and outrage by the Peruvian constitutional court which called the dissolution of Congress a coup, and said that Castillo is no longer president. Meanwhile, the Congress – which apparently did not get the memo that it has been dissolved – started the Castillo impeachment session early, and will most likely vote to remove the president.
Castillo’s move was hardly unprecedented, as previous Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori famously conducted his own successful autogolpe (auto coup) to purge the Peruvian government (and judiciary) of corruption. He would then defeat the Maoist Shining Path insurgency, be elected to two more terms as President, and then flee the country and resign by fax before being indicted on his own corruption charges. (He would eventually return to serve his prison term and receive a pardon that was later annulled by a court.)
This offers us an opportunity to look at the history of Peru’s governments from the sort of deep, informed vantage point that only 15 minutes of browsing Wikipedia can provide. Even if you limit it to Post-WWII presidents, that history is not a happy one.
Manuel Prado Ugarteche: Served without much upheaval throughout pretty much the entirety of World War II and passed the office to democratically elected successor Jose Luis Bustamante y Rivero. But his second term (July 28, 1956 to July 18, 1962) ended in a coup d’état and he died in exile. Speaking of which:
After troops loyal to the government crushed the revolt, President Bustamante suspended all civil rights.
The insurrection, he declared, had been the work of the APRA Party. Under the President’s orders, government troops occupied the APRA headquarters, seized the plant of its newspaper, La Tribuna, and arrested several prominent Apristas. But for the Military Cabinet, those moves were not enough. Postwar economic problems and strife caused by strong labor unions led to a military coup on October 29, 1948, which led Gen. Manuel A. Odria to become the new President.
Bustamante went into exile, then returned. Despite that whole “suspended civil rights and crushed rival political parties” thing, “In 1960 he was elected a member of the International Court of Justice in The Hague and served as its President from 1967 to 1969.” Died in Lima.
After two years, he resigned and had one of his colleagues, Zenon Noriega, take office as a puppet president so he could run for president as a civilian. He was duly elected a month later as the only candidate.
So much democracy!
Odriua came down hard on APRA, momentarily pleasing the oligarchy and all others on the right. Like Juan Peron, he followed a populist course that won him great favor with the poor and lower classes. A thriving economy allowed him to indulge in expensive but crowd-pleasing social policies. At the same time, however, civil rights in the nation were severely restricted and corruption was rampant throughout his regime. People feared that his dictatorship would run indefinitely; they were surprised when Odria legalized opposition parties in 1956 and called fresh elections. He did not run for office. He was succeeded by a former president, Manuel Prado.
Three main candidates participated in the Peruvian presidential elections of 10 June 1962: Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, founder and leader of the APRA, future president Fernando Belaunde, and former dictator Manuel A. Odria. Haya de la Torre gained most of the votes according to the official results, one percentage point ahead of Belaúnde.
However, none of the candidates reached the margin of one-third of the votes needed to become president.[citation needed] Therefore, the final decision lay with the Peruvian Congress. Haya de la Torre and Odría formed an alliance in order to install Odria as the new president.
At 3:20 in the morning of 18 July 1962 at the Presidential Palace, one of the thirty tanks stationed outside gunned its engine and rammed through the black wrought-iron gates. Manuel Prado, the constitutional President of Peru, was thrown out of office in a coup, just ten days short of completing his six-year term.
Perez Godoy, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, headed the military junta formed by high-ranked members of the Peruvian Military Force: General Nicolas Lindley, commander of Peru’s army; Vice Admiral Juan Francisco Torres Matos, Admiral of the Navy; and General Pedro Vargas Prada, chief of the air force. Once in the Palace, the four-man junta administered its own swearing-into office. The soldiers then suspended all constitutional guarantees, dissolved Parliament, arrested Electoral Tribunal officials “for trial” and promised “clean and pure elections” scheduled for June 9, 1963.
Snip.
Promising a “New Peru”, Pérez Godoy pushed through a 24% increase in the budget and decreed new taxes to pay for it, including a one dollar-a-ton levy on anchovies that provoked a strike and threatened to close down the thriving fishmeal industry.
And when he refused to approve the construction of a new hospital for Vargas Prada’s Air Force and six new ships for Torres Matos’ national steamship line, the other junta members turned on him.
What a tragedy it is when there’s no honor among coup leaders! If only Shakespeare had warned us…
He was deposed by the junta’s next man in line, Army General Nicolas Lindley, who swiftly moved into the presidency on March 3. Lindley restored the schedule for democratic elections and turned over the office of president to election winner Fernando Belaúnde.
Nicolas Lindley Lopez: Served a year as dictator then stepped down for a civilian government. Served as ambassador to Spain and died in Peru.
Fernando Belaunde: Served two non-continuous terms, the first of which involved a controversial settlement with Standard Oil. Want to guess how that term ended? “Belaunde himself was removed from office by a military coup led by general Juan Velasco Alvarado.”
Juan Velasco Alvarado: Served as dictator of Peru for seven years. “He pursued a partnership with the Soviet bloc, tightening relations with Cuba and Fidel Castro and undertaking major purchases of Soviet military hardware.” Followed by nationalizing American assets, etc. “Economic difficulties such as inflation, unemployment, food shortages.” Try to contain your shock. If you’ve been reading along so far, want to guess how Alvarado left office? “On August 29, 1975, a number of prominent military commanders initiated a coup…Prime Minister Francisco Morales Bermudez was then appointed president, by unanimous decision of the new military junta.” Live by the coup, die by the coup. Already in ill health, he died in 1977. Inspired Venezuelan commie scumbag Hugo Chavez.
Politically pressured from all sides, [he] failed in enacting successful political and economic reform.
A Constituent Assembly convened by the Morales Bermudez administration was created in 1978, which replaced the 1933 Constitution enacted during Oscar R. Benavides’s presidency. After elections were held in 1980, he returned power over to the first democratically elected government after 12 years of military rule, headed by President Fernando Belaunde.
Belaunde 2:
One of his first actions as President was the return of several newspapers to their respective owners. In this way, freedom of speech once again played an important part in Peruvian politics. Gradually, he attempted to undo some of the most radical effects of the Agrarian Reform initiated by Velasco, and reversed the independent stance that the Military Government of Velasco had with the United States.
Snip. “During the next years, the economic problems left over from the military government persisted.” Followed by:
Alan Garcia, another “two non-consecutive terms” president. Was his first term a success? Not so much.
His economic policy was based on APRA’s initial anti-imperialist values with García distancing Peru from international markets, resulting in lower investment in the country. Despite his initial popularity among voters, Garcia’s term in office was marked by bouts of hyperinflation, which reached 7,649% in 1990 and had a cumulative total of 2,200,200% over the five years, which destabilized the Peruvian economy. Foreign debt under Garcia’s administration increased to $19 billion by 1989. Owing to this chronic inflation, the Peruvian currency, the sol, was replaced by the inti in February 1985 (before his presidency began), which itself was replaced by the nuevo sol (“new sun”) in July 1991, at which time the new sol had a cumulative value of one billion (1,000,000,000) old soles.
According to studies by the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics and the United Nations Development Programme, around the start of his presidency, 41.6% of Peruvians lived in poverty. During his presidency, this percentage increased by 13% (to 55%) in 1991. Garcia also made an attempt to nationalise the banking and insurance industries. The International Monetary Fund and the financial community recoiled after Garcia’s administration unilaterally declared a limit on debt repayment equal to 10% of the Gross National Product, thereby isolating Peru from international financial markets.
His presidency was marked by world-record hyperinflation with the annual rate exceeding 13,000 percent per year. The administration devastated the local economy as well as all governmental institutions. Hunger, corruption, injustice, abuse of power, partisan elitism, and social unrest raised to dramatic levels spreading throughout the whole nation due to Garcia’s misdeeds and incompetence, spurring terrorism. The economic turbulence exacerbated social tensions and contributed in great part to the rise of the violent Maoist rebel movement known as the Shining Path, which launched the internal conflict in Peru and began attacking electrical towers, causing a number of blackouts in Lima. The period also saw the emergence of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA).
He was so unpopular he didn’t even run in 1990, so he was succeeded by Alberto Fujimori, a surprise winner in a runoff against the free-market oriented novelist (and later Nobel Prize laureate) Mario Vargas Llosa.
Alberto Fujimori: We’ve already covered him. Disgraced and imprisoned, he’s still a strong candidate for the most effective postwar Peruvian President. After his resignation, the Presidency passed to:
Valentin Paniagua, despite being third in line for succession, because one guy had resigned and the other was too much of a Fujimori loyalest. Served for a year, formed a national unity government and pulled back on a lot of the “secret judge and jury” tribunals Fujimori had instituted, and was able to do so mainly because Fujimori was so successful at crushing Shining Path. Followed by:
His administration was characterized by the beginning of the country’s macroeconomic boom, promoting foreign investment, the signing of free trade agreements, and the implementation of various investment projects in infrastructure and human development. At the same time, Toledo suffered a governance crisis, scandals in his personal life, and allegations of corruption against his inner circle, signs that hit his popularity until he fell to 8% of popular approval.
Snip.
On 16 July 2019, Toledo was arrested in the United States for an extradition order to Peru, as reported by the Peruvian Public Ministry. On 8 August, attorney Graham Archer, requested a request for release on bail before judge Thomas Hixson. On 12 September, the judge ruled his request for reconsideration inadmissible. On 19 March 2020, he was released on bail.On 28 September 2021, a U.S. District Court approved the extradition of Toledo, ruling that evidence presented in the case against Toledo were “sufficient to sustain the charges of collusion and money laundering” under the U.S. Peru Extradition Treaty.
Followed by:
Alan Garcia 2. Did it work out better than the last time? Not really, but it started off better:
Throughout Garcia’s second term, Peru experienced a steady economy, becoming the fastest growing country in Latin America in 2008, surpassing China in terms of rising GDP. The economic success of his presidency would be acclaimed as a triumph by world leaders, and poverty was reduced from 48% to 28% nationally. In addition, Peru signed free trade agreements with the United States and China during García’s presidency, but accusations of corruption would persist throughout his term and beyond.
After leaving office: “Died from a self-inflicted gunshot to the head as police officers under a prosecutor’s orders were preparing to arrest him” on corruption charges as part of the Odebrecht scandal. Next up:
Ollanta Humala: “Originally a socialist and left-wing nationalist, he is considered to have shifted towards neoliberalism and the political centre during his presidency.” How did it end? “In 2017, Humala was arrested by Peruvian authorities on corruption charges.” Next:
First impeachment
Main article: First impeachment process against Pedro Pablo Kuczynski
On 15 December 2017, the Congress of the Republic initiated impeachment proceedings against Kuczynski, with the congressional opposition stating that he had lost the ″moral capacity″ to lead the country after he admitted receiving advisory fees from scandal-hit Brazilian construction company Odebrecht while he was Peru’s Minister of Economy and Finance between 2004 and 2005. Kuczynski had previously denied receiving any payments from Odebrecht, but later confessed that his company, Westfield Capital Ltd, had been receiving money from Odebrecht for advisory services, while still denying that irregularities existed in the payments.
Fujimori pardon snipped.
Second impeachment, Kenjivideos and resignation
After further scandals broke out surrounding Kuczynski, a second impeachment vote was to be held on 22 March 2018. Two days before the vote, Kuczynski stated that he would not resign and decided to face the impeachment process for a second time. The next day on 21 March 2018, a video was released of Kuczynski allies, including his lawyer and Kenji Fujimori, attempting to buy a vote against impeachment from one official.
Followed by:
Martin Vizcarra. Who was also impeached twice, and also tried to dissolve congress.
On 9 November 2020, the Peruvian Congress impeached Vizcarra a second time, after declaring him “morally incompetent”; he was removed from office.[9] The President of Congress and opposition leader, Manuel Merino, succeeded him as President of Peru the following day. Vizcarra’s impeachment incited the 2020 Peruvian protests, as many Peruvians and political analysts believed the impeachment was unsubstantiated, with several Peruvian media outlets labeling the impeachment a “coup”. Vizcarra was banned from holding public office for 10 years after allegedly jumping the line to get a COVID-19 vaccine, with an 86–0 vote in congress.
Manuel Merino. He only served six days before resigning. Followed by:
Francisco Sagasti: Managed to run a caretaker government from November 7, 2020 to July 28 2021, and carried out successful elections without being indicted, deposed or killing himself, which has to count as a success.
Castillo was noted for appointing four different governments in six months, something which had no precedent within Peruvian political history. He faced two impeachment proceedings in the Peruvian Congress, although both failed to reach the necessary votes to remove him from office.
Following the second failed impeachment vote, a series of protests across the country took place due to the rising fuel prices and instability allegedly generated by Castillo’s administration, which largely affected transportation workers. His administration was not able to find a solution to the political crisis, as it escalated in addition to mining protests as the country’s economy plummeted. Castillo ultimately left the Free Peru party in June 2022 to govern as an independent. In July 2022, a fifth inquest was launched into Castillo’s alleged corruption involvements.
Bringing us to the third impeachment and his removal from office.
It’s a rich tapestry of political dysfunction.
Well, that’s more like three hours of Wikipedia reading, but it does drive home the point that the very moment anyone takes office as President in Peru, the deck is stacked against them…
Howdy! Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving! I spent six days up in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, visiting relatives and buying some 180 books, some for myself and some to deal. Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm!
We keep hearing that it’s impossible rig government unemployment statistics, but something funny is going on.
A superficial take of today’s jobs report would note that both jobs and earnings “blew past expectations, flying in the face of Fed rate hikes”, and while that is accurate at the headline level, it couldn’t be further from the truth if one actually digs a little deeper in today’s jobs numbers.
Recall that back in August, September, and October we showed that a stark divergence had opened between the Household and Establishment surveys that comprise the monthly jobs report, and since March the former has been stagnant while the latter has been rising every single month. In addition to that, full-time jobs were plunging while part-time jobs were surging and the number of multiple-jobholders soared.
Fast forward to today when the inconsistencies not only continue to grow, but have become downright grotesque.
Consider the following: the closely followed Establishment survey came in above expectations at 263K, above the 200K expected – a record 7th consecutive beat vs expectations – and down modestly from last month’s upward revised 284K…
… numbers which confirm that at a time when virtually every major tech company is announcing mass layoffs…
… the BLS has a single, laser-focused political agenda – not to spoil the political climate at a time when Democrats just lost control of the House as somehow both construction (+20K) and manufacturing (+14K) added jobs according to the BLS, when even ADP now reports that these two sectors combined shed more than 100,000 workers in November.
Alas, there is only so much the Department of Labor can hide under the rug because when looking at the abovementioned gap between the Household and Establishment surveys which we have been pounding the table on since the summer, it just blew out by a whopping 401K as a result of the 263K increase in the number of nonfarm payrolls (tracked by the Household survey) offset by a perplexing plunge in the number of people actually employed which tumbled by 138K (tracked by Household survey). Furthermore, as shown in the next chart, since March the number of employed workers has declined on 4 of the past 8 months, while the much more gamed nonfarm payrolls (goalseeked by the Establishment survey) have been up every single month.
What is even more perplexing, is that despite the continued rise in nonfarm payrolls, the Household survey continues to telegraph growing weakness, and as of Nov 30, the gap that opened in March has since grown to a whopping 2.7 million “workers” which may or may not exist anywhere besides the spreadsheet model of some BLS (or is that BLM) political activist.”
A non-profit bankrolled by some of the nation’s largest corporations and left-wing billionaire George Soros is conducting a racial census of House and Senate staff as part of its effort to establish a “Bipartisan Diversity and Inclusion Office,” according to internal emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Senate and House staff received emails from a researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies starting in July asking them to confirm their “racial and ethnic identity” as part of an alleged data collection effort. In at least two cases, senior congressional staffers who declined to provide their races were told by the researcher that the organization’s current data indicated they “may identify as white” and asked the staffers to update if the information was incorrect.
Information collected by the group will be used in its annual report that lobbies for “structural changes on Capitol Hill that would allow for more people of color to be hired in senior positions,” a previous report from the group states. That report is made possible in part by millions of dollars in donations to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies from Apple, Google, Meta, Pfizer, the Soros-backed Open Society Foundation, among dozens of other large corporations and nonprofits.
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies’ survey is part of a broader trend by left-wing organizations to pressure workplaces and governments to increase affirmative action policies. Often couched in promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” those policies have received criticism for coming at the expense of competence and offering advantages based on race instead of merit.
Rush was charged with a second-degree felony, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon family violence. An emergency protection order was issued against him, and he was soon back on the streets after making a $40,000 bond, KVUE reported.
“For $4,000, you can get out, go home, watch Netflix after trying to murder your ex-girlfriend — are you kidding me?” one of the customers said.
So in addition to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and possible attempted murder, our super-genius lawyer also violated section 46.03 of the Texas penal code by carrying a gun into a bar. And he bonded out. For all that Democrats blather about “gun violence,” they don’t seem top treat gun felonies with any seriousness when they actually occur. Thanks, Soros-backed DA Jose Garza!
But it turns out that Rush didn’t just go go home to watch Netflix, as he was found dead on Thursday.
In one meeting, Deon Jackson went from South Carolina’s Berkeley County school superintendent to unemployed.
His firing came at the hand of a newly-elected school board, which appears to have declared a judgment day for woke practices in its district.
In its first meeting after the Nov. 8 election, the board fired superintendent Jackson and school counsel Tiffany Richardson. Then it hired Anthony Dixon as superintendent and retained Brandon Gaskins as counsel. And before the day was over, the board banned teaching critical race theory and created a board to review library books for pornographic content.
Moms for Liberty, an activist group that supports parental rights in education, endorsed six of the board’s nine members. Many Moms for Liberty candidates won school board elections this November.
Speaking of disinformation, CNN carries out more mass layoffs, including Chris Cillizza. Let’s have a moment of silences for his careerOK that’s enough.
Legal Insurrection conducts a 2024 presidential preference poll. Not surprisingly, DeSantis comes in first and Trump second. Nikki Haley third over Ted Cruz is a mild surprise. Greg Abbott ranked dead last, tied with Liz Chaney, is a much bigger one.
Ordinary Chinese have gotten so fed up with the endless Flu Manchu lockdowns that they’ve started mass protests in multiple cities, even going so far as to demand the CCP and Xi Jinping step down.
Some commenters have even suggested that a revolution is the offing. I’ve seen too many hopeful shoots of Democracy crushed in not only China, but also Iran, Russia, Venezuela, etc. to have much optimism on this front. It would be nice to be proved wrong.
So how are Chinese communist authorities fighting the movement? Would you believe with pornbots?
As Chinese citizens take to the streets to protest the county’s “Zero Covid” policies and President Xi Jinping’s lockdowns, searches for names of cities and hashtags regarding the protests on Twitter have been filled with sexually explicit posts and ads for escorts to reportedly block out news of the massive protests.
Searches for the names of major Chinese cities have resulted in a massive spike in content for porn, escorts, and gambling, “drowning out legitimate search results,” wrote Twitter user Air-Moving Device. The account shared a chart showing a massive spike in the number of accounts posting such content on November 28. “Data analysis in this thread suggests that there has been a significantuptick in these spam tweets.”
For example, searching for the Chinese characters for Shanghai (上海) brings up the following on Twitter:
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to impeach controversial Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-PA).
Five lawmakers, including three Republicans and two Democrats with constituencies in Philadelphia, formed a committee to investigate Krasner earlier this year. Members of the lower chamber voted by a margin of 107 to 85 in favor of impeaching Krasner, enabling the Pennsylvania Senate to remove the official with a two-thirds majority.
“Texas Democrats Blame Lackluster Midterm on 2021 Election Reform, Redistricting, and Poor Border Messaging.” Note that the word “policies” appears nowhere in the article…
The partisan index for Texas counties. Republican counties tended to get slightly more Republican while Democratic counties got slightly less Democratic.
A study conducted by criminologist Michael Smith of the University of Texas at San Antonio shows that 56 percent of individuals charged with violent crimes or weapons law violations in Dallas are released on bail or their own recognizance. That figure includes about 75 percent of offenders charged with weapons law violations, about two-thirds of those arrested for aggravated assault, and 34 percent of those arrested for murder.
Smith examined 464 arrests from 2021 and followed the cases through May 15 of this year. The dataset included all (109) arrests for murder, 25 percent (73) of arrests for robbery, 25 percent (154) of arrests for aggravated assault involving a family member, 10 percent (67) of arrests for aggravated assault not involving a family member, and 10 percent (61) of arrests for weapons law violations.
Almost a quarter of those released were arrested again within the course of the study. The average length of time between release and the second arrest was 148 days.
Disney shares are down 40 per cent this year, and last week’s quarterly report makes for grim reading. Disney’s expenses and operating losses are skyrocketing. Even the hugely popular Disney+, which continues to gain in subscribers, made an operating loss of $1.47 billion – more than double its loss last year. An internal memo last week announced job cuts and a hiring freeze.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that Disney’s troubles arrive in a year when the company has been distracted by politics. Indeed, it seems to have gone into overdrive to promote woke causes, both on screen and off.
Most infamously, in March, Disney waded into a bruising political battle with Florida governor Ron DeSantis, over his Parental Rights in Education Act. The law, now enacted, bans ‘classroom instruction’ on issues of ‘sexual orientation or gender identity’ for Florida schoolkids under the age of 10. Although the law has the overwhelming support of parents, from across the political spectrum, it sparked fury in media circles. Critics were quick to dub it the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law, arguing that it ‘marginalises LGBTQ+ people’.
Disney was only too happy to join in the chorus of denunciation. The act ‘should never have passed’, said Disney in a statement. ‘Our goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts.’ Disney also pledged to donate $5million to organisations opposed to the law. But DeSantis hit back. He revoked a special tax status that Disney’s Florida theme parks had enjoyed since 1967.
Disney’s growing reputation for championing woke causes is costing it more than just its tax exemptions. It is now clearly damaging its relationship with audiences. As recently as March 2021, Disney’s public-approval rating was 77 per cent. But a September poll finds approval for Disney has now fallen to only 51 per cent among all Americans. And it has fallen into negative territory among Republicans. As pollster Chris Wilson notes: ‘It is highly unusual for a family entertainment company to find itself outside the good graces of so many Americans.’
