Not even sure that this is worth a breaking, since it’s drones rather than missiles or planes, but Iran just launched a drone attack at Israel.
Iran launched a massive drone attack toward Israel Saturday night into Sunday morning local time, following through on its vow to retaliate against the Jewish state after several top Iranian commanders were killed in a suspected Israeli strike in Damascus earlier this month.
The Israeli military estimates that the attack involves over 100 drones, which won’t arrive in Israel for another few hours. Some reports indicate that the airborne operation will also include missiles. This would mark the first direct Iranian attack on Israeli soil.
On Friday, President Joe Biden said that Iran’s retaliatory attack against Israel was imminent and warned Tehran against carrying out the attack. “Don’t,” he said. U.S. officials believe the attack, once it hits Israel, will lead to a wider regional conflict that extends beyond Israel and Iranian proxies such as Hamas or Hezbollah.
Airspace in Israel, Iraq, and Jordan have been closed as the attack unfolds. U.S. and Israeli officials said they plan on intercepting the Iranian drones before they reach Israel, according to reports.
Early reports said “over 50,” now it’s “over 100,” and some Iranian sources say “500.”
It’s one thing to get drones past spread out Russian SAM systems, and quite another to get them past modern U.S. and Israeli aircraft, AWACS and Iron Dome.
Iran claims ballistic missiles are on the way. We’ll see. Nazi Germany hit London with V2s back in 1944, so it’s not like the basics are out of Iran’s technological reach. Still, I wouldn’t expect anything more sophisticated than a SCUD, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Iron Dome could shoot those down as well.
If it is just drones, it strikes me as more a performative strike than anything that will actually damage Israel. This was Iran gets to say “We struck back!” without actually committing serious assets.
Livemap says “dozens” of rockets have been fired from Lebanon, which is honestly pretty by the standards of Hezbollah rocket attacks.
Of course, Hamas isn’t launching any rockets, because they’ve contracted a terminal case of IDF.
Footage of an Israeli ABM (likely Arrow 2 or 3) achieving an exoatmospheric (space) kill on an Iranian ballistic missile somewhere east of Israel tonight. pic.twitter.com/jKihty4GR0
It’s been a week of petty frustrations, with simple things like paying for online transactions made impossible by websites that send out the wrong information despite the right information being on file. Speaking of frustration, Americans continue to be battered by high inflation, blacks continue to abandon Biden, and it turns out that the Pope might, just might, be Catholic after all.
A hotter-than-expected consumer price index report rattled Wall Street Wednesday, but markets are buzzing about an even more specific prices gauge contained within the data — the so-called supercore inflation reading.
Along with the overall inflation measure, economists also look at the core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, to find the true trend. The supercore gauge, which also excludes shelter and rent costs from its services reading, takes it even a step further. Fed officials say it is useful in the current climate as they see elevated housing inflation as a temporary problem and not as good a measure of underlying prices.
Supercore accelerated to a 4.8% pace year over year in March, the highest in 11 months.
Tom Fitzpatrick, managing director of global market insights at R.J. O’Brien & Associates, said if you take the readings of the last three months and annualize them, you’re looking at a supercore inflation rate of more than 8%, far from the Federal Reserve’s 2% goal.
According to a Wall Street Journal Swing State Poll, blacks, especially black males are abandoning Biden in huge numbers.
While most Black men said they intend to support Biden, some 30% of them in the poll said they were either definitely or probably going to vote for the former Republican president. There isn’t comparable WSJ swing-state polling from 2020, but Trump received votes from 12% of Black men nationwide that year, as recorded by AP VoteCast, a large poll of the electorate.
That’s an 18 percentage point swing, minimum, for black males, if the national results and the swing state voting is similar.
By confirmed, I mean those who said they intended to vote for Trump.
The gap is even larger if we factor in undecided voters. Biden is down by a massive 30 percentage points vs 2020.
Good: A teacher helping her son with homework. Bad: A teacher helping her son force female students into sex trafficking. “Klein Cain High School cosmetology teacher Kedria McMath Grigsby is accused of helping her son, Roger Magee, force the troubled teens into prostitution.”
Investigative science writer Paul Homewood last year discovered considerable tampering in 2022 with the recent CET record. He initially found that in version one, the summer of 1995 had been 0.1°C warmer than 2018. In version 2, the two years swapped places with 1995 cooled by 0.07°C and 2018 warmed by 0.13°C. Alerted to these changes, Homewood then analysed the full record from version 1 to 2, and the graph below shows what he found.
As can be seen, the adjustments up to 1970 are small with ups and downs offsetting each other. Homewood then found that the years from 1970 to 2003 had been cooled markedly, followed by significant rises to 2022. Homewood concludes that “unfortunately it is part of a much wider tampering with temperature globally – and the tampering is always one way, cooling the past and heating the present”. Given that we now know that the Met Office has been using class 4 statistics for two thirds of its database since 2006, the recent higher adjustments would seem to call for clarifying explanations from the state-funded Met Office.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has announced his interim charges for the Senate, a set of 57 issues he is calling on Senate Committees to investigate and research ahead of the legislative session next year.
The list of charges runs the gamut of issues conservatives have called on the legislature to address, including property tax relief, protecting Texas land from hostile foreign ownership, and strengthening laws preventing electioneering by school districts and other political subdivisions.
Some of the biggest reform proposals, however, have been reserved for higher education.
Patrick has asked the Higher Education Subcommittee to study and make recommendations regarding the role of ‘faculty senates’, antisemitism on college campuses, as well as to review the implementation of a new state law banning DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) in state universities that went into effect earlier this year.
“The Senate’s work to study the list of charges will begin in the coming weeks and months. Following completion of hearings, committees will submit reports with their specific findings and policy recommendations before December 1, 2024,” said Patrick.
When you think Houston Democratic Congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee has already said the stupidest thing she possibly can, she goes out and proves you wrong.
Thanks to New York City’s idiotic rent control laws, not only would a hotel guest refuse to pay rent or leave, but a court actually ruled that he was the owner of the hotel.
First class stamps are going up to 73 cents. Thanks, Joe Biden.
If the commies running Vietnam accuse someone of a crime, I don’t automatically trust them, but Truong My Lan may actually be guilty.
Behind the stately yellow portico of the colonial-era courthouse in Ho Chi Minh City, a 67-year-old Vietnamese property developer was sentenced to death on Thursday for looting one of the country’s largest banks over a period of 11 years.
It’s a rare verdict – she is one of very few women in Vietnam to be sentenced to death for a white collar crime.
The decision is a reflection of the dizzying scale of the fraud. Truong My Lan was convicted of taking out $44bn (£35bn) in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank. The verdict requires her to return $27bn, a sum prosecutors said may never be recovered. Some believe the death penalty is the court’s way of trying to encourage her to return some of the missing billions.
The habitually secretive communist authorities were uncharacteristically forthright about this case, going into minute detail for the media. They said 2,700 people were summoned to testify, while 10 state prosecutors and around 200 lawyers were involved.
The evidence was in 104 boxes weighing a total of six tonnes. Eighty-five others were tried with Truong My Lan, who denied the charges and can appeal.
All of the defendants were found guilty. Four received life in jail. The rest were given prison terms ranging from 20 years to three years suspended. Truong My Lan’s husband and niece received jail terms of nine and 17 years respectively.
Snip.
By 2011, Truong My Lan was a well-known business figure in Ho Chi Minh City, and she was allowed to arrange the merger of three smaller, cash-strapped banks into a larger entity: Saigon Commercial Bank.
Vietnamese law prohibits any individual from holding more than 5% of the shares in any bank. But prosecutors say that through hundreds of shell companies and people acting as her proxies, Truong My Lan actually owned more than 90% of Saigon Commercial.
They accused her of using that power to appoint her own people as managers, and then ordering them to approve hundreds of loans to the network of shell companies she controlled.
The amounts taken out are staggering. Her loans made up 93% of all the bank’s lending.
According to prosecutors, over a period of three years from February 2019, she ordered her driver to withdraw 108 trillion Vietnamese dong, more than $4bn (£2.3bn) in cash from the bank, and store it in her basement.
That much cash, even if all of it was in Vietnam’s largest denomination banknotes, would weigh two tonnes.
I've been waiting 29 years to tell this story about OJ and his days at USC. Now that he's dead (may he burn in hell) I have a story that I signed an NDA for that is no longer valid. I was a junior at USC working in Topping Student Center on campus in 1995. I was an administrative…
The labour market is tightening – and it’s getting harder to find a job. In the wake of the Great Resignation, which drove more job vacancies than employers could fill, workers often had their pick of open roles. Now, they have largely lost their leverage among layoffs and budget cuts, and those open positions are increasingly rare.
Still, roles do exist – or at least appear to. Job boards like LinkedIn and Indeed continue to advertise open positions, and workers are actively submitting applications. Yet despite an influx of highly qualified candidates, plenty of desirable job adverts have languished on digital platforms with an increasingly common label: “Posted 30+ days ago”.
While the listings may be old, job seekers generally still assume companies are actively hiring for the roles. The truth is more complicated. Some of these are simply not-yet-removed adverts for jobs that have been filled – but some were never meant to be filled at all. These are ‘ghost jobs’, and they’re becoming an increasingly common – and problematic – obstacle for job seekers.
Snip.
Despite the influx of candidates, a staggering number of listings don’t result in hires. Revelio Labs, a US-based workforce intelligence firm, showed that the ratio of hires per job posting fell below 0.5 in 2023, meaning that more than half of listings did not result in an employer turning an applicant into an employee.
Clarify Capital, a New York-based business loan provider, surveyed 1,000 hiring managers, and found nearly seven in 10 jobs stay open for more than 30 days, with 10% unfilled for more than half a year. Half the respondents reported they keep job listings open indefinitely because they “always open to new people”. More than one in three respondents said they kept the listings active to build a pool of applicants in case of turnover – not because a role needs to be filled in a timely manner.
The posted roles are more than just a talent vacuum sucking up resumes from applicants. They are also a tool for shaping perception inside and outside of the company. More than 40% of hiring managers said they list jobs they aren’t actively trying to fill to give the impression that the company is growing. A similar share said the job listings are made to motivate employees, while 34% said the jobs are posted to placate overworked staff who may be hoping for additional help to be brought on.
“Ghost jobs are everywhere,” says Geoffrey Scott, senior content manager and hiring manager at Resume Genius, a US company that helps workers design their resumes. “We discovered a massive 1.7 million potential ghost job openings on LinkedIn just in the US,” says Scott. In the UK, StandOut CV, a London-based career resources company, found more than a third of job listings in 2023 were ghost jobs, defined as listings posted for more than 30 days.
It was bad enough looking for a job during the Biden Recession, and the ghost job listings just make things worse.
Now you’ll have to excuse me. I have some job applications to fill out…
Lies trying to hide how bad the Biden Recession sucks continue to unravel, a mini Texas-vs.-California update, Ukraine makes another oil refinery go boom, true depths of human depravity, some Bill Burr and Critical Drinker links, and two tons of Murica. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Against expectations of a small improvement from -11.3 to -10.0, the headline sentiment gauge dropped to -14.4 (the lowest end of analysts’ forecasts).
Furthermore, the production index, a key measure of state manufacturing conditions, fell five points to -4.1, a reading that suggests a slight decline in output month over month.
Other measures of manufacturing activity also indicated declines this month.
The new orders index – a key measure of demand – dropped 17 points to -11.8 after briefly turning positive last month.
The capacity utilization index edged down five points to -5.7, and the shipments index plunged from 0.1 to -15.4.
The decline in new orders came alongside a surge in prices as raw materials costs rose to 13-month highs…
That has the stench of stagflation lathered all over it.
Also worse than reported: employment numbers. “Philadelphia Fed Admits US Payrolls Overstated By At Least 800,000.”
We first have to go back to December 2022, when we reported something shocking: as part of its data analysis of the “more comprehensive, accurate job estimates released by the BLS as part of its Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) program”, the Philadelphia Fed found that the BLS had overstated jobs to the tune of 1.1 million! This is what the Philadelphia Fed wrote in its quarterly Early Benchmark Revision of State Payroll Employment report at the time:
Our estimates incorporate more comprehensive, accurate job estimates released by the BLS as part of its Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) program to augment the sample data from the BLS’s CES that are issued monthly on a timely basis. All percentage change calculations are expressed as annualized rates. Read more about our methodology. Learn more about interpreting our early benchmark estimates.
So what did this “more accurate”, “more comprehensive” report find? It found that…
In the aggregate, 10,500 net new jobs were added during the period rather than the 1,121,500 jobs estimated by the sum of the states; the U.S. CES estimated net growth of 1,047,000 jobs for the period.
Lots of detailed analysis snipped.
Putting it all together, we now know – as the Philly Fed reported first – that the labor market is far weaker than conventionally believed. In fact, no less than 800,000 payrolls are “missing” when one uses the far more accurate Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages data rather than the BLS’ woefully inaccurate and politically mandated payrolls “data”, and if one looks back the the monthly gains across most of 2023, one gets not 230K jobs added on average every month but rather 130K.
Of course, none of that paints Bidenomics in a flattering picture, because while one can at least pretend that issuing $1 trillion in debt every 100 days to add 3 million jos per year is somewhat acceptable, learning that that ridiculous amount buys 800,000 jobs less is hardly the endorsement that the White House needs.
I think I link a story like this every year: “California Leads Among U.S. States Sending People to Texas in 2022. Florida and New York combined sent fewer people to Texas than California.” Leave any leftwing politics behind when you move…
California has a $55 billion deficit. But don’t worry, for the 24-25 fiscal year, it’s a $73 billion deficit.
A Russian-backed “propaganda” network has been broken up for spreading anti-Ukraine stories and paying unnamed European politicians, according to authorities in several countries.
Investigators claimed it used the popular Voice of Europe website as a vehicle to pay politicians.
The Czech Republic and Poland said the network aimed to influence European politics.
Voice of Europe did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.
Czech media, citing intelligence sources, reported that politicians from Germany, France, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Hungary were paid by Voice of Europe in order to influence upcoming elections for the European Parliament.
The German newspaper Der Spiegel said the money was either handed over in cash in covert meetings in Prague or through cryptocurrency exchanges.
Pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk is alleged by the Czech Republic to be behind the network.
Mr Medvedchuk was arrested in Ukraine soon after the Russian invasion, but later transferred to Russia with about 50 prisoners of war in exchange for 215 Ukrainians.
Czech authorities also named Artyom Marchevsky, alleging he managed the day-to-day business of the website. Both men were sanctioned by Czech authorities.
“$100M missing from Bay area trust fund management company. A Bay area father who counted on a local non-profit to handle a trust fund designed for his daughter’s long-term care feels duped.” And this is a trust for special needs kids.
The radical leftists in control of Baltimore City Hall have plunged the metro area just north of Washington, DC, into apocalyptic levels. We advise readers to entirely avoid the metro area as violent crime spirals out of control.
Failed social justice reforms, defunding the police, and widespread mistrust of the police have resulted in a skeleton police force that will no longer be able to protect residents in some regions of the city.
Fox Baltimore reported last Tuesday that only three police officers were on duty for the Southern Police District, which includes more than 61,000 residents.
Joe Lieberman, RIP. One of the least reprehensible Democratic senators of the last 30 years or so. But I still remember this:
Don’t click on this link unless you want to plumb the depths of human depravity. Noteworthy: “He and his husband.”
Stellantis, AKA The European Monster That Ate Chrysler, just just laid off a whole bunch of white collar workers. Note their mention of focusing on “implementing our EV product offensive.” Oh yeah, they’re boned.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declares victory over Disney, as the latter has dropped their lawsuit over the the elimination of their special district status.
Sean Combs, AKA “Puff Daddy,” AKA “Diddy,” raided by the FBI. “A source close to the investigation told NBC News that the raid was connected to allegations of sex-trafficking and sexual assault and the solicitation and distribution of illegal narcotics and firearms.” “Source close” caveats apply.
The federal government is going to allow a shuttered nuclear power plant to be restarted. “The federal government announced that it would provide a $1.5 billion loan to restart a nuclear power plant in southwestern Michigan. NJ-based Holtec International acquired the 800-megawatt Palisades plant in 2022 with plans to dismantle it, but with support from the state of Michigan and the Biden administration, the emphasis has shifted to restarting the nuclear power plant by late 2025 instead.” Not wild about the loan part, but restarting America’s nuclear energy growth is long overdue.
Used Japanese homes are worthless Not just because of the shrinking population, but because they’re designed to be.
The Critical Drinker is not impressed with the Road House remake. “The Patrick Swayze original wasn’t exactly peak cinema. It was dumb and over-the-top and silly, and I don’t imagine people were exactly crying out for a remake. But damn, man, it’s like Citizen Kane compared to this version.”
School tries to ban American flag from truck. Result: Two tons of Murica.
Twitch is cracking down on streams that “focus on intimate body parts.” After watching this, I have one question: Where exactly did the lady featured obtain her “automatic butt jiggler?”
Feel-good crime aftermath story:
Dog shot during the robbery given a warm send off by hospital staff after undergoing multiple surgeries..🐕🐾🥺🙏❤️ pic.twitter.com/OnSjqmRt2u
Indeed, this is the first interest rate hike for Japan in 17 years.
According to Keynesian economics, Japan should have experienced an economic boom from all that monetary stimulus. It did not. Prices were stagnant. Wages were stagnant. GDP growth was anemic.
Yet deficit spending remains the preferred policy solution of just about every damn country in the world.
Back in the dim mists of time (i.e., the 1980s), Japan Inc. was going to take over the world. That didn’t happen either. Instead, the Japanese bubble, based in huge measure on wildly unsustainable real estate valuations (“At the peak of the bubble economy, Tokyo real estate could sell for as much as US$139,000 per square foot, which was nearly 350 times as much as equivalent space in Manhattan. By that reckoning, the Imperial Palace in Tokyo was worth as much as the entire US state of California.”) popped. There then followed three decades of economic stagnation.
Margaret Thatcher said “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money,” but Cuba appears to have gone them one better: Bad policies means that they’re now running out of their own money.
‘There is no money in the banks’: Cubans stand in line since dawn to cash their paychecks.
“There is no money in the banks to pay people, everyone is upset and they haven’t even given us an explanation,” said Leydis Tabares, a Cuban who resides in Camagüey, to Martí Noticias this Friday.
The problem is nationwide, said Cubans consulted from different provinces by our editorial team. The lack of cash in ATMs has caused state workers to be unable to withdraw the salary deposited onto their magnetic cards.
“In Sancti Spíritus, queues start forming since dawn because by nine or ten in the morning there is no cash left. Some employees have had to wait up to 45 days to be able to withdraw,” reported independent journalist Adriano Castañeda.
According to the journalist, the process of banking and the limitation of cash withdrawals is the cause of this crisis. “That system is a disaster,” he opined.
“A general reform is needed in Cuba, of all kinds, social, political, and economic,” commented independent journalist Guillermo del Sol. According to him, many owners of private businesses in the country have stopped depositing cash due to the same restrictions imposed by the regime.
“The money that Micro, Small, and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) deposited in the bank they couldn’t retrieve, so they stopped depositing money in banks. And since they are the ones carrying the weight of what little works within Cuba, the banks ran out of money. That’s what’s happening right now,” he explained.
So even in communist Cuba, small and medium size business are what keeps the economy running, and the commies are destroying them by withholding their access to their own money. That’s some mighty fine management, Lou.
In Guantánamo, the shortage of money for worker payment affects all sectors and is creating another type of business in the streets.
“Some charge for making the long queues in the early mornings for employees. There are also people who have cash and charge a 10% fee to deliver the amount of money they have on the card,” commented independent journalist Anderlay Guerra Blanco.
“When there’s an ATM with money, the queues are endless,” said opposition member José Rolando Cásares, who resides in Pinar del Río.
Independent journalist Vladimir Turró explained that in the capital, there are even people who line up pointlessly because at dawn, the bank doesn’t supply cash to the ATM.
“We’re talking about people who gather at banks, some even go to sleep at the ATMs, trying to get some cash, and so they spend days trying to withdraw money,” he said.
When Cuba in early August announced it was taking a major step towards electronic banking and a “cashless” society, the offices of fledgling small businesses across the communist-run country were left scrambling to figure out how to respond.
Most alarming to many budding entrepreneurs was a new 5,000 peso ($20) daily cap on cash withdrawals for businesses, one of several measures the government said were aimed at forcing Cubans to do their transactions electronically, via transfer, online payment and bank cards.
So commies limit bank access to a business’s own cash, and they’re shocked that businesses stop depositing it in banks.
Cubans are preparing for a new wave of inflation after the government last week rolled out details of an austerity plan that economists say will touch nearly every facet of the communist-run island’s already flailing economy.
I guess the austerity plan means the usually tactic of just printing more money is off the table.
The measures – which include price and tax increases and cuts in subsidies – will slow a soaring budget deficit forecast to exceed 18% of gross domestic product and set the stage for growth, according to Prime Minister Manuel Marrero.
Authorities have already announced gas at the pump will jump nearly five-fold on Feb. 1. But some economists say less visible government price increases such as on wholesale fuel and moving freight, as well as sales and import taxes, are sure to ignite substantial hikes on most products and services at the retail level.
“In economics, such prices are not increased in one area without affecting others,” Cuban economist Omar Everleny said in an interview in Havana. “And in general they are passed on to consumers. I think they will increase 400% to 500%.”
Reuters spoke with several Cubans in Havana who said prices were already rising following the announcements and in anticipation of the price hikes – and were set to soar further in the coming weeks.
Snip.
Inflation was 30% last year, cooling slightly from 38% in 2022, according to the government. Many economists say those rates fall short of reality as the government does not adequately monitor a booming informal market pegged to an informal exchange rate much higher than the official one.
In Holidays in Hell, P. J. O’Rourke talks about exchanging $480 for a gymbag full of cordobas in Sandinista Nicaragua. “You probably have to take economics over and over again two or three times at Moscow U before you can make cash worth this little.”
Government officials have announced wholesale fuel prices will double next month, freight transportation will jump between 40% and 60% in March and for the private sector import duties will increase five-fold. Private companies will also be charged a new 10% sales tax on wholesale transactions.
So prices are soaring, but people can’t get their own money out of the bank to make ends meet. So Cuba’s communist government has accomplished the rare feat of a liquidity crunch and soaring inflation at the same time.
I haven’t reported much on the farce of Democrats tearing through the thicket of law to get at their great devil Donald Trump, mainly because it is such a farce, but here’s Christopher Rufo on Joe Rogan discussing how dangerous and anti-democratic their blood vengeance crusade is.
Joe Rogan: “How disturbed are you by what seems to be this acceptance that people have for prosecuting political opponents?”
JR: “Because to me, it’s, regardless of what you think about Donald Trump as a human being and the polarizing figure that he is, setting the precedent of trying your political opponents to somehow or another, either put them in jail, or make them seem like complete total criminals in a way that would, for the casual, for the person who’s not reading deep into the headlines.”
JR: “The casual Democrat that sees this Trump real estate thing that just happened, where he got fined $365 million. I’ve seen people argue ‘fraud is fraud and this is that and he’s a fraud,’ and then I saw Kevin O’Leary from Shark Tank explain this is what every real estate developer does.”
JR: “They say ‘My building’s worth $400 million,’ and then someone comes along from the bank, and they say ‘No, it’s worth $300 million. We’ll give you a loan on $300 million’ or whatever.”
Christoper Rufo: “It’s negotiation.”
JR: “People overvalue their property all the time. [Someone] has a house and it’s worth $700,000, they decide to list it as $900,000.”
CR: “We have a democratic system that favors Trump, in the sense that he won in 2016, he’s winning the primary right now for republicans in 2024.”
CR: “But you have a bureaucracy that is dead set against him. And the rhetoric amounts to a very odd claim. They essentially say: ‘We want to keep him off the ballot, we want to put him in prison, we want to bankrupt him so he can’t become the president, even if the people support him. We want to deprive the people of making the decision.'”
CR: “So you want to take it out of the realm of politics and into the realm of administrative justice or the criminal justice system, and adjudicate it in that way on bogus pretexts.”
CR: “Who actually rules in this country? Is it the American people who get to decide by their vote who represents them in the government? Or is it the permanent bureaucracy that has accumulated so much power?”
CR: “I’m of the mind that the people should decide, not the bureaucracy. And this is a contest where Democrats are saying essentially we have to destroy democracy in order to save democracy.”
Evidently there’s no undemocratic Rubicon Democrats won’t cross, no bridge they won’t burn, to destroy democracy in the name of saving it from Orange Man Bad.
Congratulations on surviving the first 1/6th of 2024! The Big Guy is exactly who we knew he was all along, Houston police screw up, some big crime stories, Wayne LaPierre is found guilty, and the world’s saddest Oompa Loompa. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
“Remember when Joe Biden told the American people that his son didn’t make money in China?” asked Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) in a video posted to X. ““Well, not only did he lie about his son Hunter making money in China, but it also turns out that $40,000 in laundered China money landed in Joe Biden’s bank account in the form of a personal check.”
Today, a U.S. District Court issued its final judgment in Texas v. Garland, which was a challenge to the U.S. House’s proxy voting rule under the Quorum Clause of the Constitution. In its final judgment, the Court concluded that U.S. House members must be physically present for their vote to comply with the Constitution’s Quorum Clause. Attorneys from the Texas Public Policy Foundation argued the merits at trial in January of this year.
The lawsuit was originally filed with the State of Texas in response to Congress’ unlawful passage of the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill in December 2022. The U.S. Constitution requires a quorum, or a majority, of House members to be physically present for the U.S. House of Representatives to conduct business. As less than half of the members were present when the legislation was passed, with the rest voting by proxy, this legislation never should have passed, and the president should not have signed it.
“This meticulous, 120-page opinion was written after a full trial on the merits,” said TPPF senior attorney Matt Miller. “The Court correctly concluded that the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 violated the Quorum Clause of the U.S. Constitution because a majority of House members was not physically present when the $1.7 trillion spending bill was passed. Proxy voting is unconstitutional.”
This basically says that every bit of that $1.7 trillion spending was unconstitutional, along with any laws, etc. passed in that omnibus. Just how do you back out all that money that’s been spent, assuming this is upheld?
Record meth bust in Eagle Pass. “The U.S. Customs and Border Protections (CBP) have seized six and a half tons of methamphetamine, over 13,000 pounds, at the Eagle Pass Port of Entry, making it the largest ever seizure in a single enforcement action.”
Mitch McConnell announced on Wednesday that he will step down as the Senate Republican leader in November, ending his tenure as the longest-serving Senate leader in history.
“This will be my last term as Republican Leader of the Senate,” the 82-year-old veteran of the chamber said to his colleagues on the Senate floor. “I’m not going anywhere… It’s time for the next generation of leadership.”
He’ll leave the senate when his term ends in 2027. You can condemn him as the ultimate swamp creature, or praise him for his effectiveness at things like getting Trump’s Supreme Court picks confirmed. It’s two sides of the same coin. I’m not sure he was as effective as Trent Lott or Howard Baker.
Houston Police Department Chief Troy Finner called it a “dark day” at a press conference for the Houston Police Department, announcing that 4,107 adult sexual assault cases were wrongly closed without investigation.
A case management code “suspended for lack of personnel” was used, which led to closing the cases without actually investigating them.
Finner said he was first made aware the code even existed in 2021 and instructed HPD’s special victims division to stop using the code; however, he found out on February 7, 2024 that it continued. HPD first began using the code in 2016.
He said he immediately ordered a review of all cases suspended using this code dating back to 2016, which will take at least 30 days to complete. While the number of cases they have today is 4,017, he says it is “fluid and subject to change.”
60 Minutes gets to enjoy some of that vibrant Muslim diversity in Sweden to the sides of their faces.
60 Minutes goes to Sweden to make a heart warming special about diversity, but see a different situation, then this happens. pic.twitter.com/oUd2ZuJ0RV
“After five days of deliberations, a jury in New York on Friday held the National Rifle Association liable for financial mismanagement and found that Wayne LaPierre, the group’s former CEO, corruptly ran the nation’s most prominent gun rights group. The jury determined that LaPierre’s violation of his duties cost the NRA $5,400,000, though he already repaid roughly $1.5 million to the organization.” Here’s the thing: While they prosecution was unquestionably politically motivated, LaPierre did run a crooked ship. In the long run, forcing Wayne and his corrupt cronies from office has done the NRA a huge favor.
Argentine President Javier Milei just ended his country’s budget deficit in nine weeks. If Trump and the Republicans manage to control both houses of congress next year, there’s no reason they can’t balance the budget…assuming they have the will.
“Austin Fire Department Chaplain Dismissed for Comments on Transgender Athletes Sues for Free Speech Violation. A chaplain for the Austin Fire Department was dismissed from his position after expressing beliefs on his personal blog about protecting women’s sports.”
After a volunteer chaplain of the Austin Fire Department (AFD) was fired for posting on his personal blog that men and women are biologically different and should not compete against each other in sports, a lawsuit was filed in an effort to protect his rights to free speech and religious freedom.
The Alliance Defending Freedom said in a press release that it filed a motion Tuesday on behalf of Dr. Andrew Fox, who served in a voluntary capacity as chaplain for AFD before he was dismissed in 2021.
Unlike APD, AFD public and union leadership has been infected by social justice. Dr. Fox appears to have a very strong case on viewpoint discrimination grounds.
White TV host tries to race-bait Jerry Seinfeld for hosting “mostly” white male comedians on his show. It doesn’t go well for him.
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bipartisan bill into law authorizing the release of grand jury transcripts from an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. The new legislation, signed by the Florida governor on Thursday, will allow a public release of the jury’s transcripts from the 2006 probe into Epstein’s abuse of underage girls. The new measure goes into effect July 1.”
Weird Austin crime story: “Prominent local businessman arrested in Austin, accused of arson.”
A prominent Austin businessman and founder of Continental Automotive Group, or CAG, was arrested Thursday on charges of Felony Arson and a State Jail Felony offense of Burglary.
Dorsey Bryan Hardeman, 75, is accused of starting a fire at a downtown Austin building on Sunday, according to an arrest affidavit.
According to Travis County court records, Trey Collins with the Minton, Bassett, Flores & Carsey firm has been retained as the attorney representing Hardeman. Sam Bassett told KXAN the office has just begun its work and “it is premature to comment. However, we will provide Mr. Hardeman an appropriate and vigorous defense.”
The affidavit said the Austin Fire Department responded to a building fire at the former Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop on 400 Nueces St. on Feb. 25.
Once the fire was contained, fire investigators determined the incident to be incendiary and found metal shavings on the ground below the door suggesting the door lock had been drilled out, records state.
The affidavit states fire investigators watched video surveillance from the building, which showed an older man entering the building with a red container consistent with a plastic gas tank.
Multiple cameras inside the building show a man pouring liquid from the red container and dropping multiple matches on the ground, the affidavit said.
Records show the man arrived at the location in a white 4-door Mercedez SUV.
Investigators interviewed the owner of Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop who told AFD Hardeman was the owner of the property next door and had previously asked about purchasing the property at 400 Nueces St.
This is not what people refer to as “the perfect crime.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Remember Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me? It turns out McDonalds didn’t destroy his liver, a decade of alcoholism did.
Something interesting is unfolding in the skies over Ukraine’s south-central front. Over the last ten days, Ukraine has managed to shoot down no less than 12 Russian military aircraft:
First the shootdown list:
“17th of February: Two Su-34s and a Su-35.”
“18th of February A Su-34”
“19th: A Su-34 and a Su-35”
“21st: A Su-34.”
“23rd: A Su-34 and an A-50.”
“27th: A Su-34 and a Su-34.”
“And today the 29th: another Su-34.”
For what it’s worth, Livemap says that Ukraine shot down two Su-34s today.
The Russian air force lost another Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber on Thursday, the Ukrainian air force claimed. If confirmed, the Thursday shoot-down would extend an unprecedented hot streak for Ukrainian air-defenses.
The Ukrainian claim they’ve shot down 11 Russian planes in 11 days: eight Su-34s, two Sukhoi Su-35 fighters and a rare Beriev A-50 radar plane.
But those 11 claimed losses are worse than they might seem for the increasingly stressed Russian air force. In theory, the air arm has plenty more planes. In practice, the service is dangerously close to collapse.
Exactly how the Ukrainians are shooting down so many jets is unclear. It’s possible the Ukrainian air force has assigned some of its American-made Patriot missile launchers to mobile air-defense groups that move quickly in close proximity to the 600-mile front line of Russia’s two-year wider war on Ukraine, ambushing Russian jets with 90-mile-range PAC-2 missiles then swiftly relocating to avoid counterattack.
But the distance at which the Ukrainians shot down that A-50 on Friday—120 miles or so—hints that a longer-range missile system was involved. Perhaps a Cold War-vintage S-200 that the Ukrainian air force pulled out of long-term storage.
It also is apparent the Ukrainians have moved some of their two-dozen or so 25-mile-range NASAMS surface-to-air missile batteries closer to the front line. After all, the Russians found—and destroyed with a missile—their first NASAMS launcher near the southern city of Zaporizhzhia on or before Monday.
He also suggests Russia may be flying more sorties close to the lines to follow-up on its costly victory in Avdiivka.
This surge in Russian sorties presents Ukrainian air-defenders with more targets. So of course they’re shooting down more Russian planes.
It helps the Ukrainian effort that Russian pilots increasingly are blind to Ukrainian missile-launches. The Russian air force once counted on its nine or so active A-50 radar planes—organized into three, three-plane “orbits” in the south, east and north—to extend sensor coverage across Ukraine.
In damaging one A-50 in a drone strike last year and shooting down two more A-50s this year, the Ukrainians have eliminated a third of this sensor coverage, and created blind spots where Russian pilots might struggle to spot approaching missiles.
In any event, the consequences of the Ukrainians’ recent kills, for the Russians, are dire. The Russian air force is losing warplanes far, far faster than it can afford to lose them. Russia’s sanctions-throttled aerospace industry is struggling to build more than a couple of dozen new planes a year.
Escalating losses, exacerbated by anemic plane-production, almost certainly are increasing the stress on the surviving planes and crews. The Russian air arm isn’t yet in an organizational death spiral. But it’s getting closer.
The numbers tell the story. On paper, the Russian air force has acquired 140 of the twin-engine, two-seat, supersonic Su-34s. Counting this year’s unconfirmed losses, the air force has lost 31 of the Su-34s.
But 109 Su-34s still is a lot of Su-34s, right?
Wrong, according to Michael Bohnert, an engineer with the RAND Corporation in California. Shoot-downs represent “only a portion of total losses” of Russian fighters, Bohnert wrote back in August. “Overuse of these aircraft is also costing Russia as the war drags on.”
“In a protracted war, where one force tries to exhaust the other, it’s the total longevity of the military force that matters,” Bohnert added. “And that’s where the VKS”—the Russian air force—“finds itself now.”
Bohnert assumed the air force went to war two years ago with around 900 fighters and attack planes and, in the first 18 months of fighting, lost around 100 of them to Ukrainian action. The problem for the Russians—besides the losses—is that the requirement for fighter and attack sorties hasn’t decreased even as the fighter and attack inventory has decreased.
So those 800 remaining planes are flying more frequently in order to handle taskings the Kremlin once assigned to 900 planes. And that means more wear and tear, deepening maintenance needs and a growing hunger for increasingly hard-to-find spare parts—imperatives that effectively remove airframes from the front-line force.
Given what we know of lax Russian maintenance practices, it’s probably safe to assume that considerably less of those 100 Su-34s are mission capable than would be the case in, say, the U.S. Air Force, which have mission-ready goals of 75-80%, but frequently falls short.
A few more weeks of disasterous losses like this and Russia will be at dire risk of having what remains of it’s air campaign collapse.
And Ukraine still has F-16s due to enter service this year.
A year after its censorship programs were exposed, the Global Engagement Center still insists the public has no right to know how it’s spending taxpayer money…
The State Department is so unhappy a newspaper published details about where it’s been spending your taxes, it’s threatened to only show a congressional committee its records in camera until it gets a “better understanding of how the Committee will utilize this sensitive information.” Essentially, Tony Blinken is threatening to take his transparency ball home unless details about what censorship programs he’s sponsoring stop appearing in papers like the Washington Examiner:
The State Department tells Congress, which controls its funding, that it will only disclose where it spent our money “in camera”
A year ago the Examiner published “Disinformation, Inc.”, a series by investigative reporter Gabe Kaminsky describing how the State Department was backing a UK-based agency that creates digital blacklists for disfavored media outlets. Your taxes helped fund the Global Disinformation Index, or GDI, which proudly touts among its services an Orwellian horror called the Dynamic Exclusion List, a digital time-out corner where at least 2,000 websites were put on blast as unsuitable for advertising, “thus disrupting the ad-funded disinformation business model.”
Mega-bank JP Morgan has officially left a $68 trillion investor coalition that is “focused on pressing the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases to decarbonize,” according to Bloomberg.
In other words, the “fight” to decarbonize is imploding.
JP Morgan said it is leaving the Climate Action 100+ because it has “made significant investments in developing its own climate risk engagement framework”, the report says. The bank claims to have 40 professionals now focused on sustainable investing.
And the damage for the Climate Action 100+ may only be getting started. Lance Dial, a Boston-based partner at law firm K&L Gates LLP, told Bloomberg: “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more defections, especially given that there’s now a cost, such as potential litigation, that wasn’t there when companies joined.”
He added: “Attorneys general have subpoenaed firms about their membership of these groups.”
Remember that Chinese invasion we talked about earlier in the week? Republican U.S. Representative Tony Gonzales thinks it uses Sinaloa cartel.
In FY 2023, over 37,000 illegal Chinese aliens were encountered at the porous southern border, with an additional 20,000 having crossed since October when FY 2024 began. The federal data shows that the United States is seeing foreign invaders from more countries than ever before.
According to Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-Texas), he believes the illegals crossing into California may indeed be staying there, he told the Daily Mail.
“As I’ve spoken to different agencies about why some communities [groups of migrants] to one place and others go another, one: it depends on what cartel controls that pipeline,” Gonzalez said.
‘It’s very clear that the Sinaloa Cartel is the one controlling that operation and sending Chinese more toward the California corridor…California/Arizona corridor that they control. That’s half the equation.’
Another theory: “[Oriel Ortega], the former director of Panama’s border patrol told The Epoch Times that the United Nations’ migration agenda is behind the chaos at the U.S. southern border and that U.N. partners are making things worse instead of better.”
More “refugees” behaving badly, with Eritrean, East African, gangs battling it out at an opera house in The Hague.
Results: “Six of Ohio’s eight largest cities experienced a drop in gun crime after the state allowed its citizens to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.”
