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LinkSwarm for March 24, 2023

Friday, March 24th, 2023

More on the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Syria gets spicy again, woke companies like Disney are having massive layoffs, and Sig Saur gets into the Killbot business. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Things that make you go Hmmmm:

    Courtesy of Bloomberg’s reporting, it appears that not only were insiders dumping their shares faster than syphilitic hooker, there were loading up on loans from the bank at a scale that makes a mockery of any regulatory oversight…

    ”

    Yes, that’s real.

    Loans to officers, directors and principal shareholders, and their related interests, more than tripled from the third quarter last year to $219 million in the final three months of 2022 – a record dollar amount of loans going back over 20 years.

    Many questions come to mind – what were the terms, who were the recipients, what was the collateral?

    But, sadly, we will likely never know.

    However, we do note that the banking execs may be facing a serious shortfall (like their bank): if the loans were collateralized by SVB shares for example, those shares are now worthless, leaving the loan-heavy C-suite left to come up with the cash to repay the loans (and no, these loans don’t disappear with the bank’s liquidation).

    Between that and the insider share dumping, people need to go to jail.

  • Speaking of insiders, let’s talk about FTX and Silicon Valley Bank’s ties to the World Economic Forum.

    After the implosion of the FTX crypto exchange run by Sam Bankman Fried, questions of due diligence and competency immediately arose, suggesting that perhaps the company mishandled assets “accidentally” and that Fried was naive and “in over his head.” Numerous central bank officials and globalist organizations jumped into the debate almost immediately, arguing that FTX was a perfect example of why centralized regulation of crypto and digital currencies was necessary. They claimed that without oversight by banking elites, disaster was inevitable.

    Of course, what they did not mention was that FTX and Sam Fried already had extensive connections with globalist groups including the World Economic Forum. In fact, the very basis of Fried’s business model was the WEF’s “Stakeholder Capitalism” theory, which he often referred to as “Effective Altruism.”

    Stakeholder Capitalism is essentially the opposite of free markets – It is a socialist/globalist framework which uses corporations as a kind of economic enforcement tool. Corporations are already highly socialistic in their operations, and their existence is completely dependent on their special relationship with government. Corporations are created through government charter, enjoy special protections under “corporate personhood” laws and avoid direct consequences for criminal activities through limited liability.

    Many corporations are not even allowed to fail because governments backstop their operations. That’s socialism, not free markets. However, “stakeholder capitalism” expands on this dynamic a hundred-fold.

    Where free markets assert that businesses must make profit their primary objective for the overall economy to function, the WEF asserts that companies including banking institutions have a social obligation that goes beyond making money. To the typical leftist this probably sounds like a Utopian vision filled with promise, but to anyone that actually understands economics it sounds like a recipe for the collapse of civilization.

    The WEF paints stakeholder capitalism an effort to reign in the power of the corporate system in favor of social causes. In reality, it’s a way to give corporations ultimate power over everything, including ultimate influence over public behavior.

    We have seen extensive evidence of this through widespread corporate ESG investment programs implemented in the past several years. It is no coincidence that the invasion of woke ideology into the mainstream happened at the exact same time that ESG-based lending accelerated.

    The institutions lending to various companies were able to set social rules for access to credit, and these rules required businesses to adopt far-left politics in their marketing and policies as a result. Stakeholder capitalism is about homogenizing all business into a single ideological entity – Instead of competing with each other for market share through innovation, companies have been abandoning merit based competition and are colluding to saturate the mainstream with social justice cultism, climate change propaganda and globalist rhetoric.

    By making corporate elites “responsible” for society, we give them the power to engineer society.

    However, the WEF’s model of false altruism is turning out to be a disaster for corporate survival. I have to wonder now if this was the intent all along – To create a kind of ESG fueled woke financial bubble that was always intended to come crashing down, leaving the western world in ruins.

    Snip.

    Looking into SVB’s operational history, the company was a woke nightmare.

    Take a gander at their 66 page ESG report compiled in 2021 to get a sense of how far to the extreme political left the bank was. SVB is the pinnacle example of why “Get Woke, Go Broke” is more than a mantra, it’s a rule.

    Digging even deeper we then find that SVB’s leadership was highly involved in the WEF and their Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics (SCM), along with corporate governance. SVB was not only implementing every single policy the WEF outlines in its agenda, they were reporting back to the WEF on their progress.

    SVB’s capital exposure was heavily tied up in securities, but also venture capital for woke tech startups, climate change related projects and leftist activist groups which qualified for ESG loans; everything from BLM to Buzzfeed. In other words, they were investing aggressively into money-pit projects that devoured cash and gave nothing back. The real question is, how many US banks are involved in ESG and WEF operations at the same level as SVB? Dozens? Hundreds?

  • “U.S. Carries Out Airstrikes in Syria after Iranian Drone Kills U.S. Contractor, Wounds Five Service Members.” As I’ve mentioned before the withdrawal of most U.S. troops from Iraq and Syria doesn’t mean all. And the same goes for Africa.
  • Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals blocks Biden’s Flu Manchu mandate.
  • After demanding that the police be defunded, San Francisco District Supervisor Hillary Ronen now demands more cops in her district.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “56% of liberal white women age 18-29 have been diagnosed with a mental health condition.” Well, you already said “liberal”…
  • Louisiana state Rep. Francis Thompson switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party, given Republicans a super-majority in both houses and thus the ability to override any veto by Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards. ““The push the past several years by Democratic leadership on both the national and state level to support certain issues does not align with those values and principles that are a part of my Christian life,” said Thompson.
  • World Athletics, the governing body for international track and field competition, has banned men from international competition. “I’ll take ‘Headlines no one in the 20th century would understand’ for $600, Alex.”
  • “Dallas Bar Cancels All-ages Drag Event.” Funny how the threat of having your TABC license yanked concentrates the mind…
  • Get Woke, Go Broke Part 1: After a string of expensive bombs and streaming losses, Disney to lay off 7,000 employees.
  • Get Woke, Go Broke 1.5: “Woke Marvel Producer Victoria Alonso Gone From MCU.” She was one of the central figures pushing Disney to adopt a pro-groomer position in Florida. The ostensible reason for her firing was breach of contract for producing a non-Marvel movie, but a lot of industry insiders think her outspoken wokeness was a key reason for her getting the axe.
  • Get Woke, Go Broke Part 2: “Twitch Streaming Service To Sack 36% Of Employees.”
  • Another headline I didn’t expect: “SIG Sauer Acquires General Robotics.”

    SIG Sauer announced late last week it has acquired General Robotics, one of the world’s premier manufacturers of lightweight remote weapon stations and tactical robotics for manned and unmanned platforms as well as anti-drone applications. The companies have been working in concert for some time, a fact made obvious at January’s SHOT Show when they debuted a Polaris ATV equipped with a General Robotics PitBull remote weapons station that aimed and fired the vehicle-mounted SIG MG 338 belt-fed machine gun remotely.

    “This acquisition will greatly enhance SIG Sauer’s growing portfolio of advanced weapon systems,” said Ron Cohen, president and CEO of SIG Sauer. The team at General Robotics is leading the way in the development of intuitive, lightweight remote weapon stations with their battle-proven solution.”

  • Nobody should still be using cardboard sheathing on houses.
  • The Y-shaped Chicago building made more stable by adding a giant water tank at the top.
  • “Alex, I’ll take ‘The Rapist Zach‘ for $400.”
  • “It is a belief in the Cocaine Bear’s authority that allows it to officiate legally binding weddings in Kentucky.”
  • “Family Does Modified Version Of Dave Ramsey Plan Where They Just Never Budget And Spend Way Too Much Money.”
  • “Democrats Vow To Arrest As Many Political Opponents As It Takes To Defeat Fascism.”
  • “Trump To Be Indicted For Removing Mattress Tag In 1997.”
  • No one expects SwordDog!

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Regulation, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Waste and Fraud | 3 Comments »

    Square Zero

    Thursday, March 23rd, 2023

    Dwight sent over this Hindenberg Research piece on Block AKA Square AKA Cash App.

    Our 2-year investigation has concluded that Block has systematically taken advantage of the demographics it claims to be helping. The “magic” behind Block’s business has not been disruptive innovation, but rather the company’s willingness to facilitate fraud against consumers and the government, avoid regulation, dress up predatory loans and fees as revolutionary technology, and mislead investors with inflated metrics.

    There’s also a negative side.

    Even the summary is pretty breathtaking in the rang of allegations:

  • Most analysts are excited about the post-pandemic surge of Block’s Cash App platform, with expectations that its 51 million monthly transacting active users and low customer acquisition costs will drive high margin growth and serve as a future platform to offer new products.
  • Our research indicates, however, that Block has wildly overstated its genuine user counts and has understated its customer acquisition costs. Former employees estimated that 40%-75% of accounts they reviewed were fake, involved in fraud, or were additional accounts tied to a single individual.
  • Core to the issue is that Block has embraced one traditionally very “underbanked” segment of the population: criminals. The company’s “Wild West” approach to compliance made it easy for bad actors to mass-create accounts for identity fraud and other scams, then extract stolen funds quickly.
  • Even when users were caught engaging in fraud or other prohibited activity, Block blacklisted the account without banning the user. A former customer service rep shared screenshots showing how blacklisted accounts were regularly associated with dozens or hundreds of other active accounts suspected of fraud. This phenomenon of allowing blacklisted users was so common that rappers bragged about it in hip hop songs.
  • Block obfuscates how many individuals are on the Cash App platform by reporting misleading “transacting active” metrics filled with fake and duplicate accounts. Block can and should clarify to investors an estimate on how many unique people actually use Cash App.
  • CEO Jack Dorsey has publicly touted how Cash App is mentioned in hundreds of hip hop songs as evidence of its mainstream appeal. A review of those songs show that the artists are not generally rapping about Cash App’s smooth user interface—many describe using it to scam, traffic drugs or even pay for murder…
  • “I paid them hitters through Cash App”— Block paid to promote a video for a song called “Cash App” which described paying contract killers through the app. The song’s artist was later arrested for attempted murder.
  • Cash App was also cited “by far” as the top app used in reported U.S. sex trafficking, according to a leading non-profit organization. Multiple Department of Justice complaints outline how Cash App has been used to facilitate sex trafficking, including sex trafficking of minors.
  • There is even a gang named after Cash App: In 2021, Baltimore authorities charged members of the “Cash App” gang with distribution of fentanyl in a West Baltimore neighborhood, according to news reports and criminal records.
  • Beyond facilitating payments for criminal activity, the platform has been overrun with scam accounts and fake users, according to numerous interviews with former employees.
  • Examples of obvious distortions abound: “Jack Dorsey” has multiple fake accounts, including some that appear aimed at scamming Cash App users. “Elon Musk” and “Donald Trump” have dozens.
  • To test this, we turned our accounts into “Donald Trump” and “Elon Musk” and were easily able to send and receive money. We ordered a Cash Card under our obviously fake Donald Trump account, checking to see if Cash App’s compliance would take issue—the card promptly arrived in the mail.
  • Former employees described how Cash App suppressed internal concerns and ignored user pleas for help as criminal activity and fraud ran rampant on its platform. This appeared to be an effort to grow Cash App’s user base by strategically disregarding Anti Money Laundering (AML) rules.
  • The COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide lockdowns posed an existential threat to Block’s key driver of gross profit at the time, merchant services.
  • In this environment, amid Cash App’s anti-compliance free-for-all, the app facilitated a massive wave of government COVID-relief payments. CEO Jack Dorsey Tweeted that users could get government payments through Cash App “immediately” with “no bank account needed” due to its frictionless technology.
  • Within weeks of Cash App accounts receiving their first government payments, states were seeking to claw back suspected fraudulent payments—Washington State wanted more than $200 million back from payment processors while Arizona sought to recover $500 million, former employees told us.
  • Once again, the signs were hard to miss. Rapper “Nuke Bizzle”, made a popular music video about committing COVID fraud. Several weeks later, he was arrested and eventually convicted for committing COVID fraud. The only payment provider mentioned in the indictment was Cash App, which was used to facilitate the fraudulent payments.
  • We filed public records requests to learn more about Block’s role in facilitating pandemic relief fraud and received answers from several states.
  • Massachusetts sought to claw back over 69,000 unemployment payments from Cash App accounts just four months into the pandemic. Suspect transactions at Cash App’s partner bank were disproportionate, exceeding major banks like JP Morgan and Wells Fargo, despite the latter banks having 4x-5x as many deposit accounts.
  • In Ohio, Cash App’s partner bank had 8x the suspect pandemic-related unemployment payments as the bank that processed the most unemployment claims in the state, even though the latter bank processed 2x the claims as Cash App’s, according to data we obtained via a public records request.
  • The data shows that compared to its Ohio competitor, Cash App’s partner bank had nearly 10x the number of applicants who applied for benefits through a bank account used by another claimant – a clear red flag of fraud.
  • Block had obvious compliance lapses that made fraud easy, such as permitting single accounts to receive unemployment payments on behalf of multiple individuals from various states and ineffective address verification.
  • In an apparent effort to preserve its growth engine, Cash App ignored internal employee concerns, along with warnings from the Secret Service, the U.S. Department of Labor OIG, FinCEN, and State Regulators which all specifically flagged the issue of multiple COVID relief payments going to the same account as an obvious sign of fraud.
  • Block reported a pandemic surge in user counts and revenue, ignoring the contribution of widespread fraudulent accounts and payments. The new business provided a sharp one-time increase to Block’s stock, which rose 639% in 18 months during the pandemic.
  • As Block’s stock soared on the back of its facilitation of fraud, co-founders Jack Dorsey and James McKelvey collectively sold over $1 billion of stock during the pandemic. Other executives, including CFO Amrita Ahuja and the lead manager for Cash App Brian Grassadonia, also dumped millions of dollars in stock.
  • With its influx of pandemic Cash App users, our research shows Block has quietly fueled its profitability by avoiding a key banking regulation meant to protect merchants. “Interchange fees” are fees charged to merchants for accepting use of various payment cards.
  • Congress passed a law that legally caps “interchange fees” charged by large banks that have over $10 billion in assets. Despite having $31 billion in assets, Block avoids these regulations by routing payments through a small bank and gouging merchants with elevated fees.
  • Block includes only a single vague reference in its filings acknowledging it earns revenue from “interchange fees”. It has never revealed the full economics of this category, yet roughly one-third of Cash App’s revenue came from this opaque source, according to a 2022 Credit Suisse research report.
  • Competitor PayPal has disclosed it is under investigation by both the SEC and the CFPB over its similar use of a small bank to avoid “interchange fee” caps. A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request we filed with the SEC indicates that Block may be part of a similar investigation.
  • Block’s $29 billion deal to acquire ‘buy now pay later’ (BNPL) service Afterpay closed in January 2022. Afterpay has been celebrated by Block as a major financial innovation, allowing users to buy things like a pair of shoes or a t-shirt and pay over time, only incurring massive fees if subsequent payments are late.
  • Afterpay was designed in a way that avoided responsible lending rules in its native Australia, extending a form of credit to users without income verification or credit checks. The service doesn’t technically charge “interest”, but late fees can reach APR equivalents as high as 289%.
  • The acquisition is flopping. In 2022, the year Afterpay was acquired, it lost $357 million, accelerating from 2021 losses of $184 million.
  • Fitch Ratings reported that Afterpay delinquencies through March 2022 had more than doubled to 4.1%, from 1.7% in June 2021 (just prior to the announced acquisition). Total processing volume declined -4.8% from the previous year.
  • Block regularly hypes other mundane or predatory sources of revenue as technological breakthroughs. Roughly 31% of Cash App’s revenue comes from “instant deposit” which Block says it pioneered and works as if by “magic”. Every other major competitor we checked provides a similar service at comparable or better rates.
  • On a purely fundamental basis, even before factoring in the findings of our investigation, we see downside of between 65% to 75% in Block shares. Block reported a 1% year over year revenue decline and a GAAP loss of $540.7 million in 2022. Analysts have future expectations of GAAP unprofitability and the company has warned it may not be profitable.
  • Despite this, Block is valued like a profitable growth company at (i) an EV/EBITDA multiple of 60x; (ii) a forward 2023 “adjusted” earnings multiple of 41x; and (iii) a price to tangible book ratio of 13.1x, all wildly out of line with fintech peers.
  • Despite its current rich multiples, Block is also facing threats from key competitors like Zelle, Venmo/Paypal and fast-growing payment solutions from smartphone powerhouses like Apple and Google. Apple has grown Apple Pay activations from 20% in 2017 to over 70% in 2022 and now leads in digital wallet market share.
  • In sum, we think Block has misled investors on key metrics, and embraced predatory offerings and compliance worst-practices in order to fuel growth and profit from facilitation of fraud against consumers and the government.
  • We also believe Jack Dorsey has built an empire—and amassed a $5 billion personal fortune—professing to care deeply about the demographics he is taking advantage of. With Dorsey and top executives already having sold over $1 billion in equity on Block’s meteoric pandemic run higher, they have ensured they will be fine, regardless of the outcome for everyone else.

    • That’s just the high level summary. There’s a whole lot more detail in the report.

    I have never once used Cash App. I have an ancient Square Reader floating around in a bag somewhere, but I never actually ran any transactions on it. I do have PayPal, because I pretty much have to in order to buy or sell on eBay (though I’ve gotten to the point I do almost no selling there). I don’t even use Apple Pay, despite having a MacBook Pro and iPhone.

    Speaking of fees, here Louis Rossmann rants about how Square refuses to return fees for refunds:

    Anyway, if you’re using Square or CashApp, maybe it’s a good time to look into alternatives…

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    Posted in Crime, video, Waste and Fraud | 1 Comment »

    LinkSwarm for March 3, 2023

    Friday, March 3rd, 2023

    In addition to getting over a cold, I spent most of the non-work day trying to assemble a pressure washer so I could attach a water-jetting attachment so I can clean out a blocked exterior line so I can run my dishwasher without it overflowing my sink.

    The result of all this labor is that I still need to call a plumber. So enjoy yet another abbreviated LinkSwarm.

  • Hmmmmmm! “Hunter Biden Business Partner Flips, Now ‘Cooperating’ With GOP Investigators.”

    Eric Schwerin, a close business associate of Hunter Biden who also dealt with Joe Biden’s business and tax affairs, is now working with House GOP investigators looking into Biden family dealings – particularly in Ukraine and China, where the family collected millions of dollars, Just the News reports.

    Eric Schwerin, a close business associate of Hunter Biden who also dealt with Joe Biden’s business and tax affairs, is now working with House GOP investigators looking into Biden family dealings – particularly in Ukraine and China, where the family collected millions of dollars, Just the News reports.

    “He is cooperating with us,” House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) told the outlet.

    “His attorneys and my counsel are communicating on a regular basis. Now, I feel confident that he’s going to work with us, and provide us with the information that we have requested,” Comer continued. “I think that Schwerwin is going to be a very valuable witness for us in this investigation.”

    Of note, Schwerin, the former president of Hunter Biden’s now-dissolved investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners, visited the White House at least 19 times from 2009 to 2015, according to White House visitor log records reviewed by The Epoch Times and first reported by the New York Post.

  • Chicago’s massively incompetent Democratic mayor Lori Lightfoot defeated for reelection.
  • “Lori Lightfoot Blames Election Loss On ‘Tricksy Hobbitses.’
  • The Democratic Party’s war on natural gas continues apace. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Patrick L. Wojahn, the Democratic mayor of College Park, MD, resigns over child porn charges. Name that party: His political affiliation only shows up in the 19th paragraph of the piece. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • “Russia’s Latest Advance on Vuhledar Fails After 12 Seconds.”
  • Fruit and vegetable shortage hits the UK.
  • Illnesses to Democratic senators Dianne Feinstein and John Fetterman mean that Democrats have temporarily lost their senate majority. That will teach you to rely to Octagenerians and visibly impaired stroke victims to carry your water. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Pakistan swears it won’t default on it’s debt.

  • SUV struck by lasers. And by lasers, I mean a minigun. Watch the video.
  • Cuba facing shortages of just about everything. Communism will do that for you. (Hat Tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Fully automated, 100 ton, container-moving robots.
  • Baltimore police chase ends in building collapse.
  • “Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta submits $5.5 billion bid for NFL’s Commanders.” He should move them to Austin and change the name back to the Redskins, just to spite them.
  • Breakfast Bitch convicted of interstate wire fraud.
  • Did MacKay get Tulipmania wrong? It turns out he was also an enthusiast for the far more destructive “Railway Bubbles” that struck England in the 19th century.
  • Man, the pollen in Texas is just brutal this time of year. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.
  • God Confirms Heaven Will Have A Buc-ee’s.

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    Posted in Communism, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, video, Waste and Fraud | 4 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for February 17, 2023

    Friday, February 17th, 2023

    Bit of a mini-LinkSwarm this time around, as this was a week that I almost caught up on stuff delayed by the ice storm.
    
    

  • Bidenomics: “Core CPI Rises 32nd Straight Month, Headline Inflation Hotter Than Expected.”
  • “Biden’s job growth is mostly immigrants working for low wages.” Also this: “The Department of Homeland Security has been issuing an unknown number of two-year work permits to illegal immigrants, which will keep them in the workforce suppressing wages and fanning the flames of discontent amongst Americans unable to find jobs until the next presidential election.” What the hell?
  • Auto repos hit new records.
  • California’s income tax revenues decline by 50%. Tax it, and they will leave. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Disinformation Inc: State Department bankrolls group secretly blacklisting conservative media.”

    The Department of State has funded a deep-pocketed “disinformation” tracking group that is secretly blacklisting and trying to defund conservative media, likely costing the news organizations vital advertising dollars, the Washington Examiner can confirm.

    The Global Disinformation Index, a British organization with two affiliated U.S. nonprofit groups, is feeding blacklists to ad companies with the intent of defunding and shutting down websites peddling alleged “disinformation,” the Washington Examiner reported . This same “disinformation” group has received $330,000 from two State Department-backed entities linked to the highest levels of government, raising concerns from First Amendment lawyers and members of Congress.

    “Any outfit like that engaged in censorship shouldn’t have any contact with the government because they’re tainted by association with a group that is doing something fundamentally against American values,” Jeffrey Clark, ex-acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, told the Washington Examiner. “The government or any private entity shouldn’t be involved with this entity that’s engaged in conduct that is either legally questionable or at least morally questionable.”

    GDI compiles a “dynamic exclusion list” that it feeds to corporate entities, such as the Microsoft -owned advertising company Xandr, emails show. Xandr and other companies are, in turn, declining to place ads on websites that GDI flags as peddling disinformation.

    The Washington Examiner revealed on Thursday that it is on this exclusion list. The list includes at least 2,000 websites and has “had a significant impact on the advertising revenue that has gone to those sites,” said GDI’s CEO Clare Melford on a March 2022 podcast.

    GDI has identified that the 10 “riskiest” news outlets for disinformation are the American Spectator, Newsmax, the Federalist, the American Conservative, One America News, the Blaze, the Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, Reason, and the New York Post.

  • Huge earthquake rocks Syria and Turkey. That was less than a week ago and already it’s pretty much out of the news…
  • Another huge story that the news media has done it’s best to ignore: a toxic derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The blew it up to prevent a BLEVE and ended up releasing Phosgene gas. That’s carrying your World War I reenactment too far.
  • 90-year California Democratic Senator old Dianne Feinstein to retire after 2024. But…
  • A few hour later she was evidently unaware she had retired. Increasingly, “crazy” or “senile” seem to be the two most common flavors of the Democratic Party…
  • Texas Governor Greg Abbott announces legislative priorities for the current session.
    1. Cutting Property Taxes
    2. End COVID Restrictions
    3. Education Freedom (School Choice)
    4. School Safety
    5. Ending Revolving-door Bail
    6. Doing More to Secure the Border
    7. Addressing the Fentanyl Crisis

    We’ll see if he follows through.

  • Followup: Transient encampment moved away from Headpsace Salon so they can go destroy someone else’s quality of life instead. (Previously.) (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Dumbass reaches for off-duty cop’s gun, with the expected results. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Inside China’s livestreamer girl factories.
  • Updated contact information for the Austin City Council.
  • Not a Babylon Bee headline: “Catalytic converter stolen from Oscar Mayer Wienermobile in Las Vegas.”
  • I chuckled.
  • Biden Taken To Coroner For Annual Physical.

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Jihad, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 6 Comments »

    LinkSwarm For January 27, 2023

    Friday, January 27th, 2023

    Democrats enabling sexual predators (yet again), more tanks for Ukraine information, and the unexpected return of Storm Drain Woman. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
    

  • Democrat-run California loves releasing pedophiles from prison early.

    Published in November of 2022, the story indicated “thousands of child molesters are being let out after just a few months, despite sentencing guidelines.”

    The story reported that more than 7,000 inmates convicted of “lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age” were released from prison the same year they were incarcerated.

    The Daily Mail’s analysis was conducted using a database—created in 1994 after the federal Megan’s Law was passed—requiring law enforcement to make public information regarding registered sex offenders. The news organization examined data in California through July of 2019.

    “Everyone should be really upset and frightened by this,” Dordulian said.

    According to Dordulian, child molesters are the least likely of criminals to be rehabilitated and are four times more likely to commit the same crime again.

    “Once they’re out,” he said, “they are going to re-offend and there’s going to be another child that is victimized by these people.”

  • California’s repeal of an anti-loitering law has enabled pimps and human traffickers.

    Senate Bill 357. Signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in July, the measure decriminalized loitering with the intent to engage in prostitution. The bill did not officially take effect until January 1 of this year; but, from the moment it became law back in July, these women say, the on-the-ground reality changed. “The minute the governor signed it, you started seeing an uptick on the streets,” Powell said. “And on social media, the pimps were saying: ‘You better get out there and work because the streets are ours.’”

    The pimps were right: police stopped making arrests for crimes that would no longer be charged. The anti-loitering statute had provided the grounds for officers to question women and children whom they suspected might be trapped in a prostitution ring. “As a police officer, you need probable cause to stop and investigate,” Powell explained. “So if I have a law that says you can’t loiter in this area, with pasties and a G-string, flagging down cars, I could stop you for that because you’re loitering. But if I just say I’m stopping you because you look kind of young, that’s a little weak. So, it takes away a tool.” Without the statute, police hands were suddenly tied. Henceforth, questioning the girls—and potentially provoking a violent confrontation with pimps—came to seem a Pyrrhic gamble, one that California’s police officers would now avoid.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Gavin Newsom’s wife’s films shown in school promote both the radical transexual agenda and Democrats.

    The films, which include “Miss Representation,” “The Mask You Live In,” “The Great American Lie” and “Fair Play,” are licensed to taxpayer-funded schools across every state and sometimes contain sexually explicit imagery and push students to feel “shame and sorrow” about American society split by privilege and oppression. They are paired with curricula that include discussion on Gov. Newsom’s comments within the films, urging them to gather their friends and vote for aligned politicians that support a “care economy” that “embraces universal human values.”

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Former Beaverton, Oregon Democratic mayor Dennis ‘Denny’ Doyle sentenced to six months for possessing child pornography. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Closer to home: “Prosper ISD [Dallas County Metroplex] School Board President Arrested for Indecency with a Child.”
  • George Soros’ right-hand political man is working hand-in-glove with the Biden White House. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Suchomimus has a video breakdown of which tanks from where are going to Ukraine.
  • Not mentioned: Morocco is sending upgraded T-72s.
  • Union membership hits record lows.
  • Scott Adams admits Flu Manchu vaccine critics were right.
  • When real life imitates The Babylon Bee: Illinois Democratic Governor “Pritzker Demands Black Queer History in AP African-American Studies.”
  • “Former Arlington teachers union president charged with embezzlement. A former president of the Arlington teachers union, who was ousted last spring, has been charged with embezzling more than $400,000 from the organization. Ingrid Gant, 54, of Woodbridge, was arrested yesterday (Monday) in Prince William County on four counts of embezzlement.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • “Thirty years ago, Guan County, Shandong Province launched the ‘Hundred Childless Days‘ campaign under the aegis of national family planning, known in the West as the ‘one-child policy.’ The birthplace of the “Boxers” was deemed to have too high a birth rate by the provincial government. County officials sought to correct this by ensuring that not a single baby was born between May 1 and August 10, 1991.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • EU: Eat the bugs, peasants.
  • The Five > All of CNN.
  • “Austin hair salon could shut down due to neighboring homeless camp.”

    North says they do not feel safe anymore, and she believes it all ties back to the large homeless encampment located only feet away from the salon.

    “Our safety started to become a big issue. We suffered from multiple break-ins. We’ve had our cars broken into. We clean up feces and needles on a weekly basis. It increased from that to, you know, people approaching us and threatening us with weapons, threatening rape, murder, all of those things,” said North.

    The salon has been up and running just off Ben White Blvd. for four years now. North says she has seen an uptick in crime for a while now, but the dangerous behavior from people living in this encampment picked up recently.

    “In the past year, it’s gotten increasingly worse and, in the past couple of weeks, it’s gotten to the point where I actually finally felt like this might shut my business down,” said North.

    Erin Mutschler, another co-owner of the salon, says they have called the police every time they have dealt with a situation like the one caught on video, but she says police often take 45 minutes to an hour for anyone to show up.

    The mayorship of Steve Adler is the gift that just keeps giving, even with him out of office… (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • “Former Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s entire legal team has asked a federal judge to withdraw from representing the city’s top prosecutor.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Stop! Hammertime!
  • Insurance companies are refusing to insure Hyundais and Kias because they’re too easy to steal.
  • How easy? This easy. All you need is a screwdriver and a USB cable…
  • Intel reports quarterly loss.
  • Follow-up: Democratic State Rep. Harold Dutton: “Don’t Blame Abbott, Houston ISD Takeover Plan Was My Idea.” (Previously.)
  • A Florida woman was pulled from a storm drain for the third time in two years. Maybe she was looking for David Icke’s lizard people. Also, she sounds like a real winner: “Police said her license had been suspended 17 times from 2007 to 2020.” (Previously.) (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Jay Leno broke his collarbone, several ribs and both kneecaps in a motorcycle accident. But it sounds like a freak accident: “So I turned down a side street and cut through a parking lot, and unbeknownst to me, some guy had a wire strung across the parking lot but with no flag hanging from it…I didn’t see it until it was too late. It just clothesline me and, boom, knocked me off the bike.” (There’s no evidence the line was strung there by Conan O’Brien.) “But I’m OK!…I’m working this weekend.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “Hillary Clinton Boasts Of Having No Classified Documents From Her Time As President.”

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    Posted in Austin, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Media Watch, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud | 3 Comments »

    Which Democratic Party Kingmaker(s) Want Biden Out?

    Monday, January 16th, 2023

    As revelations continue to roll out about a third set of classified documents being illegally kept by Joe Biden, and crackhead son Hunter Biden paying The Big Guy $50,000 a month to rent his house (which would have meant that Hunter only got to keep $33,333 of his Burisma salary…assuming there was no other graft being passed on) a question occurs to me: Which Democratic Kingmaker(s) want to force Biden out of office?

    With midterms safely past, news about the classified documents (which was known in advance of the midterms) was allowed to leak out, indicating that whoever arranged Slow Joe’s greased-skid path to the White House has lost confidence in his ability not to screw things up so badly that Democrats get slaughtered in 2024. And this despite the decided unpopularity both of VP Kamala Harris and backup catspaw Pete Buttigieg. My working theory is that the same people who installed Biden will try to install Gavin Newsom in 2024.

    But the question is who is calling the shots in the Democratic Party? George Soros? Barack Obama? Valerie Jarrett? Ron Klain? Randi Weingarten? (I might previously have included Tom Steyer on this list, but if he really were calling the shots he wouldn’t have tried that disasterous presidential run.)

    If you have good theories and solid evidence on who is actually calling the shots in the Democratic Party these days (and thus the likely candidate for wanting to push Biden out), let me know in the comments below. As Instapundit noted, those that foisted Joe Biden on us have an awful lot to answer for…

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Waste and Fraud | 27 Comments »

    Joe Rogan Interviews Peter Zeihan (Part 2: China, Cartels and Drug Wars)

    Tuesday, January 10th, 2023

    Here’s Part 2 of my coverage of Joe Rogan’s interview with Peter Zeihan. (Part one is here.)

    First up, covering familiar ground for BattleSwarm readers, why China is screwed.

  • The rich world was a population column from [as opposed to a pyramid] 1945 to 1992, and with the end of the Cold War, the developing world became a column in 1992 until now. The problem is that this is all temporary, because birth rate keeps dropping. People keep living older and your column eventually inverts into an open pyramid upside down. And now you no longer have children, you no longer have a replacement generation at all, and there aren’t enough people in their 20s and 30s to buy everything, and there aren’t enough people in their 40s and 50s to pay for the retirees. So this decade was always going to be the decade that most of the advanced world moves into mass retirement, and the economic model collapses, and next decade was always going to be the decade that that happened to the developing world.

  • “The Chinese have jumped the ship and this is their last decade, too.”
  • “We now know that they’ve lied about their population statistics and they’re they over counted their population by over 100 million people, all of whom would have been born since the one child policy was adopted. So this is one of those places where they’ve got more people in their 60s and their 50s and their 40s and their 30s and their 20s.”
  • “Mao was concerned that as the country was modernizing, the birth rate wasn’t dropping fast enough, and that the young generation was literally going to eat the country alive. So they went through a breakneck urbanization program which destroyed the birth rate, at the same time they penalized anyone who wanted to have kids, and both of those at the same time have generated the demographic collapse we’re in now.”
  • The male to female sex ratio in China was bad before, and now it’s obviously worse.
  • “Without young people, we’ve seen their labor costs increase by a factor of 14 since the year 2000, so Mexican labor is now one-third the cost of Chinese labor. Their educational system focuses on memorization over skills, so despite a trillion dollars of investment in a bottomless supply of intellectual property theft, they really haven’t advanced technologically in the last 15 years. Mexican labor is probably about twice as skilled as Chinese labor now, even though it’s one-third the cost.”
  • “They’ve consolidated into an ethnic-based paranoid nationalistic cult of
    personality, and it’s very difficult for the XI Administration to even run it, because it’s not an administration anymore no one wants to bring Xi information on anything.”

  • The Biden Administration has adopted the Trump Administration’s trade policies on China.
  • “They now have tech barricades that prevent the Chinese from buying the equipment, the tools or the software that’s necessary to make semiconductors. In fact, [Biden] went so far as to say any Americans working in the sector have to either quit or give up their American citizenship. Every single one of them either quit or was transferred abroad within 24 hours.”
  • “They’re completely dependent on the U.S Navy to access international trade, they are the most vulnerable country in the world right now. And based on how things go with Russia, we’re looking at a significant amount of raw materials falling off the map, specifically food and energy, and the Chinese are the world’s largest importer of both of those things. So there’s no version of this where China comes through looking good.”
  • “Say what you will about the Russian economy (it’s corrupt, it’s inefficient, it’s not very high value-add), but it’s a massive producer and exporter of food and energy. You put the sanctions that are on the Russians on Beijing and you get a de-industrialization collapse and a famine that kills 500 million people in under a year.”
  • “Even if the Chinese were able to capture Taiwan without firing a shot, it doesn’t solve anything for them. They’re still food importers, they’re still dependent on the United States, they’re still energy importers. And even if they take every single one of those semiconductor fab facilities intact, they don’t know how to operate them, because they can’t operate their own, their own are among the worst in the world.”
  • “One of the fun things about Russia versus China right now is that the Russian information security is so poor that American intelligence is literally listening on everything, but in China we can hear into the office but there are no conversations happening.” I suggest taking both these revelations with a few grains of salt. Maybe Zeihan has great sources in the intelligence community, or maybe Zeihan’s great sources are lying.
  • Plus more on how Xi has killed or exiled any possible challenger to his power, and how they’re now having a massive Flu Manchu outbreak. “Their overall health is worse than ours, diabetes as a percentage of the population is higher, they don’t have a critical care system like we have, and their hospitals are really their only line of defense.”

    • Next: Why EVs are a disaster.

  • “All kinds of people think I’m full of shit!”
  • Rogan: “What is your perspective on EVS?” Zeihan: “They’re not nearly
    as good on carbon as people think. Most of the data that exists doesn’t take into the fact that most of this stuff is processed in China where it’s all coal doesn’t take [into account] the fact that most grids they run out are also majority fossil fuels. And that extends the break-even time for carbon from one year to either five or ten based on what model you’re talking. Cyber trucks are far worse than EVs, but the bigger problems we’re just not going to be able to make them much longer.”

  • To electrify everything “We need twice as much copper and four times as much chromium and four times as much nickel and ten times as much lithium, and so on. We have never, ever, in any decade in human history, doubled the amount of a mainline material production in ten years, ever, and we need all of this by 2030. No, it’s just not technically possible.”
  • Zeihan says California’s mandates for phasing out gasoline by 2035 aren’t quite as bad as they seem, as the bureaucracy has the ability to move the goal posts if they prove to be unfeasible. Pardon me if I’m not sold on the beneficent rationality of California’s hard left bureaucracy.
  • Speaking of things I’m skeptical of:

    There is a fascinating discussion happening in the environmental community right now, because they’re being confronted with reality. So California and Germany have very similar Green Tech policies, but the Germans have spent three times as much as California, but are only getting about a fifth as much power. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Germany, but the sun doesn’t shine in Germany. And now, with the Russians on the warpath and their clean-ish energy from natural gas going away, they’re going back to lignite coal in force. It was already their number one source of power. The idea that Germany’s green is ridiculous, because they rely on really, really dirty coal, now especially. But there’s now a conversation going on between the German environmentalists and the Californian environmentalists about why California, in relative terms of doing so well at this, while Germany is not. And the answer is simple geography, but that’s never been part of the conversation in the environmental community before. Now it is. They should have had this conversation 15-20 years ago, but they’re having it now. And as soon as they come to the conclusion, unwillingly but they’ll get there, that we have to choose where we put our copper and our lithium and our nickle, EVs are not going to make the cut.

    This assumes that California environmentalists are susceptible to the sweet voice of reason, and that modern environmentalism isn’t half religion and half scam. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” California’s Democratic power establishment has shown an amazing propensity to impose radical solutions that bring obvious and immediate harm to people that are not them. Why should they worry about forcing other people to buy pricey EVs when they already have theirs?

    • Next up: The drug war, both here and in Mexico.

  • Rogan starts by noting that marijuana legalization in California led to cartels planting massive amounts of weed in national forests, and suddenly guys who were game wardens are now wearing tactical gear and carrying machine guns.
  • “I think the mafia is a great example for why you shouldn’t look for the silver bullet [of drug legalization], because, yes, that in the 1920s during prohibition, was one of the big reasons it got going, but the mafia didn’t waste any time in diversifying and neither have the cartels.”
  • “They’ve gotten into cargo theft and kidnapping and avocados and limes and real estate and local government.”
  • “Now the attractiveness of gutting them of some of their primary income. Should we look at that? Of course! But it’s not so simple as removing one and it just all stops.”
  • “The challenge we’re seeing in Mexico right now is that the, uh, the air quotes “good” cartel the, one that saw drugs as a business, is being broken up. If you remember El Chapo—” Rogan: “That’s the good cartel?” Zeihan: “Sinaloa cartel, yeah. He thought of himself as a Korean conglomerate president. So it was like ‘We smuggle drugs. That’s our business. You don’t mess with things that mess with the business. You don’t trip the old lady, you don’t steal her purse, you don’t shoot at the cops. These are people who live where we operate, we want them to be on our side, so maybe even throw a party every once in a while. You focus on the business.'”
  • “The replacement cartel is Jalisco New Generation, They’re led by a former Mexican military officer who thinks that rather than don’t shit where you sleep so that the people on your side whenever you move into a town, you shoot it up. You do kick over the old lady, you do take her purse, you make the people scared of you, that’s the point of this. Drug running is a side gig.”
  • “We are here to be powerful, and drug running is just one of the ways we make that happen. And he has taken the fight to every cartel and the Mexican government, and they’re in the process of trying to break into the United States.”
  • “El Chapo and the Sinaloa became the largest drug trafficking organization in America under the Obama Administration. And one of the reasons our birth rate went down, so far so fast is they basically either co-opted or killed American gangs. So they killed the people who were doing the killing. Not a lot of Americans got killed after that.” I think he meant to say murder rate.
  • “All of the other cartels control the access points in the United States, but
    Jalisco New Generation now is challenging every single one of them trying to break through. And if they do, and they bring their business acumen, if you will north of the border, they’re going to start killing white chicks named Sheila in Phoenix and then we’re gonna have a very different conversation.”

  • “Sinaloa they co-opted the Hispanic gangs, especially the Mexican gangs, because there wasn’t a language barrier there, and they really targeted and gutted a lot of the African-American gangs. They took over drug smuggling and distribution from them to deny them income and then they just shot a lot of people…it was pretty much completed by the time we got to 2013.”
  • “Look at the violent crime rates in the United States, they’ve been trending down really significantly since about 2004 and the drop from 2004 to roughly 2014 was amazing. That’s largely Sinaloa.”
  • And now all the cartels are fighting and the murder rate in Mexico is skyrocketing.

    • He’s not a fan of legalizing cocaine:

    Also says that cartels are now laundering money via marijuana dispensaries using the federal reserve.

    And he’s not a fan of Crypto:

    Bonus: “Maxine Waters is not exactly the brightest person in congress.”

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    Posted in Border Control, Budget, Crime, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 6 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for December 24, 2022

    Saturday, December 24th, 2022

    I just ran out of time to post all the links I had for yesterday’s LinkSwarm, so here’s the rest.

  • “Life expectancy in the US declined by 5% last year, lowest level since 1996.”

    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.

  • Speaking of unexpected post-Flu Manchu deaths, Pfizer and Moderna are suing each other.

    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.

  • Commies never change.

    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.”

  • “‘Hyde Amendment’ Equivalent for Gender Modification Filed in Texas House.”

    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.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Even Sweden is done with the transexual nonsense.

    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.

  • “Oh look, Biden’s cross-dressing, women’s-luggage-stealing nuclear waste official also helped craft an LGBT school policy adopted by districts around the country.” Maybe we shouldn’t have freaks like Sam Brinton running the asylum.
  • How come a Dalton, GA Walmart has sex toys being sold next to children’s toothbrushes?
  • 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.

  • “‘Walk Away’ Founder Brandon Straka Sues MSNBC Hosts For Defamation Over False Statements.”
  • YouTube bans Pornhub.

    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.

  • Dispatches from Generation Eloi: “NYC Students Refuse To Leave Campus Building Until They’re Given All “A” Grades.” I’d not only give them all Fs, I’d erase any earned credits and expel them without a refund. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “Texas Legislator Files Prohibition Against Higher Education Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Offices.”

    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.”

    Faster, please.

  • Weather update: Some power outages in central Texas, but no more than 2-3 thousand. As of this writing, the outage map only shows 109 homes without power in the Austin area.

    • Merry Christmas!

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    Posted in Austin, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Jihad, Media Watch, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 1 Comment »

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