The Senate’s bad border deal goes down badly, Big Brother is (still) watching you, Netanyahu tells everyone calling for a Gaza ceasefire to stick it in their murder tunnels, more Democrats arrested for (or convicted of) fraud, and a tiny bit of Disney news. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Republicans took one look at the abomination of a “bipartisan” border deal and declared it dead on arrival.
In a key vote on Wednesday, Senate Republicans moved to block the long-anticipated bipartisan border deal, which ties border-security provisions to aid for both Israel and Ukraine.
The bill was blocked in a 49 to 50 procedural vote, with only four Republicans joining Democrats in backing the legislation. The bill needed 60 votes to advance.
This setback comes after months of negotiations between Senate Republicans and Democrats on a measure President Joe Biden strongly requested. While the GOP wants more resources allocated toward the southern border, House Republicans and former president Donald Trump have made it clear they don’t want the legislation tied to foreign aid.
Hours after the bill’s details were revealed Sunday night, House GOP leaders rejected the package and declared it “DEAD on arrival in the House.”
Trump, who has made the border crisis a central issue of his 2024 presidential campaign, also weighed in on the border deal earlier this week. “Don’t be STUPID!!! We need a separate Border and Immigration Bill. It should not be tied to foreign aid in any way, shape, or form!” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Before the Senate voted on the matter, Biden blamed Trump for Republicans’ fierce opposition to the bill.
“Now, all indications are this bill won’t even move forward to the Senate floor,” Biden said Tuesday. “Why? A simple reason: Donald Trump.”
Hey Biden, I’m already going to vote for Trump. You don’t need to keep giving me new reasons.
The $118 billion Senate proposal includes about $60 billion in Ukraine funding, $14 billion in Israel aid, and $20 billion in border-security improvements, among various other items listed in the legislative package.
Senators James Lankford of Oklahoma, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and Mitt Romney of Utah were the only Republicans to vote in favor of the bill on Wednesday.
Lankford should be ashamed to be in such company.
Texas isn’t taking the Biden Administrations abrogation of the rule of law lying down. “Texas Attorney General’s Legal Challenge to Biden Administration’s ‘Asylum Rule’ Will Proceed. A federal judge ruled Texas raised a plausible claim that the federal government is violating the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.”
The Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG) announced a procedural victory in one of its many ongoing lawsuits against the federal government this week, after a federal district judge ruled against a motion by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to dismiss a legal challenge to its “asylum rule,” saying Texas had a plausible constitutional challenge.
According to the OAG, the federal government violated the Appointments Clause in the U.S. Constitution when the DHS granted power to review asylum cases to immigration officers — a power uniquely held under federal statute by immigration judges.
“This case offers a rare opportunity to litigate the application of the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, which states that Congress may only vest the power to appoint “inferior Officers… in the President alone, the Courts of Law, or the Heads of Departments,” the OAG wrote in a press statement regarding the case.
The office explained that by using asylum officers to perform jobs Congress assigned to judges when said officers were not appointed in the same manner, DHS violated the Constitution.
The OAG also argues that asylum officers are granting more noncitizens asylum than otherwise would be entitled to it. This is causing surges at the border and population increases that are in turn increasing the state’s costs relating to the increases, the state says.
“It is tremendously important for Texas and for our Constitutional order that this case is allowed to move forward,” Attorney General Ken Paxton said regarding the case. “The Biden Administration must not be permitted to ignore Congress and violate the Constitution. We take every opportunity to hold Biden accountable for his unlawful overreach.”
Rank-and-file Border Patrol agents have slammed the Senate’s $118B Senate funding bill that would guarantee 1.5 million illegal migrants entry to the United States, while sending the majority of funds to Ukraine ($60B+) and Israel ($14.1B).
Snip.
“Now that I’ve seen more of it, they can respectfully go fuck themselves. The more I’m seeing the more it just puts what they’ve been doing in writing. You want to shut this down, it’s real easy. Team up [the Department of Defense] with DHS and let us enforce like we were supposed to,” one agent told the Caller, adding “I feel like we are the only nation in the world that is this dumb about the border. Maybe it’s because we haven’t.”
Oh, and “Aliens from noncontiguous countries shall not be included in the sum of aliens encountered.” Did America’s enemies write this thing?
Cruz went on to say he knew [the Biden border bill] “had zero chance of passage” and that the entire purpose of the bill was to give “political camouflage to Democrats running in November.”
“Joe Biden can secure the border any day he wants,” Cruz said. “He doesn’t want to.”
The Secure the Border Act, which passed in the lower chamber as as House Resolution (H.R.) 2, was introduced to the Senate by Cruz in September of 2023, a fact he highlighted Wednesday, saying to “give me Ukraine aid and H.R. 2 and I’ll vote for that.”
H.R. 2 would have continued construction of the border wall, reinstated the “remain in Mexico” policy, and added border patrol agents and technology for both the southern and northern borders.
“Democrats do not want to secure the border; they want this invasion,” Cruz continued. “The Americans who are dying as a result, they’re [Democrats] willing to look the other way.”
A few weeks ago, Ohio congressman and Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan’s office released a letter to Noah Bishoff, the former director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, an arm of the Treasury Department. Jordan’s team was asking Bishoff for answers about why FinCEN had “distributed slides, prepared by a financial institution,” detailing how other private companies might use MCC transaction codes to “detect customers whose transactions may reflect ‘potential active shooters.’”
The slide suggested the “financial company” was sorting for terms like “Trump” and “MAGA,” and watching for purchases of small arms and sporting goods, or purchases in places like pawn shops or Cabela’s, to identify financial threats.
Jordan’s letter to Bishoff went on:
According to this analysis, FinCEN warned financial institutions of “extremism” indicators that include “transportation charges, such as bus tickets, rental cars, or plane tickets, for travel to areas with no apparent purpose,” or “the purchase of books (including religious texts) and subscriptions to other media containing extremist views.”
During the Twitter Files, we searched for snapshots of the company’s denylist algorithms, i.e. whatever rules the platform was using to deamplify or remove users. We knew they had them, because they were alluded to often in documents (a report on the denylist is_Russian, which included Jill Stein and Julian Assange, was one example).
However, we never found anything like the snapshot Jordan’s team just published:
The highlighted portion shows how algorithmic analysis works in financial surveillance.
First compile a list of naughty behaviors, in the form of MCC codes for guns, sporting goods, and pawn shops.
Then, create rules: $2,500 worth of transactions in the forbidden codes, or a number showing that more than 50% of the customer’s transactions are the wrong kind, might trigger a response.
The Committee wasn’t able to specify what the responses were in this instance, but from previous experience covering anti-money-laundering (AML) techniques at banks like HSBC, a good guess would be generation of something like Suspcious Activity Reports, which can lead to a customer being debanked.
If Facebook, Twitter, and Google have already shown a tendency toward wide-scale monitoring of speech and the use of subtle levers to apply pressure on attitudes, financial companies can use records of transactions to penetrate individual behaviors far more deeply. Especially if enhanced by AI, a financial history can give almost any institution an immediate, unpleasantly accurate outline of anyone’s life, habits, and secrets. Worse, they can couple that picture with a powerful disciplinary lever, in the form of the threat of closed accounts or reduced access to payment services or credit. Jordan’s slide is a picture of the birth of the political credit score.
Tiabbi says worse revelations are to come…
“Netanyahu Rejects Hamas Cease-Fire Demands, Vows to Fight until ‘Absolute Victory.'”
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Hamas cease-fire demands on Wednesday, vowing to fight on until “absolute victory.”
Netanyahu made the comments shortly after meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who arrived in the region Tuesday night after meeting with leaders of Qatar and Egypt in the most serious diplomatic push of the war to secure a cease-fire agreement. Through these diplomatic channels, Hamas presented Israel with a proposal for a three-stage cease-fire that would last for 135 days and culminate in the end of the war.
“Surrendering to Hamas’s delusional demands that we heard now not only won’t lead to freeing the captives, it will just invite another massacre.”
Indeed.
The Special Counsel’s report on Biden’s mishandling paints a picture of Biden’s mental decline we all know is true but which the media refuses to report.
President Biden couldn’t even remember when he was vice president or when his son Beau had died, leading special counsel Robert Hur to conclude that he could not bring charges for mishandling of classified documents, because a jury would see the president “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
In a report, Robert Hur concluded that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” But he declined to issue any charges, in part because Biden’s poor recollection would make him hard to convict.
If you want to see Fani Willis taken down only the way Ace of Spades can, then I direct your attention to “CashApp Cougar Fani Willis: Okay, Fine, So I Used Taxpayer Money to Hire a Human Meat-Mallet to Pound My Snizz Into Thin Tender Strips Like Veal Scallopini.” (Hat tip: Reader Tig if Brue.)
Members of the Austin American-Statesman took one look at the vast wave of layoffs hitting newsrooms across the country and decided “Now is the perfect time to go on strike!” (Note: Elon Musk should buy the name, fire everyone, and build a national quality newspaper from scratch.)
Dell demands all workers (no matter how far away) return to the office. Those who don’t will be “placed on a ‘career limiting’ fully remote contract. In my experience, working for Dell is itself career limiting…
Budget drag race community comes together to help fan with terminal brain tumor who’s also the happiest guy they know. “Don’t feel bad for me. Everyone’s terminal.”
Superman gets tired of Iran’s catspaws tugging on his cape, the Biden Recession has both inflation and budget deficits soaring, another polar vortex barrels down on Texas, and the crazy-eyed girlfriend of a corrupt Democrat shows up on the Epstein list. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen just had to keep fucking around, so now they’ve found out.
The U.S. and Britain launched air strikes in Yemen on Thursday in response to the Iran-backed Houthis’ recent attacks against vessels in the Red Sea.
The strikes came hours after White House national-security spokesman John Kirby called on the Houthis to “stop these attacks” and warned that the group would “bear the consequences for any failure to do so.”
The militants have launched 27 attacks on vessels in the Red Sea since November 19, the U.S. military said earlier on Thursday. The group says the attacks are in protest of the Israel–Hamas war.
The retaliatory strikes targeted a source of the group’s attacks, Bloomberg News reported, noting that heavy explosions were seen in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa and the port city of Al Hudaydah. The attacks were carried out with support from Australia, the Netherlands, Bahrain, and Canada, while the U.K. contributed aircraft.
President Biden confirmed the strikes in a statement on Thursday evening, explaining that the action was “in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea — including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history.”
“These attacks have endangered U.S. personnel, civilian mariners, and our partners, jeopardized trade, and threatened freedom of navigation,” he said, noting that more than 50 countries had been impacted by the attacks on commercial shipping, while crews from more than 20 countries have been threatened or taken hostage in acts of piracy.
“More than 2,000 ships have been forced to divert thousands of miles to avoid the Red Sea — which can cause weeks of delays in product shipping times. And on January 9, Houthis launched their largest attack to date — directly targeting American ships,” Biden said.
Suchomimus has taken a break from his Ukraine war work to do a video on the strike:
Plus another one on the locations hit:
Is there a Habitual Linecrosser video for this strike? Yes, yes there is:
The Biden Recession bites even deeper, with higher inflation and record food prices. And those are just the official numbers. Food inflation seems a hell of a lot higher than official numbers are letting on…
Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis appointed a former romantic partner to lead the prosecution against the former president and his associates, a former Trump campaign official and co-defendant alleged in a court filing late Monday.
“The district attorney and the special prosecutor have been seen in private together in and about the Atlanta area and believed to have co-habited in some form or fashion at a location owned by neither of them,” the court document submitted by Michael Roman’s legal representatives argues. Roman served briefly as a special assistant and researcher to President Trump.
The submission does not offer any explicit proof of the DA’s connection to special prosecutor Nathan Wade, but instead claims “sources close to both the special prosecutor and the district attorney have confirmed they had an ongoing, personal relationship.” Wade was paid over half a million dollars throughout his involvement in the Trump election-interference case, which Willis has overseen and authorized.
How long until the radical left argues that it’s perfectly normal with elected black female Democrats like Fani Willis and Kamala Harris to commit adultery with other Democrats to further their career, and it’s just those right-wing troglodytes who are hung up over it?
It’s a problem in the western world that is rarely discussed in the media beyond puff-piece articles and glancing polls that avoid connecting the dots. The precipitous decline of dating, committed relationships and marriage along with a flatline in population in the past couple decades in the US is treated as a novelty issue rather than the threat to the stability of civilization that it actually is. History shows that without the traditional family structure, numerous ugly societal consequences follow.
One could argue, though, that the situation is far worse than that. We may be heading into a future where families become a novelty, and many argue that the root cause is feminism and the hyperinflated delusions of progressive women.
In order to understand the problem we have to look at the stats.
More than 50% of American women are still childless by age 30. By age 35 fertility goes into steep decline with women having a 15% chance of becoming pregnant, and a less than 5% chance of motherhood at age 40. Meaning, the best window of opportunity for women to find a compatible partner and build a family is in their 20s.
Feminists argue, though, that this is the time in a woman’s life when they should be building a career and having fun. Family life, they say, is an artificial prison “created by the patriarchy” in order to oppress the fairer sex. Corporate media and Hollywood entertainment often reinforce this narrative and encourage unrealistic life goals.
The propaganda has generated what many refer to as the “Female Happiness Paradox.” Surveys show that increased power, job access and responsibility for women in society since the 1970s has also led to a diametrically opposed decline in overall happiness for those same women. The correlation suggests the exact opposite of what feminism originally promised and that the ideology has been a net negative.
Though some will argue that a general decline in economic conditions is the real cause, surveys show that women have suffered a far more pronounced drop in happiness compared to men. Meaning, men were already acclimated to the struggles of the workaday world and their roles as providers and protectors. Women were happy until they joined men in the trenches.
For men, the reaction has been to back away from the dating scene and the double standards involved. Over 63% of men under the age of 30 are now single; that’s up from 51% in 2019. The majority of single men say this is by choice and that they are seeking to avoid relationships altogether. Why? The consensus appears to be that modern western women cost too much money and cause too much trouble.
Fear of failed marriage is one aspect that has the younger generation of men on edge, with family courts still largely in favor of women in divorce settlements and child custody. This is one reason why marriage rates have declined by 60% since the 1970s. However, the obstacles go well beyond divorce and into a new culture of female entitlement.
The word on the street is “Hoeflation”: The dramatic increase in cost for men today to maintain a relationship with a woman while the quality of women continues to go down. That is to say, it is an increase in female expectations vs what they bring to the table in a relationship.
In other words, women of the past used to have something to offer beyond sexual companionship, from greater femininity, greater potential for motherhood, less combativeness and narcissism, as well as a superior ability to raise children and maintain a home. Such traits are highly attractive to men even after 60 years of widespread feminism, but are seen as non-existent among women under 30 in 2023.
It should be noted that “Hoeflation” seems to be directly linked to progressive influences, and not all women fall into this category. Unfortunately, around 71% of young women identify with progressive beliefs, as opposed to young men who are only 53% progressive. It should also be noted that progressive today means something a lot different from what it meant in the 1990s (progressive now means woke, or extreme leftist cultism).
Terrified journalists being forced to kneel in a TV studio by gunmen pointing high-powered weapons at their heads as the cameras rolled, police officers pleading for their lives after being kidnapped on duty.
The scenes which have unfolded in Ecuador show the extent to which this once peaceful haven in Latin America has descended into violence.
Snip.
Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, has ordered the armed forces to restore order in the country after days of unrest which saw two gang leaders escape from jail, prison guards held hostage, and explosive devices set off in a number of cities across the country.
In the most dramatic attack, a group of armed men forced their way into the studios of TC Television in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, and tried to force one of the presenters to read out a message live on air.
The gunmen were eventually overpowered by soldiers and have been arrested but the live footage of the stand-off between the hooded men and the armed forces while TC staff cowered on the floor has terrified Ecuadoreans.
“Ohio House Votes to Override DeWine’s Veto of Bill Banning Child Gender Medicalization.” An Ohio senate vote on overriding the veto is scheduled for January 24.
Second Amendment victory: ” In Stunning About-Face, 9th Circuit Prohibits California from Banning Concealed Carry in Public Places.”
From the court’s Order Granting Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction:
California will not allow concealed carry permitholders to effectively practice what the Second Amendment promises. [The new law’s] coverage is sweeping, repugnant to the Second Amendment, and openly defiant of the Supreme Court. The law designates twenty-six categories of places, such as hospitals, public transportation, places that sell liquor for on-site consumption, playgrounds, parks, casinos, stadiums, libraries, amusement parks, zoos, places of worship, and banks, as “sensitive places” where concealed carry permitholders cannot carry their handguns. SB2 turns nearly every public place in California into a “sensitive place,” effectively abolishing the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding and exceptionally qualified citizens to be armed and to defend themselves in public.
Slowly but surely, Bruen is stopping the gun grabbers dead in their tracks.
“Director of ‘Bronx Rises Against Gun Violence,’ Caught With Illegal Guns, Sentenced To Prison…Michael Rodriguez, 49, the now-former director of “Bronx Rises Against Gun Violence” was sentenced to ten years in state prison following his arrest last summer on drug and gun charges.”
Nearly 59,000 registered Pennsylvania Democrats left the party in 2023; that makes more voters than fans needed to fill the capacity of the Franklin Field Football Stadium at the University of Pennsylvania.
Of those nearly 59,000 who left the Democratic Party, 36,950 switched to the Republican party, and 21,644 switched their party affiliation to “other,” the category the Pennsylvania Department of State uses in its data to cover parties such as Green and Libertarian.
“As the Democrat Party tilts further to the progressive left, more historically traditional, working-class families are moving to the Republican Party, both in terms of how they vote and how they’re registered,” conservative political strategist Charlie Gerow told the Epoch Times.
Scary traffic controller incompetence via Instapundit:
Holy smokes this is terrifying. Female Air traffic controller argues with a pilot who’s been flying for 15 years about a landing and says she “googled it” so she’s right and knows best.
DTO is the airport for Denton, Texas, a college town northwest of Fort Worth.
“Georgia Tech researchers claim they have created ‘the world’s first functional semiconductor made from graphene.’ Importantly, the research team’s epitaxial graphene is claimed to be compatible with conventional microelectronics processing methods and is thus a realistic silicon alternative. Moreover, this refined material achieves a desirable band gap for electronics applications and has latent potential for future quantum computing devices.” Higher band gap is necessary for switching a circuit from on to off; it’s what puts the “semi” in “semiconductors.”
Billions of insects are predicted to burst out of the ground in the United States during late spring, in an event which hasn’t happened for more than 200 years.
The red-eyed, winged insects called periodical cicadas, emerge in 13 to 17-year cycles and are completely harmless.
In 2024, two of these groups – called Brood XIII (meaning 13) and Brood XIX (19) – are predicted to burst from the ground together for the first time since 1803.
The US states of Wisconsin and Illinois will be mainly affected as billions of the bugs making a loud clicking noise will fill the air, cover branches, sign posts and pavements for about a month later this year.
Interesting how the BBC feels it has to explain what Roman numerals mean…
“Three Austin Police Department (APD) SWAT officers have been cleared by a Travis County grand jury following a deadly shooting last year.” As well they should be. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Another day, another machete wielding lunatic keeping Austin weird. Steve Adler may be out of office, but his legacy lives on…
The Texans host a playoff game tomorrow after winning three games each in the previous two seasons. But ESPN hates rookie quarterback phenom C. J. Stroud giving all the glory to God.
Nick Saban retires. That’s a lot of turnover among legendary winners in one week…
Echo: “When it comes to casting roles like this, you usually have to choose between fighters who can’t act, or actors who can’t fight. But unfortunately, Alaqua Cox can’t seem to do either…Because she can’t speak, she really needs to sell the performance with her body language and facial expressions. The problem is, she doesn’t seem to have any.”
When news dropped about the six-body Austin-San Antonio murder spree, I thought “Should I do a post on that?”, but didn’t see any political angle. But now one has come to light: The accused spree killer was previously out on bail thanks to yet another George Soros-funded “criminal reform” group.
The 34-year-old male accused of capital murder in the deaths of six people in Travis and Bexar counties on December 5 was previously released on a bond paid by an interest group that favors more lax bond policies, reported San Antonio media outlet KSAT.
The outlet reported that it acquired court documents from Bexar County indicating that the Texas Organizing Project bailed Shane James out of jail in 2022 after he was arrested on misdemeanor family violence charges.
Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar told the public during a news conference on Wednesday afternoon that the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office is working to create the “best case possible before we go to the magistrate” to make sure Shane is not released on bond again.
Salazar provided a timeline of events beginning with James’ arrest in January 2022 on misdemeanor family violence charges. The sheriff explained that James was released from jail on March 7, 2022 and cut off his ankle monitor. Salazar noted that cutting off one’s ankle monitor was not a criminal offense at the time.
Texas lawmakers enacted a law earlier this year making it a felony to cut off an ankle monitor.
Salazar described an encounter with James via a mental health call in which they discovered that he had active warrants on the misdemeanor charges due to removing his ankle monitor. However, the sheriff explained that their options were limited due to the fact that police can take fewer actions on misdemeanor warrants as opposed to felonies.
A nonprofit bankrolled by liberal billionaire George Soros provided over $1.2 million to the left-wing group that previously bailed out the individual charged with killing several people in Texas, including his parents.
Shane James, 34, is accused of killing six people and injuring others in Bexar County and Austin. James served as a U.S. Army Infantry officer from February 2013 to August 2015 and has been charged with several counts of capital murder.
In January 2022, James was charged with aggravated assault against his mother, father and sister, Fox San Antonio reported. Bail records showed he was bonded out by the Texas Organizing Project, a nonprofit focused on progressive issues that helped elect Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales and county Sheriff Javier Salazar.
Meanwhile, the Texas Organizing Project received hefty donations from Soros’ nonprofit before bailing out James.
“The Texas Organizing Project, like its major donor, Mr. Soros, thinks that our justice system is an arbitrary social construct that can be torn down and reshaped however they see fit with no consequences,” the Capital Research Center’s Parker Thayer told Fox News Digital. “There are always consequences, and this time, six people lost their lives because a billionaire wanted to feel morally superior by funding activists with too many college degrees and not enough common sense.”
The Open Society Policy Center, the advocacy nonprofit in the Soros-funded Open Society Foundations network, provided $700,000 to the Texas Organizing Project in 2019 for organizational support.
Later, in 2021, the policy center gave the group $565,000 to “support policy advocacy on democracy reform and government accountability in Texas,” according to its grant database.
Soros’ cash accounted for a sizable chunk of the group’s reported money in both of those years. According to the Texas Organizing Project’s tax forms, the group pulled in $2.3 million in donations in 2019, meaning the $700,000 from the Soros nonprofit accounted for roughly 30% of its cash that year. And in 2021, the Texas Organizing Project received $2.4 million, with the Soros contribution making up nearly a quarter of its contributions.
You may remember Texas Organizing Project because they were one of the Democratic-interest groups that Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo was funneling money to.
James was arrested in January 2022 for three misdemeanor assault charges. The victims were believed to be his parents and a sibling.
“The family said he doesn’t belong in jail; he has mental health issues,” said Sheriff Salazar.
According to Sheriff Salazar and Bexar County booking records, James was bonded out by the Texas Organizing Project on March 7, 2022.
On March 8, 2022, he cut off his ankle monitor.
The last altercation he had with law enforcement was in August 2023 when deputies received a call for a mental health episode at a home on Port Royal in San Antonio where it’s believed James lived with his parents.
It’s the same home where two people were found dead Tuesday night, “tentatively identified” as James’ parents, Phyllis James and Shane Matthew James, Sr.
When Soros prosecutors undercharge and let criminals and lunatics (James appears to be both) walk the streets, innocent citizens are the ones who bear the brunt of their misguided “reform.” In part thanks to Soros money, six people are dead because a psychopath was bailed out rather than kept in custody.
How do you know that a prosecution is politically motivated? When a DA actually makes convicting a police officer a campaign promise. That’s what happened with hard left, Soros-backed Travis County DA Jose Garza charging Austin Police officer Christopher Taylor with murder for the police shooting death of Michael Ramos. That case just resulted in a second mistrial.
The jury deciding the fate of Austin Police Department Officer Christopher Taylor deadlocked after several days of deliberations, prompting state District Judge Dayna Blazey to declare a mistrial.
Prosecutors accused Taylor of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Michael Ramos during a confrontation in April 2020. Taylor shot Ramos as he fled from officers in a vehicle.
Local media reported on Wednesday that jurors heard testimony for three weeks and deliberations had reached their fifth day. Earlier this week, the judge gave the jury a special instruction for deadlocked panels after they signaled they were unable to reach an agreement.
While the government cannot try someone again on the same charge if the defendant is acquitted, a hung jury means prosecutors can seek to try Taylor again to secure a conviction. It is unclear whether the state will choose to take the case to trial again.
The indictment of Ramos was among a set of investigations reopened by Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza after he was elected on the promise of “accountability” for police officers accused of misconduct. Garza won his first term in 2020, the same year protests against police violence overwhelmed the country.
Snip.
[defense attorney Doug] O’Connell consulted with the jury and confirmed that the final vote was eight jurors in favor of acquittal and four in favor of conviction after 34 hours of deliberation. He said Garza was “unable to fulfill his campaign pledge” to secure a guilty verdict against Taylor.
“(Taylor) wants to get this case over with. He wants to be able to get on with his life. This has been hanging over him for over three years now. He distinctly remembers when Mr. Garza came out while he was on the campaign trail and made Chris and this shooting a campaign issue,” O’Connell said.
O’Connell also referenced the recent shooting death of APD Officer Jorge Pastore.
“Chris is very loved, not only by his family but by his coworkers and his friends. I venture to guess that they’re all very frustrated, and for his officer friends and coworkers of course they’re still grieving at the loss of Officer Pastore last weekend, so I imagine this is going to also be difficult for them to deal with,” O’Connell said.
He added that Garza has brought indictments against more law enforcement officers than his three most recent predecessors combined.
It is the second time this year a mistrial has been declared in the case. The first time, the judge determined an impartial jury could not be formed due to jury intimidation.
On similar grounds, Taylor’s defense sought to move the trial to a different county, citing evidence that someone had attempted to intimidate potential jurors by leaving leaflets on their cars.
The defense team even provided affidavits from high-profile attorneys, such as former Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore, supporting the contention that a fair and impartial trial for Taylor cannot be held in Austin due to biased media coverage.
While [prosecutor Dexter] Gilford condemned the police response to the call at the Rosemont at Oak Valley Apartments off Pleasant Valley Road, he admitted Ramos wasn’t perfect.
Gilford said Ramos “burglarized cars” and “was alleged to have been involved with credit cards.”
Then Gilford called Ramos’ half-sister, Clavita McMillan-Brooks, to the stand. She said Ramos was a “jokester” and that their relationship was strained, largely because of his struggles with substance abuse. She’d talked to him about getting sober the last time she saw him.
“He wanted to,” she said, “but he didn’t know how to.”
Travis County Medical Examiner Dr. Keith Pinckard told jurors cocaine, methamphetamine, amphetamine, bath salts and marijuana were all detected in his body during an autopsy.
During cross-examination, Taylor’s attorneys suggested Ramos acted unpredictably as a result of his drug use and his previously documented bipolar disorder.
The gold Prius that Ramos was driving had been reported to police a day before the shooting.
Naturally the Austin hard left named the “Mike Ramos Brigade” in his honor.
Garza’s hostility to APD officers has been well documented. Normally two mistrials would mean the dismissal of all charges against the person being charged. Given what a political football Garza has made of the case, and how much he (and other Soros-backed DAs) hates cops, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Garza try to try Taylor for a third time.
There are some local bond elections on the ballot along with constitutional amendments. Here are my recommendations:
Williamson County
Proposition A: Proposed Roads: There are some 38 road projects included in the bond, totaling some $1.68 billion. Most of these seem to be “small ball” improvements on various roads and interchanges. Williamson is the fifth fastest growing county in the state, and the fourteenth in the country. One legitimate purpose of bonds is to support future growth, and the growth is there. Despite concerns over the out-of-state developers supporting the bond election, I think it best to keep ahead of growth and not be stuck with the sort of traffic nightmares that Austin and Travis County’s long-running refusal to properly plan and fund road growth have created. So despite my well-documented opposition to increased government spending, bonds and taxes, I recommend voting FOR Williamson County Proposition A: Proposed Roads.
Proposition B: Proposed Parks and Recreation: $59 million, some of it for obvious unnecessary pet projects like “Twin Lakes Park projects with YMCA to construct adventure course and expand parking.” Pay for your own damn “adventure course.” As opposed to roads, parks don’t pay for themselves by enabling growth, and should be paid for out of ongoing operating budgets. I recommend voting AGAINST Williamson County Proposition B: Proposed Parks and Recreation.
Travis County
Proposition A – Roadway Capacity and Active Transportation: Some of the items in this $233 million bond package are necessary improvements, but there are too many sops to green priorities (everything seems to have a “bike lane” or “mixed use path”). I recommend voting AGAINST Travis County Proposition A – Roadway Capacity and Active Transportation. Maybe next bond election they can come back with a pared-down bill.
Proposition B – Parks and Open Spaces: $276 million. Once again, parks should be funded out of ongoing revenue, and when it comes to Travis County, it’s useless putting more money into them since they’ll just became trash-strewn campgrounds for drug-addicted transients. I recommend voting AGAINST Travis County Proposition B – Parks and Open Spaces.
Round Rock ISD
No one in Round Rock ISD should receive a raise as long as the current social justice agenda is in place. I recommend voting AGAINST Round Rock ISD Proposition A.
Here’s Texas Scorecard’s roundup, with input from Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, True Texas Project, and the Huffines Liberty Foundation and links to Texas Legislative Council Analysis of the amendments. The Texan also has a roundup.
Here’s my quick and dirty list of propositions and recommendations.
Proposition 1 (HJR 126): Protecting the right to engage in farming, ranching, timber production, horticulture, and wildlife management. This is the “right to farm” bill, which provides a bulwark against local, state and federal interference in food-growing activities, such as were messed with by some states during the 2020 Flu-Manchu panic (such as Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer banning seed sales. And remember, such interference in people growing food on their own land was blessed by the Supreme Court in Wickard vs. Flburn. Recommendation: Vote FOR Proposition 1.
Proposition 2 (SJR 64): Authorizing a local option exemption from ad valorem taxation by a county or municipality of all or part of the appraised value of real property used to operate a child-care facility. Another subsidy for a favored industry. Recommendation: Vote AGAINST Proposition 2.
Proposition 3 (HJR 132): Prohibiting the imposition of an individual wealth or net worth tax, including a tax on the difference between the assets and liabilities of an individual or family. A wealth tax is total commie bullshit. Recommendation: Vote FOR Proposition 3.
Proposition 4 (HJR 2 from the second special session): Authorizing the legislature to establish a temporary limit on the maximum appraised value of real property other than a residence homestead for ad valorem tax purposes; to increase the amount of the exemption from ad valorem taxation by a school district applicable to residence homesteads from $40,000 to $100,000; to adjust the amount of the limitation on school district ad valorem taxes imposed on the residence homesteads of the elderly or disabled to reflect increases in certain exemption amounts; to except certain appropriations to pay for ad valorem tax relief from the constitutional limitation on the rate of growth of appropriations; and to authorize the legislature to provide for a four-year term of office for a member of the board of directors of certain appraisal districts. Well, that’s a mouthful. I don’t care for the little unrelated special interest payoff shoved in at the end, but do appreciate the tax relief, temporary though it may be. Recommendation: Vote FOR Proposition 4.
Proposition 5 (HJR 3): Relating to the Texas University Fund, which provides funding to certain institutions of higher education to achieve national prominence as major research universities and drive the state economy. Our social justice-infected universities need less money, not more, and if they’re not willing to give up being factories for radical leftwing indoctrination, they need hard reboots. Recommendation: Vote AGAINST Proposition 5.
Proposition 6 (SJR 75): Creating the Texas water fund to assist in financing water projects in this state. While there’s a need for various water projects around the state, “creating fund X administered by agency Y for the benefit of entity Z” type schemes always offer the opportunity of abuse, and the principle of subsidiarity demands that local entities pay for their own damn water projects, not rely on off-general budget slush funds. Recommendation: Vote AGAINST Proposition 6.
Proposition 7 (SJR 93): Providing for the creation of the Texas energy fund to support the construction, maintenance, modernization, and operation of electric generating facilities. While Texas needs more reliable grid, I see nothing about this proposition that would prevent the fund from being used to subsidize more of the unreliable “green” energy lawmakers already seem to love subsidizing. To quote the Huffines Foundation: “Proposition 7 would increase the cost of electricity without improving the reliability of the electric grid. It would also accelerate the trend toward ending market competition and putting Texas politicians and bureaucrats in control of the Texas electricity market. Texans should reject more subsidies for electric generators and let politicians know that grid reliability should be increased by ending renewable energy subsidies.” Recommendation: Vote AGAINST Proposition 7.
Proposition 8 (HJR 125): Creating the broadband infrastructure fund to expand high-speed broadband access and assist in the financing of connectivity projects. More corporate welfare for things the state shouldn’t be subsidizing. Recommendation: Vote AGAINST Proposition 8.
Proposition 9 (HJR 2 from the regular session): Authorizing the 88th Legislature to provide a cost-of-living adjustment to certain annuitants of the Teacher Retirement System of Texas. TFR and TTP came out as neutral. While not philosophically opposed, I suggest voting against until there’s an outside audit to confirm that none of this money is being siphoned off into ESG investing. Recommendation: Vote AGAINST Proposition 9.
Proposition 10 (SJR 87): Authorizing the legislature to exempt from ad valorem taxation equipment or inventory held by a manufacturer of medical or biomedical products to protect the Texas healthcare network and strengthen our medical supply chain. More special interests carveouts. Vote AGAINST Proposition 10.
Proposition 11 (SJR 32): Authorizing the legislature to permit conservation and reclamation districts in El Paso County to issue bonds supported by ad valorem taxes to fund the development and maintenance of parks and recreational facilities. El Paso should pay for it’s parks out of general funds, not bonds, since parks don’t generate revenue to pay back bonds. Vote AGAINST Proposition 10.
Proposition 12 (HJR 134): Providing for the abolition of the office of county treasurer in Galveston County. Normally, I’d be for anything that eliminates a government official. But there’s this from TTP: “AGAINST –The current Treasurer campaigned on a promise to eliminate his position, which prompted this legislative action. Since one less government position means less government, we initially supported this amendment. However, we then heard from many conservative activists in the Galveston area who said they don’t want the position to be dissolved because there will be no more accountability to the office and it will be handed to cronies.” I sort of believe this, since my late uncle (who ran a restaurant there) said Galveston was corrupt from top to bottom. No recommendation.
Proposition 13 (HJR 107): Increasing the mandatory age of retirement for state justices and judges. AGAINST. Turnover at least offers the opportunity of breaking up entrenched power.
Proposition 14 (SJR 74): Providing for the creation of the centennial parks conservation fund to be used for the creation and improvement of state parks. More off-budget shenanigans. Vote AGAINST Proposition 12.
Williamson County early voting locations can be found here. Travis County early voting locations can be found here.
Beset with controversy that has culminated in a looming removal trial for incompetency, Nueces County District Attorney Mark Gonzales resigned his office, mooting the case, and immediately announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for United States senator with the intent to challenge incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).
For those unclear on Texas geography, Nueces County is on the Texas gulf coast, and includes Corpus Christi. Trump beat Biden there by a few points in 2020, but Gonzalez won the DA race by three points.
Gonzales has faced criticism from law enforcement organizations and other groups who have described him as “soft on crime,” dismissing high rates of criminal cases and facing a barrage of other accusations such as failing to qualify for office by properly executing a bond and being suspended by the State Bar of Texas for failing to pay annual dues.
The removal lawsuit, brought by attorneys with Citizens Defending Freedom (CDF) on behalf of CDF State Director Colby Wiltse, was endorsed by Nueces County Attorney Jenny Dorsey and was set to go to trial after a district judge approved the case to move forward.
“This is a great day for justice in Nueces County,” Wiltse said in a press release. “Mark Gonzalez, like many of the Soros-aligned District Attorneys across the country redefined the role of the district attorney in the name of social justice, often at the cost of public safety in the communities they swear an oath to protect.”
Gonzales was quick to pivot out of the controversy and into a new political endeavor: launching a campaign for U.S. Senate. He published a campaign video on YouTube wherein he briefly characterized the effort to remove him as “bull—” and stated, “I was such a threat, they tried to remove me from office.”
He joins front runner candidates state Sen. Roland Gutierrez (D-San Antonio) and U.S. Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX-32) in the Democratic primary race for Texas’ U.S. senator, as well as nine other contenders.
Gutierrez only joined the race in July, so I’m not seeing any polling on him yet. Having two candidates with Hispanic surnames probably helps Allred.
Vacancies in the office of district attorney are filled by gubernatorial appointment for the remainder of the unexpired term, meaning Republican Gov. Greg Abbott will decide who the next Nueces County district attorney will be.
Hopefully he’ll appoint someone who will actually, you know, indict criminals.
Speaking of Soros stooges, Dwight made me aware of GarzaWatch, aimed at Soros-backed Travis County DA Jose Garza and backed by some of the Save Austin Now people (Cleo Petricek and Matt Mackowiak), among others. We’ll see if that effort bears any fruit…
[Travis County Democratic] District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg was arrested and charged with drunken driving Friday night in Northwest Travis County…
According to the arrest affidavit, a witness called 911 just after 10:45pm to report a four-door Lexus wandering into the bike lane and then into oncoming traffic while traveling southbound on FM 620 near Comanche Trail. The car was being driven by Lehmberg, according to the affidavit.
Lehmberg told the deputy that she’d had two vodka drinks earlier in the evening and that she was on a prescription beta-blocking drug. According to the arrest affidavit, there was an opened bottle of vodka in the passenger area of the vehicle within reach.
(Sorry for linking to the Austin Chronicle but a lot of the original stories on the arrest no longer seem online.)
Here’s a pro-trip, boys and girls: If you you find yourself driving around at night (well, any time, but especially at night) while drinking from an open vodka bottle (she evidently had a blood alcohol level of .239), you have a problem, and you should seek professional help and/or check yourself into rehab.
Like, the next day.
Eventually Lehmberg spent 45 days in jail and declined to run for reelection, but wasn’t removed from office.
But the thing I remember most about the Lehmberg case was her in restraints…
Eh, not quite like that
…screaming “Call Greg!” (Dwight even bought me a bumper sticker.) The “Greg” in this case was then Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton, who Lehmberg obviously believed would get the charges dismissed.
Ten or twenty years before, that might have happened, but one big reason it didn’t happen in Lehmberg’s case was dashcam footage. (Another was that Travis County LEOs seemed to hate Lehmberg’s guts.)
Speaking of “Call Greg!”, many of the videos of her arrest I previously linked to seem seem to be dead. (It seems more likely for a book to survive 100 years than an online video to last 10.) So here is sort of a compressed “greatest hits” of Lehmberg at the booking station, including the magic phrase:
Some valuable takeaways still true ten years after the fact:
Being drunk makes you stupid.
Belligerent entitlement and threats don’t make police any more likely to let you off (unless, perhaps, your last name is “Biden”).
No, seriously, shut the fuck up. When arrested, remain silent except to ask for your lawyer.
DWI is expensive, even if you don’t kill anybody. At a defensive driving class many moons ago, the instructor noted that it would be cheaper to hire a limo to drive you to Dallas, stay in a five-star hotel, dine at the city’s most expensive restaurant, down three bottles of their most expensive champagne, and have the limo driver drive you back than it would be to pay the legal fees to successfully fight a DWI in court.
I did a search to see what Lehmberg was up to after leaving office, but I couldn’t find out anything. It’s like she dropped off the face of the earth. Hopefully she got some help for her alcoholism.
Democrats being soft on criminals, pedophiles and common sense highlights this week’s LinkSwarm.
Man, there sure seems to be a lot of funny number counting going on in Philadelphia.
Regular readers are well aware that back in July, Zero Hedge first (long before it became a running theme among so-called “macro experts”) pointed out that a gaping 1+ million job differential had opened up between the closely-watched and market-impacting, if easily gamed and manipulated, Establishment Survey and the far more accurate if volatile, Household Survey – the two core components of the monthly non-farm payrolls report.
We first described this divergence in early July, when looking at the June payrolls data, we found that the gap between the Housing and Establishment Surveys had blown out to 1.5 million starting in March when “something snapped.” We described this in “Something Snaps In The US Labor Market: Full, Part-Time Workers Plunge As Multiple Jobholders Soar.”
Since then the difference only got worse, and culminated earlier this month when the gap between the Establishment and Household surveys for the November dataset nearly doubled to a whopping 2.7 million jobs, a bifurcation which we described in “Something Is Rigged: Unexplained, Record 2.7 Million Jobs Gap Emerges In Broken Payrolls Report.”
Snip.
We bring all this up again because late on Dec 13, the Philadelphia Fed published something shocking: as part of the regional Fed’s quarterly reassessment of payrolls in the form of an “early benchmark revision of state payroll employment”, the Philly Fed confirmed what we have been saying since July, namely that US payrolls are overstated by at least 1.1 million, and likely much more!
And the correction came after the midterms! What are the odds?
The Royal Bahamas Police Force took the failed financial tech entrepreneur into custody after the U.S. filed criminal charges against him, according to a press statement. FTX, which Bankman-Fried founded, imploded in November, costing investors millions of dollars in losses. The fallen businessman has been accused of misusing customer funds deposited with FTX to artificially prop up another one of his enterprises: a crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, which he operated simultaneously while seemingly evading financial ethics scrutiny.
Speaking of abusing children: “Former CNN Producer Pleads Guilty In Pedo Scandal. Former CNN producer John Griffin, who worked ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with Chris Cuomo, pleaded guilty on Monday in federal court to using interstate commerce to entice and coerce a 9-year-old girl to engage in sexual activity as his Vermont ski house. This is a different CNN pedophile than Jake Tapper’s former producer, Rick Saleeby, who resigned after it emerged that he solicited sexually explicit photos of an underage girl.”
The mother of an 11-year-old rape victim is suing a George-Soros backed prosecutor in Virginia who let the boy’s rapist walk free, alleging the prosecutor’s actions violated the minor’s civil rights and made him fear for his physical safety.
Amber Reel in November filed the federal lawsuit on behalf of her son after Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney Steve Descano (D.) let the rapist walk. Court filings show Descano was months late in sharing necessary evidence before a September trial, dooming the case and forcing his office to enter into a lesser plea deal with the rapist the same month. Ronnie Reel, who was released on time served, had faced life in prison for forcibly sodomizing the minor. Reel is the victim’s uncle.
This is the second high-profile case in the last month where the Soros prosecutor freed a dangerous offender. In December, Descano struck a plea deal that would clear the record of a man who fired his gun into a crowded Virginia bar. Soros donated more than half a million dollars to Descano’s 2019 campaign.
A grand jury had already indicted Reel in February for sodomy and aggravated sexual battery, and the case was set for trial in September. But Descano’s office didn’t share evidence with the public defender before trial, bungling Reel’s prosecution with its “woefully, woefully missed” deadlines. The case’s presiding judge said Descano’s office did a “disservice to the victim” and was “very concerning to the court.”
Because he dodged a felony sex crime conviction, Reel won’t have to register as a sex offender and won’t be barred from holding jobs in schools or other places that would put him near children. The victim and his mother in their suit say Descano’s “deliberate indifference represents egregious conduct that is shocking to the conscience.”
Speaking of pedophile friendly Democrats: “During the hearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, California [Democratic] Rep. Katie Porter asserted that the phrase “groomer” is a “lie” used to maliciously discriminate against LGBTQ+ people and make them appear to be a “threat.” “You know, this allegation of ‘groomer’ and ‘pedophile,’ it is alleging that a person is criminal somehow and engaged in criminal acts merely because of their gender identity, their sexual orientation, their gender identity.” Yes, if your “gender identity” is “I like to have sex with children,” then yes, you’re a pedophile, and if you tell elementary school children what sort of sex you have, then yes, you’re a groomer.
Former state Sen. Kirk Watson (D-Austin) will be the next mayor of Austin about two decades after he left that same office in the early aughts.
He defeated state Rep. Celia Israel (D-Austin) by a slim margin after finishing second in the general election. He’ll serve as mayor for the next two years before having to seek re-election in 2024 due to redistricting.
Watson lost Travis County, the city’s largest portion, by 17 votes while winning Williamson county by 881 and Hays County by 22. During the general and runoff races, he outspent Israel by a wide margin.
The two candidates sparred over housing and homeless policy during the general election and the runoff. About one-third of the voting population turned out to vote in the runoff versus the November 8 general.
Watson will take over for Mayor Steve Adler after his self-described “disruptive” tenure marked by a lingering homelessness problem, public fallout and a declining relationship with the police department, and a cumbersome and increasingly costly light rail transit project.
The United States has always had kind of a friends and family plan that it sells military gear to, but it has always reserved the very top top top stuff for itself and the Brits. Well, in this calendar year we have already seen the first two exceptions to that policy being made. The United States is sending air-launch cruise missiles and nuclear-powered submarines to the Australians. And now we’re giving Tomahawks to the Japanese, giving both of these countries the ability to independently destroy China’s economic links to the wider world without any additional help from the United States. And this sudden proliferation of countries that can now bring China to their knees independently, this is arguably the biggest strategic development of the Year, even more so than the Ukraine war, because it takes what has become the world’s second largest economy and puts it completely at the mercy of the domestic politics of a third party, and now a fourth party.
Oberlin College finally pays their judgment to Gibson’s Bakery. “The $25 million verdict plus interest and attorney’s fees resulted in an almost $32 million judgment, with interest running at about $4000 per day since June 2019. In all, over $36 million was owed.” Cudos to William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection for his thorough, ongoing coverage of this story from beginning to end.
F-35B fighter crashes in the Metroplex. Fortunately the pilot safely ejected, and it appears that the airplane (which was undergoing testing for Lockheed) looks recoverable. To my untrained eye it looks like a stuck throttle.
