The Austin City Council will consider approval of a $1.18 million universal basic income (UBI) pilot program that will award 85 families $1,000 per month for one year.
It is part of the “Mayors for Guaranteed Income” initiative of which Austin Mayor Steve Adler is a member, along with Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg. “Even prior to the pandemic, people who were working two and three jobs still couldn’t afford basic necessities,” reads that website.
“COVID-19 has only further exposed the economic fragility of most American households, and has disproportionately impacted Black and Brown people.”
At a Monday morning roundtable about the topic, Adler said that a couple years ago when this topic was first broached with him, he was initially “questioning of such a program.”
“There’s always a question about using taxpayer dollars [this way],” Adler said, adding, “[but here the beneficiaries] might know better than we do how to spend this money.”
I’m pretty sure that the average Austin taxpayer knows that they know better how to spend their own money than letting the Austin City Council hand it out to randos. (Actully, I doubt it will be handed out to rando or “deserving” families; I fully expect it to be yet another mechanism to rake off graft to the hard left.)
The first such program began in Stockton, California in 2020 and it has extended to dozens across the country.
On the council’s Thursday agenda, the pilot program falls under the city’s Equity Office and the funding will come out of the General Revenue fund. Chief Equity Officer Brion Oaks said on Monday that the pilot will inform the city of best practices to implement a larger program down the road.
You may remember Brion Oaks from such hits as “Defund The Police And Give All The Money To Leftwing Activists.” What do you think the odds are that the families Oaks will pick for this program will have connections to radical leftwing Democratic social justice activists?
The program’s design, including which families will take part, is still up in the air and will begin to be sorted out after the council approves the item this week. He did say that “housing insecurity” will be prioritized in that selection process — something loosely defined but may include eviction history, poverty status, and applicants’ ability to pay bills on time.
Deadbeats only need apply.
UpTogether, which runs a nationwide private UBI program, is the vendor chosen to oversee the program which is estimated to begin either in late May or early June should the council approve it. Oaks said the $1,000 figure was arrived at as roughly half of the average monthly rent in the City of Austin.
UpTogether is run by FII-NATIONAL, and both of which are run by Jesus Gerena, whose own biography describes UpTogether as “an antiracist change organization.” So the radical leftwing social justice warrior Austin City Council wants to take taxpayer money and have radical social justice warrior Brion Oaks oversee radical social justice warrior-run UpTogether run the program.
Why, it’s almost like a pattern.
What do you want to bet that there will be no external oversight to the program, and that privacy rules will prevent us from ever learning which “families” will be chosen to receive such taxpayer-funded largess?
Even by the standards of welfare statism, this is an egregious misuse of taxpayer money to fund radical leftwing pilot programs.
The City Council will reportedly be voting on this idiocy on Thursday. Austin taxpayers who oppose it should show up and say so.
While testifying before the House Budget Committee yesterday, Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Xavier Becerra affirmed that yes, his department was in favor of taxpayer-funded sex-reassignment surgeries for minors. “So for the record, you favor HHS funding . . . for sex-reassignment surgeries for minors?” Lauren Boebert, (R, Colo.) asked. Becerra answered:
I will do everything I can to defend any American, including children, whether or not they fit the categories you have mentioned or not. And if they talk about gender-affirming care, I am there to protect the rights of any American.
In other words: yes.
Related:
“They’re losing their minds because parents want to protect kids from grooming. Pay attention to this.” pic.twitter.com/j8EhsQi9gM
“Black Lives Matter Secretly Bought a $6 Million House.” I’m shocked, shocked that people who encouraged riots to help out Democrats are corrupt. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Biden: Surely Democrats everywhere will embrace my scaled-back Build Back Better bag of bloated bilge! Kyrsten Sinema: “LOL! Get rekt!”
Neither snow no rain, nor gloom of night, shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. But multiple assaults? Yeah, they’re drawing the line there. So no more mail for a block of Santa Monica, California, until they fix the problem. This is your mail on one-party Democratic control.
Get A Rope Part 1: “Hospital Refuses Father-To-Son Kidney Transplant Over COVID Jab.”
In theory, at least, the role of an organization such as McKinsey is to ask, “Why?” Everyone wants to start a streaming service. Why does yours make sense? If CNN were run by thoughtful people, it might have taken the opportunity to ask some fundamental questions of itself before procuring a new toy: “Who are we?” “What do we do?” “Are we good at it?” “Why do our staff keep getting themselves embroiled in scandals?” “Has anyone heard Brianna Keilar utter a single sentence that might be termed useful?”
Had these questions been asked, it might have dawned on CNN’s leaders that the way in which Brian Stelter sees the network is not, in fact, the way in which anyone else sees the network. Had these questions been asked, it might have become apparent to CNN’s leaders that Americans do not regard CNN and its staff as brave, diligent, indispensable firefighters, that consumers do not believe Jim Acosta to be a hero, and that, when people think about America’s turbulent democracy, the last person who comes to their minds as a fix is Jim Sciutto. Had these questions been asked, CNN’s leaders might have learned that the network’s obsession with Fox is annoying to viewers, and that launching CNN+ with a flagship documentary, The Murdochs: Empire of Influence, would probably send the wrong message. As for the network’s slogan: “The Most Trusted Name in News”? One might as soon call Chris Cuomo a wit.
Thus, the entirely predictable disaster that is unfurling before our eyes. And, thus, CNN’s bafflement that it has become a joke. And what a joke! 10,000 people a day? That’s the size of the home crowd at a Durham Bulls minor-league-baseball game. It’s the number of people who attend “MerPalooza,” a “celebration of mermaids and mermen,” or the international UFO convention and film festival, or BronyCon.
I think this comparison is unfair to BronyCon, which has historically attracted a much lower percentage of sex offenders than CNN…
You would think that by now, even the more dandified blue bloods of Conservative Inc. would have learned something from the Trump uprising about the power of populist and culture war issues. But increasingly it seems like even some of those that didn’t develop full-blown Trump Derangement Syndrome objected not only to Trump’s style, but his actual substance. They seem more afraid of alienating liberal MSM and Hollywood friends over culture war issues than paying attention to outrage among actual voters.
That’s why this Twitter thread is fire.
There are different reasons why some conservatives gravitate to this way of thinking. Some are paid grifters. Some live deep inside the left-wing information sphere and inherit its prejudices, such as the notion cultural combat is toxic for conservatives but OK for lefties.
Some believe they can win ideological struggles without sullying themselves with filthy politics. If they just hold their principles high and visibly disdain effective political strategy, people will someday realize the Right has been right all along, and rally to its banner.
I’m not sure that’s the case. I think a number of them are worried that they’ll be blocked from obtaining cushy corporate-funded sinecures at colleges and think-tanks if they ruffle too many feathers. They want their bread to stay well-buttered, and are willing to keep quiet in order to stay on as some sort of pet opposition as long as the left is willing to throw them occasional “strange new respect” bones and rub their furry bellies.
For these timid elements of conservatism, the worst offense of the Right is questioning the motives of the Left. Nothing makes them spring into action against other conservatives faster than insinuations of bad faith or sinister motives against the Left.
This attitude holds among timid conservatives even as the Left wages all-out war and loudly asserts there are no honest, sincere, good-faith arguments against its agenda. Is there a political argument on the Left that doesn't begin with denying the good intentions of opponents?
They'll tell you it's paranoia and slander to talk about the destructive agenda of the Left even as hyperventilating lefties are busy laying out their agenda with hundreds of social media videos and vowing to destroy anyone who gets in their way.
You don't want to fight an ugly culture war? Well, guess what? EVERYTHING is culture. Everything either feeds into culture, or is shaped by it. The Left gets that, and deployed legions of paid shock troops to capture institutions and corporations while you kept your hands clean.
Now we've arrived at the final destination, the fatal terrain, the fabled Hill to Die On: political and sexual indoctrination of goddamn FIVE YEAR OLDS using public money and state institutions – and it's STILL not time to take the gloves off, huh? Still time for tone policing?
It's as if some conservatives fear the Left's true agenda is so hideous – as carefully laid out by lefties themselves – that if we expose it and speak honestly about it, the public will turn against US for putting such ugliness into their Twitter feeds and Facebook pages.
What that grassroots army of parents needs right now is REPRESENTATION. They're looking for candidates to support at every level. And they need intellectual firepower, ideological support, a movement that understands their concerns and offers a philosophy to illuminate them.
That's where you're supposed to come in, conservatives – from activists to professional pundits. Or do we get another Tea Party debacle where the grassroots gets trashed by the establishment and left to the mercy of grifters because they threatened to rock the boat too hard? /end
The Social Justice Warrior-infected Democratic Party has moved so far, so fast, to such radical extremes, that it’s even woken up the normies. When a school board revolt breaks out in San Francisco, you would think that even the dullest blades in the Conservative Inc. silverware closet would sense the once-in-a-generation realignment opportunities, but no. They seem to be off daydreaming of their next Ahoy cruise or a Jeb! restoration rather than detecting the smell of blood.
The Biden Administration is all-in on slicing off your daughter’s breasts and cutting off your son’s dick. pic.twitter.com/lWrgwSUQeJ
The “moderate” Biden Administration is declaring that it may mutilate your children in the name of transgenderism without telling you. And that’s not a hill to die on? Is there any hill they’ll die on that doesn’t involve marginal tax rates?
These is a giant red wave building to sweep left-wing crazies from power almost everywhere that cuts across all previous demographic, geographic and class lines. Conservative Inc. can ride that wave, or be drowned by it.
Russian forces have retreated from a Ukrainian airfield that was key to their original plan of overthrowing Volodymyr Zelensky’s government.
Hostomel airport, just oustide Kyiv, was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the Ukraine war, as Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, sought to establish an air bridge to the capital.
Control of the airport, 20km from Kyiv, changed hands several times, as Ukrainians at first defended fiercely and then attacked the Russian occupiers.
Five weeks on, the Russians have moved out having failed in their mission, according to a senior US defence official, as it abandons plans to take the capital and shift forces to the east.
This is a huge win for Ukraine, but it also means that surviving Russian forces can shift over to east Ukraine where the war is still hot.
Also: “Ukraine forces pulled off a rare attack on Russian soil Friday when two military helicopters destroyed a fuel depot in the city of Belgorod, situated roughly 40 miles north of the border with Ukraine.”
A key inflation metric monitored by the Federal Reserve soared 6.4 percent in February compared to a a [sic] year ago, reaching a new 40-year high.
The latest price surge, which affected the price of fuel, groceries and other consumer essentials, represents the largest year-over-year increase since January 1982, according to data released by the Commerce Department on Thursday.
Not taking into account food and energy fluctuations, which tend to be more erratic and can overemphasize inflation, the personal consumption expenditures price index, the preferred inflation gauge of the Federal Reserve, jumped 5.4 percent in February from a year prior. Including gas and groceries, PCE surged 6.4 percent.
It’s gonna get worse…
The Biden Administration is evidently all-in on tranny madness and grooming your children:
The Biden Administration has now determined that "gender affirming care" – including puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries – is a right of trans youth and "appropriate" and "necessary" for their health.
The Biden Justice Department will come after states that disagree.
Speaking of DeSantis, he has some pretty sweet talent lined up for this:
Johnny & Ronnie Van Zant, brother of original Lynyrd Skynyrd lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, made DeSantis’s new campaign video, “Sweet Florida,” replete with shots at the press, a dig at Fauci and loads of beach and flag-waving b-roll pic.twitter.com/Wd3F7u466Q
Through brand names like “comprehensive sex education” and one of its parent programs, “Social-Emotional Learning (SEL),” our government schools have been turned into Groomer Schools, and parents are beginning to notice. What many will not understand, however, is that this isn’t just a fluke of our weird and increasingly degenerate times. It is, in fact, a long-purposed Marxist project reaching back into the early 20th century. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, join James Lindsay as he explains the long history of the sexual grooming that has come into our schools through Critical Gender Theory and Queer Theory as they have crept into educational programs.
There’s an hour long video there I haven’t watched all of yet…
Speaking of groomers:
An Oregon elementary school teacher has been arrested near Seattle for two charges of attempted child rape & more. Andrew Bert Hammond, a fourth-grade teacher at Newby Elementary School, allegedly proposed to meet at a hotel & had handcuffs & duct tape. https://t.co/o2aJnzmZpX
Just how bad is the graft, waste and fraud in that $1.5 trillion porkulus bill? This bad. Look over that vast list of special subsidies and ask yourself “How many of these programs are designed to channel taxpayer money into the pockets of Democratic activists.” The answer seems to be “Most of them.”
“8 Joe Biden Scandals Inside Hunter Biden’s MacBook That Corporate Media Just Admitted Is Legit.” China, Ukraine, Russia, etc.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki is leaving for MSNBC. So many angles: A.) Rats, sinking ship. B.) That revolving door between Democratic staffers and the MSM continues apace. C.) I hear she has an offer to star in Chairman of the Board 2.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the supply chain: “22,000 Union Workers At 29 West Coast Ports May Strike…West Coast union dockworkers may strike if they don’t come to an agreement to replace their existing contract with marine terminals. The contract is set to expire at the end of June.” Labor strikes are yet another part of the classic winter of discontent formula the Biden Administration is using to bring back the worst of the 1970s.
Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner has presided over a surge in violent crime, and his new policy promises more of it. Krasner recently announced plans to de-prosecute crimes for offenders aged 18 to 25, ignoring how this age group tends to contain the most violent of criminal defendants.
Krasner’s office has established a new unit that will move some 18-to-25-year-old defendants into “rehabilitative programming” instead of seeking criminal punishments. As Krasner’s data dashboard demonstrates, “rehabilitative programming” is just a euphemism for dismissing charges. Krasner promises that the program will be limited to nonviolent offenses, including drug trafficking and other offenses. (The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that gun crimes will not be included, but Krasner has previously stated that prosecutions for illegal gun possession are “not only ineffective but unjust and racially discriminatory.” The link in the district attorney’s office data dashboard about Philadelphia’s Gun Violence Task Force takes the reader to a page that states “Article Not Found.”)
This new program reflects Krasner’s determination not to think like a prosecutor, but instead to think like the criminal defense lawyer he was. The program was developed by Sangeeta Prasad, a fellow with the district attorney’s office who previously served as a public defender in New York, New Mexico, and Philadelphia. Before assuming her current post, she had no prior experience as a prosecutor, just like Krasner. The chief public defender for Philadelphia has called the new unit “an incredible initiative,” but Philadelphia courts were not invited to the press conference announcing the plan and stated that they were not aware of the experiment.
The new initiative comes at an awkward time. In 2021, Philadelphia experienced the highest number of homicides in its history, and the violence is continuing in 2022. Indeed, Philadelphia homicides have risen every year that Krasner has been in office, as carjackings, shootings, and drug overdoses soar. What makes the policy more bizarre is that it runs counter to decades of criminological research. One of the iron laws of criminal conduct is the so-called age-crime curve, which demonstrates that the majority of serious crimes are committed by defendants between the ages of 15 and 25. This finding obtains around the world and has been replicated time and again.
Speaking of repeat offenders, Millen, Georgia police Officer Larry “Ben” Thompson quit after being caught on tape having public sex while on-duty. Fair enough, but his lengthy record of misdeeds makes you wonder why he wasn’t fired long ago, since he managed to shoot another officer in the arm (“negligent discharge”) and killed a guy in a traffic accident in route to a call. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Nevada/Utah Ponzi scheme leads to FBI shootout. “The alleged $300 million scheme, run by a lawyer named Matthew Beasley, came to a head when FBI agents went to his home earlier this month and Beasley drew a gun on himself, before pointing it at agents, prompting them to shoot him.”
“[Fort Worth Superintendent] Kent Scribner will leave the district this August instead of in 2024, when his contract ends. In response to recent outcry from parents regarding Superintendent Kent Scribner’s support of CRT-based policies, Fort Worth ISD’s school board voted 7-0 to move up Scribner’s last day as superintendent to August 31, 2022.”
Ouch! Texas “Taxpayers’ Property Appraisals Rising 20% to 50% as Supply Chain Disruptions Meet Population Growth.” Austin-Round Rock is slated for the biggest increase, some 35.4%.
Don’t look now, but there’s another big Zero Day Internet infrastructure exploit out in the wild. “Spring4Shell is a remote code execution vulnerability in Spring Framework that can be exploited for remote code execution without authentication.” Spring is a Java framework that’s almost 20 years old, so the issue could potential be lurking in a lot of places…
Speaking of false accusations of racism, Gibson’s Bakery win over Oberlin in court yet again. “A three-judge panel on the Ninth District Court of Appeals issued a unanimous decision to uphold a 2019 ruling by Lorain County Judge John Miraldi, who initially awarded the bakery more than $40 million in punitive and compensatory damages, Cleveland.com reported. However, the sum was later reduced to $25 million, though the bakery was awarded more than $6 million for lawyers’ fees.”
We were driving on the PA Turnpike when a warning came across about sudden snow squalls and possible dangerous highway conditions. We got snow but nothing like THIS! Prayers for all involved. 🙏🏻 pic.twitter.com/IrNX6inRQi
The big scandal in the Hunter Biden Laptop story isn’t Hunter’s deplorable actions, it’s Joe Biden’s corruption.
Investigative reporter Peter Schweizer reiterated what he’s said about Hunter being close to criminal indictment. He said The New York Times “got a lot of cooperation from Team Biden” before they ran the story on Hunter that included their admission that the laptop was, indeed, real. He says Biden’s team was “trying to position themselves.” Of course, this case isn’t really about Hunter but the President of the United States, and a criminal indictment would open up “that whole can of worms” concerning dad’s connections to dirty money and the associated tax issues and huge national security concerns.
Snip.
George Soros, probably the most influential man in Ukraine, is a big part of this story, too. He gave $1 million to the humorously named Democratic Integrity Project, headed by Daniel J. Jones, a former FBI analyst and staffer for California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Jones had started the nonprofit (seems pretty profitable to me) after Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS approached him with the idea of forming the organization. Then, after filling its coffers to the tune of $7 million, Jones turned around and wrote a check to Fusion GPS for $3.3 million. I am not making this up. The same players keep turning up again and again.
Fusion GPS’s task: to research how Russian intelligence operations were affecting elections around the world. And they brought in Hillary’s campaign chairman John Podesta to help. Still not making it up, my friends. This was after Podesta’s and the DNC’s emails had been purloined (the narrative became that they were hacked by Russia) and published by WikiLeaks, to the DNC’s embarrassment.
(Incidentally, John’s lobbyist brother Tony was under investigation at that time for “cashing in” in Ukraine. He was paid $1.2 million to promote a plan conceived, ironically, by Manfort and Gates.)
Then there’s the story you know, the investigation of Burisma by prosecutor Viktor Shokin until then-Vice President Biden got him fired by threatening to withhold a $1 billion loan guarantee. By now everyone has seen the video of Biden bragging about it before a live audience — without mentioning Hunter was on the Burisma board.
There’s much more, involving Soros and an investigation by Shokin’s replacement into a Soros-funded organization, the ironically named Anti-Corruption Action Center (AntAC). This was when the new U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch (remember her from Trump’s impeachment?) gave the prosecutor a list of people not to prosecute, including a founder of AntAC. Second-in-command George Kent had already tried to discourage the prosecutor from investigating. According to reporter John Solomon, their message to Ukrainian officials was this: “Don’t target AntAC in the middle of an American presidential election in which Soros was backing Hillary Clinton to succeed another Soros favorite, Barack Obama.”
There are others in Ukraine tied to both the Russia hoax and Trump’s impeachment. California Rep. Adam Schiff, running the impeachment, trotted out our diplomatic “experts” from Ukraine to talk about Trump and his “impeachable” phone call to President Zelenskyy. Those were Americans, our diplomatic corps, who’d been telling Ukrainian prosecutors who they could and could not prosecute and treating a Soros-funded organization like some sort of sacred cow. Soros supported Hillary and was Trump’s political enemy. He funded an organization conceived by Glenn Simpson. Something smells like bad borscht.
Questions asked: “Did The New York Times Admit Joe Biden Is Corrupt So Democrats Can Get Rid Of Him?” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Will Rogers once famously said he did not belong to an organised political party because he was a Democrat. Yet today the traditional factiousness of the Democratic coalition has been engulfed by an almost Stalinist attitude that brooks no dissent on its most treasured policies – even though these do not resonate well with the bulk of the electorate.
To recover, Democrats need to find a way back to their historic base of working-class and minority voters, who now seem to be heading to the GOP. Franklin D Roosevelt’s alliance between big cities, small towns, labour unions and farmers was often awkward, but it still achieved remarkable success in restoring US confidence and winning the war. In contrast, President Biden’s boneheaded embrace of a progressive agenda that is widely detested across most of the population may prove to be one of the greatest political blunders of recent American history.
Given the probability of a significant loss in this November’s Midterms, we should expect – and hope for – a full-scale brawl over the party’s trajectory. There needs to be something equivalent to the New Democrats who, under Bill Clinton, revived the party after the devastating defeats of George McGovern and Michael Dukakis in the 1970s and 80s by moving the party to the centre and connecting it to the country’s diverse regions. ‘Too many Americans’, wrote New Democrats Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck in 1989, ‘have come to see the party as inattentive to their economic interests, indifferent if not hostile to their moral sentiments, and ineffective in defence of their national security’.
Snip.
The economic metrics are awful. Despite nominal GDP gains and higher wages, inflation, largely driven by energy prices, has been particularly cruel to minority and working-class voters. Overall, when asked if they are better off now than a year ago, twice as many Americans said ‘worse’ than better in a recent poll.
The cave-in to the greens has increased the Democrats’ economic vulnerability, particularly in the wake of Russian aggression and the continued role of China as the world’s dominant greenhouse-gas emitter. The well-funded American environmental elite lack the grudging sense of realism of their German counterparts, who have been forced to reconsider some of their energy policies in light of the invasion. But in resource-rich America, the green grandees still oppose boosting fossil-fuel energy supplies, despite 80 per cent of voters, and an equal percentage of Democrats, favouring the use of both fossil fuels and renewables. Public support for Net Zero / the Green New Deal hovers around 20 per cent.
Essentially the Democrats’ Net Zero obsession could result in a political disaster. In February, according to Gallup, only two per cent of voters named climate or the environment as their biggest concern, one-fifth the number who named inflation and barely one-tenth the number who cited poor government leadership. Relentless climate scaremongering has not moved the needle among voters. ‘Climate catastrophism’, notes political strategist Ruy Teixeira, is a political ‘loser’, particularly among working-class voters of all races.
Cultural issues represent another fault line between the bulk of the electorate and the tin-eared elites of the party. Democrats’ have embraced what former Bill Clinton strategist James Carville scathingly labels ‘the politics of the faculty lounge’, such as support for the increasingly discredited Black Lives Matter movement and its calls to ‘defund the police’. This idea may be beloved at places like Harvard, but among the less elevated mortals it is widely unpopular, even among minorities, including two of the nation’s Democratic African-American mayors, Houston mayor Sylvester Turner and New York City’s Eric Adams.
Voters view crime as the second-most pressing issue, after the economy and inflation. Here again the survey results are equally distressing for the progressive agenda. Voters, according to one recent survey, blame the Democrats for the current crime wave by a margin of two to one. Moderate Democrats, like retiring Florida congresswoman Stephanie Murphy, herself a refugee from Vietnam, found her support for legislation that would penalise undocumented criminals got her labeled as ‘anti-immigrant’ by the party’s dominant progressive mob.
“Hispanic Texans Overwhelmingly Believe There Is a Border Crisis and Support Security Measures.” “Almost three-quarters of respondents agreed that there is a crisis at the U.S. border with Mexico with only 23 percent disagreeing with that characterization.”
Turns out even Democratic primary voters don’t think you should be talking to kindergartners about sex:
“U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela will resign early from Congress. The South Texas Democrat announced last year that he wouldn’t seek reelection. He’s leaving early to take a job at a law firm.” Yeah, people don’t leave the United States Congress early for a law firm job. There’s something else going on there. (Hat tip: Push Junction, who noted Republicans have a good chance to flip the seat.)
“Hidalgo Staff Allegedly Plotted to Steer $11 Million Contract, ‘Slam the Door’ on Competing Bid, per Warrants. A grand jury investigation found probable cause of tampering with governmental documents and misuse of official information related to a contract awarded to a woman with ties to local and national Democrats.” My working theory is that whenever you see something like this going on, kickbacks, graft and illegal donations to hard left groups and individuals are all but a certainty.
Also: “Hidalgo Says Communications About $11 Million Vaccine Outreach Contract Were Private, Taken Out of Context.” When you’re talking about a public official discussing a public contract using taxpayer money with her public staff, also paid using taxpayer money, there is no such thing as “private.”
Nicholas Moran cautions to avoid drawing too many conclusions from the limited video information coming out of the Russo-Ukranian War. “That tanks unsupported by the other arms are easy prey is tanking 101, and what we are seeing in Ukraine isn’t revolutionary, it’s exactly what you would expect to happen if you send vehicles in unsupported into areas infested with infantry and not denied to enemy air.” Also: We’re only seeing the Ukrainian side because they’re the ones uploading cell phone footage, and an important reminder that an anti-tank hit is not an anti-tank kill. (Previously.)
Borepatch is not impressed with the level of security in the latest online voting scheme.
Heh:
I was robbed at a gas station in NJ last night. After my hands stopped trembling..I managed to call the cops and they were quick to respond and calmed me down….. My money is gone.. the police asked me if I knew who did it..I said yes.. it was pump number 9…
This seems disturbing: “Seven hospitalized ‘including four juveniles’ in mass fentanyl poisoning after deadly drug is released through air vents.” This was in Ohio. So add “aerosolized Fentanyl” to the list of things to worry about…
“United Airlines Rolls Back Vaccine Requirements for Employees. United Airlines announced that it would be changing its policy and that unvaccinated workers would be allowed to return to their normal positions by March 28.” Personally, I’d try to get them to pay through the nose for my return…
Another week, another high-profile staffer quitting Kamala Harris’ office. “On Monday, in the wake of Vice President Kamala Harris’ disastrous visit to Poland, it was reported that her National Security Adviser Nancy McEldowney, will become the latest staffer to leave Harris’ office.”
“Investors at BuzzFeed are reportedly pressuring CEO Jonah Peretti to close down its entire money-losing news operation as senior journalists announced their resignations on Tuesday.” See, the problem here is that they used “Buzzfeed,” “journalists” and “news” all in the same sentence…
Speaking of failing leftwing outlets, the Texas Observer is circling the drain.
In September, the Observer’s editorial staff comprised 13 journalists. As of this month, after a rash of resignations — and one firing — only four of them remain. The five-person business team dwindled to zero in February. This mass exodus, former staffers said, can be traced to a series of board decisions — from the handling of a complaint by former Editor-in-Chief Tristan Ahtone, which led to his resignation; to promising Executive Editor Megan Kimble the top job in the interim, only to pass her over for an outside hire; to unilaterally halting publication of the magazine just days before it went to print.
Read on for the blow-by-blow, but evidently the staff got too uppity for the board of directors and we’re shown the door, with some side orders of “diversity” and “a web-first publication.” I would say this was all good schadenfreude, but I doubt I’ve even thought of the Observer since George W. Bush was governor…
Louis Rossmann finds the same problems plaguing New York City also plague D.C., namely high retail vacancies and general disorder. “It’s literally like somebody just picked up all the problems of New York City, control-C, and control-V them somewhere else.”
Speaking of New York City, Democratic Mayor Eric Adams wants you to know that athletes and actors are simply better than you common peasants, so vaccine mandates don’t apply to them. “The exemption for athletes and entertainers comes ahead of the upcoming baseball season, opening the field for unvaccinated Mets and Yankees to play home games too. Roughly two-thirds of Yankees players and at least ten Mets remain unvaccinated and will now be able to participate, Jon Heyman of the MLB Network noted.” Plus Kyrie Irving on the Brooklyn Nets.
Hunter Biden’s laptop takes another turn in the news cycle, Democrat-connected sex offenders are popping up everywhere, a killer camel, and the return of Florida Man. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
And virtual no Russo-Ukrainian War news, since I did that yesterday.
I would say that everyone outside of the Democratic Media Complex knew that two years ago, but of course, more than half the Democratic Media Complex knew that as well and simply lied about it to get Biden elected.
Got to say this treat aged pretty well.
1. The Hunter Biden laptop story was true. 2. The story implicated Joe Biden in global pay-for-play graft from countries like Russia, China and Ukraine. 3. The #DemocraticMediaComplex suppressed the story because they wanted Biden to win.
The Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo has been transformed into a warzone after the arrest of a top cartel boss. Burning vehicles littered the streets, and heavy gunfighting was reported causing the U.S. consulate to go on lockdown and the U.S. border crossing to be temporarily shut down on Monday.
The chaos erupted late Sunday when Juan Gerardo Trevino, or “El Huevo,” the leader of one faction of the Northeast Cartel, the successor group to the Zetas Cartel, was arrested. He is also a U.S. citizen, a Mexican government official told Reuters. Trevino is on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) list of most wanted cartel members.
Trevino faces a U.S. extradition order for drug trafficking and money laundering.
In response to the arrest, cartel members hijacked and burned vehicles and attacked law enforcement and military personnel.
“During the night of Sunday, there were shootings, burning of trucks, and a grenade attack on the U.S. consulate,” Mexican newspaper El Occidental said.
On Monday, Nuevo Laredo Mayor Carmen Lilia Canturosas warned citizens in the border town to take cover.
The woke want to destroy science. “The giant plan to track diversity in research journals. Efforts to chart and reduce bias in scholarly publishing will ask authors, reviewers and editors to disclose their race or ethnicity.” Translation: Science is not sufficiently biased in favor of our political goals.
According to the latest Winston Group poll, voters still believe Democrats want to defund the police by a 48%-34% margin.
“In terms of what is the position of the Democratic Party, voters tend to believe that Democrats want to defund the police, ” pollsters David Winston and Myra Miller explain. “Among groups outside the Democratic Party, Hispanics believe this is what Democrats want (49%-32%), as do suburban voters (45%-36%). Independents believe this slightly at 41%-33%, but especially conservative independents (61%-20%).”
Despite the efforts to distance themselves from the movement, some in the Democratic Party still openly support defunding the police, which means that the public will continue to believe Democrats still embrace the radical Black Lives Matter. movement, not police.
Federal Reserve raises interest rates .25%, bringing it to .5%. Remember, in order to kill the last bout of inflation, Paul Volker hiked rates up to 20%. There’s a lot more pain ahead…and given the huge amount of quantitative easing centrals banks have done, and the extensive budget deficits most of the governments in the developed world are running, 20% may not be enough.
Researcher Kyle Becker produced in-depth, acclaimed portrait of just how much money Anthony Fauci was making. Result: Forbes fired him. (Hat tip: 357 Magnum.)
The electorate is increasingly pessimistic about the direction in which President Biden and Democrats are steering the country and feel that the party’s priorities do not align with their own.”
What’s the solution?
The pollsters advise that if Democrats want to have “a fighting chance in the midterms – as well as a shot at holding on to the presidency in 2024,” that they need to embark on a “broader course correction back to the center,” and show voters that they are focused on solving quality-of-life issues.
In short, Democrats need to reject their progressive wing and its embrace of big government spending and identity politics.
Indeed, a majority of voters (54 percent) — including 56 percent of independents — explicitly say that they want Biden and Democrats to move closer to the center and embrace more moderate policies versus embracing more liberal policies (18 percent) or staying where they are politically (13 percent).
Most voters (61 percent) also agree that Biden and Democrats are “out of touch with hardworking Americans” and “have been so focused on catering to the far-left wing of the party that they’re ignoring Americans’ day to day concerns” such as “rising prices” and “combatting violent crime.” -The Hill
The top issue for voters is inflation – which sits at its highest level in 40 years – according to 51% of respondents, followed by the economy and job creation (32%). Yet, just 16% of voters believe the economy is Biden’s main focus, and trust Republicans over Democrats to manage it (47% vs. 41%) and control inflation (48% vs. 36%).
Voters also see Biden and Democrats as weak on crime (56%) – perhaps due to four years of Democrats pushing ‘defund the police’ under Trump, while our sitting Vice President raised bail money for BLM rioters.
Speaking of groomers: “Clinton-Connected Haiti Pastor Indicted For Child Sexual Abuse & Assault…The United States is charging pastor Corrigan Clay with child sex abuse after “engaging in illicit sexual conduct” with a Haitian orphan he adopted…Corrigan is the co-founder of the non-profit charity “Apparent Project”, which is a Clinton-connected group selling jewelry, clothing and art made by Haitian orphans.”
Speaking of Democrats being soft on sex offenders, Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley uncovers why Biden Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson deserves to be rejected:
Judge Jackson has a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes, both as a judge and as a policymaker. She’s been advocating for it since law school. This goes beyond “soft on crime.” I’m concerned that this a record that endangers our children
With the Nickel market shuttered after a Chinese stainless steel tycoon was caught with a historic, potentially fatal $8 billion margin call hanging over its head, today the London Metal Exchange announced that it will reopen its nickel market on Wednesday, more than a week after it was closed last Monday, after the Chinese company at the center of the epic short squeeze was bailed out by a consortium of banks led by JPMorgan which is also the largest counterparty to the short (for a detailed breakdown read “The 18 Minutes of Trading Chaos That Broke the Nickel Market”) .
Trading in nickel will resume after Xiang Guangda, whose massive short position equivalent to approximately 150,000 tons of nickel, sent shockwaves across the commodity market last week, announced a standstill with his banks to avoid further margin calls as Bloomberg first reported earlier. Xiang’s Tsingshan Group had been in discussions with banks led by JPMorgan about a loan facility to backstop his short position and said Monday that talks on the funding would continue during the standstill period. As a reminder, Xiang is JPMorgan’s largest counterparty, and owes Jamie Dimon several billion, money which the largest US bank would not receive unless it bailed out the Chinese firm.
If you owe the bank $100,000, you have a problem. If you owe the bank $8 billion, the bank has a problem…
Category: Extremely unexpected horrifying headlines: Petting zoo camel kills two. Not in the zoo, fortunately, as Humpy had busted out of the joint and was on the lam… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
A prominent Black Lives Matter leader in Boston and her husband have been charged with using a $6,000 grant to take at-risk youth to a Philadelphia retreat on themselves – for a getaway to Maryland, restaurants and shopping sprees, among other things.
Monica Cannon-Grant, 41, founder of the nonprofit Violence in Boston, and her husband Clark Grant, 38, were charged Tuesday in an 18-count federal indictment, including charges for wire fraud and making false statements to a mortgage lending business.
In June 2019, she was given a check for $6,000 for a trip to Philly “to give these young men exposure to communities outside of the violence riddled neighborhoods that they navigate daily,” the Boston Globe reported.
Instead, the couple used the money to take a vacation to Maryland, eat at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., Shake Shack and other eateries, and pay for car rentals, Walmart purchases and visits to a nail salon, the feds allege.
The indictment charges them in connection with three separate schemes — defrauding donors, lying on a mortgage application and illegally collecting about $100,000 in pandemic unemployment benefits, according to the Globe.
Clark Grant had already been charged by the feds for allegedly engaging in pandemic-assistance fraud after a raid at the couple’s Taunton home last year.
It seems that a single scam is never enough for these people. They always seem to be working multiple scams, all of which rake off money to their own pockets in the name of Social Justice. Heaven forfend that any of them are ever required to actually work for a living.
One marvels at their failure to do any sort of risk/reward analysis on the potential fallout from getting caught in their scams. Is it really worth years in the federal big house to visit Bubba Gump Shrimp?
As the titular protagonist of a famous novel before it was turned into a hit movie once put it, “Being an idiot is no box of chocolates.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine grinds on, Hunter Biden’s bestie’s going to the big house, a massive voting problem (and possible fraud) winds up in court in Harris County, and a tiny bits on both Amazon and anime.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Not in this LinkSwarm: links on the Zaporizhzhia Ukrainian nuclear reactor, since I’m not sure I can trust any of the information sent out by either side.
It is not foreordained that Russia wins and Ukraine loses. Winning a war is not merely an exercise in numbers or technology. As General George S. Patton observed, “Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory.”
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to quickly topple the Ukrainian government and kill President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the war has widened into a contest involving almost the entire border region shared by the combatants along with the stretch of border between Belarus and Kyiv some 80 miles to the north of Ukraine’s capital city.
Much media attention has been given to Russia’s advances along the Sea of Azov in the south and on the approach to Ukraine’s third-largest city, Odessa, on the shores of the Black Sea as well as the remarkable attack that captured Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia. These Russian successes are discouraging for Ukrainian defenders but, in the grand contest, they matter far less than the battle for Kyiv.
Snip.
There are fascinating signs coming out of what may be a decisive battle to the northwest of Kyiv on the long, winding, secondary road from Chernobyl. This is the road where a 40-mile-long column of Russian vehicles was spotted by satellite. Most of the vehicles are supply trucks. They would be carrying fuel, ammunition, and food for the Russian forces that have advanced to the very outskirts of Kyiv itself but have seemingly been stalled for several days.
Snip.
Out of this come three reports that, if true, suggest the beginnings of a devastating reversal for Russian forces operating northwest of Kyiv.
First, reports today in multiple outlets that Russian Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky was killed in combat by a sniper. Sukhovetsky, 47, was an elite Russian Spetsnaz commando and veteran of Russia’s war in Syria. The commander of the Russian 7th Airborne Division, he was assigned the mission of leading the Russian thrust from Belarus to Kyiv. Men like Sukhovetsky have an outsized presence on the battlefield. They’re inspirational. Their personal leadership at the point of the spear often means the difference between victory and defeat during the fast-paced controlled violence of war. His loss would be devastating to his men and to the organizational momentum of the forces he commanded.
That Sukhovetsky was killed by a sniper suggests that he was personally trying to regain the initiative against Ukrainian forces who had fought him to a standstill.
The second report of merit is the heavy damage sustained in the town of Irpin on the northwest border of Kyiv’s city limits. The damage to this city suggests a major battle — an effort by the Russians to breakthrough. They didn’t.
The final piece of the puzzle is the Battle of Bucha. Ukrainian forces claimed the recapture of Bucha hours after the devastation visited on Irpin. The timing is important here. The Russians tried and failed to take Irpin and then the Ukrainians retook Bucha two miles to the northwest of Irpin.
The roughly 80-mile route from the Belarus-Ukraine border from the Chernobyl salient to Kyiv on the western side of the Dnieper River runs over a secondary asphalt road. This road frequently crosses rivers, runs through small villages, or is bordered on both sides by the eastern extent of the mighty Pripyat Marsh — the geographical feature which defines the border between Ukraine and Belarus.
The road is not able to support a large military force, even if unopposed in an exercise, especially during the spring and fall months during a time the locals call “Rasputitsa” — the mud season. Unfortunately for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his military commanders, Ukrainian soil never froze solid this winter, so the fall Rasputitsa is still a factor.
This is why there have been so many photos coming out from the conflict that show all manner of Russian military vehicles bogged down in the mud. As soon as a vehicle on a narrow road becomes disabled or is destroyed in combat, or as the vehicles maneuver off-road in response to combat, they risk becoming mired. Even if they don’t get stuck in the mud, they end up consuming far more fuel that must be delivered to them than they would were the ground frozen solid.
Thus, that 40-mile-long column of “tanks” is more likely mostly trucks carrying fuel, ammunition, and food to the advanced forces of the Russian 20th Combined Arms Army on the outskirts of Kyiv. That this column hasn’t apparently moved much may mean that the Russian forces just north of Kyiv are running low on basic supplies.
This greatly increases the importance for the Russian army to achieve success to the east of Kyiv where the road network is far more developed and, if the terrain is captured and secured, capable of bringing in the volume of supplies needed to properly surround Kyiv and place it under siege.
In the meantime, the forces near Kyiv may be vulnerable to a Ukrainian counterattack. While some of the Russian conscript soldiers and even the veteran contract troops may be more likely to surrender due to low morale exacerbated by a lack of food and fuel.
In about three weeks, we’ve seen a Vladimir who was “off” go from chess to raising on a busted flush in something that is well beyond “off.” The nuclear escalation is not exactly unexpected, at least if you know a bit about the Soviet playbook for such things. What matters is if he still has full control, and/or the extent to which Dead Hand has been brought online. All I will say is that if his ability to give certain orders has been unofficially curtailed, it would not be the first time. If it hasn’t, it is not a good idea to poke the crazy man with the button via official actions.
And there are a lot of official actions out there that are not going to help in regards the deteriorating man. Among others is Switzerland deciding that they are neutral, but not that neutral. Add to it firm allies who have told him no, even after he just helped them out literally a few weeks ago… Even Xi has said no on some fronts. None of this is likely to slow down the deterioration. Or provide enough of a reality check to get through to him as he rages in his bunker with his captive oligarchs.
And while we are at it, let’s look at the attack itself and the absolute fuck up that it, and subsequent actions by STAVKA (call it what it is), truly are. It was billed as a demonstration of the new Russian way of war, their version of “Shock and Awe.” Problem is, S&A or any other form of blitz is heavily dependent upon superior logistics, something the Soviets nor the Russians have ever had. You need massive amounts of ammo, fuel, parts, and replacement troops to pull it off. Replacement troops not only because of losses, but the need to detail out troops to hold key points as you go. It also requires highly trained troops who know land nav inside and out.
From what I am learning, the order went out to make this happen. The actual order, however, may not have even approached what would be given for a small-unit special ops strike. Contingency plans? Decap. No? Then try for decap again. Decap. Decap. Try it again damnit! There are differing reports on the number of Wagner troops killed or captured, but a good number were sent in on assassination missions. They were not alone. Problem was, they were all alone as the original push down got bogged down; the efforts to do airmobile and airborne ops were shot down (literally in some cases); and, the public is now on high alert to the saboteurs and assassins roaming major cities trying to mark targets, etc. Don’t expect rules of war for those caught marking civilian buildings for strikes. For now, expect a return to grinding Soviet bombardment, civilian casualties be damned.
The fact is, Vladimir has already lost simply because he didn’t win. He is committed, and is committing Russia and all its people, to a long, grinding, bloody slog that is going to have severe economic impacts. Just replacing ammunition, gear, people, is going to have a severe impact. Add to it the growing official and unofficial sanctions? The Russian people are going to feel this one, in ways they never have before. Current Vladimir does not care. He’s lost to that. He has no way to go in and control the country, or even the parts he’s tried so desperately to annex. Even those are likely to slip from him given the current state of “uppitiness” on the part of the Ukrainians.
The Ukrainians have not won. At best they have pushed things into a long grind with some chance of a stalemate. Yet, by doing this they have won. They have prevented the cheap and easy victory on which Vladimir counted. They have forced him into committing military and economic resources he does not have over the long term. Heck, even the short term. Russia’s economy was already teetering, current operations and responses are going to crater it unless something major happens. I’ve lived through a couple of power struggles in the Kremlin; under these circumstances, I hope we all do live through what is to come. A quick clean change of leadership seems unlikely given the Keystone gang we’ve seen so far, but it may be our best hope.
All we can do is wait and see what happens. While current circumstances are not new or unique on many levels, I will note that in my lifetime I’ve never seen a situation like this where key leadership was this insecure. Xi is in some ways hanging by a thread, and knows his enemies in the CCP are looking for any excuse to bring him down. Vladimir we’ve discussed. The Europeans, particularly the Germans? They are not secure either, especially since the Green policies have caused them to firmly place their mouth around Putin’s, er, finger, in regards energy. To see them decide to fund their own military, back off on the idiocy of green (maybe), and truly support the Ukraine strikes more as a desperation move than a rational push. Johnson is a non-entity right now, and not to be taken seriously. Our own dementia patient? Hell, he’s just waiting for his ice cream and to be allowed to go back upstairs to watch Matlock. Those behind him, however, are desperate beyond belief. Not one major stable leader anywhere in the world. That’s a new one and I thought I had about seen it all after watching the Soviets/Russians for more than 40 years now.
No NATO no-fly zone. Good. I very much want to see Putin defeated, but clearly NATO can’t be expected to respond to an attack on a non-member country, and that would be a dangerous escalation.
“More than a year” for $60 million in fraud? Seems a little lite.
The defendant, Devon Archer, was sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison by Manhattan Judge Ronnie Abrams, who said the crime was “too serious” to let him just walk.
“There’s no dispute about the harm caused to real people,” Abrams said, noting that the defrauded tribe, the Oglala Sioux, is one of the poorest in the nation.
Archer will also have to pay more than $15 million in forfeiture by himself and more than $43 million in restitution with his co-defendants in the case.
The convicted fraudster has maintained his innocence and intends to appeal the conviction and sentence, his attorney, Matthew Schwartz, said in court Monday.
In brief statements to Abrams just before Archer was sentenced, he and Schwartz claimed he was taken advantage of by corrupt businessmen who wanted to use him in the scheme.
“He came under the influence of a person he trusted too much and didn’t ask enough questions,” Schwartz said.
“Trusted too much.” Yeah, he trusted he wouldn’t get caught because of his powerful friends.
What are the odds this was the only crooked deal Archer had his fingers into? I’d say pretty close to zero.
The Democrats will suffer historic losses in the November midterms.
This disaster for their party will come about not just because of the Afghanistan debacle, an appeased Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the destruction of the southern border, the supply chain mess, or their support for critical race theory demagoguery.
The culprit for the political wipeout will be out-of-control inflation—and for several reasons.
First, the Biden Administration is in such denial of inflation that it sounds to Americans simply callous and indifferent to the misery it has unleashed.
Biden officials have scoffed at price spikes as “transitory.” Or they have preposterously claimed spiraling costs are a concern only to the elite. They blame the Ukraine crisis. Or they fault the out-of-office bogeyman, Donald Trump.
The administration assures us that consumer prices are only rising at an annualized rate of 7.5 percent—as if the steepest increase in 40 years actually is not all that bad.
Yet the middle class knows that inflation is far worse when it comes to the stuff of life: buying a house, car, gas, meat, or lumber.
Second, inflation is an equal opportunity destroyer of dreams. It undermines rich and poor, Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals. It unites all tribes, all ideologies, all politics against those who are perceived to have birthed the monstrous octopus that squeezes everything and everyone it touches.
The conservative passbook holder sees his meager life savings eaten away. The liberal teacher’s car payments stretch from six to 10 years.
The prospective Republican home buyer sees his hard-earned potential down payment eaten away each month. The Democratic carpenter feels his new higher wages buy even less.
Third, inflation is ubiquitous, inescapable, omnipotent—and humiliating. It destroys personal dignity. And its toxicity is insidious, sort of like seeping, odorless, colorless, but nevertheless lethal carbon monoxide.
Unlike now-unpopular critical race theory, it cannot be avoided for a day. You cannot tune it out like one does the mess in Afghanistan or the now nonexistent southern border. Inflation attacks everyone in 24/7, 360-degree fashion.
It belittles you at the gas station. It downsizes you at the food market. It humiliates you in the obscene real estate market. It makes you look stupid when you are paying for a new car. It ridicules you when you buy lumber. Suddenly you apologize that you really cannot afford your child’s braces.
Fourth, inflation undermines a civil and ordered society. It unleashes a selfish “every man for himself” mentality, the Hobbesian cruelty of a “war of all against all.”
Inflation is the economic and emotional equivalent of smash-and-grab or carjacking. It is a brazen robber in broad daylight that so infuriates Americans by its boldness. It convinces them their very civilization is dying.
“Federal Court Declares Diversity Initiative At Thomas Jefferson High School To Be Unconstitutional.” “Judge Claude Hilton ruled that the county unconstitutionally engineered the reduction of Asian-American students to achieve greater racial diversity.”
Did you know that one of the biggest freight management companies in America was temporarily locked down by a cyberattack? “Expeditors International, a top-five freight management company by revenue, disclosed Wednesday that last month’s cyberattack will have a “material adverse impact” on finances and that it will be late filing its 2021 annual report because of difficulty accessing information on its accounting systems.”
Once again Harris County has drawn scrutiny over a slew of election day problems and may need a court order to continue counting votes beyond a state proscribed deadline.
Issues with elections procedures began days before March 1 as election judges found that supplies were not available for pickup at the appointed time on Friday, February 25. Even after the delayed distribution of supplies on Saturday, election workers complained that many kits were lacking essential equipment.
The situation worsened by Tuesday, and during a conference call with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office (SOS) and representatives from the local Democratic and Republican parties, Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria notified the state that her department may not be able to count all early and election day ballots by the statutory deadline of 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 2.
According to a statement from Secretary of State John Scott, the counting delay was “due only to damaged ballot sheets that must be duplicated before they can be scanned by ballot tabulators at the central count location.”
“Our office stands ready to assist Harris County election officials, and all county election officials throughout the state, in complying with Texas Election Code requirements for accurately tabulating and reporting Primary Election results. We want to ensure that all Texans who have cast a ballot in this year’s Primary Elections can have confidence in the accuracy of results.”
According to the state election code, however, any votes counted after the statutory deadline may not count unless the county obtains a court order. Furthermore, under laws in effect since 1986, failure to deliver precinct election returns by the deadline is a Class B misdemeanor.
Calling the county’s elections problems the “worst in 40 years,” Harris County Republican Party (HCRP) Chair Cindy Siegel told KPRC news, “This has been a complete mess. We’ve had equipment delays, we’ve had equipment problems, equipment wasn’t delivered, we had polls that were unable to be set up.”
In a statement to The Texan, HCRP said that after consulting with the SOS, “if the count does not appear to be near completion in all races by [Wednesday] afternoon, the parties have tentatively agreed to seek a court order to require the Harris County Election Administrator to continue counting beyond the 24-hour deadline required by law, and to enjoin the law to allow the count to continue.”
Responsibility for conducting primary elections falls to the two main political parties, but they have contracted with the Harris County elections division to administer the elections.
Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston) who formerly served as the Harris County voter registrar, called for immediate changes to the elections division.
“[Harris County Judge] Lina Hidalgo must fire her hand-picked election administrator,” Bettencourt told The Texan. “Because if she doesn’t, I don’t think we’re going to have an election in November.”
In 2020, the three Democrats on the Harris County Commissioners Court overruled objections from two Republican commissioners and the Democrat elected voter registrar Ann Harris Bennet to create the new office of elections administrator. Prior to the revamp, the elected county clerk and elected voter registrar managed elections in the state’s largest county.
The commissioners court then appointed Longoria, a former staffer for state Sen. Sylvia Garcia (D-Houston) who had previously run unsuccessfully for Houston City Council, with an annual salary of $190,000.
Under Longoria’s guidance, the county approved $54 million for the elections division last summer which included $14 million to purchase new voting equipment.
Earlier this year, Longoria told commissioners the March primary would cost more than $8.8 million.
In 2020, Harris County received nearly $10 million in grants from Mark Zuckerberg’s Center for Tech and Civic Life and another $1 million in 2021 just before the Texas Legislature restricted such private grants.
According to sources familiar with the equipment, the second page of the paper ballot has been jamming machines and now requires entry by hand. Allegedly, although the early voting period ended Friday,
The question, of course, is whether this is a sign of manifest incompetence, or a sign of widespread attempted vote fraud?
If it was a fraud attempt, we should be grateful that it was bungled so badly in the primary that a lot more attention will be paid.
And the judge didn’t sound pleased:
Update: the "court finds it is required…to impound the precinct election materials in the possession of Ms. Longoria and her staff and for the court to supervise the activities necessary to complete the count…" https://t.co/h1FL7F5XTn
Iowa Republican Governor Kim Reynolds signs bill banning men from women’s sports. I’ll take “Headlines no one would understand 20 years ago” for $400, Alex.
Democratic Party Gaslighting: The Continuing Journeys:
The party that painted this now wants you to believe they support Law Enforcement. Americans won’t forget this — especially not on Election Day. pic.twitter.com/nCBkDmI6yf
— Kari Lake for AZ Governor (@KariLake) March 3, 2022
Ukraine fights back, Biden isn’t going to do jack about it, Kyle Rittenhouse is going to sue everyone, inflation soars, the Canadian “emergency” is ended, disaster looms for Democrats, and Ilhan Omar gets an unusual challenger. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
While reports of the battle are confused and preliminary, it appears that Ukrainian forces counterattacked, shot down some Russian helicopters, and have so far been able to prevent the Russians from landing reinforcements. Initial claims that the Russian force at the airfield had been “destroyed” were later clarified; it now seems that the battle at Gostomel is continuing. It’s easy to understand how crucial this battle is, simply by looking at a map. If the Russians could gain control of the Gostomel airfield, they could score a quick knock-out of the Ukrainian capital as part of what is being called their “decapitation” strategy.
Russian news services are claiming they’ve taken the airfield, but that may be stale news or propaganda.
Ukrainian forces take up positions in Kiev. Also: “Reports that the Ukrainian military has delivered a strike on a Russian airfield in Millerovo, Rostov Oblast have now been confirmed.”
The invasion of Ukraine by the armed forces of Russia at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s orders marks the first time since 1945 that Russia has engaged in a conventional war with a near-peer nation.
Ukraine isn’t restive Warsaw Pact nations, it isn’t Afghanistan, it isn’t Chechnya, it isn’t Georgia, and it isn’t Crimea.
The conflict launched by Putin is on a far grander scale than the invasion of Crimea in 2014, launched as Ukraine’s last pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych, was driven from office in a popular uprising.
Putin, by choosing to reach beyond the ethnic-Russian majority separatist provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas Basin, has decided to end the independent, Western-looking Ukrainian government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and install a pro-Putin quisling.
And while the fog of war, some deliberate mis-and disinformation operations by the combatants, and the far-from-perfect filter of Western media leaves much unknown at this time, what is known is that Zelenskyy is still in power a day after the Russian offensive. Further, the Ukrainian military appears to be taking a toll on the Russians invading from three sides: south across the Pripyat Marshes from Russian satellite Belarus; west from Russia, including Donbas; and north from the Black Sea in the region of Odessa and Transnistria, a Russian client breakaway state in Moldavia.
Modern conventional war is extremely difficult to do well. Imagine being a conductor of an orchestra, all while the audience was lobbing soccer balls at you and your musicians as you perform J.S. Bach’s Chaconne in D — that’s modern warfare. Putin is attempting a highly complicated operation over large distances in the face of a determined foe. Further, he’s doing so with an army largely composed of conscripts serving for only one year.
Since Putin has decided to oust the Ukrainian government, this means that every day Zelenskyy remains in office is another day that adds to Ukrainian national confidence to resist — and another day that Putin looks to have miscalculated.
A Russian Military Ship telling 13 Ukrainian troops on Snake Island to surrender. They were met with a response of " Russian military Ship, go fuck yourself."
Both the EU and the Biden Administration offer sanctions they admit will not do Jack Squat.
FULL DOCUMENT: This is the general license that US Treasury has issued exempting any "energy" related dealings from the sanctions imposed on some of the biggest Russian banks. It's so wide ranging that even includes "wood" as a form of energy exempted | #Ukraine#OOTTpic.twitter.com/3X5t0LFi3W
WATCH: AP reporter roasts Biden's State Department spokesman over the "frankly huge" list of exemptions in Biden's sanctions on Russia.pic.twitter.com/gzAWB4LwMg
Taiwan joins sanctions against Russia, including their semiconductor industry. I don’t know if any fabless Russian chip design company gets their chips fabbed at TSMC, so I’m not sure how badly this hurts their economy in the long run.
It is the West’s wacko environmentalists who handed Russian President Vladimir Putin the leverage and money to invade Crimea in 2014 and Ukraine this week.
Without these wackos, Putin would be just another gangster in charge of a crumbling country, and maybe one on the verge of a revolution to depose him.
But the facts are the facts are the facts, and the facts are these… Thanks to the West’s environmentalists, those smug greenies who are more concerned with carbon output than world peace, this gangster controls much of the energy going to the European Union (E.U.).
Thanks a lot, Greta…
A great mystery:
Under Carter, Russia invaded Afghanistan. Under Obama, Russia took over Crimea. Under Biden, Russia is invading the rest of Ukraine. Russians do land grabs when Democrats control the White House. Democrats get pissed when you point it out. But it is still true.
Biden is demonstrably more hostile to American oil and gas companies than he is to Russian companies, having frozen oil and gas leasesdespite a court order otherwise.
Thanks to Biden’s inflation, the cost of everything is going up. “70 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.”
Fellow former finance reporter Chrystia Freeland — someone I’ve known since we were both expat journalists in Russia in the nineties — announced last week that her native Canada would be making Sorkin’s vision a reality. Freeland arouses strong feelings among old Russia hands. Before the Yeltsin era collapsed, she had consistent, remarkable access to gangster-oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky, who appeared in her Financial Times articles described as aw-shucks humans just doing their best to make sure “big capital” maintained its “necessary role” in Russia’s political life. “Berezovsky was one of several financiers who came together in a last-ditch attempt to keep the Communists out of the Kremlin” was typical Freeland fare in, say, 1998.
Then the Yeltsin era collapsed in corrupt ignominy and Freeland immediately wrote a book called Sale of the Century that identified Yeltsin’s embrace of her former top sources as the “original sin” of Russian capitalism, a “Faustian bargain” that crippled Russia’s chance at true progress. This is Freeland on Yeltsin’s successor in 2000. Note the “Yes, Putin has a reputation for beating the press, but his economic rep is solid!” passage at the end:
It looks as if we’re about to fall in love with Russia all over again…
Compared to the ailing, drink-addled figure Boris Yeltsin cut in his later years, his successor, Vladimir Putin, in the eyes of many western observers, seems refreshingly direct, decisive and energetic… Tony Blair, who has already paid Putin the compliment of a visit to Russia and received the newly installed president in Downing Street in return, has praised him as a strong leader with a reformist vision. Bill Clinton, who recently hot-footed it to Russia, offered the equally sunny appraisal that “when we look at Russia today . . . we see an economy that is growing . . . we see a Russia that has just completed a democratic transfer of power for the first time in a thousand years.”
To be sure, some critics have lamented Putin’s support for the bloody second war in Chechnya, accused him of eroding freedom of the press…and worried aloud that his KGB background and unrepenting loyalty to the honor of that institution could jeopardize Russia’s fragile democratic institutions. But many of even Putin’s fiercest prosecutors seem inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the economy…
Years later, she is somehow Canada’s Finance Minister, and what another friend from our Russia days laughingly describes as “the Nurse Ratched of the New World Order.” At the end of last week, Minister Freeland explained that in expanding its Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) program, her government was “directing Canadian financial institutions to review their relationships with anyone involved in the illegal blockades.”
The Emergencies Act contains language beyond the inventive powers of the best sci-fi writers. It defines a “designated person” — a person eligible for cutoff of financial services — as someone “directly or indirectly” participating in a “public assembly that may reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace.” Directly or indirectly?
She went on to describe the invocation of Canada’s Emergencies Act in the dripping-fake tones of someone trying to put a smile on an insurance claim rejection, with even phrases packed with bad news steered upward in the form of cheery hypotheticals. As in, The names of both individuals and entities as well as crypto wallets? Have been shared? By the RCMP with financial institutions? And accounts have been frozen? As she confirmed this monstrous news about freezing bank accounts, Freeland burst into nervous laughter, looking like Tony Perkins sharing a cheery memory with “mother.”
Angeleno’s tax dollars at work:
A city audit found LA spends $837,000 to house one homeless person. Perhaps this is why Newsom has done everything he can to block my statewide audit.
China is getting a good return on its investment in the Biden clan: “DOJ shuts down China-focused anti-espionage program. The China Initiative is being cast aside largely because of perceptions that it unfairly painted Chinese Americans and U.S. residents of Chinese origin as disloyal.” We can’t let national security stand in the way of political correctness…
In what may be remembered as one of the greatest miracles of all time, it seems that an upcoming American election cycle is set to put an end to the great COVID pandemic in regions that have been clinging to “mitigation” tactics despite them being proven ineffective long ago. What science couldn’t do for blue state governors, politics is about to. Meanwhile, much of the rest of the country has already adopted an “endemic” approach to COVID. In my Indiana community, for instance, school systems have been in-person and maskless for well over a year.
A combination of experience and common sense led local officials to recognize that while COVID was a serious virus, and an often-times unpleasant condition to endure, we just weren’t experiencing the kind of mortality rates or critical hospitalizations that would require the suspension of normal life. If I was guessing, I would say that there are more counties, cities, and communities in the United States like mine than not.
While mainstream media may be drawn like a moth to the bright lights of urban areas with all the restrictions, mandates, and panic-fueled policies enacted there, most Americans have been “living with” the virus for a long time now.
In fact, if my community is any bellwether for the nation, most Americans are already wondering why anyone is still attempting to take a non-endemic approach at this point. The virus has proven itself to be, like all other viruses, prone to seasonal surges that are largely unaltered by our theatrical mitigation techniques. Not that anyone with their head screwed on straight ever thought there was value in wearing a porous cloth mask while standing up at a restaurant, then taking it off while sitting down, but the comical nonsense of mask histrionics is now widely appreciated as a goofy spectator sport. Behold:
So silly. And so as opinion polls continue showing that an ever-increasing number of Americans are infuriated by this nonsense, and that they are done with all the aggressive pandemic restrictions that proved unnecessary a long time ago, a public pivot of massive proportions is underway amongst the political class.
Whether it’s big blue state governors like California’s Gavin Newsom hilariously announcing that he will be transitioning his state to the country’s first “endemic” virus policy – meaning they’re going to start doing some things that Texas, Florida, South Dakota, Indiana, and so many others have been doing for over a year – or whether it’s blue city school boards like San Francisco’s being recalled by angry voters for their abusive and needless shutdown and masking policies, it’s clear where we’re headed.
Despite that, the midterm news for Democrats is not good.
Democrats know that they should be preparing for a brutal showing in this November’s midterm elections. Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the Virginia gubernatorial race last year — and, more to the point, the substance and style of his successful campaign — were the first sign of it.
But the hits have kept on coming. In San Francisco last week, two progressive parents succeeded in their campaign to oust three school-board members for being . . . too progressive. Irked initially at how long it was taking for area schools to reopen for in-person learning during the pandemic, these two single parents did some digging and discovered even more to be upset about: an enormous budget shortfall, an intensive campaign to rename dozens of school buildings, and the replacement of a merit-based admissions program with a diversity-minded lottery, among other issues.
Suggesting just how central education has become to politics, San Francisco’s intensely progressive mayor, London Breed — who last fall violated her own mask mandate at a concert and defended herself by saying she was “feeling the spirit” — endorsed the school-board recall effort.
“My take is that it was really about the frustration of the board of education doing their fundamental job,” Breed said after the results were in. “And that is to make sure that our children are getting educated, that they get back into the classroom. And that did not occur. . . . We failed our children. Parents were upset. The city as a whole was upset, and the decision to recall school-board members was a result of that.”
San Francisco–based writer Gary Kamiya suggests in a piece for the Atlantic that the results of the recall seem to confirm the conservative narrative. Kamiya writes that conservatives have argued “that the Democratic Party is out of step not just with Republicans, but with its own constituents. . . . Progressives rejected such conclusions, insisting that the recall was simply about competence and was driven by an only-in-San-Francisco set of circumstances.” Kamiya concludes that the best way to read the outcome is “closer to the conservative view.” “At a minimum,” Kamiya writes, “the recall demonstrates that ‘woke’ racial politics have their limits, even in one of the wokest cities in the country.”
Over in Texas, meanwhile, failed Senate candidate and failed presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke is gearing up to become a failed gubernatorial candidate, too. Running against incumbent Republican governor Greg Abbott, O’Rourke was most recently seen trying to pretend that he isn’t a fan of radical gun-control measures.
Asked about the promise he made during his run for president that he would “take away AR-15s and AK-47s,” O’Rourke attempted a hard about-face.
“I’m not interested in taking anything from anyone,” he said. “What I want to make sure that we do is defend the Second Amendment. I want to make sure that we protect our fellow Texans far better than we’re doing right now. And that we listen to law enforcement, which Greg Abbott refused to do. He turned his back on them when he signed that permitless-carry bill that endangers the lives of law enforcement in a state that’s seen more cops and sheriff’s deputies gunned down than in any other.”
As Charlie Cooke has noted, this is utter tripe. It also isn’t working. The latest poll of the race from the Dallas Moring News has Abbott up by seven points, 45 percent to 38 percent. O’Rourke himself remains underwater with voters: Only 40 percent view him favorably, while 46 percent say they have an unfavorable view of the candidate.
Republicans win a Jacksonville City Council race:
It's a citywide race, and this result will more or less match the average partisanship of the city for the past decade or so. But this was a Dem-held seat, and losing it in this fashion has to hurt the local party. And doesn't portend well in other races.
Kyle Rittenhouse is finally ready to sue, including lawsuits against Whoopi Goldberg and Cenk Uygur. I hope he bankrupts anyone who called him a white supremacist.
Former Houston Rockets draft bust Royce White is running for Congress as a Republican against “Squad” member Ilhan Omar. Hopefully he can be on the campaign trail more than he was on the floor for the Rockets…
Though quite jaundiced and cynical about the “good intentions” of our national and international elites (political and otherwise), I’ve tried to avoid buying into conspiracy theories about a “great reset” being planned for us by Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum. But now come news that Justin Trudeau wants to make all the “temporary” expanded financial surveillance powers permanent.
As all eyes were trained on the aggressive police sweep of the Ottawa trucker convoy this week, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau’s administration was quietly moving to implement a sweeping expansion of surveillance power at the federal level.
The Trudeau government’s financial war against the truckers has been covered at length. But one underreported aspect of this broader assault on Canadian civil liberties is the effort to bring crowdfunding and payment service providers — two of the most prominent routes for financial transactions on the Internet — under the permanent control of a centralized government authority.
In a February 14 news conference, Canadian finance minister Chrystia Freeland said that the government was using the Emergencies Act to broaden “the scope of Canada’s anti-money-laundering and terrorist financing rules so that they cover crowdfunding platforms and the payment service providers they use.” That broadened power requires all forms of digital transactions, including cryptocurrencies, to be reported to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center of Canada. (I.e., “Fintrac”). “As of today, all crowdfunding platforms and the payment service providers they use must register with Fintrac, and they must report large and suspicious transactions to Fintrac,” Freeland said. She justified the move as a way to “mitigate the risk” of “illicit funds” and “increase the quality and quantity of intelligence received by Fintrac and make more information available to support investigations by law enforcement.” Trudeau, standing behind Freeland at the press conference, nodded his head in agreement.
Freeland said the trucker convoy, which had assembled to protest coronavirus restrictions, had “highlighted the fact” that digital assets and funding mechanisms “weren’t captured” by the Canadian government’s pre-existing surveillance powers. As a result, she said, “the government will also bring forward legislation to provide these authorities to FinTrac on a permanent basis.”
That seems an awful lot less like an emergency measure to deal with honking truckers and more like a naked power grab to further the building of a sinister, ubiquitous surveillance state, doesn’t it? It’s the sort of thing that makes accusations of trying to impose a Chinese-style social credit system on western democracies a lot more credible, doesn’t it?
It doesn’t help that Schwab dresses and talks like a supervillain.
Why do they dress like sci-fi supervillains? Klaus Schwab looks like he could be on the set of Babylon 5 or The Expanse. pic.twitter.com/qgQVUDALDt
James Lindsay has a long thread on Schwab’s book The Fourth Industrial Revolution, his sweeping vision of “a technological fusion of the ‘physical, digital, and biological worlds,’ which is creepy transhumanism under their direction.”
Read this however you want, but this is Schwab's stated objective: to take the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is already naturally underway, and shape it according to his vision. That vision is elsewhere seen to be fascistic, Communist, transhumanist, and under WEF control. pic.twitter.com/6wUigHDpNB
— James Lindsay, useful degenerate (@ConceptualJames) February 21, 2022
Is all this just paranoid pattern-matching confirmation bias? Possibly. Let’s hope so. It probably is crazy to ascribe every baleful trend of recent memory (social justice, creeping authoritarianism, tranny madness, rising crime, pedophilia among left-wing elites, media insistence that ordinary people need to start eating bugs, etc.) to one grand conspiracy. It’s paranoid to ascribe every problem to a single malevolent actor. There are always going to be competing agendas by competing power players. It’s a mistake to assume that all the bad guys, from Schwab to George Soros to Bill Gates to Xi Jinping, are on the same team, working with each other. That way lies madness.
But there sure seems to be a whole lot of something going on.
