Posts Tagged ‘transexual’

Federal Judge Slaps Down Biden Tranny Title IX Rewrite

Wednesday, June 12th, 2024

Another week, Texas legal victory over the Biden Administration’s radical social justice regulatory overreach.

Attorney General Ken Paxton announced today that a federal court has vacated the controversial Title IX guidance nationwide.

The ruling included a permanent injunction against its enforcement against Texas and its schools.

The Biden administration’s 1,500-page rewrite of Title IX added “gender identity” as a protected class and would force K-12 schools to allow boys into girls’ facilities and activities. Schools that refused were threatened with loss of federal education funds.

In response to the rewrite, Gov. Greg Abbott instructed the Texas Education Agency to ignore the new Title IX rule. He later directed all public universities to also ignore the rewrite.

Meanwhile, Paxton sued to stop enforcement of the new rule.

“Joe Biden’s unlawful effort to weaponize Title IX for his extremist agenda has been stopped in its tracks,” said Attorney General Paxton Tuesday. “Threatening to withhold education funding by forcing states to accept ‘transgender’ policies that put women in danger was plainly illegal. Texas has prevailed on behalf of the entire Nation.”

According to the court order, “Rather than promote the equal opportunity, dignity, and respect that Title IX demands for both biological sexes, [the DOE’s] Guidance Documents do the opposite in an effort to advance an agenda wholly divorced from the text, structure, and contemporary context of Title IX. Not to mention, recipients of Title IX funding—including Texas schools—will face an impossible choice: revise policies in compliance with the Guidance Documents but in contravention of state law or face the loss of substantial funding.”

Not to mention being divorced from basic biological reality. If the cells in a person’s body contain XX chromosomes, that person is female. If those cells contain XY chromosomes, then that person is male. No amount of legislation or regulation will ever change that basic reality, no matter how hard the party insists that you must affirm that 2+2=5.

“Thus, to allow [the Biden Administration’s] unlawful action to stand would be to functionally rewrite Title IX in a way that shockingly transforms American education and usurps a major question from Congress,” wrote U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor. “That is not how our democratic system functions.”

There’s more meat worth quoting in the ruling.

Multiple Texas laws and school policies implicate the concept of sex in the educational context. The Texas Education Code prohibits school districts from allowing “a student to compete in an interscholastic athletic competition sponsored or authorized by the district or school that is designated for the biological sex opposite to the student’s biological sex.” TEX. EDUC. CODE § 33.0834. The Board of Trustees for independent school districts “have the exclusive power and duty to govern and oversee the management of the public schools of the district.” Id. § 11.151(b). Pursuant to that oversight power, Texas school districts promulgate additional policies on related issues that mirror § 33.0834. These school districts receive federal funds.

These additional district-specific policies take various forms. For example, some Texas school districts—such as Frisco ISD, Grapevine–Colleyville ISD, and Carroll ISD—mandate that schools within their respective districts maintain separate bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers based on biological sex. These school districts also prohibit the assignment of bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers based on subjective gender identity. Consistent with the biological reality of sex, Carroll ISD precludes district employees from “requir[ing] the use of pronouns that are inconsistent with a student’s or other person’s biological sex.

“The biological reality of sex” is precisely what the left has declared war on.

As part of the radical left’s war against Christianity and the nuclear family, the social justice-infected Democratic party has decided to make pandering to confused and mentally ill men a higher priority than protecting actual women. Despite how deeply unpopular this anti-reality position with the American public, conservatives were initially slow to take up the fight against it, either cowed by histrionic emotional arguments (“If you deny transexualism, you’re literally forcing them to kill themselves!”) or an inability to believe that the something so brazenly absurd is real and not some sort of elaborate joke. But when the Biden Administration tries to rewrite Title IX, a law written to protect women, by executive fiat to mean the exact opposite of the statutory language in order to protect men pretending to be woman at the expense of actual women, then we have to assume that they are very serious indeed.

Texas is fortunate to have a governor and attorney general who are not afraid to fight against the Biden Administration’s war on reality.

LinkSwarm for May 24, 2024

Friday, May 24th, 2024

More worrying signs of inflation, more evidence of Biden family corruption, more creepy child sex offenders, F-35s are stacking up, and an infamous movie may finally have a premiere. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

This is Memorial Day weekend, and in Texas there’s a runoff election on May 28, so be sure to vote if you have a runoff in your area. (There are no Republican runoffs in Williamson County.)

  • The Social Justice revolution is being imposed on Democrats through a handful of the ultrawealthy: “Billionaires Funding Protests Donate Millions To House Dems.”

    House Democrats’ reelection campaigns have accepted $6.5 million from three major political families, which have helped bankroll several student groups participating in the protests. The family members cut most of those checks over the last two years, although some of the donations to longstanding House members came over the last decade.

    The names are well-known among Democratic funding circles: Soros, Rockefeller, and Pritzker. Yet before the anti-Jewish protests swept college campuses over the last few months, their financial ties to the student groups were not widely known. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a member of the same wealthy Pritzker family, is not among the donors.

    Several investigative media reports over the last month have uncovered the extensive financial ties between these families and student groups involved in organizing anti-Israel protests and activism across the country predating the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel and in its aftermath and during Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

    The donors to student groups include George Soros, a billionaire philanthropist and Democratic campaign contributor who helms the Open Society Foundation and his family members; the Pritzkers, the owners of Hyatt Hotels Corporation; and members of the famed Rockefeller family, including relatives of the wealthy American Banker and philanthropist David Rockefeller. The donations have either gone directly to student groups involved in campus demonstrations or to umbrella foundations and organizations, which have, in turn, channeled the funds to the protestors.

    The House Democratic Congressional Committee and the House Majority PAC, which was founded by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and is directly affiliated with the House Democratic leadership, collected most of those funds, nearly $5.5 million by those two Democratic campaign entities alone, FEC records show.

    Meanwhile, 30 House Democrats, including Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and other members of the leadership, received a combined total of $856,858 from the Soros, Pritzker, and Rockefeller families, while a dozen Democratic candidates in competitive races received a total of $139,000. RCP did not examine Senate recipients.

    The House members in competitive races who received funds from at least one of the three families include Reps. Mary Peltola of Alaska, Mike Levin of California, Yadira Caraveo of Colorado, Johana Hayes of Connecticut, Eric Sorensen of Illinois, Frank Mrvan of Indiana, Sharice Davids, Jared Golden, Hillary Scholten, Angie Craig of Minnesota, Don Davis, Chris Pappas of New Hampshire, Gabe Vasquez, of New Mexico, Susie Lee of Nevada, Steven Horsford of Nevada, Paty Ryan of New York, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, Andrea Salinas of Oregon, Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, and Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania.

    Craig’s campaigns have received the most of any other House member from the three families: $96,490 since 2018. Lee’s campaign received the second most: $75,000 since 2017.

    The Democratic candidates who accepted donations from at least one of the three families include Kirsten Engel in Arizona; Adam Gray, Rudy Salas, George Whitesides, and Will Rollins in California; Lanon Baccam in Iowa; Tony Vargas in Nebraska; Lauren Gillen, Mondaire Jones, and Josh Riley in New York; Ashley Ehasz in Pennsylvania; and Michelle Vallejo in Texas.

  • American households gained net worth under Trump. Under Biden, adjusted for inflation, it’s gone negative.
  • Bidenflation is making McDonald’s meals too expensive for ordinary people.

  • Inflation isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. “In fact, the progressive political class does have a plan to deal with the national debt. Their plan is to perpetuate inflation and thereby to engineer a slow-motion stealth default on the debt that will enable them to continue to enjoy without disruption the political benefits that flow to them from their irresponsible debt-funded vote buying.”
  • CIA Blocked Probe Into Hunter’s Hollywood Tax ‘Sugar Brother.'” Of course they did.

    A trove of new whistleblower documents provided to House GOP investigators reveal, among other things, that the CIA prevented federal investigators from pursuing Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris as a witness in their investigation of Hunter Biden.

    Morris, a Hollywood entertainment lawyer who has ‘long supported’ Hunter (and why?) has loaned the First Son more than $6.5 million, according to a January letter to the House oversight committee.

    We’ve known about the CIA connection since March, when the Chairmen of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, Jim Jordan (R-OH) and James Comer (R-KY) said that a whistleblower has brought them information that ‘seems to corroborate our concerns’ that the CIA directly interfered with DOJ and IRS investigations of Hunter Biden.

    According to a whistleblower, the CIA “intervened in the investigation of Hunter biden to prevent the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) from interviewing a witness,” the letter, addressed to CIA Director William Burns, reads.

    Specifically, the Committees were concerned at how “the DOJ deviated from its standard processes to afford preferential treatment to Hunter Biden,” which they learned “after two brave whistleblowers testified to Congress” that the Justice Department had done just that.

  • Try to contain your shock for this one: “New evidence indisputably shows Hunter Biden lied to Congress in at least three separate instances during his February 28, 2024 transcribed interview.

    According to Hunter Biden’s business associate, Devon Archer, he and Hunter Biden were equal owners of Rosemont Seneca Bohai, and that entity was used by both individuals. According to evidence provided by the IRS whistleblowers, Hunter Biden was the beneficial owner of the entity’s associated bank account, which was used to receive Hunter’s salary from Burisma and to receive foreign wires, such as funds allegedly transferred from a Kazakhstani individual through an entity that were then used to purchase a Porsche for Hunter Biden. Congressional investigators questioned Hunter Biden during his February 28th deposition regarding his connection to Rosemont Seneca Bohai, as well as bank accounts associated with the entity.

    (Hat tip: Jim Geraghty at National Review.)

  • Confirming what everyone already knew: Joe Biden lied when he said he never met with Hunter’s business partners. (Hat tip: Charles Glasser at Instapundit.)
  • Progressive Portland DA Ousted as Voters Overwhelmingly Reject Soft-on-Crime Policies.” Former Republican Nathan Vasquez defeated leftwing tool Mike Schmidt, though for some reason National Review omitted the fact that Schmidt has long been backed by George Soros.
  • Biden judge sent a 6’2″ serial child rapist to a women’s prison.
  • Germany just decriminalized child pornography.
  • Tranny surgery increases the risk of suicide twelvefold.
  • Supreme Court upholds South Carolina’s Republican-drawn congressional district maps.
  • New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu dishes the truth on fellow governors. Andrew Cuomo? “Complete jackass. No one like him.” Gavin Newsom? “Just a prick.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Bill Maher Scolds Pearl-Clutching Lefties Over Harrison Butker Tradwife Speech.” For feminists, evidently being a traditional wife and mother isn’t an allowable “choice.”
  • Hmmmm: “Lockheed Running Out Of Parking Space For F-35s Pentagon Refuses To Accept.” “Last summer, the DOD put a complete freeze on accepting the stealth fighters until Lockheed fixed huge hardware and software problems associated with ‘Technology Refresh-3′ (TR-3), a $1.8 billion package intended to expand the planes’ capabilities.”
  • Media Matters for America, the group that thinks American journalists just aren’t leftwing enough, just had a massive layoff, thanks in part to a defamation lawsuit from Elon Musk. Thanks, Elon! (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Electric cars need lithium for batteries.

    I like it…

    One rich source for Lithium has been discovered: groundwater from fracking operations.

  • The Minnesota Republican Party has selected former NBA player Royce White as it’s nominee to run against Democratic incumbent Amy Klobuchar for the senate. Houston Rockets fans will find this a particularly unlikely turn of events, since White never suited up for the Rockets (the team that drafted him) due to a dispute over mental health protocols and White’s fear of flying. At least he should be plenty comfortable on the campaign bus…
  • Red Lobster filed for bankruptcy and is closing 87 locations, none in Austin. Evidently an “Endless Shrimp” promotion was a big contributing factor, which suggests executive learned nothing from the losses they incurred in a similar endless crab promotion in 2003…
  • Computer pioneer C. Gordon Bell, RIP.
  • Woke tranny Dr. Who hits the lowest ratings in 60 years after telling critics not to watch.

  • Could the infamous, uncompleted Jerry Lewis movie The Day the Clown Cried finally be screened this year? Maybe. Lewis gave the footage to the Library of Congress in 2014, specifying it couldn’t be seen for ten years, which puts it next month. But evidently there are a lot of editing required before that debacle could be seen in anything close to final form.
  • Doggie gone. Much sadz.
  • “Biden Placed In Presidential Weeble-Wobble To Keep Him From Falling Down.
  • Still between jobs, so hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    LinkSwarm for May 3, 2024

    Friday, May 3rd, 2024

    More corruption from the Biden family (plus a Texas Democratic congressman), more bad news from the Biden Recession, more pedophile sex offenders, more college madness, and virtue signaling, Third Reich style. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

    And remember: If you’re in a large Texas county, there’s a tax appraisal district election tomorrow, so be sure to get out and vote if you haven’t already voted early.

  • Another week, another corrupt Biden family scheme exposed. “Joe Biden’s Brother Embroiled In High-Ranking Qatari Scheme To ‘Provide Wealth Of Introductions’ Through ‘My Family.'”

    Qatar has had a lot of fingers in a lot of pies. While we knew about the EU’s ‘Qatargate,’ investments with the Kushner family, and of course Sen. Bob Menendez advancing Qatar’s interests, Politico reports that the Biden family’s ties to Qatar “would constitute some of the closest known financial links between a relative of President Joe Biden and a foreign government,” if courtroom testimony about Jim Biden’s foreign fundraising efforts is substantiated.

    In June 2017, Qatar’s neighbors – led by Saudi Arabia, banded together and cut diplomatic ties with the country, citing its alleged support for terrorism. As a result, the country was thrown into a sustained crisis.

    To dig themselves out, Qatari rulers began showering well-connected Westerners with gifts and financial benefits, according to Politico, “sometimes in the form of investment funding.”

    Around this time, Jim Biden was trying to raise $30 million for embattled hospital chain Americore – teaming up with Florida businessman Amer Rustom, CEO of the Platinum Group, who boasted of his ties to officials in the Middle East, as well as fund manager Michael Lewitt. Together, the three sought investment funding from various Middle Eastern sources for Americore and other ventures – “which came to focus largely on Qatar,” according to a former Americore executive who spoke on condition of anonymity.

    According to public records obtained by the outlet, Jim Biden leveraged ties to his older brother and “sought workarounds to restrictions on international money movements,” including one discussion about trying to move money across a Middle Eastern border in the form of gold bars that may or may not have happened.

    Let ye who has never smuggled gold across the border of an Arab country cast the first stone.

    “My family could provide a wealth of introductions and business opportunities at the highest levels that I believe would be worthy of the interest of His Excellency,” Jim Biden and Rustom wrote in a draft letter to an official at the Qatari sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority. “On behalf of the Biden family, I welcome your interest here,” the draft continues.

    Corrupt to the core.

  • More evidence from the Biden recession: “Job Openings Tumble, Quits Plunge, Hires Unexpectedly Crater To January 2018 Levels.”

    After several months of relatively boring JOLTS prints, this morning Janet Yellen’s favorite labor market indicator once again got exciting, and not in a good way.

    Starting at the top, according to the March JOLTS reported, job openings unexpectedly tumbled by 325K – the biggest drop since October 2023 – from an upward revised 8.813 million in February to just 8.488 million, far below the 8.690 million expected – and the lowest number since February 2021 when it last printed below 8 million.

    “Unexpectedly.”

  • “Chinese Nationals Charged With Conspiracy to Export US Technology.”

    The Department of Justice has arrested two Chinese nationals who allegedly plotted to export U.S. technology to advance the People’s Republic of China’s military operations.

    Han Li, 44, and Lin Chen, 64, have been charged with several counts of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), in addition to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), for attempting to export a machine used to process silicon microchips….

    “Specifically, the defendants sought to illegally obtain for CGTC a DTX-150 Automatic Diamond Scriber Breaker machine from Dynatex International, a Santa Rosa, California company.”

    That’s a backend semiconductor machine for slicing finished individual computer chips off a processed wafer.

  • “Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar Indicted on Bribery, Money-Laundering Charges.”

    Representative Henry Cuellar and his wife were indicted by a federal grand jury on bribery, foreign influence, and money-laundering charges, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Friday afternoon.

    The Texas Democrat and his wife are accused of accepting roughly $600,000 in bribes from two foreign entities starting in December 2014 and continuing through 2021. The foreign entities are a Mexican bank and an oil and gas company linked to the government of Azerbaijan, according to the Justice Department.

    In exchange for the bribes, Cuellar agreed to use his office for promoting favorable U.S. foreign policy towards Azarbaijan and pushing legislative and executive branch officials to adopt policy measures beneficial to the bank, authorities said.

    In 2022, Cuellar’s home and office were searched during a federal investigation into Azerbaijan and American businessmen linked to the Middle Eastern nation. Cuellar formerly co-chaired the congressional Azerbaijan caucus.

    Cuellar represents TX28. Republicans Jay Furman and Lazaro Garza Jr. are competing in the runoff to challenge Cuellar this fall.

  • Columbia shows some semblance of a spine, threatens to expel students occupying administrative buildings.
  • Related: “Columbia Student Who Said ‘Zionists Don’t Deserve To Live’ Reportedly ‘Thrown Out Of School.'”
  • Also: “Police Begin Detaining UCLA Protesters Occupying Campus.”
  • “Tucked away in the $95 billion military aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan is a $3.5 billion slush fund to open new processing centers for Muslim migrants, in what Sen. Eric Schmitt described as a bid to “supercharge mass migration from the Middle East.” Republicans in congress asleep at the switch again.
  • Ukraine hits two more oil refineries.
  • It’s not just China that the CCP’s crazy policies are ruining. There are over 500 abandoned, unfinished buildings in Cambodia. A crackdown on online gambling also hastened the demise of many real estate ventures there.
  • Tranny sex offender tries to snatch a child from an elementary playground in broad daylight. “Trans-identifying male Solomon Galligan [simply] walked on campus last Friday afternoon during recess at Black Forest Hills Elementary School in Aurora, Colorado, and straight-up tried to steal a kid.”

    The suspect, who is identified as male in the arrest affidavit, shared news of his transition on Facebook back in 2011.

    ‘So im starting my hormone shots and i relly cant wait im on my hormone pills ive been on them for almost 4 months i wake up all depressed and crying but in the end its gonna be totally worth it you know what io mean im really excited my measurements are already changing and im super thrilled,’ he wrote.

    Galligan was put on the sex offender registry and was convicted that same year of non-consent sexual contact, according to his latest arrest affidavit.

  • Another week, three more Texas teachers arrested for having sex with students.

    Ernest Herrera, 56, was arrested Monday after he admitted to sexual contact with a 13-year-old student, claiming they had “developed a relationship.”

    Herrera taught social studies at Southside Independent School District’s Losoya Middle School in San Antonio.

    He was charged with improper relationship between educator and student, a second-degree felony punishable by 2 to 20 years in prison.

    Herrera was booked into Bexar County Jail and held on a $75,000 bond.

    The district superintendent stated that Herrera was fired “effective immediately.”

    Andrew McCown, 27, was arrested Wednesday and charged with having an “improper relationship” with a 17-year-old female student.

    McCown is a math teacher and football coach at Roosevelt High School in San Antonio’s North East ISD.

    He was reportedly placed on leave in March and will be terminated.

    McCown, who is related to former NFL quarterbacks Josh and Luke McCown, was arrested in 2022 for drunk driving while he was a teacher and coach at Robinson ISD.

    According to a statement to MySA, the district “conducted a background check on April 25, 2023, and at that time, it was clear and McCown was hired.”

    Another football coach, Perryton ISD athletic director Cole Underwood, was arrested Wednesday and charged with sexual assault of a child, a second-degree felony.

    The alleged victim is a Perryton High School student, reportedly a 14-year-old girl.

    Underwood was released from Ochiltree County Jail on Thursday after posting a $125,000 bond.

    According to a statement from Perryton ISD, Underwood resigned.

  • The new York case against Trump isn’t going so well for the prosecution. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • In a poll of Texas voters, Trump leads Biden by 9%, and Ted Cruz leads Democratic challenger Colin Allred by 13%. Usual “polls this far out are meaningless” caveats apply.
  • Four reform candidates elected to NRA board. Now they just need to replace all of Wayne’s cronies on the board for me to rejoin.

  • Democrats passing a “living wage” law for Seattle ensures that they can’t make a living wage.
  • Second Boeing whistleblower dies suddenly.

  • Chinese officials are asking villagers to take out fake business licenses. Is that for their own business scams, or to artificially pump up Chinese economic statistics?

  • Profiles in Cowardice: “PEN America, a leading nonprofit dedicated to free expression, canceled its 2024 World Voices Festival late last week under pressure from pro-Palestinian activists. Many writers affiliated with the organization either threatened to boycott the event unless PEN acceded to certain demands, including labeling Israel’s actions in Gaza ‘genocide,’ or distanced themselves from the free-speech group in response to online pressure from pro-Palestinian activists.”
  • Monroe County, New York, Democratic District Attorney Sandra Doorley wants you to know that she’s simply better than you and doesn’t have to pull over for police.
  • Virtue signaling: Third Reich Edition.
  • Brandon Herrera has both a meme review and an update on his runoff against Tony Gonzalez for TX23.
  • OnlyFans camgirl paid to propagandize for the Biden Administration. It’s a shame she wasn’t paid for sex, since then American taxpayers could see the Biden administration paying money to screw someone other than themselves…
  • Sale of books from the library of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg results in $187,740 loss.
  • “Missionaries Travel From Africa To Bring The Gospel To United Methodist Church.”
  • History Repeats Itself As Communists Run Out Of Food.
  • Hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    Abbott Joins DeSantis In Defying Biden’s Title IX Redefinition

    Tuesday, April 30th, 2024

    Forcing transexism down America’s throat seems to have become a top Democratic Party priority. But now Texas has joined Florida in rejecting the Biden Administration’s unilateral rewrite of Title IX by executive fiat.

    The Biden administration and the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) issued a new Title IX rule that includes changes to how federal civil rights law protects “discrimination based on sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.”

    A key provision in the rule change now “Recognizes that preventing a person from participating in a recipient’s education program or activity consistent with their gender identity subjects that person to more than de minimis harm.”

    The Human Rights Campaign said the new rule will “protect LGBTQ+ students” in addition to reversing “Trump-era changes to Title IX that limited federal funded educational institutions’ obligation to address sexual harassment and assault and clarifies protections for pregnant and parenting students.”

    “For more than 50 years, Title IX has promised an equal opportunity to learn and thrive in our nation’s schools free from sex discrimination,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. “These final regulations build on the legacy of Title IX by clarifying that all our nation’s students can access schools that are safe, welcoming, and respect their rights.”

    Title IX is a federal program that instructs educational institutions that receive federal funds from the DOE to carry out their educational programs “in a nondiscriminatory manner free of discrimination based on sex, including sexual orientation and gender identity.” Included in the issue areas of Title IX are athletics, financial assistance programs, admissions, recruitment, and sex-based harassment investigations.

    The actual text of Title IX as passed in 1972 said nothing about “sexual orientation or gender identity,” rather stating “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

    Not “orientation,” not “gender identity,” sex. As in the biological kind, where those with XX chromosomes are female and those with XY chromosomes are male.

    Gov. Greg Abbott issued a letter Monday to President Biden, saying, “Texas will not adhere to the new rules.”

    “I am instructing the Texas Education Agency to ignore your illegal dictate.”

    Following the Title IX rule changes, Rep. Briscoe Cain (R-Deer Park) penned a letter to Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath.

    “As Commissioner of the Texas Education Agency, I am calling on you to promptly direct all superintendents in Texas to ignore the proposed changes to Title IX,” wrote Cain.

    “Additionally, I am calling on all Texas superintendents to publicly commit to disregarding this directive from the Biden Administration.”

    The Texas Freedom Caucus followed with its own letter to Morath expressing similar concerns, stating they “urge” him to “instruct all Texas superintendents to disregard these proposed alterations.”

    Other state governors and education chiefs in Florida, Louisiana, Montana, and South Carolina have issued similar disregard directives.

    Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis has been particularly vocal in his opposition.

    Florida rejects Joe Biden’s attempts to rewrite Title IX. We will not comply. And we will fight back. We are not going to let Joe Biden try to inject men into women’s activities. We are not going to let Joe Biden undermine the rights of parents. And we are not going to let Joe Biden abuse his constitutional authority to try to impose these policies on us here in Florida…

    We will not comply.

    Back to Texas:

    Attorney General Ken Paxton has also sued the Biden administration and the DOE over the Title IX rule change.

    “Texas will not allow Joe Biden to rewrite Title IX at whim, destroying legal protections for women in furtherance of his radical obsession with gender ideology,” wrote Paxton in a press release.

    “This attempt to subvert federal law is plainly illegal, undemocratic, and divorced from reality. Texas will always take the lead to oppose Biden’s extremist, destructive policies that put women at risk.”

    The complaint argues the DOE “has attempted to effect radical social change in our Nation’s schools” and that the new Title IX rule “walks back many of the constitutional safeguards issued by the Trump Administration to ensure that students accused of harassment have access to a fair hearing.”

    Snip.

    “This rule violates existing federal law, ignores the Constitution, and denies women the protections that Title IX was intended to afford them,” AFL stated in a press release. “The Biden Administration has exceeded its authority and radically distorted the meaning intended by Congress when the law was made.

    The radical transexism the Biden Administration is trying to shove down America’s throats may be popular with the hard left social justice warriors who now man the levers of the Democratic Party’s political machinery, but it’s deeply unpopular with ordinary Americans of both sexes and all races, creeds, and colors. It’s an alien, anti-reality ideology being imposed from without with no basis in any law passed by congress, and resistance to its irrational dictates is both widely popular and a constitutional necessity.

    LinkSwarm For April 25, 2024

    Friday, April 26th, 2024

    The Biden Recession bites deeper, Soros’ hands are all over the pro-Hamas protests, California fast food wage hikes hurt workers (but help robotics companies), and some Harris County legal followups. Plus some Zack Snyder bashing. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • MSNBC accidentally has guest on that accidentally tells the truth about the Biden Recession.

    For the first time in our history, a 30-year-old man or woman isn’t doing as well as his or her parents were at 30. That is the social compact breaking down.

    People aged 30-34, 60% of them in 1990 had one child. Now it’s 27%. People are opting out of America, they’re not optimistic about it, they’re not having kids. Young people aren’t having sex. They’re not meeting, they’re not mating. The pool of emotionally and economically viable men shrinks every day. Which lessens household formation.

    They (millennials and Gen Z) look up, they see wealth, exceptional wealth, across my generation and people in certain industries, and they are really struggling. Their purchasing power is really going down…

    We get very concerned with housing and traffic once we own the housing. Housing permits are sequestered from young people, housing prices have gone from $290,000 to $420,000 in the last 4 years.

    So a young person, a house, stocks that I don’t own, skyrocket in value, let’s have Covid relief and flush the markets and take assets way up because a million people dying would be bad, would be tragic if I got less wealthy, and we’re doing it on their credit card.

  • Whole paycheck: $7 for an apple. Thanks, Joe Biden!
  • “Bill Maher Calls Out Hollywood Pedophilia And The Gay Agenda In Schools.”

    Bill Maher is, if anything, clever about his timing like most comedians. His rebellion against the woke mob has been carefully crafted in a way that has allowed him to avoid outright cancellation. It’s not as impressive a revolt as Gina Carano’s because the risk today is far less, but at least he’s willing to address the obvious hypocrisy within the social justice crowd and admit that maybe, just maybe, conservatives had it right all along.

    His latest surprising monologue covers an issue everyone has known about for years but almost no one in the media has been willing to address seriously because it involves many of their friends in the entertainment industry. Hollywood was quick to jump on the feminist bandwagon at the helm of the “Me Too Movement”, but this only exposed a small part of Hollywood’s degeneracy. Actresses trading sex for favors from producers and executives is hardly that shocking a revelation. The thing they really don’t want to talk about is the industry’s penchant for pedophilia…

    The money quote from that video that’s not in the ZeroHedge article: “The left will overlook child-fucking if a guy from the wrong party points it out.”

    One of the deepest darkest secrets of film, television and music media is that the business has long been used as a vehicle for child abusers to target kids in an environment where parental supervision is limited (and lots of money can be gained). This reminds us of yet another environment where parental supervision is limited: Public schools. The political left has also targeted these institutions as ample ground for grooming. Why? As Bill Maher notes, the groomers are naturally gravitating to where the children are.

    “Leave the kids alone” is a mantra that the woke movement simply refuses to understand or accept. The reason is relatively transparent – Leftists are less inclined to have children of their own, and so, in order to increase their numbers and power they are required to indoctrinate your kids instead. This is all done under the guise of “inclusion” and the “greater good” but the results of this kind of activism are becoming deeply disturbing. Even moderate liberals are noticing that woke behavior is destroying what remains of their image.

  • “Unsealed Court Docs Reveal Biden DOJ Colluded With National Archives To Target Trump, Jack Smith Tried To Conceal.”

    Newly unsealed documents in Donald Trump’s classified documents case reveal that the Biden White House colluded with the National Archives (NARA) and the FBI to concoct a case against the former president.

    What’s more, Special Counsel Jack Smith sought to conceal this – telling Judge Eileen Cannon in February that Trump’s counsel isn’t entitled to discovery on documents between the White House and NARA, that the court should toss requests for evidence of the alleged coordination, and that the court should deny Trump’s request for evidence related to secure facilities at his residences. Further, Trump’s request for unredacted discovery of materials should be denied.

    Seems like a substantial due process rights violation, doesn’t it?

  • Ukraine/Israel/Taiwan aid package signed into law.

    Immediately after Biden’s signature, the Pentagon announced $1 billion of military assistance to Ukraine from the Presidential Drawdown Authority.

    Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, ammunition for HIMARS rocket systems, 155mm artillery rounds, 60mm mortary rounds, and Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles, are among the U.S. capabilities being provided to Ukraine, the Pentagon said.

    The foreign-aid legislation will send roughly $60 billion in aid to Ukraine, with $23 billion being used to replenish U.S. weapons stockpiles and $11 billion to fund U.S. military operations in the surrounding area.

    Israel will receive $26 billion including $4.4 billion to fund its Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile defenses. Over $9 billion of the Israel aid will go towards humanitarian relief.

    While I support military aid to Ukraine, Republicans should not have dropped their demand that border security be addressed first, nor should we be raising the national debt to do it. And if we’re going to be paying for David’s Sling and Iron Dome, then we better damn well be getting the tech back to use in our own weapons.

  • “Half of Americans — including 42% of Democrats — say they’d support mass deportations” of illegal aliens. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • I know you’re going to be shocked, shocked to find out that George Soros is funding the anti-Israel student protests.

    At three colleges, the protests are being encouraged by paid radicals who are “fellows” of a Soros-funded group called the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR).

    USCPR provides up to $7,800 for its community-based fellows and between $2,880 and $3,660 for its campus-based “fellows” in return for spending eight hours a week organizing “campaigns led by Palestinian organizations.”

    They are trained to “rise up, to revolution.”

    The radical group received at least $300,000 from Soros’ Open Society Foundations since 2017 and also took in $355,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund since 2019.

  • More on that theme:

    (Hat tip: Commenter MadTownGuy.)

  • Also on that subject:

    A lot of Jewish friends, especially those who are finally awake after 10/7, say things like “how is this America?” or “It’s so scary that this Jew-hatred is happening everywhere.” But it’s very much NOT “America” and it absolutely is NOT happening “everywhere.” In south Florida, Jews wear the dinner plate Magen Davids and no one says one word. In rural Michigan, churches put “pray for Israel” on the signs outside. I’m not naive, obviously Jew-haters can and do live anywhere. But they’re only thriving, open, proud, in blue areas and I’m not going to let people ignore that. A lot of liberal Jews are trying to parse things right now. They imagine they are still of the left but just on this one tiny little thing, their right to exist, they disagree. No, my friends. It’s a house of cards and you’re pulling the one from the very bottom. The whole left ideology is corrupt and you’re going to have to face it. You can’t spread the blame around. The hatred, the rage, the violence, the dehumanization is all coming from one side: yours.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “Houston Teacher Arrested for Improper Relationship with a Student. Cy-Fair teacher Kayden Burbank allegedly had a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old student.”
  • When Democrat judges go rogue. “Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • California’s fast food wage hikes have had exactly the effects every non-Democrat predicted.

    The state of California seems hellbent on making life a living hell for middle-class residents, as evidenced not just by their soft-on-crime policies but by the minimum wage increase that went into effect at the beginning of April.

    Though the $20/hour wage was ostensibly designed to help minimum wage workers, it has had the opposite effect, with fast food restaurants in the Democrat-run state slashing jobs and hours, implementing hiring freezes, and/or bringing in self-serve kiosks to ease the financial burden.

    Something else they’ve had to do is raise prices on the food they serve, with prices going up as much as eight percent at some locations.

  • Another result: here come the robots.

    While the fast-food industry was founded on utilizing technology to increase efficiency, the robot revolution seems to be speeding up.

    Last year, Sweetgreen, a Los Angeles-based fast-casual salad chain, debuted its fully automated Infinite Kitchen at a restaurant in Illinois. Like Mezli, the Infinite Kitchen moves bowls down a conveyor belt where its system automatically portions out ingredients. The technology is “expected to cut labor costs in half while boosting throughput,” according to a trade magazine.

    Similarly, the founder of Chipotle recently launched a new fast-casual chain, Kernel, that utilizes robots to heat and assemble vegetarian meals.

    In December, a CaliExpress burger joint opened in Pasadena, complete with robot arms that cook burgers and fries, and AI-powered kiosks that allow customers to order and pay (and tip, of course), with their faces. Leaders at Miso Robotics, one of the companies behind CaliExpress, have said it is the first restaurant where all the ordering and cooking is fully automated.

    The robots “don’t call in sick, they don’t get drunk the night before work and come in with a hangover,” one CaliExpress leader told a local TV station. “They’re a little bit more reliable.”

    Other restaurants, including Cajun Crack’n in Concord, Calif., are experimenting with robots that can deliver food, bus tables, and may soon be taking orders. Robot bartenders and baristas are also in the works.

    While restaurant sales are forecasted to increase this year and the restaurant workforce is expected to grow, owners are continuing to struggle with slim margins, in part due to food inflation and rising labor costs. According to the National Restaurant Association’s 2024 State of the Restaurant Industry report, 98 percent of restaurant operators are struggling with higher labor costs, and 38 percent say they weren’t profitable last year.

    Biden Recession + union-backed wage hikes = boom times for robots

  • Ukraine drone strike hits a Russian oil refinery in Yartsevo
  • …and an oil facility at Kardymovsky, Smolensk.
  • El Paso Democratic judge: Eh, there’s not enough evidence to put these illegal aliens on trial for assaulting state troopers. Just let them go. Grand jury: Nope! We’re indicting 141 of them for that riot.
  • America doesn’t have enough dry docks to fight a protracted naval war. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • ERCOT estimates that an additional 40,000 megawatts of generating capacity by 2030.
  • Followup: Harris County’s scheme to handout guaranteed income paychecks has been blocked by the Texas Supreme Court. (Previously.)
  • Another Harris County follow-up: DA Kim Ogg announced that the legal cases against Lina Hidalgo staffers will now be prosecuted by the Texas Attorney General’s office because Democratic DA nominee Sean Teare, who defeated Ogg in the March primary, “works for the Cogdell Law Firm, which is defending Hidalgo’s former Chief of Staff Alex Triantaphyllis in the case, and that he had sought and received Hidalgo’s endorsement.”
  • The Biden Administration wants to waste taxpayer money pushing radical transgenderism in other countries. “The Biden administration wants to train at least 200 activists to advocate for transgender rights in India as part of a program ostensibly designed to advance America’s ‘national interests,’ according to a federal grant posting.”
  • More Biden Administration madness: “A popular US convenience store chain has been hit with a civil rights lawsuit accusing it of discriminating against minority job seekers because it requires applicants to have no criminal record.”
  • “Largest Christian University in America Gets Fined $37 Million. Coincidence or Targeted Attack?”

    A dust storm of political madness is brewing in Phoenix as Grand Canyon University faces the continued threats of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.

    Christians have watched as the Biden administration attacks biblical views left and right, with a particularly vehement disregard for the sanctity of life and marriage. As such, it can’t be too surprising that Cardona, a part of this leftist administration, has vowed to shut down America’s largest Christian university.

    In late October, Grand Canyon University was hit with “a $37.7 million fine brought by the federal government over allegations that it lied to students about the cost of its programs,” The Associated Press reported—an accusation that GCU President Brian Mueller described as “ridiculous.”

    Around the same time, Liberty University, America’s second-largest Christian university, also was fined $37 million “over alleged underreporting of crimes.”

    Grand Canyon University appealed its fine in November even though a hearing is not expected until January 2025. But the question Mueller has is one of integrity. Is this genuine consideration for the well-being of students, or is this a targeted attack against religious institutions?

    “It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the two largest Christian universities in the country, this one and Liberty University, are both being fined almost the identical amount at almost the identical time?” GCU’s president speculated in a speech. “Now is there a cause and effect there? I don’t know. But it’s a fact.”

  • Trader Joe’s organic basil has an extra organic ingredient: salmonella.
  • Critical Drinker wasn’t impressed with Rebel Moon 2: “Comically inept…boring and tedious..derivative cliched and unoriginal. It takes a special kind of cinematic anti-genius to bring all these things together into one movie. You have to actively work to make a film this bad”
  • Penguinz0 says it’s actually worse than the first one. “It’s a disaster on the most basic levels of movie making.”
  • In fact, he watched Rebel Moon Part 2 twice just to count the slo-mo scenes. “It came out to 1,256 seconds, or 20 minutes and 56 seconds worth of slow motion.” But he might have missed some while dozing. “This shit hits harder than NyQuil.”
  • The Biden Recession hits boardgaming. This is not a field I have much experience with, as the last boardgame I bought was the Kickstarter for the Designer Edition of Ogre. But I have noticed a similar decline in what science fiction book collectors are spending. Still, the idea that boardgames manufacturers are close to $1 billion in debt is pretty staggering.
  • The Onion sold. “The Onion has a new owner: a company called ‘Global Tetrahedron,’ which is a real thing based on a fake entity invented by the satire site more than two decades ago….The Onion’s new owner is Jeff Lawson, co-founder and former CEO of Twilio, a customer-service software company, he announced Thursday on X (formerly Twitter).” When last we read about Jeff Lawson, he was dumping money on the Dem side in the 2020 Texas Senate race, to no effect. Now people are wondering whether they’ll shut down zombie SJW gaming site Kotaku…
  • Texas become first state to unban import of Japanese Kei trucks. (Hat tip:Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Long lost first model of original USS Enterprise recovered.
  • “Man Sets Himself On Fire To Show How His Side Is The Sane And Rational One.”
  • “Columbia Protestors Clarify They Only Want Death To America After America Is Done Paying Their Student Loans.”
  • Live in Florida? Ron DeSantis would like you to adopt this cute border dog:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • LinkSwarm For April 19, 2024

    Friday, April 19th, 2024

    Israel’s Iran strike is shrouded in mystery, California is shockingly “permissive” on sex trafficking children, Warhammer goes woke, and a new Doom speed-running record. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Early reports said that Israel struck at Iranian nuclear facilities at Isfahan, but current reports say that’s not the case.

    Senior US military sources:The target of the Israeli strike was an Iranian military base in Isfahan near Natanz, not the nuclear facilities themselves. “The Israelis hit what they intended to strike,” The targets within this strike included Iranian air defense systems at the air base including those used to protect their nearby nuclear facilities. It was a message to the Iranians, “We can reach out and touch you.” The Russian made air defense systems were shown to be ineffective. There was one target but multiple strikes within that target. The Israelis used missiles and unmanned aircraft – in other words no manned aircraft (F35’s or others) were used as part of this strike

    Both Israeli and Iranian sources are being cagey about what actually was hit. Right now it’s looking like it was a very limited strike, almost just a “See? We can hit them if we want to” strike to satisfy the Biden Administration’s endless calls for “restraint” while they continue to pound Hamas into a fine red paste. But it does offer a certain amount of support for the Kayfabe theory of Middle East politics…

  • Speaking of Gaza, that plan to send U.S. servicemen there to build a pier was an asinine one, but it was great to demonstrate just how badly screwed up naval logistics is for sudden overseas deployments. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Powerline has a pretty staggering chart on Biden inflation:

  • Traffick a kid in California, spend the weekend in jail; try it in Florida and they execute you.”

    The penalty for the equivalent of child trafficking in “progressive,” “forward-thinking,” “compassionate” California is a maximum penalty of a year in jail, and a minimum of two days in jail, plus a $10,000 fine which may or may not be paid depending on sentencing details.

    Plenty has been said in recent years about soft-on-crime policies in states led by Democrats, and with good reason. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that political movements that believe the execution of preborn children is morally and legally permissible would also enforce such loose penalties for child endangerment and exploitation. But this seems, even for liberals, unconscionable.

    Thankfully, it’s not that way everywhere. Other states with right-leaning leadership handle child predation, shall we say, “differently.”

  • But California especially loves setting sex offenders free if they’re illegal aliens.
  • Speaking of idiot laws in California, their new “mansion” tax means that no one can afford to build apartment complexes any more.
  • “Landmark NHS England Report: Science Doesn’t Support Gender-Affirming Medicine.” Wait, you mean mutilating children to demonstrate your trendy wokeness is a bad idea? Who knew?
  • Despite that, the Biden Administration is going to shove transexualism down the throats of colleges by fiat by rewriting Title IX rules without congressional approval.
  • Uri Berliner exposes the radical wokeness at NPR and is fired by new ultra-woke Alpha Karen NPR head Katherine Maher.

    It turns out that Katherine Maher is no ordinary ascendant progressive media executive. No, this woman’s social-media history reveals her to be the Kwisatz Haderach of white wokeness, presumably bred through generations of careful genetic selection to be the supernaturally perfect embodiment of Affluent White Female Liberalism. (As many have noted, she not only acts but looks like Titania McGrath.) It’s vaguely unreal: If there was a trendy progressive take floating around on Twitter and popular within media circles, then you can reliably bet she was there to voice it in the most preeningly insulting way possible.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit, who also offers lots of choice Chris Rufo commentary on tweets from Maher.)

  • “Texas Congresswoman Beth Van Duyne (R-TX-24) has taken out a full-page advertisement in the New York Post in an effort to recruit law enforcement from New York City, encouraging them to ‘escape New York and move to Texas. Sadly, the corrupt and crumbling Empire State is so purposefully anti-law and order, that you should no longer put your careers and lives in the hands of politicians who couldn’t care less about you or your families,’ the advertisement states.”
  • I’ll take “Headlines You Don’t Want To Read At Breakfast” for $400: “New York Suffers Record Rise in Potentially Deadly Disease Caused by Rat Urine. New York City has seen a record jump in the number of human leptospirosis, a disease caused by rat urine that can cause kidney damage, liver failure, and even death.”
  • The University of Texas at Dallas closes its DEI office and eliminates 20 jobs. Progress!
  • “A far-left extremist that firebombed a pro-life office in Wisconsin in 2022 has been sentenced to 7.5 years in federal prison, along with three years of supervised release and a $32,000 fine.”
  • The return of the Turtle Tank.
  • A mass cancellation attack is trying to get Reporting from Ukraine’s YouTube channel deleted.
  • Republicans aim to use ballot initiatives to overturn unpopular Democratic Party policies. “Republicans in Washington are moving to get three major ballot initiatives passed. These measures will repeal Democrat-passed policies that are becoming unpopular among locals. The three changes would repeal the state’s sanctuary status for illegal immigrants, end an attempt to ban natural gas, and a change to the laws to strip squatters of their rights.”
  • You’ll need to click Show More for this one:

  • Venezuelan illegal alien attempts to rob a bank using a translator app.
  • Fleshlight + AI = Brave new frontiers of sad perversion.
  • Has Warhammer gone woke? “I can’t help thinking that you finally started to bow to pressure from ‘Modern Audiences,’ and you were almost certainly encouraged to do this by a sudden infusion of investment money from BlackRock.”

    The moment you make any concession, no matter how tiny, you’ve already given the game away. You’ve made it known that you’re prepared to bow down to their demands if they put enough pressure on you. And so, inevitably, their demands are never going to end. They’ll literally never be happy because there’s always going to be some other thing, some other piece of problematic lore, some other rule or exclusionary detail that has to be altered to comply with their constantly evolving demands, and all in the name of inclusion and diversity.

    Because these people don’t care about your hobby, they don’t care about integrating into a community of like-minded individuals. All they care about is that the community bends and reshapes itself to suit them, until eventually they bend it so much that it breaks. People like that are complete and utter poison for any hobby, any fandom, any franchise. All they ever manage to do is stir up conflict, resentment and division, driving people away and turning fans against the very company that tries to pander to them, because their very reason for existing is to undermine and destroy the thing they claim that they’re trying to save.

    And if you’ve got any common sense whatsoever or any love for the fandom that you’re so passionate about, you’ll think very carefully before bending the knee to them.

  • Madam Web finally crawls just past the $100 million mark before going to streaming to die.
  • And by the way, Disney still isn’t in the black on it’s purchase of Star Wars and Lucasfilms.
  • My review of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.
  • After 6 months and 100,000 attempts, Doom speedrunner beats 26 year old record…by one second.
  • White House Calls In Elmo To Help Explain Latest Global Conflict To President.”
  • “Biden Unveils Official Campaign Slogan ‘Death To America.'”
  • LinkSwarm For April 12, 2024

    Friday, April 12th, 2024

    It’s been a week of petty frustrations, with simple things like paying for online transactions made impossible by websites that send out the wrong information despite the right information being on file. Speaking of frustration, Americans continue to be battered by high inflation, blacks continue to abandon Biden, and it turns out that the Pope might, just might, be Catholic after all.

  • Core inflation is up yet again.

    A hotter-than-expected consumer price index report rattled Wall Street Wednesday, but markets are buzzing about an even more specific prices gauge contained within the data — the so-called supercore inflation reading.

    Along with the overall inflation measure, economists also look at the core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, to find the true trend. The supercore gauge, which also excludes shelter and rent costs from its services reading, takes it even a step further. Fed officials say it is useful in the current climate as they see elevated housing inflation as a temporary problem and not as good a measure of underlying prices.

    Supercore accelerated to a 4.8% pace year over year in March, the highest in 11 months.

    Tom Fitzpatrick, managing director of global market insights at R.J. O’Brien & Associates, said if you take the readings of the last three months and annualize them, you’re looking at a supercore inflation rate of more than 8%, far from the Federal Reserve’s 2% goal.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Speaking of inflation, welcome to $7 Tree.
  • Black voters continue to abandon Biden in droves.

    According to a Wall Street Journal Swing State Poll, blacks, especially black males are abandoning Biden in huge numbers.

    While most Black men said they intend to support Biden, some 30% of them in the poll said they were either definitely or probably going to vote for the former Republican president. There isn’t comparable WSJ swing-state polling from 2020, but Trump received votes from 12% of Black men nationwide that year, as recorded by AP VoteCast, a large poll of the electorate.

    That’s an 18 percentage point swing, minimum, for black males, if the national results and the swing state voting is similar.

    By confirmed, I mean those who said they intended to vote for Trump.

    The gap is even larger if we factor in undecided voters. Biden is down by a massive 30 percentage points vs 2020.

  • Biden may not be on the ballot for the Ohio general election because the Democratic National Convention falls too late to certify him.
  • Pope turns out to be Catholic, comes out against child genital mutilation.
  • “Nebraska state Sen. Mike McDonnell announces that he’s switching from Democrat to Republican.”
  • Country musician Jason Aldean refuses to let Biden campaign use hit song “Fly Over States.”
  • Good: A teacher helping her son with homework. Bad: A teacher helping her son force female students into sex trafficking. “Klein Cain High School cosmetology teacher Kedria McMath Grigsby is accused of helping her son, Roger Magee, force the troubled teens into prostitution.”
  • Man driving eighteen-wheeler interntionally crashes into DPS office in Brenham, killing one.
  • Hard evidence that temperature data is being manipulated to show global warming.

    Investigative science writer Paul Homewood last year discovered considerable tampering in 2022 with the recent CET record. He initially found that in version one, the summer of 1995 had been 0.1°C warmer than 2018. In version 2, the two years swapped places with 1995 cooled by 0.07°C and 2018 warmed by 0.13°C. Alerted to these changes, Homewood then analysed the full record from version 1 to 2, and the graph below shows what he found.

    As can be seen, the adjustments up to 1970 are small with ups and downs offsetting each other. Homewood then found that the years from 1970 to 2003 had been cooled markedly, followed by significant rises to 2022. Homewood concludes that “unfortunately it is part of a much wider tampering with temperature globally – and the tampering is always one way, cooling the past and heating the present”. Given that we now know that the Met Office has been using class 4 statistics for two thirds of its database since 2006, the recent higher adjustments would seem to call for clarifying explanations from the state-funded Met Office.

    (Hat tip: Boreptach.)

  • Ukrainian drone attack hits radar site 650km inside Russia.
  • Speaking of drones, China is supplying tens of thousands of drones…to Ukraine. I did not see that coming, but China certainly can use the money.
  • Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick lays out his legislative priorities for 2025.

    Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has announced his interim charges for the Senate, a set of 57 issues he is calling on Senate Committees to investigate and research ahead of the legislative session next year.

    The list of charges runs the gamut of issues conservatives have called on the legislature to address, including property tax relief, protecting Texas land from hostile foreign ownership, and strengthening laws preventing electioneering by school districts and other political subdivisions.

    Some of the biggest reform proposals, however, have been reserved for higher education.

    Patrick has asked the Higher Education Subcommittee to study and make recommendations regarding the role of ‘faculty senates’, antisemitism on college campuses, as well as to review the implementation of a new state law banning DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) in state universities that went into effect earlier this year.

    “The Senate’s work to study the list of charges will begin in the coming weeks and months. Following completion of hearings, committees will submit reports with their specific findings and policy recommendations before December 1, 2024,” said Patrick.

  • When you think Houston Democratic Congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee has already said the stupidest thing she possibly can, she goes out and proves you wrong.
  • I know you’re shocked, shocked to find out that gun-grabbing opportunist David Hogg’s political group Leaders We Deserve spent way more on administration than backing candidates.
  • Thanks to New York City’s idiotic rent control laws, not only would a hotel guest refuse to pay rent or leave, but a court actually ruled that he was the owner of the hotel.
  • First class stamps are going up to 73 cents. Thanks, Joe Biden.
  • If the commies running Vietnam accuse someone of a crime, I don’t automatically trust them, but Truong My Lan may actually be guilty.

    Behind the stately yellow portico of the colonial-era courthouse in Ho Chi Minh City, a 67-year-old Vietnamese property developer was sentenced to death on Thursday for looting one of the country’s largest banks over a period of 11 years.

    It’s a rare verdict – she is one of very few women in Vietnam to be sentenced to death for a white collar crime.

    The decision is a reflection of the dizzying scale of the fraud. Truong My Lan was convicted of taking out $44bn (£35bn) in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank. The verdict requires her to return $27bn, a sum prosecutors said may never be recovered. Some believe the death penalty is the court’s way of trying to encourage her to return some of the missing billions.

    The habitually secretive communist authorities were uncharacteristically forthright about this case, going into minute detail for the media. They said 2,700 people were summoned to testify, while 10 state prosecutors and around 200 lawyers were involved.

    The evidence was in 104 boxes weighing a total of six tonnes. Eighty-five others were tried with Truong My Lan, who denied the charges and can appeal.

    All of the defendants were found guilty. Four received life in jail. The rest were given prison terms ranging from 20 years to three years suspended. Truong My Lan’s husband and niece received jail terms of nine and 17 years respectively.

    Snip.

    By 2011, Truong My Lan was a well-known business figure in Ho Chi Minh City, and she was allowed to arrange the merger of three smaller, cash-strapped banks into a larger entity: Saigon Commercial Bank.

    Vietnamese law prohibits any individual from holding more than 5% of the shares in any bank. But prosecutors say that through hundreds of shell companies and people acting as her proxies, Truong My Lan actually owned more than 90% of Saigon Commercial.

    They accused her of using that power to appoint her own people as managers, and then ordering them to approve hundreds of loans to the network of shell companies she controlled.

    The amounts taken out are staggering. Her loans made up 93% of all the bank’s lending.

    According to prosecutors, over a period of three years from February 2019, she ordered her driver to withdraw 108 trillion Vietnamese dong, more than $4bn (£2.3bn) in cash from the bank, and store it in her basement.

    That much cash, even if all of it was in Vietnam’s largest denomination banknotes, would weigh two tonnes.

    Yeah, none of that seems kosher…

  • Memorial Hermann Hospital: No liver transplant for you!
  • How CD sales and rock music both collapsed in the early 21st century.
  • A very interesting O.J. Simpson story:

    (Hat tip: Commenter Kirk.)

  • Strange news from Russia: Chechnya has banned music that’s slower than 80 beats per minute, or faster than 116 beats per minute. Both the Russian and Chechen national anthems are slower than that…
  • “John Tinniswood of Southport, UK is now the world’s oldest man.
  • How a programmer managed to rip off casinos for years. It helped that he worked for the Nevada Gaming Control Board…
  • “New ‘Biden Diet‘ Sweeps Nation: Pay The Same Amount Of Money But Eat 50% Less Food.”
  • Vatican Reluctantly Sides With God On Gender Theory.
  • Adorable prison break.
  • Hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    LinkSwarm for April 5, 2024

    Friday, April 5th, 2024

    Hope you’ve got your taxes done. I’m still working on mine.

  • “Summers: Inflation Reached 18% In 2022 Using The Government’s Previous Formula.”

    Numerous commentators—especially those defending President Biden’s economic record—have puzzled over why Americans are sour about the state of the U.S. economy. Unemployment rates have returned to pre-pandemic lows, commentators correctly point out, and the official rate of inflation is declining. So why are Americans ignoring the view of many experts that the economy is doing well?

    According to a striking new paper by a group of economists from Harvard and the International Monetary Fund, headlined by former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, the answer is that Americans have figured out something that the experts have ignored: that rising interest rates are as much a part of inflation as the rising price of ordinary goods. “Concerns over borrowing costs, which have historically tracked the cost of money, are at their highest levels” since the early 1980s, they write. “Alternative measures of inflation that include borrowing costs” account for most of the gap between the experts’ rosy pictures and Americans’ skeptical assessment.

  • Backlash Is Real‘: DEI Exodus Gains Steam Across Corporate America.”

    The unraveling of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives was seen on the state level, as Red states rushed to ban DEI programs in 2023. Google, Facebook, and other tech companies slashed DEI staff by late last year. Early this year, universities began rolling back diversity programs, while Harvard President Claudine Gay was demoted.

    DEI was doomed to fail, and corporations have been quickly scrambling to abandon mindless and profitless diversity programs with Marxist roots. The latest earnings call data shows that “DEI” mentions have collapsed from their peak in 2021, according to Axios, citing data from AlphaSense.

    In January, Johnny Taylor, president of the Society for Human Resource Management, told Axios that corporate executives are fed up with DEI.

    “The backlash is real. And I mean, in ways that I’ve actually never seen it before,” Taylor said, adding, “CEOs are literally putting the brakes on this DE&I work that was running strong” since George Floyd’s murder in early 2020.

    Kevin Clayton, senior vice president and head of social impact and equity for the Cleveland Cavaliers, said the chief diversity officer role was all the rage across corporate America after Floyd’s murder. He said companies filled these positions “out of gilt,” and hiring wasn’t the best.

    Axios noted, “Some businesses are cutting back funding, trimming DEI staff — and even considering pulling back on things like employee resource groups comprised of workers of various races, ethnicities or interests.”

    The pushback on DEI is finding momentum across corporations and universities. Subha Barry, former head of diversity at Merrill Lynch, told Bloomberg last month: “We’re past the peak.”

    Let’s hope so.

  • No one at the wheel: “Biden Reportedly Has No Idea He Issued ‘Trans Day Of Visibility’ Proclamation.”
  • Gen Z hates the lousy Biden economy and favors Trump over Biden. Though a word to those Gen Z sorts who complain about a 9-5 schedule being “unnatural”: A “natural” schedule is performing backbreaking hunter/gatherer or subsistence agriculture work from dawn to dusk 6-7 days a week and dropping dead before you turn 40…
  • Virginia’s Republican governor Glenn Youngkin vetoes dozens of gun control bills.
  • Boston takes over Soldiers Home to house illegal aliens.
  • Ukrainian drones hit a Russia drone production facility at Yelabuga, Tatarstan, which is almost 1,000 miles inside Russia, using a drone that looks a whole lot like a light aircraft.
  • Ukraine hits another Russian airbase with over 40 drones, and presumably took out even more Su-34s.
  • Whoops, make that three Russian airbases hit. including reports of three Tupolev Tu-95 “Bear” bombers damaged. (Yes, Russia still has a propeller-driven bomber in service. It can carry nuclear weapons and launch cruise missiles.)
  • Watch President of Guyana Mohamed Irfaan Ali absolutely dismantle a BBC reporter over his attempt to guilt him over global warming. It’s good to see that there’s at least one world leader who hasn’t drunk the green Kool-Aid…
  • Gun crimes evidently mean being released without bail if the perp is an illegal alien.
  • Cost estimates more than double to replace failing Austin arts center building.” Note the “Extended community engagement: $1 million” which is code for “Payoffs to leftwing activists.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • UT Austin Closes DEI-Focused Division of Campus and Community Engagement, ‘Redistributes’ Programs.” Let’s hope the “redistribution” doesn’t just end up infecting other department.
  • “Paxton Seeks to Investigate Boeing Parts Supplier, DEI Initiatives. Attorney General Ken Paxton is seeking to investigate Spirit AeroSystsems after public outrage involving Boeing’s aircraft manufacturing issues.”

    Boeing stated in 2022 that “for the first time in our company’s history, we tied incentive compensation to inclusion.”

    Boeing’s 2023 Global Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion report explains that “diversity must be at the table for every important decision our company makes – every challenge we face, every innovation we design. Equity, diversity and inclusion are core values because they make Boeing — and each of us individually — better.”

    According to the report, racial and ethnic minorities now hold 41.4 percent of jobs in the U.S. Boeing Commercial Airplanes Unit, and 28.3 percent in the U.S. Boeing Defense, Space, and Security. In 2022, U.S. racial and ethnic minorities made up 47.5 percent of new hires at Boeing.

    You know what I want at the table for every important Boeing decision? Planes not falling out of the sky.

  • Harvard: Segregation now, segregation forever!
  • “Trans woman [that is to say, a man] pleads guilty after threatening to kill, rape school children in Illinois.” According to the virtue signaling sign people, love is love even when it’s murderous hate…
  • Intel lost $7 billion last year. Intel has a technology roadmap to get its process tech back on track, but failure to execute on previous nodes is what got them into this mess.
  • “Sir Maejor Page accused of creating bogus BLM charity to swipe nearly $500K to buy lavish home, guns facing fraud trial.” #BlackLivesMatter was (and is) a scam all the way down. (Hat tip: Dwight.) (Previously.)
  • In addition to having fingers in the pie in Syria and Yemen in addition to their proxy war with Israel, Iran also has to deal with Sunni Baluch separatist organization Jaish al-Adl (“Army of Justice”) on their own territory, where they killed at least 11 Iranian security force members.
  • “Journalists with the Austin American-Statesman are on strike once again.” Time to break this out again:

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Steve Wozniak sues YouTube over fake crypto endorsement videos.
  • City says mobile car wash isn’t.
  • Yes, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny lost a ton of money.
  • Belew, Vai, Levin and Carey Play 80’s King Crimson.” Sign me up. Edited to Add: Crap, tickets went on sale for the Austin show in September TODAY. I was just barely able to snag two tickets in nosebleed…
  • The Lock-Picking Lawyer wants you to see how his Big Dick performs.
  • If it weren’t bad enough that illegal aliens were taking all the lawn maintenance jobs…(language warning)

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    The Social Justice War To Replace Christianity

    Sunday, March 31st, 2024

    Happy Easter!

    You might think that on Christianity’s most holy day, a president running for reelection in a majority Christian nation would go out of his way to avoid antagonizing Christians.

    You’d be wrong.

    The Biden Administration has declared today, Easter Sunday, as a “Transgender Day of Visibility.”

    The White House on Friday announced “transgender day of visibility” for March 31, which this year falls on Easter Sunday.

    “NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2024, as Transgender Day of Visibility,” President Biden wrote in a Friday statement. “I call upon all Americans to join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our Nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination based on gender identity.”

    Since its inception, the Biden administration has made LGBT activism a cornerstone of its policy priorities. Biden boasted in his statement that he appointed transgender leaders to his administration and ended the ban on transgender Americans serving openly in the military.

    In the past, some of Biden’s transgender inclusivity events at the White House have backfired.
    A transgender influencer was banned from the White House on Tuesday for posing topless at President Biden’s Pride celebration over the weekend.

    Rose Montoya, who exposed his bare prosthetic breasts to the camera and onlookers at the official event, violated basic standards of decency and social manners, a spokesperson for the White House told the New York Post.

    Children of the National Guard are also barred from sending in religious Easter egg designs for the 2024 “Celebrating National Guard Families” art event at the White House, Fox News reported Friday. The White House hosts many Easter traditions, including the military family art initiative and the annual Easter Egg Roll.

    Easter egg submissions “must not include any questionable content, religious symbols, overtly religious themes, or partisan political statements,” according to the flyer.

    You wouldn’t want Christian symbolism in an Easter celebration, now would you?

    I’m surprised the Gay Mafia isn’t already suing Masterpiece Cakeshop to make them a cake depicting a crucified Easter Bunny.

    Transexist dogma demands that you agree that 2+2=5. To note the biological reality that human beings with XX chromosomes are female, and XY chromosomes are male, and that no amount of cosmetic surgery can ever change that, is commit a heresy against the new church of social justice.

    Transesxist dogma is so unpopular that they’re even rejecting it in New York City, but the Biden Administration still insists on forcing it down America’s throats.

    Even in an election year.

    Even on Easter Sunday.

    The brazenness of dedicating Easter Sunday to transexual activism should convince you that the hard left is actively hostile to Christianity. They view it as a competing source of moral legitimacy that thwarts their will-to-power desire of a complete transformation of American society.

    More specifically, they want to use social pressure and government coercion to remake Christianity itself in their own image, to make it compliant and subservient to a state they control, just as in Communist China.

    People who dedicate their lives to the Risen Christ rather than utopian schemes to remake society are a threat to the left’s plans for total top-to-bottom social control, just like vast numbers of armed citizens are.

    Plan accordingly.

    LinkSwarm For March 15, 2024

    Friday, March 15th, 2024

    Happy Ides of March! You might want to avoid knife-wielding Romans today. Trump trial news, lots of Russo-Ukrainian War news, transexual madness starts to recede, and more Disney missteps. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Biden’s proposed budget is going to lower the deficit by $3 trillion. By which he means it will grow by $16 trillion.

    Following yesterday’s release of Biden’s $7.3 trillion budget, the Biden administration bragged about lowering the deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade – an average of 0.8% of GDP over that period.

    This would consist of roughly $2.6 trillion over 10 years in additional spending programs, offset by around $4.8 trillion in tax increases over the same period. Most of the tax and spending proposals have been included in prior budget proposals from the White House, according to Goldman’s Alec Phillips, however there are several new items.

    The budget would increase the corporate alternative minimum tax on book income from 15% to 21%, raising $137 billion over the next decade. It also limits a corporation’s ability to deduct employee pay exceeding $1mm/year, raising $272 billion over 10 years. The largest proposed tax increases include; raising the corporate minimum tax from 21% to 28%, as well as a series of tax increases on high-income earners, including new Medicare taxes, and a new 25% minimum tax on incomes over $100 million, raising $500 billion over the next decade.

    Of course, it has zero chance of passing under the current Congress – but that’s not the point.

    As one DC strategist wrote in a morning email noted by CNBC’s Brian Sullivan, the budget deficit will still grow by another $16 trillion over the next decade – and that’s with aforementioned tax hikes.

    Without them, the deficit grows to $19 trillion.

    In short, talk of ‘$3 trillion saved’ is total bullshit in the grand scheme of things, given how much the national debt will grow in the best case scenario.

  • “Georgia Judge Strikes Down Six Counts in Trump Election-Interference Indictment.”

    The judge overseeing the Georgia election-fraud case struck down six counts in the indictment on Wednesday finding that the language in the counts didn’t provide “sufficient detail” for former president Donald Trump and more than a dozen other co-defendants “to prepare their defenses intelligently.”

    The counts that Fulton County Superior Court judge Scott McAfee struck down all involved allegations that some of the defendants in the case solicited various Georgia elected officials to violate their oaths of office and to unlawfully appoint pro-Trump presidential electors.

    The six counts struck down by McAfee on Wednesday involved Trump, his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Ray Smith and Bob Cheeley. The defendants were accused in the various counts of soliciting elected members of the Georgia house and senate and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to violate their oaths “to unlawfully appoint presidential electors.” Trump and Meadows also requested that Raffensperger “unlawfully decertify” the 2020 presidential election, according to two of the counts that McAfee struck down on Wednesday.

  • Fani Willis ruling: She can stay on the case despite her numerous ethical lapses and bias, but her boytoy Nathan Wade has to go, so he’s stepping down.
  • “Judge Sets Trial Date for Hunter Biden’s Federal Gun Case.” “U.S. district judge Maryellen Noreika ruled the trial will start on June 3 at a status conference with Hunter Biden’s attorneys and special counsel David Weiss’s team of prosecutors.”
  • Kursk and Belgorod Invaded by Freedom for Russia Legion with Tanks.” It looks like several more villages have been invested this time, with some artillery backing (and unconfirmed reports of Bradleys). (Previously.)
  • Ryazan Oil Refinery Hit By Multiple Ukrainian Drones.”
  • And another one. “Kaluga Oil Facility Hit By Drones.” I know a lot of previous Ukraine drone strikes on oil facilities hit storage tanks. It can be hard to tell with the quality of videos, but in both of these videos, it appears that these recent strikes are hitting either the cracking or fractional distillation towers, which are much higher value targets and more difficult to replace.
  • Russia bags one (possibly two) Patriot batteries.
  • Have I already talked about how stupid Biden’s idea to build a floating pier for Hamas is?

    The Biden admin knows that US military personnel will not be safe in Gaza, but millions of dollars will be spent to build a pier to send aid that the Gazans don’t even want and that someone in the admin hopes will become a “commercial facility.”

    That’s what they think “American leadership” looks like.

    Apart from wasting taxpayer money, this is building infrastructure that, unless Israel finishes off Hamas, will fall into the hands of terrorists.

    Also, it will take 60 days to build (at least), by which time Israel should have finished pounding Hamas into a thin paste. It’s stupid piled on top of stupid.

  • Biden Department Of Justice Declares War On Voter ID And Other Election Security Laws.” Of course they have. There’s no way to drag Biden’s ambulatory corpse over the finish line without cheating.
  • Progress: “U.K. National Health Service to Stop Prescribing Puberty Blockers to Kids.”
  • Bling bishop’ Lamor Whitehead convicted of fraud, attempted extortion and lying to the FBI.” Not noted in the piece is that under his full name, Lamor Whitehead-Miller, he ran for Borough President of Brooklyn as a Democrat…and came in dead last. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • New Canadian law wants to hand down life sentences for #WrongThink.
  • The F-35 is now certified for nuclear weapons. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • UT brings back the SAT. It was stupid to dump it.
  • Female Swimmers Sue NCAA over Male Competition.” Discovery of who’s pushing transexism on American institutions should be enlightening…
  • I haven’t paid much attention to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s independent presidential run because I doubt it’s going to be on enough state ballots to even play a spoiler role. But the idea that he’s thinking of picking NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers as his running mate seems extra stupid. Yes, he’s won a Super Bowl and is a four-time MVP, is 40 years old (and thus constitutionally eligible to serve, but what the hell does an NFL quarterback know about running the country? Also, since Rodgers is under contract to the Jets, won’t having to play NFL football preclude him from actively running as VP pick?
  • Crazy white boy Shuan King is now a Muslim.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Weird crime news of the week: “2 men charged with blowing up woman’s home, planning to use large python to eat her daughter.”
  • Captain Marvel 3, Ant Man 4, Eternals 2 All Cancelled.” Second time to break this out this week:

  • Related: Just about all of the $71 billion Disney spent to acquire Fox was essentially wasted. They got into a bidding war, and then “they don’t use the catalog that Fox has that they were given.”
  • The Texas town of Palestine is suing Union Pacific over a contract dispute. The catch: The contract was signed in 1872.
  • Charges are dropped in “Hotel California” lyrics case.

    In the middle of trial, New York prosecutors abruptly dropped their case Wednesday against three collectibles experts who had been accused of scheming to hang onto and peddle the pages, which Eagles co-founder Don Henley maintained were stolen, private artifacts of the band’s creative process.

    In explaining the stunning turnabout, prosecutors agreed that defense lawyers had essentially been blindsided by 6,000 pages of communications involving Henley and his attorneys and associates. Prosecutors and the defense got the material only in the past few days, after Henley and his lawyers apparently made a late-in-the-game decision to waive their attorney-client privilege shielding legal discussions.

    In waving attorney-client privilege, it looks like Henley made himself a prisoner of his own device…

  • An end to drywall?
  • How the famous tracking shot in Wings was done.
  • I’ve seen this one before, but it’s still funny:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)