Israel rolls on in Gaza, Democrats get indicted on election fraud, Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty, censorship schemes get busted, and George Soros’ evil fingers are everywhere. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Israel’s ground offensive has surrounded Gaza City, where it seems to think most of Hamas infrastructure is located.
The blue circles indicate Israel military activity, which does rather suggest they’re pounding the snot out of Hamas.
House Republicans on the GOP’s “weaponization” subcommittee said in a Friday report that the IRS has agreed to end its “abusive” policy of surprise visits to taxpayers’ homes following pressure from the panel.
The Committee’s and Select Subcommittee’s oversight revealed, and led to the swift end of, the IRS’s weaponization of unannounced field visits to harass, intimidate, and target taxpayers,” reads the report. “Taxpayers can now rest assured the IRS will not come knocking without providing prior notice—something that should have been the IRS’s practice all along.”
The IRS announced in July that it would end most unannounced agent visits to the homes of Americans, citing security concerns.
But it also came after the agency engaged in what appeared to be witness intimidation, after visiting the New Jersey home of journalist Matt Taibbi on the same day he appeared before Congress to testify on government abuse.
Following the incident, Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) demanded answers from the IRS, writing “In light of the hostile reaction to Mr. Taibbi’s reporting among left-wing activists, and the IRS’s history as a tool of government abuse, the IRS’s action could be interpreted as an attempt to intimidate a witness before Congress.”
Taibbi thanked Jordan on Saturday, writing in response to the report:
One of the cases outlined is my own. My home was visited by the IRS while I was testifying before Jordan’s Committee about the Twitter Files on March 9th. Sincere thanks are due to Chairman Jordan, whose staff not only demanded and got answers in my case, but achieved a concrete policy change, as IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel announced in July new procedures that would “end most” home visits.
Anticipating criticism for expressing public thanks to a Republican congressman, I’d like to ask Democratic Party partisans: to which elected Democrat should I have appealed for help in this matter? The one who called me a “so-called journalist” on the House floor? The one who told me to take off my “tinfoil hat” and put greater trust in intelligence services? The ones in leadership who threatened me with jail time? I gave votes to the party for thirty years. Which elected Democrat would have performed basic constituent services in my case? Feel free to raise a hand.
If silence is the answer, why should I ever vote for a Democrat again?
In the conversation with [Joe] Rogan, Musk then explains George Soros’ massive bet (now overseen by his son, Alexander Soros) on funding city and state district attorney elections nationwide. He said, “The value for money in local races is much higher than in national races – the lowest value for money is a presidential race.”
“Soros realized you don’t actually need to change the laws – you just need to change how they’re enforced – if nobody chooses to enforce the law – or the laws differentially enforced – it’s like changing the laws,” Musk said.
This leaves with a new interview from one Maryland sheriff, just outside of crime-ridden Baltimore City, in Wicomico County, who drops a truth bomb about radical progressive lawmakers in the state, some of whom have likely been funded by Soros, who purposely fail to enforce law and order and only embolden criminal.
“I’m in my 40th year of law enforcement, and I have never ever seen it this bad,” Sheriff Mike Lewis said.
Lewis continued: “I’ve never seen a government so ingrained – and quite frankly complicit – in the criminal activity taking place in our nation.”
Speaking of Soros: “Soros has funneled over $15M to pro-Hamas organizations through Open Society Foundations.” Of course he has.
A jury has found Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of FTX, guilty on all seven criminal fraud counts for his role in the crypto exchange’s downfall.
Those counts include wire fraud on customers of FTX, conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers of FTX, wire fraud on Alameda Research lenders, conspiracy to commit wire fraud on lenders to Alameda Research, conspiracy to commit securities fraud on investors in FTX, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud on customers of FTX, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
He faces a maximum sentence of 115 years in prison. His sentencing is scheduled for March 28 at 9:30 a.m.
During a month-long trial in a Manhattan federal court, prosecutors claimed Bankman-Fried misled investors and mishandled billions in funds. He was accused of misusing customer funds deposited with FTX to boost his crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research.
Nicolas Roos, an assistant U.S. attorney, said Bankman-Fried committed crimes of “epic proportions.” He alleged during closing arguments that Bankman-Fried built his company on a “foundation of lies and false promises.”
Snip.
Bankman-Fried was a Democrat megadonor, giving nearly $39 million to Democrat-aligned causes during the 2022 election cycle.
Prosecutors said he “misappropriated and embezzled FTX customer deposits, and used billions of dollars in stolen funds for a variety of purposes, including … to help fund over a hundred million dollars in campaign contributions to Democrats and Republicans to seek to influence cryptocurrency regulation,” according to an August indictment.
Both Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend and the former head of Alameda, and FTX co-founder Gary Wang, testified against Bankman-Fried during the trial. Ellison and Wang both pleaded guilty in December to multiple charges.
“The Department of Health and Human Services has sent over $800,000 to a group in Texas where they distribute crack pipes, according to the Dallas Express…The funds were sent to the El Paso Alliance, a non-profit that helps people recover from alcoholism and drug addictions, according to its website.” Knowing what I know about leftwing activists, I’m guessing that $80,000 went to crack pipe distribution, and the rest disappeared into various leftwing pockets.
California is still having trouble managing this newfangled electricity thing. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
China’s least awful communist official, former Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang, just died of a heart attack at age 68, and the CCP is banning memorial wishes for him.
Despite the Texas law against teaching Critical Race Theory, Katy ISD students are being told to reflect on their white privilege.
More than two dozen top U.S. law firms have issued a stern warning that law schools move with “urgency” to address the rising antisemitism on campus, or else it could affect recruitment, National Review has learned.
“Over the last several weeks, we have been alarmed at reports of anti-Semitic harassment, vandalism and assaults on college campuses, including rallies calling for the death of Jews and the elimination of the State of Israel. Such anti-Semitic activities would not be tolerated at any of our firms,” the statement published on Wednesday reads.
“As educators at institutions of higher learning, it is imperative that you provide your students with the tools and guidance to engage in the free exchange of ideas, even on emotionally charged issues, in a manner that affirms the values we all hold dear and rejects unreservedly that which is antithetical to those values,” the letter continued. “There is no room for anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism or any other form of violence, hatred or bigotry on your campuses, in our workplaces or our communities.”
Snip.
Signatories included: Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Latham & Watkins LLP, McDermott Will & Emery LLP, Milbank LLP, O’Melveny & Myers LLP, Paul Hastings LLP, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, Proskauer Rose LLP, Ropes & Gray LLP, Shearman & Sterling, Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett LLP, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, Watchtell, Lipton, Rosen, and Katz, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, Norton Rose Fulbright, and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP.
Jewish homes in Paris marked with Stars of David. It’s good that sort of thing has never led to any negative outcomes in Europe…
Good: Disney is making it’s live-action Snow White remake a more traditional film, including actual dwarfs rather than random guys. Bad: The CGI dwarfs look absolutely horrible. It’s as though Disney wants to punish movie-goers for rejecting their woke vision…
I’m not an Elon Musk fanboy. I’m not a fan of electric cars, and not everything he does is genius, and some of it is just strange. But I do appreciate how his purchase of Twitter has put the left into tizzy over no longer being able to censor their opponents (though, as I’m still suspended, Musk needs to fix the broken appeals process).
But this video on the rapid pace of SpaceX expansion shows another reason Musks’ political opponents fear him: The man simply gets shit done.
At Orbital Launch Site 2, co-located at Kennedy Space Center’s lc39a pad:
Because of NASA’s trepidation at the thought of a Starship failure and definitely delaying SpaceX from completing its Crew Dragon or Falcon Heavy contracts for the agency [And probably because the Biden Administration is pissed over Twitter and Musk’s resisting the Flu Manchu shutdowns. -LP], the company de-prioritized Starship Florida’s pad, slowing progress. SpaceX has nonetheless made significant progress. In 13 months, SpaceX has:
Created foundations
Modified one of pad 39a’s giant spherical tanks to store cryogenic methane
Installed miles of plumbing
Built and assembled a second skyscraper sized Starship launch tower
Installed the legs of the pad’s Orbital Launch Mount (or OLM)
Installed a water Deluge system at the base of the OLM
Assembled most of the OLM’s donut-like mount offsite
Constructed a new super-sized storage tank
And delivered a forest of smaller storage tanks.
“SpaceX has also completed the fabrication of a massive pair of steel arms transported them to pad 39a, attached them to a wheeled vehicle, and installed the structure on the Starship launch tower in Florida.”
“SpaceX employees have affectionately dubbed these arms ‘chopsticks,’ and they are an essential part of what CEO Elon Musk refers to as mechazilla,” which can stack and unstack Starship components. NASA never assembled components on the launch pad, they assembled them in the massive Vehicle Assembly Building and then rolled them out (very slowly) on crawlers.
“Many engineers even consider this ground structure to be more challenging than the production of the Starship spacecraft itself. However, SpaceX has not only one watchtower in Texas, but also constructed an additional launch Tower in Florida.”
“Currently, Falcon 9’s completed 66 launches.”
“It’s not unreasonable to expect more than 90 missions before the curtain Falls on 2023.”
“SpaceX has launched three crewed missions to the ISS along with three Falcon heavy rockets.”
They’re also launching payloads for Northrup Grumman.
“Lastly the missile defense agency has plans to launch the hypersonic and ballistic tracking space sensor mission into orbit later this year using a Falcon 9 rocket.”
That sort of breakneck pace is one the old NASA used to work at, the one crewed by the guys that won World War II (plus a smattering of indefatigable German scientist snatched up during Operation Paperclip) and who beat the Soviets to the moon. If today’s NASA had undertaken the expansions SpaceX has on pad 39a, they’d probably be in their third round of finalizing the Request For Proposal to send out to ask other people to bid on the work.
Musk gets shit done and his company is now vital to the Military Industrial Complex.
Well, I’ve had better weeks. In addition to my job ending, my dog had to get $1,700 worth of veterinary work done (removing and testing a lump on his chest, and while he was getting that I got his teeth cleaned). So feel free to hit the donation jar at the bottom of the post.
A prosecutor overseeing the Hunter Biden tax probe likely intervened to protect President Biden from Department of Justice scrutiny, Eileen O’Connor, former assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Tax Division, testified at the first House Oversight impeachment hearing Thursday.
The impeachment inquiry, which was formally opened earlier this month without a full House vote, builds on the committee’s months-long probe into Biden’s alleged foreign influence peddling.
U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware David Weiss led the investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes, which began in 2018, and was assisted by assistant U.S. attorney Lesley Wolf.
IRS whistleblowers who worked on the probe, and have since provided a trove of information to the committee, identified many deviations from standard procedure, which they claim were driven by Weiss and his staff as well as officials at main Justice in an attempt to slow walk or otherwise obstruct the probe.
The whistleblowers highlighted the fact that attorneys from the DOJ’s tax division suggested the removal of Hunter’s name from documents, including subpoenas, and pointed out that prosecutors at the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware prohibited IRS and FBI investigators from asking about or referring to “the big guy” or “dad” in witness interviews.
Wolf also ordered investigators not to escalate the tax probe into a campaign-finance probe, according to a document the GOP committee obtained from the whistleblowers. Specifically, she told them not to pursue the possibility that a hefty sum Hunter received from a major Democratic donor to pay his back taxes may have constituted an illegal campaign-finance contribution.
Why, it’s almost as if there’s a different rule for powerful Democrats than for other Americans…
“Adam Schiff Funneled Millions To Defense Contractors After Taking Donations.” Of course he did. “This financial maneuvering coincided with Schiff receiving $8,500 in contributions from PMA Group PAC and two family members of Paul Magliocchetti, founder and owner of the lobbying firm retained by both defense companies. In 2011, Paul Magliocchetti was sentenced to 27 months in prison for making illegal campaign contributions.”
Target closes nine stores in Portland, San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle and New York City, citing losses from crime.
States are fighting back against ESG companies trying to destroy their oil and gas industries.
“Oklahoma is a natural gas and oil industry state,” [Oklahoma State Auditor Cindy Byrd] said. “These things are very important to us, and we’ve seen that shut down over the last few years, which is really hurting Oklahoma.”
Increasingly, the environmental social and governance (ESG) industry is coordinating efforts among banks, insurance companies, and asset managers to cut America’s production of fossil fuels. It coordinates these efforts through a coalition of net-zero associations under the umbrella of the U.N.-affiliated Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ).
The net-zero clubs that are part of GFANZ encompass virtually all elements of global finance, including the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), the Net Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA), the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative (NZAMi), the Net Zero Asset Owners Alliance (NZAOA) and the Net Zero Financial Service Providers Alliance (NZFSPA). Members of these alliances pledge to work together to achieve UN goals of net zero CO2 emissions by 2050 or sooner.
We thought about investments, getting good returns, trying to make money with your money, and that was the prominent thought when I first got in office,” said Kentucky State Treasurer Allison Ball. “I remember when I first started coming to events, I began to hear about an initiative called ESG, and I thought at the time that this was academic; I didn’t really take it very seriously.
“In the course of the last couple of years, it began to become very aggressively pushed,” she told The Epoch Times. “There’s been an effort to really make it the only game in town, to really shift that mentality from investing to make money, making sure you’re getting good returns, to using investments as leverage to push certain mostly political ideas.
“Coal and oil and gas industries, those are signature industries in Kentucky,” Ms. Ball said. “And they’ve been targeted very strongly by the E part of ESG, so I began to see real impacts on the economy of Kentucky, my home area.”
The felony convictions of four former Navy officers in one of the worst bribery cases in the maritime branch’s history were vacated Wednesday due to questions about prosecutorial misconduct, the latest setback to the government’s years-long efforts in going after dozens of military officials tied to Leonard Francis, a defense contractor nicknamed “Fat Leonard.”
U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino called the misconduct “outrageous” and agreed to allow the four men to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and pay a $100 fine each.
California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein dead at 90.
“A group of five Harris County residents filed a petition in state district court on Friday seeking to remove Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo from office, arguing that she has abandoned her duties and responsibilities as the elected chief executive of the state’s most populous county….petitioning to remove Hidalgo under Texas Local Government code allowing for removal of an unfit or incompetent elected official.” She’s been on “mental health leave” since July.
“Prosper ISD Taxpayers Debate Priciest High School Stadium in Texas.” As in $94.8 million pricey. And that’s after they already built one for $53 million, the fifth priciest in the state, that opened in 2019. And they’ve already built two high schools that cost $200 million each, presumably with gold-plated microscopes and Tito Puente as the music teacher…
I’m not a big fan of electric vehicles, which still don’t have the range or battery longevity to be tempting as a regular driving option.
Also, outside Telsa (which obviously has some record of financial success), the whole EV space seems screwy. Today’s case in point: A company called Lucid, which I only know from various sketchy speed-test videos on YouTube, paid its CEO $379 million for 2022:
It’s rare for CEOs to rebuke their peers’ outlandish pay packages—mostly because they’d be throwing stones from glass houses—but Lucid Motors’ CEO Peter Rawlinson drew sharp criticism from his EV rival Elon Musk on Monday after earning the title of the highest paid executive in the automotive business.
“Beware any company where leadership compensation is not linked to performance,” the Tesla CEO wrote on X in response to a post about Rawlinson’s pay.
Rawlinson received a $379 million compensation package in 2022 for his role at the luxury EV maker Lucid, including a $575,000 base salary, $5.5 million of stock options, and an incredible $373 million in stock awards, according to a new CEO compensation survey from Automotive News and Equilar.
Notwithstanding Musk’s criticism, Rawlinson earned his huge pay package after hitting market-cap targets for Lucid early last year, SEC filings show. Lucid, like 88% of the 250 largest publicly traded U.S. firms, now uses performance-based compensation for at least some portion of its executive pay.
Snip.
Lucid’s stock fell more than 82% in 2022, and the company earned total revenue of just $608.2 million. Also, when comparing Rawlinson’s pay to his peers in the automotive business, his latest compensation package appears extreme. Rawlinson’s total compensation in 2022 was 11 times greater than the $34 million earned by the second-highest-paid automotive CEO, GM’s Mary Barra, and 21 times greater than the $18.3 million Ford CEO Jim Farley made.
CEOs at fellow EV startups aren’t making anywhere near Rawlinson’s total compensation, either. Rivian Automotive CEO Robert Scaringe earned roughly $1 million in 2022, even though his company is now worth over $22 billion, over 50% more than Lucid Motors’ roughly $14 billion.
Keep in mind that Lucid lost over $2 billion over the last year. Now, startups can take a while before they turn profitable, but paying the CEO of an unprofitable company hundred of millions of dollars to boost the stock price of a money-losing company sounds awful pump-and-dumpish to me. The EV space is hardly free of companies that turned out to be run by fraudsters.
Here’s a lawsuit against Texas Attorney General filed under the pre-Musk Twitter regime that was just dimissed.
In a Tuesday press release, Attorney General Ken Paxton claimed legal victory over Twitter after a federal appeals court threw out the social media company’s lawsuit against him.
After President Donald Trump was banned from Twitter following the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, the Texas Office of the Attorney General issued a “civil investigative demand” (CID) for Twitter to reveal information on how it moderates content.
Paxton said he wanted to determine whether Twitter had violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
As we know from the ongoing Twitter revelations following Musk’s takeover, there was a whole lot of deception (and censorship) going on.
Twitter then sued Paxton in the Northern District of California for violation of the First Amendment. The district court dismissed the case as not “prudentially ripe,” meaning it would be better decided in the future when there was more information.
A discussion of “ripeness” as a legal concept in lawsuits is far beyond the scope of my expertise. (Ditto “standing.”)
A panel of judges affirmed that decision and added that the case was “not constitutionally ripe,” meaning it rested on hypothetical future events rather than present facts because Twitter did not claim the CID had a “chilling effect” on its free speech at the time.
Twitter then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which affirmed the panel’s judgment that the case was constitutionally unripe.
“The issues here are not fit for judicial decision,” wrote Judge Ryan D. Nelson in the opinion, “because Twitter’s allegations do not show that the issuance of the CID is chilling its speech or causing it other cognizable injury that the requested injunction would redress.”
Paxton’s press release claimed the lawsuit was a “thinly-veiled distraction.”
“I’ve been asking Twitter for years to answer questions about its content moderation and large-scale censorship, but Twitter’s only response has been to try and hide behind its bogus lawsuits against me,” he wrote.
“Now that yet another court has ruled in our favor and more details surrounding Twitter’s censorship have come to light, I look forward to helping get to the bottom of any actions that the company took to mislead consumers.”
Musk might want to order his Twitter employees to go ahead and comply with Paxton’s records requests.
After releasing so many details of Twitter’s censorship regime, Musk might think about releasing the memos behind Twitter’s lawsuit strategy under the previous regime…
Democrats being soft on criminals, pedophiles and common sense highlights this week’s LinkSwarm.
Man, there sure seems to be a lot of funny number counting going on in Philadelphia.
Regular readers are well aware that back in July, Zero Hedge first (long before it became a running theme among so-called “macro experts”) pointed out that a gaping 1+ million job differential had opened up between the closely-watched and market-impacting, if easily gamed and manipulated, Establishment Survey and the far more accurate if volatile, Household Survey – the two core components of the monthly non-farm payrolls report.
We first described this divergence in early July, when looking at the June payrolls data, we found that the gap between the Housing and Establishment Surveys had blown out to 1.5 million starting in March when “something snapped.” We described this in “Something Snaps In The US Labor Market: Full, Part-Time Workers Plunge As Multiple Jobholders Soar.”
Since then the difference only got worse, and culminated earlier this month when the gap between the Establishment and Household surveys for the November dataset nearly doubled to a whopping 2.7 million jobs, a bifurcation which we described in “Something Is Rigged: Unexplained, Record 2.7 Million Jobs Gap Emerges In Broken Payrolls Report.”
Snip.
We bring all this up again because late on Dec 13, the Philadelphia Fed published something shocking: as part of the regional Fed’s quarterly reassessment of payrolls in the form of an “early benchmark revision of state payroll employment”, the Philly Fed confirmed what we have been saying since July, namely that US payrolls are overstated by at least 1.1 million, and likely much more!
And the correction came after the midterms! What are the odds?
The Royal Bahamas Police Force took the failed financial tech entrepreneur into custody after the U.S. filed criminal charges against him, according to a press statement. FTX, which Bankman-Fried founded, imploded in November, costing investors millions of dollars in losses. The fallen businessman has been accused of misusing customer funds deposited with FTX to artificially prop up another one of his enterprises: a crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, which he operated simultaneously while seemingly evading financial ethics scrutiny.
Speaking of abusing children: “Former CNN Producer Pleads Guilty In Pedo Scandal. Former CNN producer John Griffin, who worked ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with Chris Cuomo, pleaded guilty on Monday in federal court to using interstate commerce to entice and coerce a 9-year-old girl to engage in sexual activity as his Vermont ski house. This is a different CNN pedophile than Jake Tapper’s former producer, Rick Saleeby, who resigned after it emerged that he solicited sexually explicit photos of an underage girl.”
The mother of an 11-year-old rape victim is suing a George-Soros backed prosecutor in Virginia who let the boy’s rapist walk free, alleging the prosecutor’s actions violated the minor’s civil rights and made him fear for his physical safety.
Amber Reel in November filed the federal lawsuit on behalf of her son after Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney Steve Descano (D.) let the rapist walk. Court filings show Descano was months late in sharing necessary evidence before a September trial, dooming the case and forcing his office to enter into a lesser plea deal with the rapist the same month. Ronnie Reel, who was released on time served, had faced life in prison for forcibly sodomizing the minor. Reel is the victim’s uncle.
This is the second high-profile case in the last month where the Soros prosecutor freed a dangerous offender. In December, Descano struck a plea deal that would clear the record of a man who fired his gun into a crowded Virginia bar. Soros donated more than half a million dollars to Descano’s 2019 campaign.
A grand jury had already indicted Reel in February for sodomy and aggravated sexual battery, and the case was set for trial in September. But Descano’s office didn’t share evidence with the public defender before trial, bungling Reel’s prosecution with its “woefully, woefully missed” deadlines. The case’s presiding judge said Descano’s office did a “disservice to the victim” and was “very concerning to the court.”
Because he dodged a felony sex crime conviction, Reel won’t have to register as a sex offender and won’t be barred from holding jobs in schools or other places that would put him near children. The victim and his mother in their suit say Descano’s “deliberate indifference represents egregious conduct that is shocking to the conscience.”
Speaking of pedophile friendly Democrats: “During the hearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, California [Democratic] Rep. Katie Porter asserted that the phrase “groomer” is a “lie” used to maliciously discriminate against LGBTQ+ people and make them appear to be a “threat.” “You know, this allegation of ‘groomer’ and ‘pedophile,’ it is alleging that a person is criminal somehow and engaged in criminal acts merely because of their gender identity, their sexual orientation, their gender identity.” Yes, if your “gender identity” is “I like to have sex with children,” then yes, you’re a pedophile, and if you tell elementary school children what sort of sex you have, then yes, you’re a groomer.
Former state Sen. Kirk Watson (D-Austin) will be the next mayor of Austin about two decades after he left that same office in the early aughts.
He defeated state Rep. Celia Israel (D-Austin) by a slim margin after finishing second in the general election. He’ll serve as mayor for the next two years before having to seek re-election in 2024 due to redistricting.
Watson lost Travis County, the city’s largest portion, by 17 votes while winning Williamson county by 881 and Hays County by 22. During the general and runoff races, he outspent Israel by a wide margin.
The two candidates sparred over housing and homeless policy during the general election and the runoff. About one-third of the voting population turned out to vote in the runoff versus the November 8 general.
Watson will take over for Mayor Steve Adler after his self-described “disruptive” tenure marked by a lingering homelessness problem, public fallout and a declining relationship with the police department, and a cumbersome and increasingly costly light rail transit project.
The United States has always had kind of a friends and family plan that it sells military gear to, but it has always reserved the very top top top stuff for itself and the Brits. Well, in this calendar year we have already seen the first two exceptions to that policy being made. The United States is sending air-launch cruise missiles and nuclear-powered submarines to the Australians. And now we’re giving Tomahawks to the Japanese, giving both of these countries the ability to independently destroy China’s economic links to the wider world without any additional help from the United States. And this sudden proliferation of countries that can now bring China to their knees independently, this is arguably the biggest strategic development of the Year, even more so than the Ukraine war, because it takes what has become the world’s second largest economy and puts it completely at the mercy of the domestic politics of a third party, and now a fourth party.
Oberlin College finally pays their judgment to Gibson’s Bakery. “The $25 million verdict plus interest and attorney’s fees resulted in an almost $32 million judgment, with interest running at about $4000 per day since June 2019. In all, over $36 million was owed.” Cudos to William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection for his thorough, ongoing coverage of this story from beginning to end.
F-35B fighter crashes in the Metroplex. Fortunately the pilot safely ejected, and it appears that the airplane (which was undergoing testing for Lockheed) looks recoverable. To my untrained eye it looks like a stuck throttle.
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to impeach controversial Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-PA).
Five lawmakers, including three Republicans and two Democrats with constituencies in Philadelphia, formed a committee to investigate Krasner earlier this year. Members of the lower chamber voted by a margin of 107 to 85 in favor of impeaching Krasner, enabling the Pennsylvania Senate to remove the official with a two-thirds majority.
“Texas Democrats Blame Lackluster Midterm on 2021 Election Reform, Redistricting, and Poor Border Messaging.” Note that the word “policies” appears nowhere in the article…
The partisan index for Texas counties. Republican counties tended to get slightly more Republican while Democratic counties got slightly less Democratic.
A study conducted by criminologist Michael Smith of the University of Texas at San Antonio shows that 56 percent of individuals charged with violent crimes or weapons law violations in Dallas are released on bail or their own recognizance. That figure includes about 75 percent of offenders charged with weapons law violations, about two-thirds of those arrested for aggravated assault, and 34 percent of those arrested for murder.
Smith examined 464 arrests from 2021 and followed the cases through May 15 of this year. The dataset included all (109) arrests for murder, 25 percent (73) of arrests for robbery, 25 percent (154) of arrests for aggravated assault involving a family member, 10 percent (67) of arrests for aggravated assault not involving a family member, and 10 percent (61) of arrests for weapons law violations.
Almost a quarter of those released were arrested again within the course of the study. The average length of time between release and the second arrest was 148 days.
Disney shares are down 40 per cent this year, and last week’s quarterly report makes for grim reading. Disney’s expenses and operating losses are skyrocketing. Even the hugely popular Disney+, which continues to gain in subscribers, made an operating loss of $1.47 billion – more than double its loss last year. An internal memo last week announced job cuts and a hiring freeze.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that Disney’s troubles arrive in a year when the company has been distracted by politics. Indeed, it seems to have gone into overdrive to promote woke causes, both on screen and off.
Most infamously, in March, Disney waded into a bruising political battle with Florida governor Ron DeSantis, over his Parental Rights in Education Act. The law, now enacted, bans ‘classroom instruction’ on issues of ‘sexual orientation or gender identity’ for Florida schoolkids under the age of 10. Although the law has the overwhelming support of parents, from across the political spectrum, it sparked fury in media circles. Critics were quick to dub it the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law, arguing that it ‘marginalises LGBTQ+ people’.
Disney was only too happy to join in the chorus of denunciation. The act ‘should never have passed’, said Disney in a statement. ‘Our goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts.’ Disney also pledged to donate $5million to organisations opposed to the law. But DeSantis hit back. He revoked a special tax status that Disney’s Florida theme parks had enjoyed since 1967.
Disney’s growing reputation for championing woke causes is costing it more than just its tax exemptions. It is now clearly damaging its relationship with audiences. As recently as March 2021, Disney’s public-approval rating was 77 per cent. But a September poll finds approval for Disney has now fallen to only 51 per cent among all Americans. And it has fallen into negative territory among Republicans. As pollster Chris Wilson notes: ‘It is highly unusual for a family entertainment company to find itself outside the good graces of so many Americans.’
Blue cities bleed, more Democrats violating election laws, another Democratic congressional staffer exposed for carrying water for Red China, Elon Musk takes over and immediately starts cleaning house at Twitter, and more transexual lunacy. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
As polling continues to show crime is a top issue for voters, the number of homicides has skyrocketed nationwide.
In fact, homicide rates rose by an average of nearly 10% in 50 of the most populated U.S. cities between the third quarter of last year and the third quarter of this year — and are still rising — according to a new study.
WalletHub compared 50 of America’s largest cities based on per capita homicides for the third quarter (July through September) of each year since 2020, using locally published crime data to compile its findings.
According to WalletHub, these were the ten cities with the highest homicide cases per 100,000 residents from July through September:
St. Louis, Mo. (19.69)
Kansas City, Mo. (14.86)
Detroit, Mich. (13.24)
Baltimore, Md. (12.45)
New Orleans, La. (10.99)
Milwaukee, Wisc. (10.46)
Memphis, Tenn. (9.99)
Philadelphia, Pa. (9.36)
Norfolk, Va. (7.78)
Chicago, Ill. (7.71)
The top prosecutors in most of these cities are backed by progressive megadonor George Soros, a billionaire who’s spent the last several years injecting tens of millions of dollars into local district attorney races nationwide, backing candidates who support policies such as abolishing bail, defunding the police, and decriminalizing or deprioritizing certain offenses.
In St. Louis, for example, Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner is one of the first prosecutors bankrolled by Soros’ financial network of organizations and affiliates, heavily funded by these sources in 2016 and again in 2020.
Amid high homicide figures, Gardner has declined more cases and issued fewer arrest warrants than her predecessor, charging fewer felonies and prosecuting thousands of fewer cases as a result. She has also deferred prison sentences for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies as part of her reform initiatives.
Gardner has said this is part of her “platform to reduce the number of cases unnecessarily charged in order to focus on the more difficult cases for trial.”
Last year, Gardner came under fire after three murder cases under her purview were dismissed in one week due to prosecutors in her office not showing up for hearings or being unprepared.
Her campaign website boasts that she’s “made jail and prison a last resort, reserved for those who pose a true public safety risk,” while limiting “the arrest and detention of people accused of misdemeanors and low-level felonies.”
Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner is another Soros-funded prosecutor.
Soros spent almost $1.7 million through the Philadelphia Justice and Public Safety PAC to help Krasner in 2017, pouring more than five times as much money into the race as Krasner himself. Four years later, Krasner received a combined $1.259 million from Soros-funded groups for his reelection.
During his tenure, Krasner has cut the future years of incarceration by half and slashed the length of parole in probation supervision by nearly two-thirds compared to the previous DA. He has also made a priority of not prosecuting people who are illegally in possession of guns unless they hurt or kill people.
The top prosecutors in New Orleans, Milwaukee, Norfolk, and Chicago have also been backed by Soros-linked money. Many of the others are self-described progressive prosecutors.
According to some experts, progressive prosecutors pursuing soft-on-crime policies have contributed to the spike in homicides and other violent crime.
“Prosecutors in most major cities have failed the people they serve by refusing to prosecute criminals, including those charged with violent crimes,” Tristin Kilgallon, associate professor of pre-law and history at the University of Findlay, told WalletHub. “Countless violent crimes have been committed by those who have been released back into the streets due to recent ‘bail reform’ initiatives or by prosecutors who declined to pursue charges.”
“Texas Secretary of State Finds ‘Serious Breaches’ in Harris County 2020 Election Audit. Auditors found multiple chain of custody issues and violations of state and federal law requiring maintenance of records in the state’s largest county.”
Issues found by auditors relate primarily to the county’s extralegal “drive-thru” voting initiated by then-interim County Clerk Chris Hollins.
Auditors found that for at least 14 polling locations the county does not show chain of custody for the Mobile Ballot Boxes (MBB) and that there were multiple MBBs created for some voting locations. Auditors say the MBBs from the polling locations “were not the MBBs ultimately tabulated.” They also note that they have been able to locate some missing MBBs, but have not been given an explanation as to why the originals were not tabulated. Each MBB can hold 9,999 ballots.
Another issue found by auditors is that poll book and provisional voting data provided by the county do not match the number of cast vote records on some of the devices.
Ennis also noted that after upgrading voting systems the county does not appear to have retained “any equipment or computers that provide relevant reports or alternatively, can read the MBBs” from 2020 or recover the cast vote records stored in them as required by both state and federal election codes.
Why, it’s almost like the Democrats running Harris County wanted to commit election fraud…
Speaking of election fraud, Facebook has been fined $25 million for breaking Washington State election law.
According to court documents, King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North found Meta to be in violation of Washington’s political disclosure law 822 separate times between 2019 and 2021 and issued the maximum possible fine for each instance, which totaled up to $30,000 per violation.
Meta was also ordered to “come into full compliance” with the state’s election transparency laws within the next 30 days as well as pay the attorney’s fees for the case, which Ferguson has requested be tripled for a total of $10.5 million. The final total will be decided by North at a later date.
According to The Seattle Times, the state’s election transparency laws, which have been in place since 1972, require ad sellers to “disclose the names and addresses of political buys, the targets of such ads and, the total number of viewers of each ad.” The judge found that Meta had intentionally violated the standards.
Washington Democrat Attorney General Bob Ferguson said “that he had “one word for Facebook’s conduct in this case – arrogance.”
He told the Times, “It intentionally disregarded Washington’s election transparency laws,” Ferguson said. “But that wasn’t enough. Facebook argued in court that those laws should be declared unconstitutional. That’s breathtaking.”
When Pennsylvania Democrats insist that a candidate who suffered a life-threatening stroke in May is recovering well and “has no work restrictions and can work full duty in public office,” that candidate must look and sound fine to prove they’re telling the truth. Last night, in the lone debate in the Pennsylvania Senate race, John Fetterman looked and sounded very, very far from fine. But you can judge for yourself by watching the whole debate here.
I expected Fetterman’s debate performance to be a Rorschach test, with Democrats insisting that he was fine and hand-waving away any problems, and Republicans pointing to every verbal misstep, pause, or oddly worded answer. But by the end of the hour, there was little debate, no pun intended. John Fetterman’s ability to hear, understand, process information, and speak appears to still be severely impacted by his stroke. Perhaps the worst moment of the night came when one of the moderators asked him about a statement he made in 2018 opposing fracking, and how he could square that past stance with his current claim that he always supported fracking. After a long pause, presumably from reading the moderator’s question from the monitor, Fetterman said, “I, I, I do support fracking and . . .” and then for a moment, Fetterman’s head shook, and his mouth moved, but no words came out. Then he picked up again: “I don’t . . . I don’t. I support fracking, and I stand, and I do support fracking.” With everyone watching likely mortified and embarrassed to watch Fetterman struggle to finish the sentence, the moderator mercifully moved on to the next question.
Elon Musk took over Twitter late Thursday and fired company CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, senior legal representative Vijaya Gadde, and general counsel Sean Edgett.
Musk, the world’s richest man, acquired the social media giant through a $44 billion purchase. He reportedly had until Friday to complete the deal.
In a video tweet that went viral, Musk appeared at Twitter’s corporate offices Wednesday carrying a sink, implying that employees would need to accept that he was now in charge.
This is a good start, but all the people on the Safety and Trust Council need to be fired, and all accounts suspended or banned need to be restored.
Rishi Sunak is the new UK Prime Minister, and Nigel Farage is not impressed:
A House Democratic staffer was fired after her outreach to other congressional aides allegedly on behalf of the Chinese embassy was revealed this week, National Review has learned. After an investigation found that the staffer had acted improperly, her boss, Representative Don Beyer, swiftly removed her.
“Congressman Beyer was totally unaware of these activities prior to being contacted by the House Sergeant At Arms,” Aaron Fritschner, his deputy chief of staff, told National Review in a statement this morning. “As soon as he learned of them, he followed every directive he was given by security officials. The staffer in question is no longer employed by the office of Congressman Beyer.”
Fritschner added that Beyer, who has a hawkish record on China, was “deeply upset” upon learning about the activities of the now-former staffer, Barbara Hamlett.
Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Pinkey Carr, a Democrat, was found to exhibit such misconduct that comprise more than 100 incidents over a period of about two years.
The misconduct “encompassed repeated acts of dishonesty; the blatant and systematic disregard of due process, the law, court orders, and local rules; the disrespectful treatment of court staff and litigants; and the abuse of capias warrants and the court’s contempt power,” stated the court’s per curium opinion. “That misconduct warrants an indefinite suspension from the practice of law.”
pic.twitter.com/7N0aaa9MYQ