An anonymous hacker has claimed to have leaked 270 GB of internal data and source code from The New York Times (NYT) on the controversial image board 4chan.
The leak, reportedly containing over 5,000 repositories and 3.6 million files, was published on June 6, 2024. It has since raised widespread concern and speculation about the potential implications for the historic news organization.
The hacker, who has not been identified, posted a magnet link to the files on 4chan, encouraging users to download and share the data. According to the hacker, the leaked collection comprises uncompressed tar files with fewer than 30 encrypted repositories.
The leaked data reportedly contains a variety of source code, including the blueprints of well-known games like Wordle, email marketing campaigns, and ad reports. The hacker’s message was signed “With love from /aicg/,” a nod to a 4chan community.
While the leak’s legitimacy has not been independently verified, cybersecurity experts and media outlets have expressed serious concerns. The Register reported that it had seen a list of files in the purported leak but had not confirmed their authenticity.
Bryan Lunduke of The Lunduke Journal (who’s covered leaked/hacked material like this before) downloaded the files. He says they’re 334GB worth of files (maybe the size discrepancy is zipped vs unzipped) and thinks they’re real.
This dropped June 6.
“We are talking about a 334 gigabyte archive containing supposedly 3.6 million and some change files, individual source code files. Massive. Off-the-charts massive.”
He though it might just be every New York Times story ever published, but it doesn’t appear to be. Nor does it look like an email server dump.
“This is massive. It almost is making my brain hurt simply going through all of this.”
“I went through it. I read a bunch of it in depth. When I say a bunch of it, I mean I spent a long time on it and barely made a dent.”
“It truly does look to be over 3 something million source code files.”
“The first things I looked through were tremendously boring. It was just stupid JavaScript files dealing with Markdown.” JavaScript is a front-end programming language used for performing a huge variety of tasks in your browser. Markdown is an HTML-like text markup language used as a basis for rendering documents in a variety of different formats (standard web page, phone webpage, PDF, online help, etc.
A lot of it appears to be internal website documents.
“It’s from a wide variety of stuff. I mean it’s all over the map. We’re talking onboarding documents and technical documents, hiring documents, switchboard documents, user attribute documents, a huge amount of documentation.”
Plus actual source code for iOS and Android applications.
Lunduke explains legal doctrine on leaked materials and reporting, saying he didn’t commit any crime to obtain the material, which should legally put him in the clear for talking about material therein relevant to the public interest. Normally I’d point out “Hacking is wrong, mkay,” but New York Times has itself published hacked/leaked/stolen material itself at least as far back as The Pentagon Papers, so this is a case of biter bit.
“There a reasonable assumption that publishing some of this leaked material would be of the public interest…There are a number of policies and other interesting things in place documented within this material that could be of the public interest.”
“This does appear to be real. I cannot fathom how all of this could have been created if it wasn’t real.” I am inclined to agree. But! It’s important to note that a real archive can be salted with false information for a variety of nefarious purposes, so caveat lector.
“It is an absolutely monstrous amount. Simply searching through it and scanning it is insane. There are over 5,000 individual mini-archives within this link each one appears to represent an individual source code repository, or at least a folder or subfolder within source code repositories.” He says it appears to be just the latest snapshot, and not all the versions you would find in a source code repository like GitHub.
The time stamps on the files look recent.
“Man, there’s some funky things going on here.”
I am most interested in how internal policies codify/enforce woke social justice priorities, if there are any special instructions for covering Donald Trump (or other Republicans), racial preferences in hiring policies, etc.
I already voted and the election is next week, so there is light at the end of the tunnel! And if political bloggers are already sick of this election season, just think how sick of it ordinary voters are. None of which will keep me from live-blogging/live-tweeting it election night…
Six weeks ago, Democrats were expecting a blue wave to rival the Republican victory of 2010, when the GOP picked up 63 House seats. Everything was in their favor. History—the party in power almost always loses seats. Money—Democrats continue to outraise Republicans by staggering amounts. The opposition—some 41 GOP House members retired, most from vulnerable districts where Donald Trump’s favorability is low. Democrats were even positioned to take over the Senate, despite defending 10 Trump-state seats.
Democrats obliterated their own breaker in the space of two weeks with the ambush of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The left, its protesters and its media allies demonstrated some of the vilest political tactics ever seen in Washington, with no regard for who or what they damaged or destroyed along the way—Christine Blasey Ford, committee rules, civility, Justice Kavanaugh himself, the Constitution. An uncharacteristically disgusted Sen. Lindsey Graham railed: “Boy, y’all want power. God, I hope you never get it!”
A lot of voters suddenly agreed with that sentiment. The enormous enthusiasm gap closed almost overnight as conservative voters rallied to #JobsNotMobs. Even liberal prognosticators today forecast that Republicans will keep the Senate and Democrats will manage only a narrow majority in the House, if that. It’s always possible the polls are off, or that there is a last-minute bombshell. But it remains the case that the ascendant progressive movement blew an easy victory for Democrats.
Antisemetic hate crimes in New York are on the rise, yet “during the past 22 months, not one person caught or identified as the aggressor in an anti-Semitic hate crime has been associated with a far right-wing group.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Over 270 individuals along the caravan route have criminal histories, including known gang membership. Those include a number of violent criminals – examples include aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, armed robbery, sexual assault on a child, and assault on a female. Mexican officials have also publicly stated that criminal groups have infiltrated the caravan. We also continue to see individuals from over 20 countries in this flow from countries such as Somalia, India, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh.
Giant Russian floating dry dock isn’t. It may or may not have damaged Amiral Kuznetsov, Russia’s only aircraft carrier (antiquated though it is) when it went down. Now the Russian Navy is in a world of hurt in the north because no other dry dock north of the Black Sea is capable of hosting either the Kuznetsov or many of Russia’s largest submarines. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
More reminders of just what sort of Administration Lightbringer McLegTingle ran:
CIA conducted "routine counterintelligence monitoring" of US Congressional communications, 2014. pic.twitter.com/gJm77JT3Ml
Aww, no one wants to campaign with Bill Clinton anymore. “‘Inability to reckon with his sexual indiscretions’? Does the NYT use the phrase ‘sexual indiscretions’ when writing about other celebrities who’ve been accused of rape and sexual harassment?”
Workers walk out of Google in protest of their protecting sexual harassment among executives:
Perhaps no company deserves to be destroyed by feminists, but if any company does, none deserves it more than Google. Having built the world’s most powerful search engine, the company then developed or purchased a series of other innovations — Gmail, YouTube, etc. After obtaining a hegemonic position in the online world, however, Google then inexplicably sold its corporate soul to “social justice” ideologues.
The extent to which Google has been captured by left-wing totalitarians, and become an active agent of intellectual repression, became apparent last year after the company fired James Damore for writing an internal memo that criticized their “diversity” policies. Damore sued his former emoployer (“Google Lawsuit Exposes Stalinist Climate Protecting Anti-White, Anti-Male Bias,” Jan. 10) and Google was also subsequently sued by a former member of its “technology staffing management team” who said the company implemented illegal hiring quotas. Only female, black or Latino candidates were eligible for hiring at Google, the lawsuit by Arne Wilberg alleges, and recruiters were ordered to “purge entirely any applications by non-diverse employees.”
Texts from the Nevada Democratic Party: “F—K Trump. Stupid Republican retard. Trump is the anti-christ. Trump loves misery and hates Mexicans. Trump wants you to die. Trump wants to murder Mexicans.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Like most Democrats, I reacted to the stunning 2016 election of Donald Trump with a combination of confusion and dread. After all, Hillary Clinton was the favorite and, to Democrats like me, a Trump victory seemed to portend certain economic disaster, nuclear war, and pretty much the end of America as we knew it.
But now nearly two years into his administration, Trump has presided over a “winning streak” that includes a booming economy and stock market, an unemployment level at a nearly 50-year low, two Supreme Court appointments, no new foreign wars or domestic terrorist attacks emanating from abroad, a significant degree of progress on trade relations with Canada and Mexico, a “needed reset” on the China relationship, and the prospect of peace on the Korean Peninsula.
Perhaps it is time that even his opponents reconsider Trump. Does Trump have a strategy that we can describe? Is Trump a return of Richard Nixon, of Ronald Reagan, or of something else entirely? After several months of watching the news without gaining any answers, I finally canceled my cable subscription and sought out other sources. I found some insights in unexpected places.
Trump’s presidency marks a return to realpolitik and great power politics.
Snip.
A third insight was from the unlikeliest place: the critically acclaimed animated show, “Rick and Morty.” During Trump’s campaign, his supporters frequently talked about how funny the candidate was. This humor was lost on most of my left-leaning peers. But “Rick and Morty” showed me what I have may been missing. Here is a popular TV show about a mad scientist Rick, an amoral, sociopathic man who considers himself the smartest man in the universe and tells dirty jokes in front of his grandson Morty. The slapstick, low-brow, and nihilistic insults and dirty humor of “Rick and Morty” — much like Trump — resemble some of the comedic greats from the decades prior to the 1990s: “The Honeymooners,” “Benny Hill,” “Abbott and Costello,” “The Three Stooges,” and “I Love Lucy.” These comedic devices can be traced back hundreds of years to Asian and European theater, which used slapstick, puns, insults, and innuendo.
Compare that oeuvre to the 1990s-2000s, during which comedy was more satirical, knowing, self-referential, meta, and smug. This idea is far from perfect, but examples of satire that use slapstick as well include “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report,” “South Park,” “Team America: World Police”, and Sacha Baron Cohen’s parodies. American society today seems to be witnessing a return of what columnist Noah Smith calls “goofy” humor and a decline of “knowingly sarcastic” humor. Even The New Yorker complained that the 2018 Emmys were too smug and later described Trump’s rallies unfavorably as a “vaudeville routine.” Perhaps our shift toward a reversion in history also means we are seeing a cultural reversion as well. Smugness has become politically tone deaf.
Snip.
The Trump Doctrine takes previous policy assumptions and turns them on their head. Trump’s “America First” approach is a reversion to the idea of realpolitik and great power competition. It is better suited to a moment in which American power is much less dominant. The president takes each state-to-state relationship on its own terms. That’s why he’s often antagonistic with allies and friendly with threatening dictators. The consequences of insulting friendly countries, such as Canada, might be hurt feelings in exchange for better trade terms, while souring relations with an antagonistic one, such as North Korea, could result in serious security threats. He pursues the optimal outcome in a utilitarian sense rather than follow previous rules about diplomatic etiquette. Trump keeps his enemies even closer than his friends, while previous presidents did the opposite. Niccolo Machiavelli might have been familiar with these tactics.
Trump’s diplomatic method can be reduced to the four “B’s”: bullying, bargaining, burden-sharing, and bragging. He starts an interaction by bullying the subject — usually on Twitter, seeks a chance to sit down with the target to bargain as hard as possible toward what Trump may see as a more reciprocal relationship of burden-sharing, and then finally brags about whatever the results are. Trump treats all relationships as transactional, deploying tit-for-tat tactics toward achieving his goal of “reciprocity.” His message is that he wants to make America great again but does not spend much time lecturing or moralizing to foreigners. Finally, his use of insults, jokes, and slapstick, physical humor creates an image of honesty and authenticity with his supporters. Overall, these techniques and worldviews are becoming increasingly common around the world, including with the leaders of countries as diverse as Turkey, the Philippines, Russia, Israel, Mexico — and potentially Brazil.
Trump described his realpolitik-with-no-sacred-cows approach during the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September: “America’s policy of principled realism means we will not be held hostage to old dogmas, discredited ideologies, and so-called experts who have been proven wrong over the years, time and time again. This is true not only in matters of peace, but in matters of prosperity.”
Overall, Trump’s approach represents a reversion to a style of statecraft that flips previous approaches. Technocracy, meritocracy, and bureaucratic approaches are giving way to establishing top-level personal rapport, trust, and loyalty. Free trade ideology is giving way to trade as a means to enrichment. Building institutions gives way to questioning the utility of each institution. Moral diplomacy gives way to talking to anyone who will bargain. Careful speeches give way to saying anything that gets results. Saving sacred cows gives way to killing them or threatening to do so. Open markets give way to using U.S. markets, military, and migration as bargaining chips. Every relationship is subject to maximum leverage of what is possible.
West is nothing if not independent. He doesn’t need the approval of the Democratic establishment or the usual suspects among the liberal Hollywood elite. He is untethered from the traditional liberal gatekeepers in the same way Trump was untethered from the Republican establishment as a presidential candidate. There is a reason that the Democrats and their allies in the media insult, marginalize, ridicule and try to “Uncle Tom” West. It is obvious they are afraid of him and the discussion he might start.
“Beto O’Rourke Raised Record Breaking $38 Million in 3Q.” And he’s still losing. Just imagine if Democrats had used that money to protect endangered incumbent senators instead…
O’Rourke’s “extraordinary political success” is illusionary. His national popularity is contingent on aesthetics and mass of coverage. It is merely that Beto looks and acts like the type of guy producers at most cable news networks and talk shows think—or more precisely, wish—a senator would look and act like. Unlike, say, Cruz (nearly two years older than Beto), who is always blathering about the Constitution or whatnot.
It’s not as if O’Rourke is a special talent by any measure. His speeches and talking points are just as vacuous and predictable as those of any other middling politician. His positions on guns and abortion—and a multitude of other issues—are in lockstep with his party, not the state. O’Rourke has never offered any substantively impressive policy ideas. He’s not led on any notable issues in the House. He’s remarkably unremarkable.
The son of a onetime Republican county judge and a longtime furniture store owner, the Democratic congressman from El Paso married into the family of one of his hometown’s most prominent developers and has assembled real estate investments worth millions.
Congress is rife with rich people, but O’Rourke had a 2015 net worth of about $9 million, ranking 51st out of 435 House members, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. That’s more than double the $3.8 million worth of his Republican opponent, Sen. Ted Cruz, who ranked 41st of 100 senators.
Think Progress alum thinly disguised as a journalist does 50 Shades of Beto. Ick.
The hits keep coming:
The lies flow easily from 'Beto':
Beto O'Rourke's Mother, Who He Says Is A 'Lifelong Republican,' Donated To Obama, Voted In 15 Of 17 Democratic Primaries https://t.co/I5QC9SEjlF
The Russian government kills journalists, among others. I do not recall the Washington Post protesting on this basis the Obama administration’s “reset” of relations with Putin’s government or Obama’s promise to be more “flexible” with Russia after his reelection. Nor, as far as I remember, did the Post cite Russia’s murderous ways as a reason not to farm out to Putin enforcement of the “red line” against the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
Cuba’s treatment of journalists and others has been atrocious. Yet, the mainstream media supported the Obama administration when it radically reset U.S. relations with Cuba without insisting on any change in the regime’s treatment of dissidents.
What are the differences between Russia/Cuba and Saudi Arabia? I see two. First, Russia and Cuba are adversaries of America. Saudi Arabia is an ally.
For the sane, this difference would, if anything, cut in favor of the Saudis. For the left, it cuts against them.
Second, the Trump administration has very visibly allied itself with Saudi Arabia as a means of countering Iran and achieving other American objectives in the Middle East. Thus, the Khashoggi slaying provides the mainstream media with the opportunity to do what it does best — hammer President Trump.
In my view, the Khashoggi slaying should not cause America substantially to alter its foreign policy. Our relatively close relationship with Saudi Arabia is predicated, as it should be, on mutual interests and mutual adversaries. Either the geo-political predicate justifies the relationship or it doesn’t.
1. Vilification (Alt-right, racist…) 2. Guilt by association ("Did the *Koch brothers* fund this?") 3. Misrepresentation ("So basically, you think trans ppl should just *die*…") 4. Reduction to privilege anxiety ("White fragility!") https://t.co/tOPJGl0zWp
Florida man does it again. Not only is he a registered sex offender who hired a federal informant for a mad-bombing spree aimed at target stores, he did it all for…making money off shorting the stock?
Sometimes you put up something you don’t actually agree with, and which most of your readership may find more confounding than enlightening. This is one of those times.
Some may find the author’s theories absurd, or opaque, or illogical, and I’m not entirely in disagreement. But if you view them through Scott Adams’ “persuasion technique looks an awful lot like magic from the outside” filter, these essays make a certain amount of sense.
I’m also posting this for two non-conservative science fiction writer friends to take a look at: Don Webb (an expert on Egyptian magic) and Will Shetterly (a socialist with an interest in the American class structure).
So, without further adieu, here are excerpts from the four parts of John Michael Greer’s The Kek Wars:
Every aristocracy begins as a set of tough, capable individuals who come to terms with some reality the previous ruling elite has ignored too long, and use that reality as a battering ram to break down the doors of the status quo and take power from the overly delicate hands that previously held it. As long as the new aristocracy stays in touch with the world outside its own circles, and provides the people it rules with effective ways to seek redress of grievances and communicate their wants and needs, it retains power—but when it retreats from that necessary interaction and closes its ears to the needs of those under it, it writes its own death warrant.
The managerial aristocracy of contemporary America followed exactly that trajectory. It took power from an older aristocracy in the crisis years of the Great Depression, when Franklin Roosevelt spearheaded a not-quite-violent seizure of power and broke the grip of a failed social and economic orthodoxy. There Was No Alternative until FDR created one, and in his wake a new cadre of bureaucrats and intellectuals seized the levers of power and turned the established certainties of American life on their heads. The bare-knuckle international slugging matches of the Second World War and the early Cold War were grist for the new aristocracy’s mill, and when it was in its prime, it had the common sense to pay attention where necessary to the grievances and wants of those outside its circle.
Fast forward to 2000 or so, and the members of this same caste had fallen into the same trap as the elites of the pre-New Deal era, and embraced a social and economic orthodoxy just as toxic as the one their predecessors overthrew. What’s worse, they made the same mistake as their predecessors, and convinced themselves that the policies that furthered their own interests at everyone else’s expense were not only the only alternative, but the only moral alternative.
The policies in question? There were a galaxy of them, but the threefold core was metastatic centralism, economic globalism, and unrestricted illegal immigration. The fantastic proliferation of federal regulations since 1932 choked out small businesses and transferred wealth and power to big corporations and government bureaucracies; the elimination of trade barriers encouraged the offshoring of millions of working class jobs that, despite endless claims in the mainstream media, were never replaced, and were never intended to be replaced; the tacit encouragement of unlimited illegal immigration created a vast underclass of noncitizens who had no rights worth mentioning, and were employed at starvation wages under inhuman conditions, thus driving down wages and working conditions across the whole range of working class jobs.
In last week’s thrilling episode of The Kek Wars, we talked about the way that America’s managerial aristocracy and its broad penumbra of lackeys and hangers-on retreated into a self-referential bubble to avoid noticing the consequences of their preferred policies. As they did so, those policies—the metastatic growth of government regulation that strangled small businesses and transferred power and wealth to huge corporations and federal bureaucracies, the trade policies that forced working class wages and benefits down below subsistence levels, and the tacit policy of encouraging unlimited illegal immigration that created a vast labor pool of noncitizens who had no rights and thus could be exploited with impunity—drove tens of millions of Americans into destitution and misery. Now it’s time to start exploring how the blowback to those policies took shape.
Snip.
Thus we don’t yet have a consensus ideology among the losers we’ve been discussing. The label “Alt-Right” is a grab bag of contending notions, not a specific set of proposals. The mainstream media’s loud insistence that the Alt-Right is all about racism, by the way, is straightforward disinformation; what the American aristocracy fears more than anything else is a rapprochement between working class white people and working class people of color, and the constant shrieks of “racism!” from the privileged classes are part of a strategy intended to stave off that ultimate elite nightmare.
One of the lessons of the history of morals is that the more stridently you repress something, the more desperately people want to do it. In Victorian England, when sex was utterly unmentionable in polite company, the streets of London swarmed with prostitutes and brothels thrived, so that people could do in private what they wouldn’t dream of talking about in public. The drug abuse epidemic in the US today, similarly, is almost entirely a product of the much-ballyhooed War On Drugs—countries that treat drug addiction as an ordinary medical issue, not a subject for moral grandstanding, have much lower rates of drug use.
Recent crusades against “hate speech” have had exactly the same effect in today’s America. Those who attend university classes or work in white-collar jobs know that their every word is scrutinized by jealous rivals ready to use accusations of sexism, racism, or the like as a weapon in the competition for status. Most people, forced into so stifling an environment, will end up desperately longing for a place where they can take a deep breath and say absolutely anything, no matter how offensive. The chans were among the internet venues that offered them that freedom. Posts on the chans are anonymous, so there was no risk of reprisal, and the culture of the chans (and especially of /pol/) tended to applaud extreme statements, so they became a magnet for the people we discussed in last week’s post: those who for one reason or another lost out in the struggle to become flunkeys of the established order of society, who were locked out of what had been the normal trajectory of adult independence by plunging wages and soaring rents, and who were incensed by the smug superiority of a system that assumed that it had all the answers.
Snip.
It was somewhere around this same time, too, that someone on the chans noticed that “kek” wasn’t just a funny way of saying LOL. It was also the name of an ancient Egyptian god, a god of the primeval darkness that gave birth to the light, who was worshiped in the city of Hermopolis—and who was very often portrayed as an anthropomorphic frog. Like Pepe, in other words. Following up this clue, another anonymous user found on the internet the photo of an ancient Egyptian statue of a frog, mislabeled as a statue of Kek. It was actually a statue of the frog goddess Heqet, but no one realized that at first—and the hieroglyphics of the name Heqet look rather unnervingly like a person sitting in front of a computer screen, with a swirling shape like magical energies on the far side of the screen.
By the time this finished percolating through the chans, a great many people there were convinced, or ironically pretended to be convinced, and at all events acted as though they were convinced, that Donald Trump was the anointed candidate of the god Kek, bringer of daylight, who had manifested as Pepe the Frog and was communicating his approval to them with “gets.” In response, the chaos magicians of /pol/ flung themselves into action. Those of my readers who followed the 2016 US election will remember that rumors were swirling around the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by this point, claiming that she had a debilitating health condition that she was hiding from the media and the voters. The operative mages on /pol/ focused their efforts on a single goal: making Hillary Clinton collapse in public.
Snip.
The thing that doomed Clinton’s campaign, more than anything else, was the inability of the candidate and her inner circle of advisers and managers to notice that anything was going wrong. Every time polls showed that a very large percentage of American voters disliked and distrusted their candidate, Clinton’s handlers simply looked blank and set out to reintroduce her to the voters, and when that didn’t work—and it never did—they simply looked blank and tried again. From my perspective, and not from mine alone, it really did look as though they were under a spell.
As the campaign wore on, the Clinton machine’s weird detachment from reality became even more pronounced. People who were involved in local Clinton campaign organizations have written about the way their increasingly desperate attempts to warn the national headquarters that Trump was gaining ground in crucial swing states were brushed aside as irrelevant, while millions of dollars were wasted on venues such as Chicago, which the Democrats would have won easily if they’d nominated Zippy the Pinhead. As Trump held rally after rally in the critically important states of the upper Midwest, and the numbers swung further Trump’s way with every poll, the Clinton campaign ignored those battleground states and lumbered ahead as though going through the right motions would conjure up the victory that they seemed to think the universe owed them.
Two features of the Changer myth seem particularly relevant at the moment. The first is pointed up skillfully in the stories. The beings who try to stop the Changer and keep the world the same just keep doing whatever they were doing when the Changer arrives: the man with the board keeps carving tree trunks, the man with the many-pointed weapons keeps looking around—and there they are today, the beaver beside his dam, the deer on the hill. Having refused change, they become unable to change, and keep on going through the motions of their failed plans forever. That’s exactly what Trump’s opponents have been doing since his candidacy hit its stride, and more particularly since his inauguration. “From now on your name is Protester,” says the Changer, and sticks a pussy hat on the person’s head and a placard in her hands…
Food for thought, even if you’re deeply skeptical (as I am) about vast swathes of his theory…
Since I just topped up my Strategic Dog Reserve, blogging may get light at some point. But in the meantime, enjoy another Friday LinkSwarm:
This may be what’s driving some Democrats’ idee fixe on Russia: a guilty conscience:
Radical left-wing icon former California Democratic Rep. Ron Dellums was a hired lobbyist for Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. June 9, 2016, the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned.
Dellums, who represented liberal San Francisco and Oakland, Calif., is a long-time darling of left-wing political activists. He served 13 terms in Congress as an African-American firebrand and proudly called himself a socialist. He retired in 1996.
The former congressman is one of several high-profile Democratic partisans who was on Veselnitskaya’s payroll, working to defeat a law that is the hated object of a personal vendetta waged by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A national outcry has erupted in the establishment media about Trump Jr.’s meeting with Veselnitskaya. But there has been little focus on the Democrats who willingly served for years on her payroll helping to wage a Russian-led lobby campaign against the law. Congress passed the legislation, the Magnitsky Act, in response to the murder of Sergei Magnistky, a Russian lawyer who alleged corruption and human rights violations against numerous Russian officials.
According to a complaint filed to the Department of Justice Foreign Agents Registration Act division last July, Dellums failed to register as a foreign agent representing a Russian-driven effort led by Veselnitskaya to repeal the Magnitsky Act.
Add Dellums to a list that includes Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Podesta brothers of high profile Democrats who have documented financial and lobbying ties to Putin’s government.
Russian journalist on how American journalists cover Russia, especially the Russian hacking story. “The way the American press writes about the topic, it’s like they’ve lost their heads.” Also: “Putin seem to look much smarter than he is, as if he operates from some master plan.” He’s actually a bumbler…
You know the Obama Veterans Administration that was only too happy to look the other way while veterans were dying on the waiting list? President Trump’s Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin has helped implement a number of reforms:
In Shulkin’s five months on the job, the VA has been a whirlwind of activity:
The department announced last week that between President Trump’s inauguration and July 3, it had fired 526 employees, demoted another 27, and temporarily suspended another 194 for longer than two weeks.
In April, the department launched a new website that lets veterans compare the wait times at its facilities and view Yelp-style reviews of each facility written by previous patients.
Veterans Health Administration’s Veterans Crisis Line — designed for those struggling with PTSD, thoughts of suicide, and other forms of mental stress — is now answering “more than 90 percent of calls within 8 seconds, and only about one percent of calls are being rerouted to a backup call center.” A year ago, an inspector general report noted that “more than a third of calls were being shunted to backup call centers, some calls were taking more than a half hour to be answered and other callers were being given only an option to leave messages on voicemail.”
At the end of June, Shulkin unveiled the world’s most advanced commercial prosthetic limb — the Life Under Kinetic Evolution (LUKE) arm — during a visit to a VA facility in New York. Veteran amputees demonstrated the technology, a collaboration among the VA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the private sector. (The name alludes to the lifelike robotic hand that Luke Skywalker is fitted with in The Empire Strikes Back.)
In May, Shulkin said the department had identified more than 430 vacant buildings and 735 underutilized ones that cost the federal government $25 million a year. He said that most of the buildings are not treatment facilities and could profitably be closed or consolidated. Of course, if he actually attempted to close or consolidate some of the buildings, he might face a controversy along the lines of those touched off by military-base-closing announcements in recent decades.
Shulkin has also gotten some help from Congress during his short time on the job. At a time when Republican legislators have had enormous difficulty passing big pieces of legislation, they’ve made great progress on VA reform.
One particular law designed to make the VA more accountable is arguably the most consequential legislation President Trump has signed so far. It establishes speedier procedures for firing employees, gives the department the authority to recoup bonuses and pensions from employees convicted of crimes, adds greater protections for whistleblowers who report errors and scandals, and expands employee training.
The One Sentence That Explains Washington Dysfunction: “I didn’t expect Donald Trump to win.” So no one was ready to do anything policy-wise once he did. “Among those consequences: The expectation that Republicans might actually try to keep the promises they’ve made to voters over the last eight years.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
No matter which party is in charge of Washington, rain or shine, summer or winter, the deficit keeps growing. “Real monthly federal spending topped $400 billion for the first time in June.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
An appeals court vacated the conviction of former New York Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, just the latest in a long line of appeal reversals for former federal prosecutor Preet Bharara. How much of Bharara’s once-sterling reputation was real, how much was showboating, and how much was good press from working at MSM-saturated New York City? (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
What we are actually witnessing — in Hungary, in the United States and in many other countries in recent years — is a populist reaction against the elite “progressive” consensus of which Soros is a prominent symbol. There is an international clique of influential people and organizations who share certain ideas about the future direction of political, social and economic policies, and who don’t want to be bothered with debating the merits of these policies. The ordinary people whose lives would be affected by the agenda of the elite aren’t being asked for their approval, and popular opposition to the elite agenda (e.g., the Brexit vote, Trump’s election, Hungary’s anti-“refugee” referendum) is treated by the elite media as evidence of incipient fascism. Never does it seem to have occurred to George Soros, or to anyone else in the international elite, that perhaps their policy ideas are wrong, that they have gone too far in their utopian “social justice” schemes. Unable to admit error, the progressive elite therefore resort to cheap insults and sloppy accusations of “fascism” to stigmatize opposition to the Left’s agenda.
For ABC, religious liberty organization = hate group.
Seattle decides that they want to drive the affluent out of the city. I’m sure many cities in Texas would be happy to welcome them with open arms…
And just in case you thought that was going to be the craziest story out of Seattle this week: “Seattle Councilman Objects to Hosing Excrement-Covered Sidewalks Because It’s Racist.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Kid Rock is running in the 2018 Michigan Senate race. And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer. And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.
On the same subject. “Rock is arguably much better positioned than Trump for a successful political run.”
“The man running Sweden’s biggest security firm was declared bankrupt this week after his identity was hacked.”
Flaccid NFL ratings lead to Viagra and Cialis pulling out as sponsors. Maybe if they stopped focusing on politics, the NFL’s ratings wouldn’t be as soft….
Austin attorney “Omar Weaver Rosales, who filed hundreds of lawsuits against local small businesses alleging technical violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, has been suspended from practicing law in the Federal Western District for three years.”
Clint Eastwood, when looking to cast American Paris train heroes Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone for a movie he’s directing, decided to cast Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone.
Was Shia LaBeouf always this big an asshole, or did he get worse after Trump and 4Chan broke him? “I got more millionaire lawyers than you know what to do with, you stupid bitch!” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Alyssa Milano is too busy as a member of “the Resistance” to take care of trivia like paying her taxes. Or her share of her employee’s taxes.
Woman climbs Mt. Everest to prove that vegans can do anything, dies. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
AMC releases emails from fired Walking Dead producer Frank Darabont in which he states how he’s boiling with rage over subpar efforts by various production team members. It’s not a good look, but if you directed The Shawshank Redemption, I’m inclined to cut you more than the usual amount of slack over your film-making methods…
Marvel is actually doing a live Squirrel Girl TV show. Sure, it’s called New Warriors, but we all know what the real attraction is there…
In the end, we are witnessing the continuation of an evolving class war, pitting the oligarchs and their political allies against the state’s diminished middle and working classes. It might work politically, as the California electorate itself becomes more dependent on government largesse, but it’s hard to see how the state makes ends meet in the longer run without confiscating the billions now held by the ruling tech oligarchs.
Lots of comparisons between California and the rest of the nation. Like: “California has a nasty anti-small business $800 minimum corporate income tax, even if no profit is earned, and even for many nonprofits.” And “CA public school teachers the 3rd highest paid in the nation. CA students rank 48th in math achievement, 49th in reading.”
Across California, many local governments have raised taxes while cutting services. Local officials desperate for union support have made irresponsible deals with public employee unions, creating staggering employee costs. Taxpayer money meant to provide essential services to the least well-off instead goes directly to higher salaries and benefits.
In Santa Barbara County, the 2017-2018 budget calls for laying off nearly 70 employees while dipping into reserve funds. The biggest cuts are to the Department of Social Services, which works to aid low-income families and senior citizens. Meanwhile, $546 million of needed infrastructure improvements go unfunded as Santa Barbara County struggles to pay off $700 million in unfunded pension liabilities. County officials estimate that increasing pension costs may cause hundreds of future layoffs.
Unfortunately, Santa Barbara County is far from alone. Tuolumne County is issuing layoffs in the face of rising labor and pension costs from previous agreements. In Kern County, a budget shortfall spurred by increased pension costs has led to public safety layoffs, teacher shortages, budget cuts, and the elimination of the Parks and Recreation department, even as Kern County’s unfunded pension liability surpasses $2 billion. In the Santa Ana Unified School District, nearly 300 teachers have been laid off after years of receiving pay raises that made them unaffordable, including a 10% raise in 2015.
In Riverside County, non-union county employees took the blow for the county’s irresponsible pension deals, as all but one of the 32 employees the county laid off this June were non-union members. This came after contract negotiations granted union employees hundreds of millions of dollars in raises. The Riverside County DA said these raises caused public safety cuts. In addition, Riverside County imposed an extra 1% sales tax to pay for these benefits. Across California, citizens suffer as local governments give away their money while cutting their services.
Don’t think I’m going soft on the Saudis. I’ve just not seen a recent image from California where there were this many American flags and none of them were on fire.
But let’s not forget that we are dealing with a corrupt, degenerate, autocratic state where there is no free speech, where universities are run by fanatics who indoctrinate students with radical ideology; where street thugs aligned with the ruling party freely commit acts of violence against opposing views, and whose ruling elite routinely violates the basic rights of Christians and other minorities. Also, Saudi Arabia is pretty bad too.
Whether you agree or disagree with [religious liberty] laws, they don’t seem like any of our state’s business. California passes its share of laws that might offend any number of Nebraskans or North Carolinians, but we don’t see travel bans on official visits to Los Angeles or San Francisco. Federalism is a wonderful thing. Each state gets to pass laws that reflect the values of its voters.
There was a big, biased piece in New Yorker about Texas politics. Instead of linking to it, I’m going to link to Cahnman’s takedown of it.
California pension funds are going broke because math is hard:
Unlike water deficits, pension deficits compound. As a result, years of healthy investment earnings cannot close pension deficits. Ironically, Walker herself supplies the proof with these two sentences from her op-ed:
“[CalPERS’s] investment returns over the last 20 years have averaged 6.7 percent.”
“[CalPERS’s] funded ratio [today] is at about 63 percent.”
Yet CalPERS’s funded ratio 20 years ago was 111 percent! Ie, despite averaging a wonderful 6.7 percent annual return for 20 years, CalPERS’s funded ratio fell 48 percentage points. That’s because pension liabilities compound at high rates.
“Illinois at the brink: Parallel should give Californians pause….As in Illinois, the Democrats who control California politics use their power first and foremost to protect the interests of public employee unions — not the poor and powerless. This has created an entrenched pension-protection complex.”
Helping Californians move to Texas isn’t just an idea, it’s a business model:
Paul Chabot was a hard working candidate for Congress in the Redlands area. He lost twice and decided that California was no longer a decent place to raise his family—so he moved to Texas. Now he is organizing conservatives and family people to move to Texas. There is an effort to re-populate that State of New Hampshire—indeed former San Diego Assemblyman Howard Kaloogian moved to the Granite State, along with thousands of other Americas.
“So Chabot has found a new pursuit. Last week, he launched the website Conservative Move. It’s a business aimed at helping people leave blue states like California and move places where they might be a little more comfortable — like North Texas, where Chabot and his family moved in January.
“The purpose of this organization is to help other families create an opportunity where we didn’t have much guidance,” Chabot says.
After the election, Chabot searched for a community that appeared to uphold the values that he and his family held dear, like safe streets and good schools. Eventually, they decided on McKinney, Texas, a city about 40 miles north of Dallas with a population around 150,000.”
Missed this for the last Texas vs. California update:
On Tuesday, May 6th, Nick Melvoin and Kelly Gonez, who are more concerned with the needs of parents, kids and taxpayers than stoking the bureaucracy and complying with teacher union diktats, were elected to the Los Angeles Unified School District board. Reformers are now the majority of the seven member governing body in America’s second largest city.
Melvoin, especially, was vocal in his campaign that the school district needs a major shake-up, including a call for more charter schools. He also stressed the need for fiscal reform, which includes a reworking of the district’s out-of-control pension and healthcare obligations. In December, LAUSD Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly told the school board that the district may not be able to meet its financial obligations in the future because it faces a cumulative deficit of $1.46 billion through the 2018-2019 school year. While that dollar amount has been disputed in some quarters, there’s no doubt that the district is facing a budgetary crisis. It’s also no secret that an abysmal graduation rate (pumped up with the help of fake “credit recovery” classes) and shrinking enrollment have taken a serious toll on LAUSD. Also, in 2015, only one in five 4th-grade students in Los Angeles performed at or above “proficient” in math and reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Needless to say, anything that bodes well for parents and taxpayers will rankle the teachers unions, and the LA school board race was certainly no exception. Not only did the young Turks (Melvoin is 31 and Gonez 28.), defeat the unions’ candidates, they raised more money – in Melvoin’s case far more – than their opponents. This was a rare occurrence, because historically teachers unions have greatly outspent their opponents to get their candidates elected, especially in high-profile elections. But this time the unions could not compete with the likes of philanthropist Eli Broad who donated $450,000 to the campaign and former LA Mayor Richard Riordan who contributed over $2 million. Additionally, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings donated nearly $7 million since last September to CCSA Advocates (the political wing of the California Charter School Association), which spent almost $3 million on the board election.
On the union side the United Teachers Los Angeles was the big spender, pitching in about $4.13 million, according to city filings. But much of this money came from the UTLA’s national partners. The American Federation of Teachers gave UTLA $1.2 million and National Education Association, $700,000.
More on the same subject. “Melvoin, especially, was vocal in his campaign that the school district needed a major shakeup, calling for more charter schools. He also stressed the need for fiscal reform, including a reworking of the district’s out-of-control pension and health-care obligations.”
California teacher who was laid off shortly after winning her school’s Teacher of the Year award takes her union to court:
Bhavini Bhakta never intended to become an activist, but after being laid off six times in the first eight years of her career as an elementary school teacher in the Pasadena suburbs, she decided to get involved in the education reform movement. She focused first on challenging seniority-based layoffs, which in turn led her into conflict with the California Teachers Association. Now she is a plaintiff in Bain v. CTA, a case which challenges the dues structure of unions as a violation of the First Amendment. The suit seeks to restore voting rights on union matters to agency fee payers, who pay full dues for representational activities but opt out of paying for lobbying and political activities.
“The state union forcibly takes our money and uses it to misrepresent us. They’re not serving the teachers on the ground,” she said in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon. “They’re using my money for their own purposes.”
California Democrats receive death threats for daring to point out that single-payer socialized medicine bill is pie-in-the-sky malarkey without a funding mechanism.
Mark Peterson, the Contra Costa district attorney forced to resign as part of a felony perjury conviction, cut a sweet plea deal with state prosecutors allowing him to keep most of his pension.
The deal will probably let him walk away with starting annual retirement payments of about $128,000 in addition to Social Security benefits. That’s because he pleaded no contest to only the most recent of 13 felony counts stemming from his illegal tapping of campaign funds for personal use.
Today we celebrate another milestone marking the incredible momentum of Texas’ continuing economic expansion. Toyota Motor North America joins Hulu, Jacobs Engineering, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Kubota, Jamba Juice, Sabre and many other innovative industry leaders who have decided to go big in Texas.
Our greatest natural resource in the Lone Star State is the hardworking people of Texas. And that work ethic draws global leaders like Toyota to Texas every day. With the second-largest workforce in the nation at more than 13 million strong, Texas continues to be a national leader in job creation. In fact, more Texans have jobs today than ever before, even as more people are moving here every year from states that overtax and overregulate.
During his latter years in office as Texas governor, Rick Perry made it a priority to lure businesses to the state, particularly from California. Two-and-a-half years into the term of Gov. Greg Abbott, the successor to Perry, the pace of corporate relocations to the Lone Star State shows no signs of slowing down.
Much has been written about the state’s business-friendly environment. Most businesses in Texas that aren’t sole proprietorships or partnerships pay a 1 percent or lower “franchise tax,” in lieu of a traditional corporate income tax. In addition, the state’s governing bodies tend to favor minimal regulations and sponsor research and development initiatives.
The state’s economy is healthy, evident by strong employment growth. The Texas Workforce Commission reports a net gain of 210,000 jobs across the state in 2016, and employers are projected to add another 225,000 jobs in 2017.
Equally important to strong job growth is the quality of life that employees are promised upon relocating.
According to Robert Allen, president of the Texas Economic Development Corp., the lifestyle element is perhaps the most common incentive for moving to Texas among executives and employees alike.
“When we ask executives why they’re moving to Texas, what we hear is that providing a high quality of life for their workforces is number one on their lists,” says Allen.
“Employees back that claim up. They’re able to buy larger houses, keep more of their incomes, send their kids to good schools and live in safe neighborhoods. This makes it easier for employees to take a leap of faith,” he adds.
Texas has no personal income tax. Its education system currently ranks 21st based on a state-by-state study by wallethub.com, a credit scoring and reporting site. The study considers factors such as average SAT/ACT score, dropout rates, student-teacher ratios, graduation rate for low-income students and remote-learning opportunities within online public schools. The Huffington Post also notes that Texas has the fourth-highest graduation rate in the country, despite its ever-growing population and high percentage of non-native-English-speaking students.
And according to a recent study from the NYU School of Law, while violent crime rates are rising in urban areas throughout the country, they’re holding steady in Texas. The state’s murder rate falls in the middle of the pack despite it being a national leader in population growth.
“Federal judge blocks California ban on high-capacity magazines.” Note that’s not just a sale ban: “The law would have barred people from possessing magazines containing more than 10 bullets.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Just before a holiday, Trump does something that amuses the rest of us but shocks the media into doing nothing but talk about it over and over again while he enjoys his time off.
Hmm.
When had he done that before?
Oh yes, just before Christmas 2015, Trump said Obama schlonged Hillary.
There was a time not so long ago when journalists were trusted and admired. We were generally seen as trying to report the news in a fair and straightforward manner. Today, all that has changed. For that, we can blame the 2016 election or, more accurately, how some news organizations chose to cover it. Among the many firsts, last year’s election gave us the gobsmacking revelation that most of the mainstream media puts both thumbs on the scale — that most of what you read, watch and listen to is distorted by intentional bias and hostility. I have never seen anything like it. Not even close.
Snip.
The behavior of much of the media, but especially the New York Times, was a disgrace. I don’t believe it ever will recover the public trust it squandered.
Snip.
Here is a true story about how Abe Rosenthal resolved a conflict of interest. A young woman was hired by the Times from one of the Philadelphia newspapers. But soon after she arrived in New York, a story broke in Philly that she had had a romantic affair with a political figure she had covered, and that she had accepted a fur coat and other expensive gifts from him. When he saw the story, Abe called the woman into his office and asked her if it was true. When she said yes, he told her to clean out her desk — that she was finished at the Times and would never work there again. As word spread through the newsroom, some reporters took the woman’s side and rushed in to tell Abe that firing her was too harsh. He listened for about 30 seconds and said, in so many words, “I don’t care if you f–k an elephant on your personal time, but then you can’t cover the circus for the paper.”
A Pakistani family under criminal investigation by the U.S. Capitol Police for abusing their access to the House of Representatives information technology (IT) system may have engaged in myriad other questionable schemes besides allegedly placing “ghost employees” on the congressional payroll.
Imran Awan, his wife Hina, and brothers Abid and Jamal collectively netted more than $4 million in salary as IT administrators for House Democrats between 2009 and 2017. Yet the absence of signs of wealth displayed among them raise questions such as was the money sent overseas or did something other than paychecks motivate their actions?
Snip.
Official documents, court records and multiple interviews suggest the crew may have engaged in tax fraud, extortion, bankruptcy fraud and insurance fraud and the money could have been funneled overseas. Abid has hired high-profile attorney James Bacon who specializes in anti-money laundering litigation.
The Awans share modest homes, drive unremarkable cars and report little in the way of assets on congressional disclosures. The family owns significant amounts of Virginia rental properties, which are heavily financed, with second mortgages sometimes taken out. It’s unclear where the rental income goes because the Awans insist tenants pay in odd ways.
The Daily Caller News foundation interviewed multiple current and former tenants who said Imran insisted rent be paid in untraceable ways. Many of those TheDCNF interviewed about the Awans asked not to be identified for fear of suffering retaliation by the family, particularly renters to whose homes Imran has keys.
“He only wants cash — for the security deposit, everything. The mortgage is probably $600, we pay $1,800 a month,” one said.
“I would write the rent to all sorts of different people,” another claimed. While still another tenant said the family insisted on blank money orders.
Those interviewed also were puzzled that Congress kept the Awans on the payroll full-time when the family spent months of the year in Pakistan.
The four Awans were each making approximately $160,000 a year on Capitol Hill. Other House IT workers told TheDCNF that the Awans appeared to hold no-show jobs, with bare-bones services provided, and it appeared one person was doing the work for the rest of them.
Cristal Perpignan, a former Awan renter, said Imran instructed her to pay the rent to Imran’s friend, Rao Abbas, who lived in the basement of the home she occupied and was also on the House payroll as an IT worker. But Perpignan said Abbas spent his days at home.
Imran’s wife purchased the home in 2008 for $470,000. A second mortgage was taken out in 2012, and — at least on paper — it was sold to Imran’s 22-year old brother Jamal in November 2016 for $620,000 — $43,000 more than its assessed value.
“Phoenix dropped their sanctuary city status and started enforcing the law…and crime rates went down.”
“Migrant smugglers in Honduras say their business has dried up since [President] Trump took office.” Also this: “Give Trump critics credit: They predicted he would destroy jobs, and they were right; he appears to have destroyed a considerable number of positions in the previously vibrant and lucrative illicit people-smuggling industry.”
In 2005, a left-leaning blogger wrote, “Illegal immigration wreaks havoc economically, socially, and culturally; makes a mockery of the rule of law; and is disgraceful just on basic fairness grounds alone.” In 2006, a liberal columnist wrote that “immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants” and that “the fiscal burden of low-wage immigrants is also pretty clear.” His conclusion: “We’ll need to reduce the inflow of low-skill immigrants.” That same year, a Democratic senator wrote, “When I see Mexican flags waved at proimmigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I’m forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.”
The blogger was Glenn Greenwald. The columnist was Paul Krugman. The senator was Barack Obama.
Prominent liberals didn’t oppose immigration a decade ago. Most acknowledged its benefits to America’s economy and culture. They supported a path to citizenship for the undocumented. Still, they routinely asserted that low-skilled immigrants depressed the wages of low-skilled American workers and strained America’s welfare state.
Snip.
Between 2008 and 2016, Democrats became more and more confident that the country’s growing Latino population gave the party an electoral edge. To win the presidency, Democrats convinced themselves, they didn’t need to reassure white people skeptical of immigration so long as they turned out their Latino base. “The fastest-growing sector of the American electorate stampeded toward the Democrats this November,” Salon declared after Obama’s 2008 win. “If that pattern continues, the GOP is doomed to 40 years of wandering in a desert.”
As the Democrats grew more reliant on Latino votes, they were more influenced by pro-immigrant activism. While Obama was running for reelection, immigrants’-rights advocates launched protests against the administration’s deportation practices; these protests culminated, in June 2012, in a sit-in at an Obama campaign office in Denver. Ten days later, the administration announced that it would defer the deportation of undocumented immigrants who had arrived in the U.S. before the age of 16 and met various other criteria.
South African is contemplating seizing the land of white farmers without compensation. Because Zimbabwe is such a sterling model of economic success to emulate…
Through four decades of communist rule, Poland and the other captive nations of Europe endured a brutal campaign to demolish freedom, your faith, your laws, your history, your identity — indeed the very essence of your culture and your humanity. Yet, through it all, you never lost that spirit. (Applause.) Your oppressors tried to break you, but Poland could not be broken. (Applause.)
And when the day came on June 2nd, 1979, and one million Poles gathered around Victory Square for their very first mass with their Polish Pope, that day, every communist in Warsaw must have known that their oppressive system would soon come crashing down. (Applause.) They must have known it at the exact moment during Pope John Paul II’s sermon when a million Polish men, women, and children suddenly raised their voices in a single prayer. A million Polish people did not ask for wealth. They did not ask for privilege. Instead, one million Poles sang three simple words: “We Want God.” (Applause.)
In those words, the Polish people recalled the promise of a better future. They found new courage to face down their oppressors, and they found the words to declare that Poland would be Poland once again.
Czech Republic to enshrine right to bear arms in their constitution. Gee, why on earth would a nation situated between Germany and Russia need its citizens to own guns?
“Yeah, Abdul, we’re going to need to tweak your resume for this position. Instead of ‘Beheading Infidels,’ let’s put ‘Contractor.'”
Vladimir Putin and President Trump meet at the G20 summit.
Speaking of the G20 Summit, mostly peaceful protestors there commit the mostly peaceful arson for which they’ve become so well-known. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
The conclusive findings of this research are that the three GAST data sets are not a valid representation of reality. In fact, the magnitude of their historical data adjustments,that removed their cyclical temperature patterns, are totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data. Thus, it is impossible to conclude from the three published GAST data sets that recent years have been the warmest ever – despite current claims of record setting warming.
“Democratic lawmakers voted 71-42 to override Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s veto of a $5 billion tax hike on Thursday.” Can’t possibly imagine how Illinois’ Democrats plan to tax and spend their way out of a financial hole could possibly backfire… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“From its founding in 1919 in the wake of the Russian Revolution until the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Communist Party of the United States of America was an instrument of Soviet foreign policy.” Not that anyone should be unclear on the topic after all these years, but I’m sure the piece was a shock to at least some of the New York Times dwindling readership…
Long, long, long article about video game maker Konami, where they actually get their money (fitness clubs and gambling machines), and how they came to treat their employees so poorly.
I wasn’t planning on doing Yet Another CNN Post. But CNN decided that repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot with a .38 wasn’t sufficient, got out a shotgun and took aim at their own torso.
And did I mention that the person CNN is evidently trying to unmask is reportedly a 15-year old kid?
Bonus: CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski, who made himself the public face of the threatened doxing (“that will teach you to make fun of your awesome media betters, you puny peasant!”) evidently had a key role in a very early Twitter mobbing:
The kid CNN threatened to dox shouldn’t have apologized, he should have had his parents set up a Patron account to make more anti-CNN memes. By lunchtime he’d have been rich enough to retire.
Moreover, CNN’s bragging about they had threatened a random Internet user over a meme was their lead story for hours. Either they have no idea how distasteful the average Internet user would find this wildly disproportionate response, or else their collective egos have been so bruised by constantly losing to Trump that they feel an acute psychic need to celebrate swatting a fly with a howitzer.
And they seem to have no idea just what’s about to happen to them. They just went from “having a bad week” to “worst week for a media company since Hulk Hogan body slammed Gawker clear out of the Prime Material Plane.”
CNN picked a fight with the internet. This is not a fight they can win.
🚨🚨RETWEET🚨🚨 A partial list of CNN's advertisers and their phone numbers. More coming soon. Let them know what you think about #CNNBlackmail. pic.twitter.com/QkMeLzd5VU
Here we are, a week after one of the biggest political upsets in American history, and the reverberations are still being felt. Democrats seem to be stuck in the anger and denial phases of the Kubler-Ross grieving cycle, and probably won’t get to bargaining until the 2017 legislative session opens with Republicans in charge of the White House, Senate, and House.
While liberals were losing their minds over Trump, India was losing its mind by banning all bills over $1.50. The idea is evidently to force Indians to accept a cashless society (in the name of “fighting corruption”), but it’s actually grinding India’s economy to a halt.
More on the Democratic Party wipeout: “Republicans are now in control of a record 67 (68 percent) of the 98 partisan state legislative chambers in the nation, more than twice the number (31) in which Democrats have a majority.”
Conservatives have a once in a lifetime opportunity at the state level. Including supermajorities in a number of states, a Democratic Party which has gerrymandered itself into oblivion, and almost enough states to call a constitutional convention.
Mark Steyn. “If you keep insisting that half your fellow citizens are haters, maybe you’re the hater.” Also this: “One third of the Democrats’ representation in the House now comes from just three states – New York, Massachusetts and California. That’s one reason why they’re calling for the abolition of the Electoral College.”
Trump to hold post-election tour rallies in swing states. 1. He’s closed the sale, and now he’s servicing the account. 2. You know Obama has to be kicking himself for not thinking of that.
More from the Democratic Party’s genius candidate selection process. “If you could choose any state in America where you might want to run a shemale candidate for the United States States, Utah probably wouldn’t be your first choice, nor anywhere in the top 40.”
Threaten to kill random white people after Trump’s election? Expect to spend some time in involuntary committal for a mental assessment. Even if you’re a university professor.
Rapper Kanye West says he would have voted for Trump…and will run for President in 2020. West is an idiot savant black nationalist car wreck married to Kim Kardashian, but after this year, would you really say he has no chance of being elected? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
I will say this for West: He knows where to steal his riffs:
How many piece of Gnostic symbolism can you spot in that video?
There’s so much Clinton Corruption news dropping I haven’t had time to sift through it all.
Take, for example, this 90 page document, evidently compiled by the 4Chan folks from publicly available sources. I’ve only started go through this. (A lot of it looks like unsourced speculation from the Chan Clan, so caveat lector.)
What would happen to Clinton if she had broken information secrecy rules while in the military. “To say that Hillary Clinton is unfit to be commander-in-chief is to give her too much credit. It implies that she might be fit for other positions of responsibility. She’s not fit to be POTUS, and she’s not fit to be a private. It’s time for her to slink back to her foundation, make her speeches, and retire to private life.”
Slashdot is hardly a hotbed of conservative thought, but look at this thread on Clinton’s statement on H1B visas. All the highest rated comments are how people are fed up with Hillary’s obvious lies and how they won’t be voting for her.
