A coalition of Republican-led states is suing the Biden administration and the State of California in an attempt to prevent new electric vehicle mandates on truck owners and operators throughout the country from going into effect.
Two legal challenges were filed over the new emissions rules, Nebraska Attorney General Hilgers said in a statement on May 13.
They include a petition for review filed by a coalition of 24 states in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit which challenges the Biden administration’s new regulation setting stronger greenhouse gas emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles.
Texas isn’t mentioned in the article, but it is in the filing:
Under 42 U.S.C. § 7607(b)(1), Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 15, and D.C. Circuit Rule 15(a), the States of Nebraska, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming petition this Court for review of the final agency action taken by Respondents United States Environmental Protection Agency and Michael S. Regan, in his official capacity as Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, titled “Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles—Phase 3,” published at 89 Fed. Reg. 29,440 (April 22, 2024). A copy of the agency action is attached to this petition.
Petitioners will show that the final rule exceeds the agency’s statutory authority and otherwise is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and not in accordance with law. Petitioners thus ask that this Court declare unlawful and vacate the agency’s final action.
That petition lists the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its administrator Michael Regan as defendants.
In the legal filing, plaintiffs argue the EPA’s rule imposing stringent tailpipe emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles effectively forces manufacturers to produce more electric trucks and fewer internal combustion trucks.
The EPA has said the new rules, which are set to take effect for model years 2027 through 2032, are needed to help combat climate change and will help avoid up to 1 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions over the next three decades.
However, the infrastructure needed to support such vehicles is “virtually nonexistent” and they also have shorter ranges and require longer stops, according to Mr. Hilgers.
The new regulation will also negatively impact the economy and put extra pressure on power grids, according to the lawsuit.
A separate coalition of 17 states and the Nebraska Trucking Association also filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California seeking to block a package of regulations that they say are “targeting trucking fleet owners and operators.”
That lawsuit lists the EPA and the California Air Resources Board as defendants.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit are challenging a string of California regulations called “Advanced Clean Fleets” which aims to “accelerate a large-scale reduction in tailpipe emissions focusing on zero-emissions medium- and heavy-duty vehicles,” according to the California Air Resources Boards’s (CARB) official website.
The rules would ban big rigs and buses that run on diesel from being sold in California starting in 2036.
Nebraska AG Mike Hilgers seems to be walking point on this one but, as usual, Texas is joining in another lawsuit against Biden Administration regulatory overreach.
Better to get this law thrown out now than to wait until food become unaffordable because there aren’t enough reliable trucks to deliver it…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, alongside Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach and Gun Owners of America Texas director Wes Virdell, held a press conference on Wednesday morning announcing the filing of two lawsuits against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) regarding new rules about private firearm sales.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced new rules adding definitions of certain terms under the Safer Communities Act that will expand the circumstances requiring individuals to obtain Federal Firearm Licenses (FFL) and perform background checks to sell guns. This is to close the so-called “gun show loophole,” which has been a priority for the Biden administration.
If they are talking about the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022, there’s absolutely nothing in the text of the act about closing any “gun show loophole.”
Texas’ lawsuit was filed on the morning of May 1, 2024 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Amarillo Division. It was filed by Texas with the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Utah; Jeff Tormey; Gun Owners of America; Gun Owners Foundation; Tennessee Firearms Association; and the Virginia Citizens Defense League also listed as plaintiffs.
Kansas’ lawsuit was filed on the morning of May 1, 2024 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, Delta Division. It was filed by Kansas alongside the states of Arkansas, Iowa, Montana, Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming, with Phillip Journey, Allen Black, Donald Maxey, and the Chisholm Trail Antique Gun Association also listed as plaintiffs.
Both lawsuits seek declaratory and injunctive relief.
“Today, Texas is leading a multi-state coalition that is suing to stop the final rule issued by the ATF that criminalizes private firearm sales. Biden’s latest effort to unilaterally curtail our constitutional rights is completely illegal,” said Paxton in his speech.
“Yet again, Joe Biden is weaponizing the federal bureaucracy to rip up the Constitution and destroy our citizens’ Second Amendment rights. This is a dramatic escalation of his tyrannical abuse of authority. With today’s lawsuit, it is my great honor to defend our Constitutionally-protected freedoms from the out-of-control federal government.”
Kobach also spoke at the announcement of the lawsuits.
“Biden’s latest attempt to strip away the Second Amendment rights of Americans through ATF regulations will make many law-abiding gun owners felons if they sell a firearm or two to family or friends. This rule is blatantly unconstitutional. We are suing to defend the Second Amendment rights of all Americans,” said Kobach.
“Until now, those who repetitively purchased and sold firearms as a regular course of business had to become a licensee… This rule would put innocent firearm sales between law-abiding friends and family members within reach of federal regulation,” the Kansas court filing reads. “Such innocent sales between friends and family would constitute a felony if the seller did not in fact obtain a federal firearms license and perform a background check.”
While not at the announcement, the attorneys general of Utah and Mississippi both offered statements in the lawsuit’s press release.
“Nearly 40 years ago, Congress condemned ATF for targeting innocent gun owners instead of focusing on felons, calling ATF’s actions ‘reprehensible.’ Congress even changed the law to limit ATF’s authority. But ATF is at it again, this time trying to require a citizen selling even a single firearm to obtain a license. Utah is proud to join the 26 states — in three separate lawsuits— protecting their citizens from this bureaucratic overreach.” said Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes.
“By seeking to treat every legal gunowner as a commercial gun dealer and every gun sale or trade into a commercial transaction, this rule unmasks the Biden Administration’s anti-gun agenda in ways many of its other actions have not. The Second Amendment could never have contemplated this kind of regulation and it will not withstand scrutiny in the courts. On behalf of Mississippi gunowners, we are proud to stand with the citizens who have come forward in this lawsuit,” said Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch.
Twenty-five states are suing the ATF across both lawsuits. Florida has also filed its own suit against the ATF for declaratory and injunctive relief about the same rule.
For those counting along on the home game, that’s more than half the states in the union suing the Biden Administration over their latest attempt at gun legislation by fiat.
This is not the first lawsuit that Paxton has filed against the ATF this year. In February, the State of Texas sued the ATF over the Biden administration’s recent decision to redefine firearms with pistol braces as short-barrelled rifles under the National Firearms Act (NFA).
Complete civilian disarmament has been a longterm goal of the Democratic Party, and to that end they would love to ensnare ordinary Americans in FFL laws and paperwork for private firearms transactions, despite such restrictions never being contemplated by the founding fathers. In the post-Bruen judicial landscape, expect the courts to be extremely skeptical of unconstitutional firearms regulation, especially those with no basis in the underlying statute language, and expect Paxton to notch another victory over the Biden Admistration in his belt.
Russia laid the groundwork for expanding its soft power across North America and Asia with a new executive order signed by Vladimir Putin last week.
The new order provides funds for the search, registration and legal protection of Russian properties abroad, including land and buildings located on the territory of the former Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.
Among the areas affected by the new decree is Alaska, which was sold to the United States in 1867 and still has communities with close ties to Russia.
Central and Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and large parts of Asia were once part of the former empire.
However, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) notes that “it is not clear what Russia’s current or historical assets consist of.”
This first of what promises to be multiple Nelsons
A second Nelson, because one simply wasn’t enough.
Evidently Putin’s continuing inability to conquer Ukraine, a former vassal state laying right next door, wasn’t enough of a humiliation for him, and he needs to pretend he can go toe-to-toe with the world’s only hyperpower to reclaim the 49th state over a century-and-and half old case of buyer’s seller’s remorse.
Another Nelson, just because.
Let’s, for the moment, set aside the distinct possibility that this declaration of suzerainty over former Soviet states not only implicitly threatens the Baltic Nations, but also Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan.
Basically, all the Stans.
Still, the “just wants to watch the world burn” part of me wants to see Pooty-Poot’s Russia try to conquer Alaska, if only because the American reaction to whatever half-assed misexpedition across the Bearing Strait Russia is able to launch might result in the complete seizure of the Kuril-Aleut oil fields in far eastern Siberia. Indeed, I imagine that it wouldn’t even be a week before American air power completely wrecked the fragile Transiberian Railway and Highway, making Russian forces in the far east completely SOL. At that point, an American air and sea bridge from Alaska would still provide more reliable logistical support than Russia’s long, primitive and fragile Transiberian transport network.
One wonders what purpose these vainglorious, unenforceable pronouncements are meant to serve. It’s like an eight year old building a pillow fort in the middle of the living, loudly proclaiming “Better not come in here! It’s my fort!” Only for his mother to ignore it and pick up the couch cushions because The Price Is Right is on.
Maybe no other reason than puffing up Putin’s fragile ego.
Perhaps Putin should limit himself to one unwinnable “Special Military Operation”” at a time…
Greetings, and welcome to Friday the 13th LinkSwarm! Inflation keeps soaring, diesel and baby formula shortages wrack the nation, and too many creepy transexual pedophiles pop up in the news.
The East Coast of the U.S. is reporting its lowest seasonal diesel inventory on record. And some trucking companies appear spooked.
The East Coast typically stores around 62 million barrels of diesel during the month of May, according to Department of Energy data. But as of last Friday, that region of the U.S. is reporting under 52 million barrels.
The sharp increase of diesel prices has been a major stressor in America’s $800 billion trucking industry since the beginning of 2022. According to DOE figures, the price per gallon of diesel has reached record highs — a whopping $5.62 per gallon. It’s even higher on the East Coast at $5.90, up 63% from the beginning of this year.
When relief is coming isn’t yet clear, and experts say higher prices are the only way to attract more diesel into the Northeast.
There is a clear dividing line between American households with newborns and those without, and you can see it in which people have been talking about, and worrying about, a nationwide infant formula shortage for months and which people just heard about the problem recently. Target, Walmart, CVS, and Walgreens are all limiting how much infant and toddler formula customers can purchase per visit. So how did the U.S. — the wealthiest, most advanced, and most prosperous nation on the planet — end up in a situation where so many parents are worrying about feeding their youngest children?
Most reporting on the infant-formula shortage points the finger at Abbott Laboratories, which instituted a February recall of powder formulas, including Similac, Alimentum, and EleCare, manufactured in its Sturgis, Mich., facility. The recall — which the company emphasizes was voluntary — came after four consumer complaints of Cronobacter sakazakii (a.k.a. Salmonella Newport) in infants who had consumed powdered formula manufactured in the Sturgis plant. Cronobacter germs can cause sepsis, a dangerous blood infection, or meningitis, which swells the protective linings surrounding the brain and spinal cord. Those infected with Salmonella bacteria develop diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps twelve to 72 hours after infection, and infants are more severely affected than adults.
Abbott Laboratories emphasized that no product it distributed to consumers has tested positive for the presence of either of these bacteria, but that during testing in the Sturgis facility, the company found evidence of Cronobacter sakazakii in areas of the plant where products would not come in contact with it. As a precaution, it recalled all formula manufactured in this facility with an expiration of April 1, 2022, or later. No Abbott liquid formulas are included in the recall, nor are powder formulas or nutrition products manufactured at other Abbott facilities.
Here, it’s worth noting that the supply chain for infant formula was strained well before Abbott’s recall. According to the data-research firm Datasembly, the percentage of stores nationwide at which formula was out of stock surpassed double digits way back in July 2021, and by January 2022, it had hit 23 percent.
According to Datasembly, infant formula is now out-of-stock in 40 percent of stores nationwide. Moreover, in Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Missouri, Texas, and Tennessee, more than half of baby formula was completely sold out during the week starting April 24. In another 26 states, between 40 and 50 percent of infant-formula supplies were sold out.
Unspeakable depravity: “Trans porn company owners sentenced for forcing 7-year-old girl into sexual exploitation…One of these members, Marina Volz, a biological male who identifies as a woman, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for forcing ‘her’ 7-year-old daughter to participate in sexual acts.”
Speaking of Democrats supporting child rapists: “Woke L.A. DA George Gascon’s Pet Transgender Child Rapist Is Now Facing a Murder Charge….child rapist, “Hannah” Tubbs, who gamed the system and magically became a ‘woman’ so he could serve his sentence in a female juvenile prison and do easier time with a chance of getting out early.”
Still more elite institutions parading their transexual pro-pedophilia positions: “Child sex abuse center hires professor who faced backlash over pedophile comments…[Allyn Walker], an academic who resigned from a Virginia university after saying it wasn’t necessarily immoral for adults to be sexually attracted to kids has been hired by a Johns Hopkins University center aimed at preventing child sexual abuse.”
The NBA: Pulls All-Star Game out of Charlotte because it thinks a North Carolina bathroom bill discriminated against transsexuals. Also the NBA: To stage a game in the United Arab Emirates, where homosexuality is punishable by death.
“EV Automaker Hailed As The ‘Next Tesla’ Is Hemorrhaging Cash And Investors…Start-up electric vehicle (EV) maker Rivian Automotive’s stock [fell] 18.72% to $23.40 per share on Monday, a whopping 87% decline from its November peak of $179.47 a share.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Writer who checks all the proper boxes sells a first novel that turns out to be plagiarized. So she publishes an apology. Which turns out to also be plagiarized. The frogurt is also cursed. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
They’re making a sequel to This Is Spinal Tap, perhaps the funniest movie ever made, featuring the original principles. My enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that chances are extremely high it will suck.
Greetings, and welcome to a Saturday LinkSwarm! To get this out, even a day late, I’ve tossed all the Virginia Governor’s race/Louden County news into a separate post, hopefully on tap for tomorrow.
One of President Biden’s first acts on immigration is to suspend investigations, arrests, and deportations of most criminal aliens for the next 100 days. In a memo titled “Review of and Interim Revision to Civil Immigration Enforcement and Removal Policies and Procedures”, sent on Wednesday to all immigration agency heads, Acting DHS Secretary David Pekoske announced the deportation freeze and new enforcement priorities that go into effect now. The memo imposes restrictions on immigration enforcement actions that are even tighter than those adopted (with disastrous results) by the Obama administration, and make the country a sanctuary not only for criminal aliens, but all who are here in defiance of our laws.
According to the memo, virtually all removals will stop for 100 days. In addition, only the following categories of illegal aliens will be subject to removal as of February 1, 2020:
National security threats — those who have been involved in or are suspected of involvement in terrorism, or who are otherwise deemed a threat;
Recent illegal border crossers — those who have arrived illegally after November 1, 2020; and
Aggravated felons — those who are currently incarcerated for an aggravated felony conviction and who are determined to be a threat to public safety.
If you’re any other kind of illegal alien felon, Democrats evidently want you here, victimizing Americans.
In practice, this means that ICE must release criminal aliens and others in custody who are not covered in these definitions. This will include aliens convicted of domestic violence, sex offenses, drunk driving, theft causing loss of less than $10,000, vehicular homicide, an infinite number of misdemeanor crimes, and much more. It means that when USCIS refuses green cards or other benefits because the applications were fraudulent, that unqualified applicant will be able to stay anyway. It means that in the next 100 days, if a local police officer arrests a previously deported gang member, even one with a serious criminal history, for a new crime that is not an aggravated felony, ICE will not be able to take action to remove that gang member again.
“Joe Biden to Ban Cash Bail for Violent Criminals — in the Interest of ‘Equity.'” There’s no end to the number of other people’s dead bodies social justice warriors are willing to step over on their way to utopia…
San Francisco prosecutors quit, and District Attorney Chesa Boudin faces a second recall effort over failure to prosecute crimes.
Walgreens closed 22 stores in San Francisco where thefts under $950 are effectively decriminalized.
A couple of readers asked “Why just San Francisco?” if it was California Proposition 47 that put the $950 limit on nonviolent misdemeanors.
The answer is total lack of enforcement in San Francisco.
Please note San Francisco DA faces second recall effort as residents ‘fed up’ with progressive ‘zero consequence’ policies.
A second recall effort launched against San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin demonstrates how residents are “fed up” with his progressive policies, as his push to reduce jail funding and refusal to prosecute repeat offenders ensures the streets remain marred with open-air drug dealing and violent crime now stretching into the suburbs, a leader of the prominent local police union tells Fox News.
Last week, the first Republican-backed recall effort fell just 1,714 signatures short of the 51,325 required to trigger a special election to bring the question of ousting Boudin before voters. Now a second recall effort is being organized, which Boudin brushed off Monday night as proof that his so-called successes in reducing incarceration has “angered the billionaire class.”
But it’s his progressive approach that’s actually hurting average San Franciscans, San Francisco Police Officers Association President Tony Montoya tells Fox News, as Boudin’s “swiftest revolving door in criminal justice” sends the message to offenders that there are no consequences for their actions.
Snip.
Prosecutors Brooke Jenkins and Don Du Bain told KNTV they have stepped down from their posts in San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s office due to his lack of commitment to prosecuting crimes.
“Chesa has a radical approach that involves not charging crime in the first place and simply releasing individuals with no rehabilitation and putting them in positions where they are simply more likely to re-offend,” Jenkins said in the interview. “Being an African American and Latino woman, I would wholeheartedly agree that the criminal justice system needs a lot of work, but when you are a district attorney, your job is to have balance.”
Du Bain added that he believed Boudin “disregards the laws that he doesn’t like, and he disregards the court decisions that he doesn’t like to impose his own version of what he believes is just – and that’s not the job of the district attorney.”
The Chinese private equity fund in which John Kerry holds a $1 million stake is not only invested in a tech company blacklisted for human rights abuses but is also a major shareholder in a solar panel company linked to labor abuses of the Uyghurs.
Last December, that private equity fund, Hillhouse China Value Fund L.P., purchased a 6 percent stake in LONGi Green Energy, a Chinese solar panel manufacturer, making it the company’s second largest shareholder.
LONGi has come under fire from human rights groups and U.S. lawmakers for sourcing many of its raw materials from companies suspected of using forced labor in Xinjiang, a region in northwest China where the government has cracked down on the Uyghur population and other ethnic minorities.
Hillhouse is also a major funder of a tech company tied to the Chinese government’s surveillance of the Uyghurs, as first reported by the Washington Free Beacon last week. News of that investment led Republican senators to call on Biden to fire Kerry over ethics concerns. Further insight into Hillhouse’s holdings is likely to increase scrutiny of Kerry’s finances and raise questions about whether he is using his role as climate envoy to block regulations on Chinese solar panel imports. While Kerry has acknowledged that many solar panels are produced with forced labor in Xinjiang, he has also indicated resistance to additional financial restrictions or penalties on these goods.
So Kerry is working the China grift and the green grift at the same time. No wonder he couldn’t resist…
Speaking of which: China produces more CO2 than the U.S., India, Russia and Japan combined. “China’s emissions are so vast that its biggest companies, few of which are household names, create more pollution than entire nations. China Baowu, the world’s top steelmaker, put more CO2 into the atmosphere last year than Pakistan.”
Manchin and Sinema continue to terrorize democrats by daring to doing what their constituents want rather than doing the Holy Will Of The Party.
Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) are the gruesome twosome. They may have different reasons behind their opposition to the $3.5 trillion spending package, dubbed human infrastructure, that Democrats want to pass via the reconciliation process, but the results are the same. The far-left can’t get everything they want—which has infuriated them to no end. They don’t like the price tag. They don’t like the ethos behind it. They don’t like the tax structures. The tax on billionaires is out due to Manchin’s opposition. Sinema isn’t moving on hiking corporate taxes. Now, paid family leave has been nixed and most of the climate change provisions are gone too. Manchin and Sinema are the angels of death for the far-Left. It’s not hard to figure out why. These two will do what they think is best for the constituents of their respective states. Period. This has been known about Manchin for years, and he’s not afraid to lose re-election. If that’s the case, he will happily take his houseboat and go home. Sinema is the same with regards to Arizona. She’s there to serve them. Not Chuck Schumer, not the liberal media, not the hordes of illegal alien activists who harass her in the bathroom. And polling shows that voters in West Virginia and Arizona aren’t too keen on the $3.5 trillion bill
If you haven’t been following the situation on Capitol Hill — and it’s in so much flux that it’s almost impossible to stay completely up to date — I’ll give you a brief rundown before we get to that odor.
“Build Back Better” is Biden’s slogan for a massive expansion of welfare, spending, regulation, the likes of which we haven’t seen since LBJ’s Not-So-Great Society. Massive change on slender majorities is not a good idea, either politically or for the nation’s social fabric, but Dems gotta Dem.
BBB comes in two parts.
The first is a $1.2 trillion-with-a-T “infrastructure” bill that doesn’t contain much actual infrastructure spending, but is nonetheless supported by enough Republicans to almost guarantee its passage. (We’ll get back to the “almost” momentarily, so stick a pin in that.)
The second is another, even larger bill so absurd that its contents fall under comic sci-fi writer Douglas Adams’ “bistromathics.” There have been several versions of this bill, ranging in price from the current “compromise” bill costing $1.8 trillion (so they say) to the original Bernie Sanders (CPUSA-Vermont Oblast) version weighing in at $3.5 trillion (but actually $5 trillion).
No one knows what any version would actually cost. My friend and colleague Stephen Kruiser heard from a Senate aide on Thursday that the current bill is 2,500 pages, has no table of contents, and we probably won’t know what’s in it even if it does pass.
This brings us to a defining concept of bistromathics, recipriversexclusion, a number whose existence can only be defined as being anything other than itself. So if Democrats claim the bill costs precisely $1,790,238,032,455, then you can be sure it costs some figure exactly not that (but higher).
But they can’t get any version passed, because the hard left keeps demanding more and more radical proposals Democratic leadership can’t deliver.
Authorities in Denver have ordered the arrest of Steve Bachar, a longtime Clinton operative and “socially responsible” investor who has been charged with felony theft and securities fraud. The former co-chair of the Clinton Global Initiative is also under investigation for unrelated allegations that he mishandled millions of dollars allocated for personal protective equipment at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bachar is accused of stealing as much as $1 million and lying to an investor “in connection with the offer, sale or purchase of a security,” according to the criminal complaint filed by the Denver district attorney’s office. The crimes are alleged to have occurred between October 2017 and August 2018. The former Clinton operative told the Denver Post the criminal charges were “outrageous, unfounded, and false,” and he looks forward to letting “the facts come to light.”
Bachar, who served as White House advance lead and in the Treasury Department under former president Bill Clinton before joining the Clinton Global Initiative, also served on the national finance committee for Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign in 2016 and as an adviser to former governor John Hickenlooper (D., Colo.). His private sector career as a corporate attorney and cofounder of Empowerment Capital Management was focused on “socially responsible investing.”
This is not the first time the socially responsible investor has been accused of serious wrongdoing. In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bachar allegedly pocketed nearly $2 million from health care companies that believed they were purchasing life-saving personal protective equipment such as masks and gowns.
According to a lawsuit filed by a Denver-based health care company, Bachar agreed to sell them 4,200 cases of N95 masks for $2.4 million in April 2020 but never delivered the masks and did not return their initial payment of $604,000. Over the summer, Bachar was ordered to pay nearly $4.5 million to the companies he allegedly defrauded but has yet to comply with the civil judgments against him.
Speaking of corrupt Democratic crime families, former New York Governor has been charged charged with sex cri-cri-cri-crime.
With the obligatory Eurythmics video
(I actually own their 1984 soundtrack, but “Sexcrime” isn’t nearly as good as “Doubleplusgood.”)
While the administration begs overseas adversaries to ramp up oil production with jobs and development to the benefit of foreign citizens, Americans remain handicapped by Democrats’ zealous animosity towards fossil fuel extraction on domestic land.
Underneath the tundra surface of Alaska’s North Slope sits an estimated 4.3 t0 11.8 billion barrels of untouched recoverable oil located within the flat wetland boundary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Then-President Donald Trump opened ANWR’s 1.6 million acres of the 19.6 million-acre refuge for drilling in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, with leases approved since then now in jeopardy under the new administration.
Biden has been yanking permits and demanding new environmental assessments in an effort to cancel projects altogether. Last week, the Interior Department tossed out the analysis completed under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), long held as the gold standard of assessing environmental impacts, and ordered a new supplemental review for leases in the Arctic refuge two months after they were suspended.
Racine County Sheriff’s Department investigators have presented evidence that the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) committed felony election fraud by telling nursing home staffers to violate state law and fill out ballots on behalf of nursing home residents who were unable to themselves.
During a news conference Thursday, Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling said WEC commissioners and staff who prohibited legally-required special voting deputies from entering nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic and instead told nursing home staff members to assist residents in voting committed a Class I felony, which is punishable by a maximum sentence of three years, six months in prison and $10,000 in fines.
I missed this for my Texas Critical Race Theory fight roundup: “Keller ISD’s Timber Creek High School is Brewing Division.” “Over the last year, teachers and staff at a North Texas school have been going against the district and teaching racist propaganda, creating division among students, parents, and staff. Under the supervision of teachers, students are leading the charge in this growing division Keller ISD’s Timber Creek High School has been experiencing since the previous school year.”
Portugal’s six-year experiment with leftwing “anti-austerity” government will end this week in a political crisis leading to early elections unless António Costa, the socialist prime minister, can strike a last-minute budget deal with the radical left.
The anti-capitalist Left Bloc (BE) and old-guard Communist party (PCP) have vowed to withhold crucial support in a budget vote on Wednesday unless the minority Socialist party (PS) government makes further concessions in a bill already seen as the most leftwing in recent history.
“They are asking the impossible and I can’t see the PS giving way,” said Francisco Seixas da Costa, a political commentator and former secretary of state for European affairs. “The pact has exhausted its possibilities and the BE and PCP can see no further advantage in co-operating with the government.”
Costa has offered a €40 increase in the national minimum wage to €705 a month and a €700m increase in investment in the national health service, alongside higher old-age pensions and public sector wages. The BE and PCP are pushing for bigger increases in these areas as well as labour reforms that the government fears would clash with EU rules.
After offering hope to struggling centre-left parties across Europe and inspiring neighbouring Spain’s mainstream socialists to follow a similar path, Portugal’s broad left pact is foundering over the smaller parties’ dissatisfaction with their peripheral role, and the limits of EU policy.
If the budget is defeated, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Portugal’s centre-right president, has said he will immediately dissolve parliament and call a general election two years ahead of schedule. Costa, meanwhile, has stated he would remain in office at the head of a caretaker government until the ballot was held, probably in January.
This has been all over everywhere this week, but it still angries up my blood: Fauci Funded ‘Cruel’ Puppy Experiments Where Sand Flies ‘Eat Them Alive’; Vocal Cords Severed.”
No less than four versions of “Let’s Go Brandon” are in the iTunes top 10.
Iran has announced that the country’s energy infrastructure was hit by a massive cyberattack on Tuesday, which left state subsidized gas stations across the country out of commission, resulting in very long lines of cars observed waiting to fill up in many towns and cities.
The timing is interesting given it happened near the two year anniversary mark of deadly nationwide protests following serious gas shortages and price hikes in the fall of 2019. The ‘activist’ nature of the hack is further revealed in that Iranian media is reporting that a message showed up in national computer systems that were hacked that addressed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with the words, “where is the gas?”
By nearly every measure Americans are more generous with their money and time than anyone — including Europeans.
Indeed, American charitable giving exceeds the entire GDP of most European countries.
According to the Almanac of American Philanthropy, Americans donate around seven times as much as continental Europeans to charitable causes per capita. Per person, even after adjusting for differences in household income, Americans donate twice as much of their income as the Dutch, three times as much as the French, five times as much as Germans, and ten times that of Italians.
The frozen campaign continues. Slow Joe racks up Pinocchios and launches a podcast, the Democratic Convention has been moved back a month (and may turn into a virtual-only affair), and Bernie’s doppelganger says it’s time to throw in the towel. It’s your Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update!
Wisconsin may or may not have a primary tomorrow. It’s theoretically going ahead but there seem to be numerous legal challenges due to the difficulty of holding it due to the Wuhan coronavirus.
Polls
Yet again, there’s not a single poll that has Sanders up over Biden at the state or national level, and polling itself seems to have dropped off to almost nothing, a victim of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak.
Joe Rogan says he’d rather vote for President Donald Trump than Joe Biden. “I’d rather vote for Trump than [Biden]. I don’t think he can handle anything. You’re relying entirely on his cabinet. If you want to talk about an individual leader who can communicate, he can’t do that. And we don’t know what the fuck he’ll be like after a year in office.” (It’s an interesting interview, but then I get to the part where his guest talks about a friend’s self-trepanation and go “Well, this is a little far afield of fodder for a political blog…”)
Democrats have postponed the start of their convention from July 13 to August 17.
From the nuts and bolts of campaigning (fundraising, door-knocking, holding rallies) to the most basic assumptions about the economy and how the public sees Trump, nearly everything needs to be reassessed. Biden’s Philadelphia headquarters has been cleared out. “Everybody’s working remotely across the whole campaign,” said Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s communications director. “We’re all discovering the joys of a Zoom conference call.”…
The presumed date by which Biden’s delegate nerds predicted Bernie Sanders would be unofficially knocked out of the race has been upended by a series of canceled primaries. Biden had planned to use a predicted victory in Georgia on Tuesday to essentially end the race by declaring that he had achieved “an insurmountable delegate lead.”
Instead, the Georgia primary was moved to May and Biden retreated to a makeshift studio in his basement at home in Delaware to broadcast Zoom videos that have had to compete — poorly, so far — with briefings from elected officials like Trump and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who are actually responsible for dealing with the crisis.
“Everything that’s happening right now is like nothing I’ve experienced in previous presidential campaigns,” said Dunn.
The first big political issue is whether the Sanders campaign has any chance of returning from the dead. With many remaining primaries getting kicked to May and June, Biden might not be able to deliver his “insurmountable delegate lead” line until the summer. And while the pandemic has essentially erased Sanders from the news, there is an undercurrent of frustration — and a little nervousness — among some Biden aides that he has been robbed of a clean victory as the presumptive nominee at the end of March, as they had assumed he would. “There’s no closure,” said a top Biden adviser.
The pandemic exploded and inserted itself as the only issue that matters just as Biden made his remarkable transition from lost cause to incredible comeback. The rebound was so swift and his dominance over the race so sudden, that a lot of Biden advisers and outside allies are still processing what happened. Did Biden build an excellent team that just took some time to get things right? Or was Biden’s team hapless and he was simply the beneficiary of underlying dynamics in the primary that allowed him to beat Sanders?
The latter view was expressed by an informal adviser to the campaign.
“After Super Tuesday, Biden got catapulted to the front of the line in spite of himself and his campaign,” he said. “The classic example of that obviously is Massachusetts, where he never went there, didn’t spend any money, didn’t have any people on the ground, and he beat Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. It’s extraordinary. And there’s a reason for it: Democratic voters were saying that the most important thing to them is to beat Trump and he was happy to be the beneficiary of that. But perhaps many of us were overly critical of how they ran the campaign and, frankly, how he performed. He has some fundamental strengths that those of us watching this undervalued.”
When Biden has been heard from, he has looked frankly pathetic. After disappearing for more than a week after his primary victories in Missouri, Michigan and Washington, Biden emerged this week for a series of speeches and interviews from his Wilmington, Del., home.
The purpose was obvious — his campaign desperately needs to muscle its way back into the news cycle. But that turned out to be easier said than done…Biden is clearly not working for the Biden campaign.
Gates is a Republican and is certainly no liberal, but his reputation for moderation, pragmatism, and managerial talent was such that Barack Obama wanted to retain him for a long stint as secretary of defense. It wasn’t the easiest of tenures, but for two and a half years, Gates worked diligently and as smoothly as he could with President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the rest of the Obama-Biden national security team.
It is therefore a matter of grave alarm—at least a DEFCON 2 and possibly DEFCON 1, the ultimate state of alert—when Gates, that most centered of centrists, asserts that Biden has “been wrong on nearly every foreign policy and national security issue for the past four decades.”
The entire syllabus of Biden’s foreign policy and national security errors is a target-rich environment for the many American Greatness writers with expertise on particular issues. Anyone who makes the case for Biden’s election to the presidency should be made to defend the extremism and demonstrated failure of Biden’s national security record.
The former VP doesn’t just stick to marginal lies or spin either, he goes directly at major issues knowing that he’ll be shown to be fibbing.
But does he know? That’s a real question when you’ve got a guy who’s clearly losing his mental faculties. As I’ve documented here, here, and here (among many others), Biden’s inability to process his thoughts and his constant “gaffes” are apparent at this point. There have also been bouts of anger on the campaign trail in which he’s berated or even physically accosted Democrat primary voters.
These are the kinds of things someone wouldn’t do if they had the ability to understand what they were doing. Trump may be a brute at times, but you’ll never find him jabbing his finger in a voter’s chest and yelling at them.
All of these things raise serious questions about just how stable Biden is. If you’ve watched him lately, he looks like he’s about to fall over while just trying to do remote TV hits. This is not a guy who looks — or acts — like he’s all there. So while the constant lies are worthy of coverage — and every single one needs to be slammed — the reality of his condition may be much more serious than just a case of being a politician.
If I’m following Joe Biden correctly during this ABC interview, he still wants the Wisconsin primary to proceed this week during a stay-at-home order amid a pandemic, but says out of caution that the DNC Convention should not be held in Wisconsin 3-4 months from now. Check.
Did you know that Joe Biden has a podcast? Speaking of which: “Biden’s New Podcast Available Exclusively On Vinyl.” “Joe Biden did a town hall about coronavirus last night [March 27] on CNN, and I don’t think there is a single news article about it other than on CNN itself, which doesn’t seem to have a transcript.” Biden is running ahead of where Hillary Clinton did against Sanders four years ago. “Biden held onto much of the turf that Clinton won in 2016, but he also captured a lot of territory that Sanders carried four years ago. We found that much of Biden’s success can be explained by his dominance in areas with larger shares of white voters without a college degree.” Time’s Up: We’re here to fight for all women who make accusations of sexual assault. Well, except those against Joe Biden. For Reasons. Related:
It’s kind of strange that after Joe Biden was accused of sexual assault, his Senior Adviser, @SymoneDSanders went through and deleted all of her Tweets about Kavanaugh.
Joe Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee. Yet many Democrats have ‘buyers’ remorse’ as the COVID virus has driven Biden off centerstage and into a hastily-built basement studio in his Delaware home.
Biden has tried to remain relevant to the public through TV broadcasts, but those appearances have been gaffe-prone and interspersed with lapses in lucidity. Last Friday, he announced on CNN that ‘I speak to all five of my grandkids,’ which must make his very much alive sixth grandchild feel a little neglected. Dave Catanese of McClatchy found his interview last Monday painful to watch: ‘Joe Biden struggled mightily at the top of his MSNBC interview where he looked to be reading from notes to answer a question.’
Democrats openly worry about the lack of enthusiasm for Biden. A new Washington Post/ABC poll found 86 percent of Trump supporters enthusiastic about their choice. Only 74 percent of Biden backers said the same thing. Most ominously, the poll found that 15 percent of Democrats who still back Bernie Sanders say they’d vote for Trump, not Biden, in November. That’s more than the 12 percent of Sanders voters who plumped for Trump in 2016.
The knife-in-the-back anonymous-top-aides-say-he-should-consider-dropping-out stage is already in full swing. Of course, it’s from the Washington Post and contains the magic “just trust me bro” phrase (“according to two people with knowledge of the situation,”) so who knows if it’s real or just more DNC rat-farking. His Saturday Night Live doppelganger Larry David says Sanders should drop out and everybody should back Biden.
Out of the Running
These are people who were formerly in the roundup who have announced they’re not running, for which I’ve seen no signs they’re running, or who declared then dropped out:
Although I know much of the Midwest has already been blessed with several feet of global warming, winter doesn’t officially start until tomorrow. In the meantime, finish up your Christmas shopping (if you haven’t already) and enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm!
Brexit bill passes by huge majority. Britain is set to leave the EU by January 31, 2020. I’m putting this first because Brexit is far more important in the long run than the impeachment farce.
The amazing psychic powers of Instapundit. From 2017: “Trump knows that the press isn’t trusted very much, and that the less it’s trusted, the less it can hurt him. So he’s prodding reporters to do things that will make them less trusted, and they’re constantly taking the bait. They’re taking the bait because they think he’s dumb, and impulsive, and lacking self-control — but he’s the one causing them to act in ways that are dumb and impulsive, and demonstrate lack of self-control.”
But then again, no president in modern memory has been on the receiving end of such overwhelmingly negative media coverage and a three-year effort to abort his presidency, beginning the day after his election.
Do we remember the effort to subvert the Electoral College to prevent Trump from assuming office?
The first impeachment try during his initial week in office?
Attempts to remove Trump using the ossified Logan Act or the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution?
The idea of declaring Trump unhinged, subject to removal by invoking the 25th Amendment?
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month, $35 million investigation, which failed to find Trump guilty of collusion with Russia in the 2016 election and failed to find actionable obstruction of justice pertaining to the non-crime of collusion?
The constant endeavors to subpoena Trump’s tax returns and to investigate his family, lawyers and friends?
Now, frustrated Democrats plan to impeach Trump, even as they are scrambling to find the exact reasons why and how.
Most presidents might seem angry after three years of that. Yet in paradoxical fashion, Trump suddenly appears more composed than at any other time in his volatile presidency.
Ironically, Trump’s opponents and enemies are the ones who have become publicly unhinged.
If you want to know how it’s playing out in America, check out this tweet from PolitiBunny, who was so hardcore #NeverTrump she voted for Egg McMuffin in 2016:
No amount of persuasion, begging, or even outright harassment could convince me to vote for Trump in 2016.
Democrats not only made me a Trump voter last night, but I’m officially ready to do what I can to help him get re-elected.
The House passes the USMCA free trade deal, and I expect senate approval to be quick. USMCA will have longer and more lasting consequences than the silly theater the Democrats put on Wednesday.
Of the 65 deadliest cities in America, over 90% have Democratic mayors, and over 70% have not had Republican mayors in a long, long time. The last Republican mayor of New Orleans left office in 1872… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Clearly Greta Thunberg is being exploited by her cynical puppetmasters, but equally clearly she’s a tiresome, bizarre Marxist scold whose exploitation of the hapless dummies who buy into the climate change hoax is part of what is an increasingly violent plot to undermine capitalism and freedom. Recently, the cretins at TIME, which shockingly still exists in 2019, named her “Person of the Year.” That’s appropriate, since 2019 has been a very annoying year.
In 2029, after the world hasn’t ended but her usefulness has, she’ll be a Jeopardy question and probably shacked up with an unemployed performance artist named Björn in an Oslo suburb. Fun fact: “Greta Thunberg” is Swedish for “Cindy Sheenhan.”
But today, we’re all supposed to fall over ourselves over Pippi Longnagging – at least that’s what our betters command – yet it’s unclear why. Teenagers are notoriously ignorant, and ones spewing recycled Marxism are the worst of all. But the idea is not that this tiresome truant is some visionary thinker. The idea is to leverage her youth and awkwardness to keep you from speaking the indisputable truth that she’s a weird brat who presses for an ideology that butchered 100 million people in the last century. And now, she is hinting she wants to run up that score.
Snip.
The other day, this malignant muppet “told cheering protesters … ‘we will make sure we put world leaders against the wall’ if they fail to take urgent action on climate change.” Now, maybe her English is bad, or maybe she’s just ignorant, but then again the murder of opponents is the Marxist way. Marxist? St. Greta? Well, let’s take a look at what was carved on the tablets she recently brought down from Mount Socialism:
“Schoolchildren, young people, and adults all over the world will stand together, demanding that our leaders take action, not because we want them to, but because the science demands it,” she said. “That action must be powerful and wide-ranging. After all, the climate crisis is not just about the environment. It is a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will. Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it. We need to dismantle them all. Our political leaders can no longer shirk their responsibilities.”
Wait, “the science demands” that we “dismantle” all our “[c]olonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression?” Now, what science exactly is that? Is it geology? Physics? Phrenology maybe?
How stupid do they think people are? Very. And to judge by the judges at TIME, they’re often right. Maybe Greta never heard of Siberia or Cambodia, but we have. Screw that – if she wants to impose her masters’ Marxist fantasies on us, she’ll need to be packing something deadlier than “How dare you!”
Muslims across India staged angry protests over new legislation that grants citizenship rights for refugees fleeing Islamist persecution in the neighboring countries.
The Citizenship Amendment Bill, passed by the Lower House of the Indian parliament by 293 to 82 votes, opens the path to naturalization for the followers of six faiths, including Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians, but excludes Muslims.
Muslim mobs took to streets in several Indian cities, setting fire to vehicles, throwing stones, and hurling home-made bombs at security forces called in to restore order, Indian newspapers report. Left-wing student groups joined the protesters. They blockaded campuses in India’s capital New Delhi.
On the one hand, 95% of the time it is in fact Muslims who are persecuting the members of other religions. On the other, the trend in India under Modi has been toward a Hindu religious-ethno state, and things there could turn very bad, very quickly for the Muslim minority there. Muslims constitute only 14% or so of India’s population, but 14% of 1.3 billion is still some 182 million people. And by “very bad” I mean “possibly Rwanda-level bad,” only at 10 times the scale…
“Poland may have to leave EU, Supreme Court warns.” Hey, I bet I know at least a couple of countries who would be happy to sign free trade deals if they did…
I do not think it is a secret that Vox Media’s employment model has long been unsustainable. They use “contractor” designations to avoid all sorts of labor laws, including providing minimum wage and benefits — and they well exceed the intended use of “contractor.” I’ve published 1,304 articles in 8 years at Clips Nation. That’s not contract work. When I am on the site every day and have day-to-day oversight from corporate, that’s not contract work. Everyone, including SB Nation, has known that this model is unsustainable. While I won’t publicly disclose the numbers, and SB Nation limits our access to a lot of data, I am certain that Clips Nation generates enough revenue to support multiple employees, even when you account for the money that needs to support other aspects of the site (marketing, software, etc).
The state of California is cracking down on companies like SB Nation who are exploiting the “contractor” loophole, as it well should. Unfortunately, Vox Media is predictably unwilling to cease being greedy. In order to attempt to protect their disproportionate and exploitative revenue share from team sites, Vox has decided to eliminate about 200 of these contractor positions — every contractor in California, including myself, Robert, and our staff writers, editors, and podcasters in paid roles — and replace them with a handful of full-time employees who are going to work as a team to run SB Nation’s 25 team sites in California.
I doubt he knows how profitable Vox is. It’s entirely possible it loses money, like many online “media empires.” But I sincerely doubt Vox held a gun to his head those eight years. If he feels exploited for work he voluntarily agreed to do at the wages offered, he only has himself to blame. This is not to say that Vox doesn’t suck; it does. But this situation sucks not due to Vox, but due to the California state laws of which this freelancer so obviously approves.
Here’s an interview with Burt Ward, Robin on the 1960’s Batman TV show, about some of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans. Nowadays he and his wife run a dog rescue center, where they’ve eventuality saved the lives of more than 15,000. Good on you, Burt.
Welcome to a Friday the 13th LinkSwarm! Try to avoid hockey-mask-wearing serial killers today.
Although I feel slightly dirty putting up a link to Vox, this piece on how Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend warps the politics of the state is worth reading, even if you have to factor in Vox’s anti-conservative bias. And I was unaware that Alaska now has the highest unemployment rate in the country…
Chicago, Los Angeles and New York are among the worst-run cities in the country, and residents are leaving. If only there was one single common (D)enominator to all those cities…
President Trump seeks a ban on flavored vaping. This is a very stupid approach to something that is largely a non-problem. It’s not the government’s purpose to protect people from themselves, even if it were vaping is several orders of magnitude less dangerous to your health than smoking, and this is appropriately handled at the state or local (not national) level. Plus there is a sufficient framework of laws to making sales to minors illegal anywhere they’re not already illegal. President Trump is simply wrong here.
Brexit is already changing the British economy. For the better.
The economy overall expanded by 0.3 per cent in July, significantly faster than the 0.1 per cent expected, and better than most of our main rivals. Next, we found out that the trade deficit narrowed slightly as imports fell. Finally, we learned that employment was at record highs and that wages were still growing at record rates. Add in a Chancellor who is about to start spending money with carefree abandon and there is no reason why it shouldn’t improve from here. It isn’t fantastic. But it is a decent performance from a mature economy facing what is meant to be its biggest economic challenge in a generation.
The best data we have suggest that the vast majority of Americans view political correctness as a problem, and that, contra the claim of many progressives, this is not a battlefield consisting of resentful ranting whites on one side and oppressed people on the other, the latter simply asking to be treated and spoken of with decency. In fact, the people most enthusiastic about intense forms of language-policing tend to be more privileged and more white, according to a national political-correctness survey conducted by the firm More in Common that made headlines last year. As Yascha Mounk wrote in his writeup in The Atlantic, “While 83 percent of respondents who make less than $50,000 dislike political correctness, just 70 percent of those who make more than $100,000 are skeptical about it. And while 87 percent who have never attended college think that political correctness has grown to be a problem, only 66 percent of those with a postgraduate degree share that sentiment.” Moreover, “Whites are ever so slightly less likely than average to believe that political correctness is a problem in the country: 79 percent of them share this sentiment. Instead, it is Asians (82 percent), Hispanics (87 percent), and American Indians (88 percent) who are most likely to oppose political correctness.”
Now, people have criticized that survey on the grounds that if you ask people whether “X is a problem,” where X is a culture-war buzzword, you’re likely to get a lot of positive responses. I think there’s something to this critique, but the numbers are too overwhelming to fully discount it. I also think that if you’re going to argue that PC is just a synonym for “being a decent person” you should then explain why so many Americans think that concept is a problem. Are Americans that invested in indecency?
Plus, it would be one thing if this survey were some sort of strange outlier, but if you look at the data we have on specific culture-war blowups of relevance to the PC and/or cancel-culture debates, you find the same pattern over and over. Almost always, the opinions most commonly represented in mainstream progressive outlets are not held by the masses, including by the groups seemingly with the most at stake. I’ve written about this before: On issues ranging from Ralph Northam’s blackface scandal to the Washington football team name to what term(s) should be used to refer to people of recent Latin American descent, woke-progressive opinion is often very out of line with that of the majority of members of the groups in question. Not only do the wokest progressives not speak for Americans; they don’t speak for the groups they’re claiming to want to protect. A 40-year-old American Indian from Oklahoma — that paragon of wealth and privilege and white resentment, of course — made this point pretty succinctly when he was interviewed for a focus group which accompanied the release of the More In Common survey: “It seems like everyday you wake up something has changed … Do you say Jew? Or Jewish? Is it a black guy? African-American? … You are on your toes because you never know what to say. So political correctness in that sense is scary.”
“It’s new,” Stone says of cancel culture, the term used to refer to boycotts started (usually via social media) when a person or group is offended by a star or brand. “I don’t want to say it’s the same as it’s always been. The kids are fucking different than us. There’s a generational thing going on.” Currently, Dave Chappelle is in the crosshairs for his latest Netflix stand-up special, Sticks and Stones. “I know some people have been canceled for genuinely, like, personal behavior, but Dave is not getting canceled anytime soon,” Stone says, joking that South Park and Chappelle are “grandfathered” out of the culture.
Stone also shared his theory as to why critics were so hard on the latest Chappelle special, while viewers seemed to enjoy it far more. “I feel bad for television critics and cultural critics,” he explains. “They may have laughed like hell at that, and then they went home and they know what they have to write to keep their job. So when I read TV reviews or cultural reviews, I think of someone in prison, writing. I think about somebody writing a hostage note. This is not what they think. This is what they have to do to keep their job in a social media world. So I don’t hold it against them.”
Also:
One of the most notable aspects from last season was the lack of any political dealings, specifically the nearly total absence of Donald Trump via the Mr. Garrison persona. “It was nice for us,” Parker says. “It was nice to not come in and talk about Donald Trump. And I think it was nice for people to watch and go, ‘Oh, yeah, there is still comedy outside of fucking Donald Trump. There is still funny shit as the world goes on.’ And you can get your Trump comedy on so many other shows.”
Every segment they air is selected because they think/hope it will damage President Trump and disenfranchise the tens of millions of Americans who voted for and support him. They don’t report news. They select only stories that they think will damage President Trump, and ignore or otherwise downplay and dilute the stories that don’t.
MyPayrollHR, a now defunct cloud-based payroll processing firm based in upstate New York, abruptly ceased operations this past week after stiffing employees at thousands of companies. The ongoing debacle, which allegedly involves malfeasance on the part of the payroll company’s CEO, resulted in countless people having money drained from their bank accounts and has left nearly $35 million worth of payroll and tax payments in legal limbo.
Snip.
Financial institutions are supposed to ignore or reject payment instructions that don’t comport with precise formatting required by the National Automated Clearinghouse Association (NACHA), the not-for-profit organization that provides the backbone for the electronic movement of money in the United States. But Slavkin said a number of financial institutions ended up processing both reversal requests, meaning a fair number of employees at companies that use MyPayrollHR suddenly saw a month’s worth of payroll payments withdrawn from their bank accounts.
Fake influencer exposed. Oh wait, let me rephrase that: More fake than usual influencer exposed. I’m not on Instagram, and I’m incredulous that “influencer” is even a thing. Maybe I could start an “anti-influencer” channel, with just videos of me reading a book while occasionally sipping from a can of off-brand diet root beer. Maybe I could get famous brands to me not to wear their clothing…
Permit me to list just a few of the more troubling accounts I was privy to during the committee’s meeting. Far more times than I would care to mention, the name “Indiana Jones” (the adopted title Dr. Jones insists on being called) has appeared in governmental reports linking him to the Nazi Party, black-market antiquities dealers, underground cults, human sacrifice, Indian child slave labor, and the Chinese mafia. There are a plethora of international criminal charges against Dr. Jones, which include but are not limited to: bringing unregistered weapons into and out of the country; property damage; desecration of national and historical landmarks; impersonating officials; arson; grand theft (automobiles, motorcycles, aircraft, and watercraft in just a one week span last year); excavating without a permit; countless antiquities violations; public endangerment; voluntary and involuntary manslaughter; and, allegedly, murder.
(Hat tip: Greg Benford on Facebook.)
Poland frowns on Greenpeace’s shenanigans:
No messing about 💪
Armed Polish border guards board Greenpeace 'Rainbow Warrior' ship blocking the delivery of coal to the port of Gdansk.
Greenpeace have accused Polish authorities of using excessive force.
When you see a phrase like “Moose vs. Hovercraft,” you think it’s probably about some ironic iPhone game you can back on Kickstarter. (That, or a SyFy movie, in which case it would be Giant Moose vs. Megahovercraft.) But today the phrase pops up in relation to a case the Supreme Court has agreed to take up. Bonus: For the second time.
An Alaska hunter who wants to use his hovercraft to hunt moose persuaded the Supreme Court to take up his case Monday for the second time.
After its last hearing on John Sturgeon’s case, the Supreme Court found that the Ninth Circuit failed to recognize the unique conditions of Alaska that usually make the state the exception, not the rule, when it comes to Nation Park Service regulations.
On remand from the Supreme Court, however, the Ninth Circuit again ruled against Sturgeon, finding that the U.S. government had authority to regulate Sturgeon’s use of a hovercraft on the federally protected Nation River.
Sturgeon’s latest petition for certiorari, which he filed this past January,
Asks whether the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act prohibits the National Park Service from exercising regulatory control over state, tribal or private land that overlaps with the National Park System in Alaska.
The Supreme Court decision for the first round of Sturgeon vs. Frost can be found here. An excerpt:
In 2007, John Sturgeon was piloting his hovercraft over a stretch of the Nation River that flows through the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, a conservation system unit in Alaska that is managed by the National Park Service. Alaska law permits the use of hovercraft. National Park Service regulations do not. See 36 CFR §2.17(e). Park Service rangers approached Sturgeon, informing him that hovercraft were prohibited within the preserve under Park Service regulations. Sturgeon protested that Park Service regulations did not apply because the river was owned by the State of Alaska. The rangers ordered Sturgeon to re move his hovercraft from the preserve, and he complied. Sturgeon later filed suit against the Park Service in the United States District Court for the District of Alaska, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief permitting him to operate his hovercraft within the boundaries of the Yukon-Charley. Alaska intervened in support of Sturgeon.
The Supremes remanded the case back to the Ninth Circuit saying they had misinterpreted the regulation in question:
Looking at ANILCA both as a whole and with respect to Section 103(c), the Act contemplates the possibility that all the land within the boundaries of conservation system units in Alaska may be treated differently from federally managed preservation areas across the country, and that “non-public” lands within the boundaries of those units may be treated differently from “public” lands within the unit. Under the Ninth Circuit’s reading of Section 103(c), however, the former is not an option, and the latter would require contorted and counterintuitive measures.
The Ninth basically responded as they are usually wont to do. “Nah-uh, you’re not the boss of me! I do what I want! Screw you, moose-hunting hovercraft guy!” (I might be paraphrasing just a tad here.)
Having been ignored the first time, expect the Supreme Court to strike down upon the ninth with great vengeance and furious anger issue a more strongly-worded decision. The only question is whether it will be a narrowly-based textual decision, or a broader decision about federal regulation of state and private lands.
