Posts Tagged ‘Alejandro Mayorkas’

LinkSwarm for October 11, 2024

Friday, October 11th, 2024

Weird roundup this week: Lot’s of Hollywood and car news, not too much on the looming election. (Shrugs.) It’s whatever happens to catch my eye.

It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Yes, Democrats spent FEMA money on illegal aliens.

    More than 200 people have been confirmed dead as a result of Hurricane Helene, and that total is expected to rise as search-and-rescue crews reach more remote communities. Roads have been destroyed, many towns are still without power, and people are beginning to run out of food as trucks cannot get in to provide aid.

    Amid all of this, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the architect of the migrant invasion, warns that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is running out of money to aid hurricane victims. Meanwhile, thanks to the migrant crisis his catch-and-release policies created, FEMA has spent over $1 billion feeding, housing, and transporting illegal immigrants across the United States in just the last two years.

    Before he was elected, President Joe Biden said of migrants wanting to enter the U.S. illegally, “We could afford to take in a heartbeat another 2 million.” Thanks to Biden’s subsequent policies, all supported by Vice President Kamala Harris, including the end of former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program, the temporary suspension of all deportations, and the creation of the CBP One app parole program and the Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans parole program, the number of illegal immigrants allowed into the U.S. by Biden has been closer to 4 million.

    Unfortunately for communities across the U.S., the ability of this country to take in millions of illegal immigrants has not been as smooth as Biden predicted. Cities, many of them controlled by Democrats, have been begging the federal government for assistance in housing, clothing, feeding, education, and providing healthcare for the flood of migrants who are straining budgets in their communities.

    In response, the Biden administration has spent tens of billions of dollars helping to ease the pain caused by their illegal migrant invasion. Local governments are required to provide education to all children, regardless of legal status, and the Department of Education helps local governments pay to educate these children. Hospitals must provide emergency care to all patients, even illegal immigrants without health insurance, and so the Department of Health and Human Services helps local hospitals stay afloat by reimbursing them through Medicaid.

    And the Department of Homeland Security helps provide food, housing, and transportation to illegal immigrants through FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program and Shelter and Services Program Awards program. When the influx of migrants was bankrupting cities across the country this past winter, Democratic mayors traveled to the White House to beg Biden for more FEMA money to help their communities “meet the growing needs of these individuals.”

    And the White House gave them the FEMA money they wanted. In just the last two years alone, the Biden administration has spent over $1 billion in FEMA funds giving local communities the resources needed to deal with the migrant crisis that the Biden administration created.

    if Joe Biden had said he wanted to let 4 million illegal aliens into the country, and subsidize their food and clothing, do you think he would have been “elected” in 2020?

  • CBS lies, altering interview of Kamala Harris on Israel:

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • At CBS, an employee stands accused of doing actual journalism.

    On September 30th, anti-Israel author Ta-Nehisi Coates sat down for what turned out to be a spirited six-and-a-half-minute interview on CBS Mornings, during which co-anchor Tony Dokoupil challenged some of the claims made in Coates’ new book, “The Message.”

    The book contains several essays about some of Coates’ travels, with the longest one being about his trip “to Palestine.” It was claims made in that essay that Dokoupil zeroed in on for closer examination during their exchange:

    “I have to say, when I read the book, I imagine if I took your name out of it, took away the awards, the acclaim, took the cover off the book, publishing house goes away, the content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist,” Dokoupil said.

    “So then I found myself wondering, why does Ta’Nehisi Coates, who I’ve known for a long time, read his work for a long time, very talented, smart guy, leave out so much? Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it? Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it? Why not detail anything of the first and the second Intifada, the café bombings, the bus bombings, the little kids blown to bits. Is it because you just don’t believe that Israel in any condition has a right to exist?” the CBS anchor continued.

    Perhaps because Coates’ word is viewed as sacrosanct by woke leftists in the media, academia, and beyond despite his deeply flawed logic on issues like reparations, eruptions began almost immediately in the CBS newsroom, with tensions boiling over a week later during an editorial call:

    During its editorial meeting on Monday at 9 a.m.—the morning of October 7—the network’s top brass all but apologized for the interview to staff, saying that it did not meet the company’s “editorial standards.” After being introduced by Wendy McMahon, the head of CBS News, Adrienne Roark, who is in charge of news gathering at the network, began her remarks by saying covering a story like October 7 “requires empathy, respect, and a commitment to truth.”

    After quoting extensively from the CBS News handbook, she said, “We will still ask tough questions. We will still hold people accountable. But we will do so objectively, which means checking our biases and opinions at the door…”

    Presumably, the “bias” accusations stem from the fact that, according to the New York Post, Dokoupil is “a convert to Judaism whose ex-wife lives in Israel along with their two children.”

    “During its editorial meeting on Monday at 9 a.m.—the morning of October 7—the network’s top brass all but apologized for the interview to staff, saying that it did not meet the company’s ‘editorial standards.’”

    Though Shalt Not Question the Holy Social justice.

  • #BlackLivesMatter fraudster Tyree Conyers-Page sentenced to 42 months in prison.

    A US judge has sentenced a disgraced Black Lives Matter leader to federal prison after he was convicted at trial in April on wire fraud and money laundering charges. Sir Maejor Page, 35, of Toledo, Ohio, who uses the alias Tyree Conyers-Page, was found guilty of running a “fake charity scheme” for personal profit, defrauding donors of more than $450,000 they had given to his nonprofit Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta.

    US District Court Judge Jeffrey Helmick of the Northern District of Ohio sentenced Page on Thursday to 42 months in federal prison. He was also ordered to pay a $400 special assessment fee, according to a press release from the Department of Justice.

    Prosecutors accused Page of defrauding 18,000 donors who collectively gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to his fraudulent charity, Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta. Page took the donations and used them for his own personal benefit. He purchased entertainment, hotel rooms, clothing, firearms, and a property in Ohio that he intended to use as his personal residence, court documents showed.

    Page continued to collect donations for his “social justice” charity through its Facebook page after the organization’s tax-exempt status was revoked for failing to submit IRS Form 990 for three consecutive years. He consistently shared content on Facebook relating to social justice and racial issues in order to establish the legitimacy of his nonprofit organization, despite the fact this it was no longer tax-exempt. The convicted fraudster used Facebook to communicate privately with donors, to which he falsely claimed that their contributions would be allocated to “fight for George Floyd” and the “movement.”

    #BlackLivesMatter was fraud all the way down…

  • Elon Musk thinks that the reason so many billionaires are dumping money on Kamala is that they’re terrified Trump will release Epstein’s client list.
  • Does internal polling show Harris in trouble?

    In a recent podcast interview, the political analyst who first predicted that Joe Biden would withdraw from the presidential race revealed that private polling he has seen appears to suggest that Vice President Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) is in serious trouble ahead of the November election.

    According to Breitbart, Newsmax commentator and former political director for ABC News Mark Halperin gave his analysis on The Morning Meeting with Sean Spicer and Dan Turrentine. Halperin said that internal polling could see Harris lose all but one of the seven swing states in this election, as her current lead in the national popular vote is not enough to win the electoral college against former President Donald Trump.

    “So the new New York Times poll shows her up three nationally,” Halperin explained. “We all know that three is like the bubble point, right? If she’s up three, she’s got a chance to win the Electoral College, but they’d rather be at four, and they don’t want to be at two. So three is right at the bubble. I’m not saying this Times poll’s right. But it’s in line with international polls.”

    “We all know from our contacts in both campaigns that Pennsylvania is tough for her right now. And without Pennsylvania, there are paths, but there aren’t many. There’s no path without Wisconsin,” Halperin continued. “So you see here, Tammy Baldwin’s Senate campaign poll shows Harris down three in Wisconsin. We all said yesterday, Wisconsin and Michigan are looking worse for Harris than before.”

    Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin’s (D-Wisc.) campaign had previously shared internal polling with both the Wall Street Journal and Axios, showing Harris losing to Trump in the state and Baldwin herself with a mere 2-point lead over her Republican challenger, Eric Hovde (R-Wisc.).

    Such results in private polls align with the trend reflected in public polls, with pollsters such as Quinnipiac University and Emerson College showing President Trump gaining momentum in most of the swing states, now either leading Harris or tied in enough states to win the electoral college.

    “I just saw some new private polling today that’s very robust private polling. She’s in a lot of trouble,” said Halperin. “The conversation I’m having with Trump people and Democrats with data are extremely bullish on Trump’s chances in the last 48 hours, extremely bullish. You think of the seven battleground states; which ones is Harris in danger of losing? I would say Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia. I’m not saying she’ll lose all six, but she’s in danger.”

    If Harris were to lose these six states but hold the seventh swing state, Nevada, then the result would be an exact repeat of the 2016 election, with President Trump winning 306 electoral votes to Harris’ 232.

  • “100-foot ‘Vote for Trump’ sign lit up in Amsterdam, NY after court rules against Democrat-run city for trying to block it.”
  • Others have done a better job reporting this, but Milton hit central Florida hard.
  • “Law enforcement has arrested Estefania Primera, an illegal alien from Venezuela, following reports that she was the ring leader for a gang’s sex trafficking operation in El Paso. Primera was named by a sex trafficking victim as the leader of a Tren de Aragua sex trafficking ring.”
  • “Springfield resident films Haitian migrant cutting up animal in yard of “pet-friendly” apartment complex featured on CNN.”
  • Ukrainian drones hit another Russian ammo depot.
  • They also hit a Shahed drone stockpile in Krasnodar.
  • They also hit an oil facility in Feodosia, where the fire spread for days.
  • Meta fined $101 million for storing Facebook passwords without encryption. This is like setting your smart phone unlock number to 1234…
  • The Royal New Zealand Navy manages to lose a ship to a reef. I’m sure that result had nothing to with the captain being a lesbian and that she was super-qualified and not a diversity hire…
  • People have been asking about the Texas temporary ID ruling in other threads, and now we have an update.

    Secretary of State Asks Attorney General to Rule on ‘Limited Term’ Driver’s Licenses as Voter ID. Paxton received a request from Secretary of State Nelson to rule on the validity of “limited term” driver’s licenses as voter ID.

    Texas Secretary of State (SOS) Jane Nelson issued an advisory on Tuesday that describes “limited term” driver’s licenses as an acceptable form of voter ID, though recommending other forms of photo identification if possible.

    While the Texas Election Code does not specifically designate “limited term” ID cards as a permissible form of voter ID, it does describe “a personal identification card issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety” (TxDPS) as an approved form of identification.

    As Nelson’s advisory acknowledges, TxDPS distributes “temporary term” driver’s licenses to noncitizens, provided they are an individual with lawful temporary status in the U.S.

    The SOS’s guidance concedes that if an individual is registered to vote and presents a “limited term” driver’s license or ID card, they may receive a ballot after being fully informed by the election judge or clerk of the “eligibility requirements” necessary to vote in Texas.

    The issue cited by the SOS is that while the limited term ID denotes noncitizen status at one point, it doesn’t mean that the individual has not since been naturalized. Transportation Code also includes the limited term ID as a valid form of identification, creating a small window for a potentially legitimate use of the document to vote.

    Additionally, if an individual presents a “limited term” ID card but is not registered to vote, they may receive a provisional ballot after election officials fully evaluate what their lack of registration and unique form of identification suggests.

    Nelson recommended using language such as, “The limited-term driver’s license/identification card you presented suggests that you are not a United States citizen. Your name does not appear on the list of registered voters. Per the Texas Election Code, to be eligible to vote in the State of Texas, you must be a qualified voter of this state,” when explaining the situation to the unregistered voter and prior to distributing a provisional ballot.

    Nelson requested on October 9 that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton rule on whether a limited term driver’s license that “generates questions of voter eligibility” is a valid form of voter ID and if an election official must present a ballot to an individual who only provides such ID in person. The request is for a non-binding opinion by the Office of the Attorney General.

    Nelson also asked Paxton how ballot workers ought to treat mail-in ballots that only list an ID number or driver’s license card that is “limited term,” in regards both to “counting” the vote and for investigating “instances of fraud.”

    So Paxton will be able to nip this potential avenue of voting fraud in the bud.

  • “A former Democrat member of the Texas Senate is throwing his support behind a Republican candidate for the seat he once held. Former State Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. of Brownsville announced his endorsement of Adam Hinojosa in the race against freshman Democrat State Sen. Morgan LaMantia, pointing to their shared pro-life values as a key reason.”
  • The Biden Recession is slamming restaurants.
  • “The most fun I had going to see the new Joker movie was in the car ride and from it, because I was listening to Warhammer 40K lore on the Horus Heresy. And just listening to that was better than seeing Joker Folie a Deux.”
  • Finally, a non-insulting use for AI? They’re going to use AI to create dubs of original Japanese anime in voices that sound like the original Japanese voice actors. This would be a big improvement on a lot of the early crappy dubs, but I can’t imagine American voice actors being thrilled at losing those gigs…
  • 95% of gamers don’t want DEI in their games. Obviously. Social Justice poisons everything it touches.
  • Oh no! Velma has been cancelled! Let’s have a moment of silence forOK that’s enough.
  • Speaking of things that have no future, Deadspin fails to get the lawsuit against it over calling a young Kansas City Chiefs fan racist thrown out. G/O Media is looking at losing a lot of money for dickish virtue signaling…
  • Social Justice video game consulting company Sweet Baby Inc. scrubs their website of just about everything, including their client list.
  • “Oklahoma-based BrucePac has issued a massive recall of nearly 10 million pounds of “ready-to-eat” meat and chicken products due to potential contamination with Listeria.” Here’s a complete list of the products recalled.
  • “Electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer Fisker Inc. is under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and faces formal objections from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) over its Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. The company filed for bankruptcy earlier this year after halting production in March…The DOJ contends in filings that Fisker’s proposed $750,000 cap on recall expenses in its bankruptcy plan is insufficient to cover both parts and labor costs required for vehicle repairs.”
  • Also: “New York-based company called American Lease was less deterred by this warning and in June agreed to purchase the remaining Fisker inventory—approximately 3,300 cars for a total of $46.3 million dollars. By October, American Lease had paid Fisker $42.5 million and had taken delivery of about 1,100 Oceans. That was the plan until the end of last week, at least. Last Friday evening, Fisker informed American Lease that the Oceans ‘cannot, as a technical matter, be ‘ported’ from the Fisker server to which the vehicles are currently linked to a distinct server owned and/or controlled by’ American Lease.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Also from Instapundit: Fisker left their California headquarters trashed when they vacated.
  • “Kia cars can be hacked with a smartphone.”

    The issue originated in one of the Kia web portals used by dealerships. Long story short and a hefty bit of API abuse later, [Sam] Curry and his band of far-more-capable Kia Boyz managed to register a fake dealer account to get a valid access token, which they were then able to use to call any backend dealer API command they wanted.

    “From the victim’s side, there was no notification that their vehicle had been accessed nor their access permissions modified,” Curry noted in his writeup. “An attacker could resolve someone’s license plate, enter their VIN through the API, then track them passively and send active commands like unlock, start, or honk.”

  • Sales for once mighty Toyota are down due to a massive engine recall.
  • “1 killed, 12 rescued inside Colorado gold mine after elevator malfunctioned during tour.” Dwight pointed this out to me, mainly because I just posted a Halloween horror piece on mining disasters, including the famously gruesome Val Reef’s gold mine elevator disaster.
  • Bungled. “A founding member of the experimental rock band Mr. Bungle was found guilty Friday of first-degree murder in the killing of his girlfriend after prosecutors in California found an audio file the victim recorded on her phone as she fought for her life. A jury in Santa Cruz deliberated for a day before finding Theobald ‘Theo’ Lengyel guilty of first-degree murder in the killing of his girlfriend Alice “Alyx” Kamakaokalani Herrmann on the night of Dec. 4, 2023, inside her Capitola home.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Trop dropped.
  • Quentin Tarantino on how John Carpenter’s The Thing inspired both Reservoir Dogs and The Hateful Eight.
  • The pianist cashed his ticket and drove an exhausting 500 miles to the concert venue on the only night he could play, only to find a broken, out-of-tune piano. The restaurant couldn’t get his order right before he had to leave to perform. He refused to play multiple times before finally relenting and, still in pain from the drive, improvised the best-selling solo piano album of all time.
  • “Democrats Perplexed Why Candidate Nobody Ever Voted For Is Slipping In The Polls.”
  • “FEMA Warns They Don’t Have The Resources To Block Humanitarian Aid For Next Hurricane.”
  • “Trembling, Bleeding Spokeswoman Issues Statement Denying That Doug Emhoff Would Ever Hit Anyone.”
  • “Thousands Of Migrant Farmworkers Head North In Preparation For The Democrat Ballot Harvest.”
  • “Lesbian Captain Crashes After Insisting Ships Don’t Have To Go Into Ports.”
  • This dog story angries up my blood, but it has a happy ending.
  • I’ve been unemployed a year now, so feel free to hit the tip jar.





    Also, a hearty thanks to everyone who has already donated.

    LinkSwarm for October 4, 2024

    Friday, October 4th, 2024

    A crippling dock strike gets the can kicked past election day, Hurricane Helene wrecks havoc on the highlands, illegal alien crime flourishes, two bombing plots aimed at “diversity” are thwarted, Texas A&M ditches woke classes, more Diddy dirt, and Japanese gamers aren’t onboard with Ubisoft’s “black samurai.”

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • “Striking Dockworkers Agree to Take a Measly 62 Percent Raise and Not Spoil the Election for Democrats.” How convenient.
  • “America Last: After Spending $640 Million On Migrants And Billions Abroad, FEMA Suddenly ‘Broke.'”

    The Biden-Harris administration’s ‘America Last’ policies have left the country vulnerable. Between draining the strategic petroleum reserve, sending hundreds of billions in cash and equipment to Ukraine (such as electrical transformers that are now needed for Hurricane Helene), and FEMA spending $640 million to help migrants, the agency tasked with emergency preparedness is now ‘broke,’ and doesn’t have enough money to get through hurricane season which typically lasts through November.

    The agency is being stretched as it works with states to assess damage from Hurricane Helene and delivers meals, water, generators and other critical supplies. The storm struck Florida last week, then plowed through several states in the Southeast, flooding towns and killing more than 160 people.

    Mayorkas was not specific about how much additional money the agency may need, but his remarks on Air Force One underscored concerns voiced by President Joe Biden and some lawmakers earlier this week that Congress may need to pass a supplemental spending bill this fall to help states with recovery efforts.

  • “This woman blasted Joe Biden live on NBC – she has family that has been trapped in NC for days and says FEMA is nowhere in sight. Why haven’t President Biden or Vice President Harris called a major press conference and/or landed on the ground in towns that were wiped off the map by last week’s flooding?”
  • Indeed, there are a lot of reports that some government agencies are actively hindering private rescue and relief efforts in North Carolina. “Let’s begin with this terrible report of a man who used his own helicopter to rescue stranded people above Asheville, N.C., and who was told if he continued, he would be placed under arrest.”

    Also: “We have medical teams trying to access Burnsville (elevation 2,700ft) and Black Mountain. Authorities are threatening arrest. I’m gonna keep this short & simple; something is very wrong here.”

    Also: “NEW – Federal Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has shut down aid flights into Western North Carolina. A NOTAM has been issued by the FAA that won’t allow anyone not approved by the state to fly aid missions.”

    Plus a slate of 18-wheeler tire slashings in multiple locations that’s hopefully not government sanctioned. Hopefully…

  • Trump announces that Elon Musk is providing free Starlink terminals to areas affected by hurricane Helene.
  • Musk will also be a Trump’s October 5 rally in Butler, PA, the same site as the attempted assassination attempt against Trump.
  • One pollster thinks Trump could win swing states by a landslide.

    The Trafalgar Group released a poll on Wednesday showing Trump has increased his lead in the vital swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin.

    The recent poll shows Trump beating Harris by 2.2 points in Michigan, with Trump scoring 47.5% of the votes to Harris’s 45.3%.

    On August 31, the Trafalgar Group had Trump beating Harris 47% to 46.6%, a lead of only 0.4%.

    Trump is winning in Wisconsin as well, topping the Kackler by 47.1% to 46%. The poll had Trump at 47.3% to Harris’s 46.2%.

    “These numbers are the best we’ve seen for Trump in this election cycle. If this momentum holds, he could easily win by a significant margin,” a polling source stated.

    In Pennsylvania, which many pundits believe Harris needs to win, Trump is up, with 47.5% of the vote, compared to Harris’s 45.3%.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “Texas Congressman Confirms Thousands of Murderers, Rapists Entered the Country Illegally.”

    The Biden-Harris administration has allowed well over half a million illegal aliens with criminal histories to enter the United States.

    U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-23) published the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data on social media platform X.

    According to the newly released information, 662,566 noncitizens on ICE’s national docket have criminal histories. These numbers include 13,099 murder convicts, 15,811 sexual assault convicts, and 13,423 weapon offense convicts.

    “We’ve known for far too long that the Biden-Harris border crisis poses a direct threat to Americans,” Gonzales said in a press release. “The truth is clear—illegal immigrants with a criminal record are coming into our country.”

    The Texas congressman asserted that beyond the disturbing new data, it should also serve as a “wake-up call” for the federal government and cities across the United States that keep sanctuary policies in place.

    Gonzales first requested the data on March 13 when he penned a letter requesting answers to several illegal immigration questions to President Joe Biden and U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

    Of the seven million reported cases on ICE’s docket, the letter requested information on how many noncitizens were charged with a crime by a municipality. Additionally, the letter asked how many were noncitizens convicted of a crime and released into U.S. communities.

    Over six months later, Gonzales has finally received a response.

    Sure seems like Gonzales has been a lot more active on this issue since Brandon Herrera primaried him…

  • Another side effect of Biden-Harris open borders policy: An explosion of illegal alien prostitution networks.

    As ‘Border Czar’ Kamala Harris visited the southern border for a photo-op on Friday, alarming new revelations also emerged showing that far-left Democrats in the White House rolled out the red carpet to 650,000 migrants with criminal records. This has already fueled chaos nationwide, including a new report of an “explosion in migrant prostitution” networks across America.

    A newly leaked law enforcement document obtained by New York Post journalists shows that the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua has exploited desperate migrant women into sex trafficking networks across eight states.

    At least eight states have seen an explosion in migrant prostitution since the gang laid down roots in the US, with authorities in Texas, Nevada, Illinois, California, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey and New York now fighting to curtail the sex trade, the memo shows. -NYPost

    The Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua has been linked to sex trafficking in eight states including New York.

    In New York City, police sources told the NYPost that Tren de Aragua gangsters are recruiting their members and victims straight out of city-run migrant shelters.

    In the Big Apple, Tren de Aragua is trying to recruit foot soldiers to force women into sex trafficking — in the hopes that it will become a main source of income for the gang, according to the leaked memo.

    Funny how we didn’t see or hear a single story about Tren de Aragua prior to the Biden Administration, and now they seem to be everywhere.

  • Speaking of sexual slavery, a Yazidi woman captured by the Islamic State was just rescued…in Gaza. From the river to the sea/No sex slave shall be free…
  • “A paralegal at a New York City district attorney’s office has been arrested after he attempted to make an explosive to bomb a migrant shelter located across from his apartment, according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday.” See, here in Texas, we just want to deport illegal aliens, not blow them up…
  • “Philadelphia: Muslim teen hoped to make bombs for terror group, planned LGBTQ parade jihad massacre….Muhyyee-ud-din Abdul-Rahman, 18, of West Philadelphia, not only had bomb-making materials, that were found in the trash at his home, he had tested bombs in the woods behind his home and had likely considered an attack on Philly’s LGBTQ community.” Funny how some of the Democratic Party’s vibrant diversity wants to blow up other parts of the Democratic Party’s vibrant diversity…
  • John Kerry admits that the First Amendment is a huge barrier to forcing leftist views down people’s throats. “Our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to hammer [disinformation] out of existence. What we need is to win…the right to govern by hopefully winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change.” If anyone you know is committing #Wrongthink, be sure to report them to the Ministry of Love…
  • Iran hit mostly Jack and Squat in its missile attack on israel, though it did evidently hit one airbase hanger.
  • Hamas Commander Killed in Israeli Strike Led U.N. Refugee Agency Teachers’ Union.” [Fateh Sherif] was responsible for coordinating Hamas’ terror activities in Lebanon with Hezbollah operatives, as well as Hamas’ efforts in Lebanon to recruit operatives and acquire weapons.”
  • MSM media outlets fell all over themselves to praise dead terrorist scumbag Hassan Nasrallah.
  • Israel hits a Russian airbase in Syria. One wonders what Russian’s adventures in Syria have gotten them other than some dead mercenaries and weapons sales.
  • Russia Captures Vuhledar: After Over 800 Vehicle Losses and Over Two Years of Trying.”
  • The Babylon Bee filed a lawsuit against the state of California on Monday after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a series of “deepfake” laws that target outlets that publish satire and parody.”
  • Virginia high school teacher fired for refusing to use tranny pronouns awarded $575,000. Make them pay.
  • Albania wants to createa microstate in their own capital for “Sovereign State of the Bektashi Order” for the moderate Sufi Muslim sect. “His hoped-for Muslim state in Tirana, the capital of Albania, will be a Vatican-style sovereign enclave that will control territory the size of five New York City blocks and will allow alcohol, allow women to wear what they want and not impose lifestyle rules.” Not the worst idea I’ve heard this year. At least they could sell postage stamps…
  • A&M to Deactivate ‘LGBTQ’ Studies Minor and Social Justice Certificate.”

    A Texas A&M spokesperson has confirmed that the university will deactivate 38 certificates and 14 minors, including the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies minor.

    The A&M spokesperson told The Battalion that the official list of deactivated programs will not be public until it appears before the Faculty Senate on October 14. A university statement cited low enrollment as the reason for deactivating the programs.

    However, Theresa Morris, the director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, said that the LGBTQ Studies minor was among those ending.

    An official in the Department of Communication & Journalism also confirmed that certificates for both Communication, Diversity and Social Justice and Communication & Global Media are being deactivated.

    Additionally, the director of Marketing and Communications in the College of Performance confirmed that the certificates for popular culture and performing social activism were also in the deactivation process.

    This comes after State Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Midlothian) repeatedly called DEI courses and the LGBTQ studies minor an “outrageous abuse of tax money” and examples of “taxpayer-funded indoctrination.”

    Good. Maybe students will be forced to choose a major that adds to the world rather than tearing it down with social justice.

  • “Lawsuit Accuses Democrat State House Candidate of Not Paying Vendors. House District 80 Democrat candidate Cecilia Castellano is already under investigation by Attorney General Ken Paxton in a separate voter fraud case.”

    A lawsuit filed in Tarrant County is accusing a Democrat running for the Texas House of Representatives of failing to pay her vendors and subcontractors in the business she operates.

    House District 80 candidate Cecilia Castellano, who operates Azteca Designs and Construction, allegedly failed to provide proper compensation for work done by one of Azteca’s subcontractors, the Glass Doctor of North Texas, according to the suit.

    Glass Doctor had entered an agreement to work on a project with Azteca in November 2023, where the subcontractor was slated to earn $49,643.36, according to the filing. Later, Glass Doctor was tasked with replacing damaged glass installed by another subcontractor for an additional $18,487.77.

    However, Glass Doctor says the payments never arrived.

    Plaintiffs instead painted a picture of Azteca going out of their way to avoid providing the payments, claiming the project was “not built pursuant to written plans” and back-charging Glass Doctor to fix work done by a third party.

  • “Fort Bend County Judge KP George Indicted Over Fake Racist Messages. Warrants indicate George may have attempted to conceal evidence.”

    Fort Bend County Judge KP George has been indicted on misdemeanor charges related to faked racist messages on social media but could face felony charges over an alleged attempt to hide evidence.

    A grand jury indicted George last Thursday in relation to a scheme in collaboration with Taral Patel, his former chief of staff and now Democratic candidate for county commissioner. Patel was indicted on four felony and four misdemeanor charges after investigators tied him to fake social media and email accounts used to make offensive posts and circulate falsified polls.

  • “Netflix Cancellations Skyrocketed After Founder Donated, Endorsed Harris. Netflix cancellations went through the roof after co-founder and chairman Reed Hastings endorsed and donated to VP Kamala Harris.”
  • Following up on last week’s Diddy arrest story, the accusations just keep piling on, with 120 more sexual abuse claims, including 25 from minors. If even 10% of these claims are true, how did he get away with such massive abuse for so long? Who does he have dirt on?
  • “[German] Green Party co-chairs Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour are stepping down. The move could make things even harder for Germany’s fractious coalition government. Germany’s Green Party is going from crisis to crisis. Three days after regional elections in the eastern state of Brandenburg delivered a stinging defeat to the party, its entire leadership has resigned. Now, the party will have to choose a replacement at its party conference in November.”
  • My my, hey hey/Disney cancels the movie about Rei.
  • Who could possibly be pissed off about a historical game starring a black samurai? Well, for starters, Japanese gamers.
  • “Kamala Announces Construction Of ‘Murderers Only’ Express Lane At Southern Border.”
  • School Shooters Distance Themselves From Tim Walz.”
  • “Hezbollah Reaches Out To U.S. For Advice On How To Govern With A Dead Leader.”
  • “Young Hezbollah Recruit Can’t Believe He’s Already Made Regional Manager.”
  • OK, I’m awake!

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • I’ve been unemployed for one year now, so feel free to hit the tip jar.





    Also, a hearty thanks to everyone who has already donated.

    Texas AG Paxton Sues Biden Administration Over Illegal Aliens Yet Again

    Monday, August 26th, 2024

    Another week, another lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton against the Biden Administration over breaking immigration law to benefit illegal aliens.

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued the Biden administration over a policy he alleges would allow illegal immigrants to “Parole in Place” (PIP) and receive therwise unpermitted benefits.

    The lawsuit alleges that the Biden administration is violating the U.S. Constitution in a new agency rule, established on August 19. That rule establishes a process for “certain noncitizen spouses and noncitizen stepchildren of U.S. citizens” to get around federal prohibitions against certain immigration benefits being obtained until after leaving the country and returning in a legal manner, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) press release.

    “These provisions of law established by Congress serve as powerful disincentives for individuals to cross the border unlawfully. Indeed, were they not present, there would be no practical reason for any alien to abide by the law, wait his or her turn, and only come to the United States when the law provides,” the filing argues.

    “DHS has announced the creation of a program that effectively provides a new pathway to a green card and eventual citizenship.”

    In the lawsuit, Paxton requested the court grant injunctive relief to ban the DHS from implementing the new PIP rule while the policy is on trial.

    “Under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the federal government is actively working to turn the United States into a nation without borders and a country without laws. I will not let this happen,” Paxton said in a press release.

    “Biden’s new parole workaround unilaterally grants the opportunity for citizenship to unvetted aliens whose first act on American soil was to break our laws.”

    The lawsuit is a coalition of sixteen states — Texas, Idaho, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Wyoming — along with conservative legal organization America First Legal (AFL).

    It was filed against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ur Jaddou, Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Troy Miller, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Patrick J. Lechleiter, and Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young.

    Stephen Miller, president of AFL, said, “Today, we are proud to represent a coalition of 16 states in filing a lawsuit to block an unconstitutional Biden-Harris amnesty program. This executive amnesty gives over one million illegals legal status, work permits, and a path to voting citizenship.”

    “It is brazenly unlawful, a deadly accelerant to the ruinous border invasion, and we will use every lawful tool to stop it.”

    Texas and its co-litigant states have racked up a pretty good record against the Biden Administration as of late, winning cases over border wall construction, the unilateral transexual rewrite of Title IX, and even vaccine mandates for the National Guard. Expect Paxton and his state coalition to win this case, too, but the real remedy for the Biden Administration’s willful defiance of border security laws will have to come from American citizens voting in November.

    LinkSwarm For July 26, 2024

    Friday, July 26th, 2024

    More dirt comes out about the (intentionally?) shoddy security at Trump’s Butler rally, Netanyahu addresses congress, China bribes some Democrats, Israel hits the Houthis, Redbox users are screwed, and Sanrio upends the world with a shocking revelation. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Security at Trump’s Bitler rally was even worse than we thought.

    More whistleblowers are coming forward with damning allegations about the law-enforcement failures surrounding the failed assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump.

    Whistleblowers with “direct knowledge” of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) handling of the Trump rally in Butler, Pa., last weekend came forward to Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) alleging that the rally was a “loose” security event featuring personnel drawn from a different wing of DHS who were not trained for such an event.

    “Whistleblowers who have direct knowledge of the event have approached my office. According to the allegations, the July 13 rally was considered to be a ‘loose’ security event. For example, detection canines were not used to monitor entry and detect threats in the usual manner. Individuals without proper designations were able to gain access to backstage areas. Department personnel did not appropriately police the security buffer around the podium and were also not stationed at regular intervals around the event’s security perimeter,” Hawley wrote in a letter sent Friday to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

    “In addition, whistleblower allegations suggest the majority of DHS officials were not in fact USSS agents but instead drawn from the department’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). This is especially concerning given that HSI agents were unfamiliar with standard protocols typically used at these types of events, according to the allegations.”

  • After disastrously failing at her one job, Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle resigns.

    Embattled Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday after her refusal to answer basic questions in front of a congressional committee drew bipartisan calls for her resignation.

    Cheatle stepped down ten days after the assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump, one of the most significant law-enforcement failures in American history, and the defining moment of her law-enforcement career.

    Snip.

    At a hearing with the House Oversight Committee Monday, Cheatle brought Republicans and Democrats together in calling for her resignation. She repeatedly failed to answer basic questions about what went wrong at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pa., instead deflecting to the Secret Service’s ongoing investigation and the FBI’s separate investigation.

    Cheatle admitted the assassination attempt was the Secret Service’s most consequential failure in decades, but did not disclose much information, despite being under subpoena.

    She did not have a specific timeline of what law enforcement did after the shooter was first discovered, failed to explain why agents were not deployed onto the rooftop the gunman equipped, declined to comment on specific personnel assignments for the Trump rally, did not elaborate on why the rooftop was outside of the Secret Service’s perimeter, would not commit to firing anyone involved with the Trump rally, and deflected each time Trump’s requests for enhanced security came up.

    She did tell lawmakers that she had not visited the crime scene, nine days after Trump was wounded when a bullet grazed his right ear. After the attack, Cheatle said she called Trump to apologize.

    The Secret Service will have an internal report on what went wrong at the Trump rally in 60 days, a timeline multiple lawmakers told Cheatle is unacceptable given the intensity of the presidential campaign and America’s political climate.

  • Cheatle also helped hide Biden’s cognitive decline.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Which party threatens Democracy? It’s not the Republicans.

    Never in modern presidential history has a political party staged a veritable inside coup to remove their current president from his ongoing candidacy for his party’s nomination and reelection.

    Stranger still, the very elites and grandees, who now are using every imaginable means of deposing Biden as their nominee, are the very public voices that just weeks ago insisted that candidate Biden was “sharp as a tack” and “fit as a fiddle.” And they damned any who thought otherwise!

    They are also the identical operators whose machinations ensured that there would not be an open Democratic primary. They demonized the few on the Left who weakly challenged Biden in the primaries. Yet now they will select a replacement candidate who likely never received a single primary vote.

    Note further: Biden’s impending forced abdication is not because he is non compos mentis.

    Rather, the inside move is due to Biden’s disastrous debate exposure that confirmed his dementia could no longer be disguised by a conspiracy of leftist politicos and media.

    But far more importantly, the impetus for removal is driven by the admission that the cognitively Biden is headed for a climactic November defeat.

    Were Biden now ahead in the polls by five points, these same backroom machinists would be insisting that he was still Pericles.

    Yet now Biden is being un-personed and Trotskyized, as we prepare the new groupthink narrative of his likely surrogate—a soon to be praised eloquent, mellifluous, and articulate Cicero-Harris.

    That Biden will likely remain as president until January 20, 2025, should remind the country the Left is more worried about its own next four-year continuance in power than the fate of the country that now admittedly will be guided in the next six months by a president judged unfit by his own supporters to run for the very office that he will still keep holding.

    Further irony arises when those who, as supposedly guardians of democratic norms, pontificated to the country the last nine years about the Trump-Hitlerian threat to democracy. Yet now they so cavalierly work overtime on how:

    a) to pull off the removal of their candidate from the November ballot on grounds of senility,
    b) but not the removal of the same president from office (their own fate is more precious than our collective fate as a nation),
    c) while trying to select, rather than elect, a replace candidate,
    d) without ever offering any explanation, much less an apology, how a Democrat president from January 20, 2021, was daily declared vibrant, dynamic, and engaged but suddenly one day after June 27, 2024, was remanufactured as not?

  • This is quite a spicy accusation about the Trump assassination attempt.

    In this report on cell phone location (presumably from publicly-sourced advertising data, which should terrify you), the Heritage Foundation claims one device that regularly visited the Crooks home was tracked to DC near an FBI office.

    Also strange was the fact that a device linked to the Crooks home had visited Butler twice in the week or so before the shooting (an hour and twenty minute drive).

    Another device repeatedly visited Plymouth, Massachusetts, although how that connects to the Trump shooting is unknown.

    Going back to last August, one device visited a local gun shop (again, not suspicious for an American to visit a gun shop unless this was the visit where the AR was purchased).

    If this proves to be true link between the FBI and Crooks, the implications here are pretty frightening…

  • While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was addressing congress, the pro-Hamas Useful Idiot Brigade was busy vandalizing national monuments.

    Thousands of demonstrators filled the streets of downtown D.C. carrying signs with messages like “arrest Netanyahu” and “end all U.S. aid to Israel.” Groups waving Palestinian flags, and chanting “Free, free Palestine,” marched toward the U.S. Capitol.

    Outside Union Station, protesters removed American flags and hoisted Palestinian ones in their place. The Columbus Memorial Fountain in the circle outside the station was defaced with the words, “Hamas Is Coming,” written in red paint. Other monuments, like the Freedom Bell and various statues, also suffered damage. FOX 5’s Stephanie Ramirez says law enforcement is preparing for more possible protests Thursday.

    U.S. Capitol Police officers deployed pepper spray after they said some protesters became “violent” and “failed to obey” orders to move back from the police line.

  • Netanyahu won’t bend an inch for terrorist apologists.

    Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had harsh words for anti-Israel protesters in his Wednesday address to a joint session of Congress, slamming the activists as “useful idiots” for Iran and other bad actors even as they congregated outside the Capitol.

    “Defeating our brutal enemies requires both courage and clarity,” he said. “Clarity begins by knowing the difference between good and evil. Yet, incredibly, many anti-Israel protesters choose to stand with evil. They stand with Hamas. They stand with rapists and murderers. They stand with people who come into the kibbutzim — into the home — with the parents and the children, the two babies in the secret attic, and murder the parents, find the secret latch to the attic, find the babies, and they murder them. These protesters stand with them. They should be ashamed of themselves.”

    Netanyahu referenced the claims from many anti-Israel protesters that Hamas terrorism constitutes legitimate resistance while Israel’s retaliatory war is out of bounds.

    “They refuse to make the simple distinction between those who target terrorists and those who target civilians — between the democratic state of Israel and the terrorist thugs of Hamas,” he told the chamber.

    The prime minister stressed in his speech that anti-Israel protesters are not just opposed to the existence of the Jewish state but are anti-American as well.

    “These protesters burn American flags even on the Fourth of July.”

  • Dispatches from The Land of “Duh”: “Study Reveals That Giving Americans $1,000 Per Month Has Negative Consequences.”

    According to the 3,000-participant, three-year study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, giving people $1,000 per month increased leisure time, as recipients spent less time on sleeping, child care, community engagement, caring for others, and self-improvement.

    The study also found that recipients’ income, not including the free money, reduced their incomes significantly, as “for every one dollar received, total household income excluding the transfers fell by at least 21 cents, and total individual income fell by at least 12 cents.”

    “The takeaway from the best study done so far about UBI in the United States is that handing out money isn’t the solution to all our problems,” Daniel Di Martino, a economics researcher and graduate fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told The Center Square. “In fact, sometimes it makes things worse.”

    Or they could have read pages 150-152 of Charles Murray’s Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980 for his summary of the results of the SIME/DIME experiments, which were similarly bleak.

  • After letting camps of drug-addicted transients overrun his state for years, California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom decides that he can finally start clearing out those camps, now that he has the cover of a Supreme Court ruling.

    California governor Gavin Newsom directed state officials to remove homeless encampments across the Golden State on Thursday after the Supreme Court ruled in June that local governments have a right to ban public camping and impose fines for violators.

    Newsom announced the guidance in an executive order, advising cities to crack down on encampments on public property while providing social services and housing alternatives. The order, first reported by the New York Times, represents a sharp departure from the accommodative homelessness policies adopted by progressive state governments over the last decade.

    Note that “providing social services” means that the Homeless Industrial Complex will still be able to rake off the graft…

  • Food for thought:

    (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)

  • CBS said nearly half of Americans can’t afford healthcare, but for some reason didn’t mention ObamaCare.

    Americans spend more money on health care on a per capita basis than people in any other developed nation, yet almost half say they’ve struggled recently to pay for medical treatment or prescription drugs, according to a new study from Gallup and West Health.

    About 45% of those polled by the organizations said they’d recently had to skip treatment or medicine either because of cost or lack of easy access. Of those, about 8% said they also wouldn’t have access to affordable care if they required it today, a group that Gallup and West Health termed ‘cost desperate.’

    Snip.

    The Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, became law back in 2010, and President Obama promised Americans that his legislation would “reduce the costs of health care” and that “families will save on premiums.” He said Americans could even keep their doctors and health plans – over and over again, in fact.

    Instead, here’s what Obamacare did, according to America First Policy Institute:

    • Premiums have increased by 80%.
    • From 2010 to 2023, the average premium for family coverage increased 80%, from just over $13,000 to nearly $24,000.
    • Total healthcare costs for a family of four now exceed $30,000 per year — increasing from $18,000 per year when Obamacare was passed.
    • Deductibles have increased over 50% since Obamacare was implemented in 2013.
  • Speaking of Obama, he officially endorsed Harris, which presumably puts a surprise Michelle Obama nomination at the convention off the table.
  • “US Subsidiary Of Chinese EV Manufacturer BYD Donated Hundreds Of Thousands To Democrats.” Because of course they did.

    Well you can add this to a list of reasons Democrats just can’t seem to stomach Elon Musk any more.

    The U.S. subsidiary of Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BYD and its top executive, Stella Li, have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates and organizations over the past decade.

    A review of federal and state political spending records by the Daily Caller News Foundation reveals these contributions.

    They found that between 2020 and 2023, BYD and Stella Li contributed over $40,000 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

    Additionally, they have invested more than $30,000 into organizations supporting President Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign.

    BYD, the world’s largest EV producer, was recently banned by Congress from selling batteries to the Pentagon due to security concerns, according to Bloomberg News.

    The report says that between 2018 and 2023, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom received about $60,000 from Li and BYD USA. Newsom faced criticism for awarding BYD a $1 billion no-bid contract for protective equipment during the pandemic and later test-drove a BYD vehicle in China in 2023.

    Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa received over $10,000 from Li for his unsuccessful 2018 gubernatorial campaign, while the California Democratic Party got about $19,000 from Li and BYD USA between 2018 and 2020.

    In 2015 and 2016, BYD USA and its executives donated over $11,000 to Michael Antonovich, former Chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, who often supported BYD-friendly initiatives.

    Additionally, BYD USA contributed $25,000 in 2018 to Californians For Safe, Reliable Infrastructure, a group opposing Proposition 6, which aimed to repeal a gas tax.

    In 2017 and 2018, BYD USA and Stella Li donated over $19,000 to Los Angeles City Councilman Kevin de Leon. De Leon, then President pro Tempore of the California Senate, praised BYD at a 2017 ribbon-cutting for its Lancaster manufacturing facility, emphasizing the company’s role in job creation.

  • “Why the Democrats can’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together.”

    There’s an old saying in politics that “personnel is policy” which refers to a lot more than just having someone competent in the job. It’s a reflection that politics is about coalitions – building them and maintaining them. The coalition members get their cut of the government largess, and pay for it with loyalty to the guy at the top. If they’re not loyal, he gives them their pick slip and they lose the largess.

    This was actually Trump’s biggest mistake when he was president, not filling the Federal Government with his coalition. In his defense, he was in the middle of a Republican civil war, where there were multiple factions and multiple coalitions.

    That’s exactly what the Democrats face now, and why they can’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together. Because there are multiple coalitions, whoever emerges on top won’t know if he (she?) can trust these coalitions because they aren’t his coalitions. They might be able to be integrated into his coalition, given time, but time is exactly what the Democrats do not have right now.

    It takes time to forge a governing coalition – just look at any parliamentary system: when the government is stable it is because the governing coalition is solid. Ministers can issue policy with a reasonable expectation that it will be supported and carried out by the coalition members. When the governing coalition is unstable, chaos results. Orders get ignored or slow walked or subverted because the Minister no longer has the loyalty of the coalition members.

    Eventually a leader emerges who can attract key talent from outside coalitions and integrate it into his. This will involve rewards like positions in the bureaucracy or some such – featherbedding is the name of this game. But until this all gets sorted out and the new coalition is filled with people who think they’re better off with the new leader than without, nothing is going anywhere.

    Even worse, there will always be serious back stabbing between different coalitions. Trust is not a virtue most politicians hew to, and quite frankly until they are in a position to remove perks as well as give them, they would be a fool to trust just about anybody.

    Some day a leader will emerge to stitch together the various coalitions that make up the Democratic party. It won’t happen in the next 100 days, sure as God made little green apples.

    The biggest implication of this is that it will be much more difficult for the Democrats to “fortify” the upcoming election via 2020-style shenanigans. Sure, the party bosses will want to, but how much do they trust the other coalitions to support them? Would other coalitions even go so far as to rat them out (with plausible deniability, of course) – leading to various party elders behind bars. That certainly would make it easier for other party elders to construct a winning coalition once they’ve taken out some of the competition.

  • Althouse: “Joe Biden seems bereft of the ordinary tools of human interchange.”
  • “Visibly Angry Kamala Harris Lashes Out At Israel After Netanyahu Meeting.” Of course she did. How dare Israel defend itself when she needs to suck up to all those pro-Hamas voters Democrats insisted on importing to Michigan?
  • Dispatches from the Biden Recession: Commercial real estate bond default rates hit “8.7% in 2024, nearly three times higher than two years ago.”
  • More shenanigans in Democrat-controlled Fulton County, Georgia: Nearly all of Fulton County Housing Authority board resigns over “accusations of money mismanagement, sexual harassment, and other issues.”
  • “Judge Rules for Musk’s SpaceX in Lawsuit Against National Labor Relations Board.” “Members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and administrative law judges (ALJ) employed by the board, are likely unconstitutionally protected from removal by the president, according to U.S. District Judge Alan Albright.”
  • Israel hits the Houthis. Looks like Israel is kicking just about all Iran’s catspaws in the nuts…
  • Ukrainian drones hit Tuapse oil refinery and Morozovsk air base.
  • They also hit Millerovo air base.
  • Some 200 dead in Bangladesh over government attempts to impose a hiring quota system.
  • France’s rail network paralyzed by coordinated arson attacks just as the Olympics begin.
  • Instagram Censors Team USA Rifle Shooter Ahead Of Paris Paralympics.”
  • Pro-Hamas organizer runs Jewish Voice for Peace Twitter account.
  • “Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and local law enforcement officers arrested 50 Houston-area residents Wednesday in relation to a fraudulent bail bond scheme that allowed suspects accused of violent crimes to remain on the streets of the city. The arrests reignited criticism of Harris County’s criminal justice practices and prompted calls for closer scrutiny of bail bond providers.”

    According to an indictment filed with the federal court, beginning in 2021 defendants working for or with AABLE Bonds of Houston created or co-signed fraudulent bond agreements that allowed non-qualifying suspects to obtain pre-trial release.

    “An integral part of the criminal justice system, as old as the system itself, is the bail bond – a device that allows defendants temporary release while awaiting trial by guaranteeing future court appearances,” said U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani in a statement. “Honesty in the underwriting of those bail bonds is essential to ensuring compliance and protecting the community. However, this indictment alleges employees of AABLE Bonds and many others conspired to violate that trust.”

    In addition to the 50 arrested, officials are seeking three fugitives: Tawana Jones, 44, Pamela Yoder, 60, and Amir Khan, 60.

    The U.S. Attorney’s Office stated that co-conspirators allegedly emailed or submitted falsified co-signer financial reports via electronic communications. The office noted that the government and insurance agencies rely on these financial reports to enter into third-party agreements known as surety bonds.

    Most of the 53 co-conspirators are charged in connection to alleged conspiracy to commit wire fraud, while AABLE Bonds CEO Sheba Muharib is charged with affecting persons engaged in the business of insurance.

    The 11 named criminal defendants who obtained release under the allegedly fraudulent enterprise include Curtis Holliday, who has pleaded guilty to killing his wife and stuffing her body in a freezer. Another is the man who shot to death 17-year-old David Castro as the teen rode in a car with his family after an Astros baseball game in 2021.

    David’s father Paul Castro noted on social media that Muharib had bonded out his son’s killer on a discount bond, but he also pointed to the role played by Harris County Justice of the Peace Angela Rodriguez.

    “Remember that Judge Angela Rodriguez voted to renew Muharib’s bond license after Muharib showed herself to be a danger to our community,” wrote Castro.

    Muharib has been the focus of investigations for several years. Her brother Wisam Muharib provided bail to a murder suspect who was later charged in the murder of Harris County Constable Deputy Omar Ursin.

    Andy Kahan, Victim’s Advocate for Crime Stoppers of Houston, emphasized during a press conference Thursday that there were victims impacted by the fraudulent releases of suspects.

    During the press event, resident April Aguirre said that after the man charged in the shooting death of her nine-year-old niece Arlene Alvarez was released on a bond by AABLE Bonds, her family became suspicious of some local bail bond companies.

    Aguirre, Castro, and others worked with elected officials to change Harris County’s rules in 2022 to require that suspects charged with violent offenses pay at least 10 percent themselves to ensure release from jail, but during a press conference with Crime Stoppers of Houston, she said they suspected fraud was continuing.

    “Murderers were still getting out on discounted bonds,” said Aguirre. “So, we started making complaints to the bail bond board and to our federal partners asking for help. We didn’t know what we were dealing with, and we could never have imagined how large this is.”

    “But I can say one thing, we need to stop making money off dead children and we need to stop making money off of homicide victims. This should not be a lucrative business, it’s sick.”

    Mario Garza, President of the Professional Bondsman of Harris County, said that there were bondsmen who followed the rules and helped support the criminal justice system but lamented that what was supposed to be a partnership between bondsmen and elected judges had broken down.

    “Judges used to take that discretion seriously,” said Garza. “What we have is what’s morphed out a soft-on-crime criminal justice system that’s allowed a company like this to do what they’ve done.”

    Kahan expressed concern that bail bond companies elsewhere may be operating similar schemes.

  • Cann’s files for Chapter 11 and will be closing 9 Texas stores, including one in Austin. When I was getting ready to move into my house in 2004, they were one of the stores I thought about buying appliances from, but people told me they hated dealing with Conn’s, so I ended up buying them from Lowes.
  • “Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley who was blocked from the Twitter account of the University of Oregon’s Division of Equity and Inclusion after tweeting ‘All men are created equal.'”
  • Unclear on the concept: “California judge says school was justified in punishing 7-year-old who said all lives matter because ‘she’s too young to have First Amendment rights.'”

  • Southwest Airlines avoided the CrowdStrike outage because it runs Windows 3.1 and Windows 95.

  • Intel says it’s software, not hardware that is causing its latest generation of chips to fail. “Our analysis of returned processors confirms that the elevated operating voltage is stemming from a microcode algorithm resulting in incorrect voltage requests to the processor.” OK, microcode is embedded in the heart of the chip, but can be updated, which means that it doesn’t require expensive mask fixes.
  • The CDC is trying to keep people from importing dogs into the U.S.. This is going to impair the efforts of many dog rescue groups. A bipartisan group of senators is opposing. “The unprecedented requirements included in the final rule, such as the six-month minimum age requirement for dogs to enter the United States and the need for a microchip before a rabies vaccination and additional documentation and certification would create significant barriers to low-risk entry from Canada into the United States and have a disproportionate effect on border communities in our states.”
  • Everyone who “purchased” a movie from Redbox is now screwed because now that Redbox is bankrupt it turns out they’ve got nada.
  • If I’m reading between the lines here, Social Justice Warriors seized control of the Romance Writers of America, blew it up when they got caught, and left the organization $3 million in debt.
  • “Judge Refuses To Dismiss Trump Defamation Lawsuit Against ABC, Stephanopoulos. On Wednesday, a federal judge rejected a motion by ABC News and George Stephanopoulos to dismiss the defamation lawsuit filed against them by former President Donald Trump.”
  • Gina Carano’s lawsuit against Disney moves forward.
  • Hello Kitty is not a cat and doesn’t live in Japan.

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • It begins.
  • If you have a spare $40,000 lying around, you can bid on the Necronomicon from Evil Dead II.
  • “Secret Service Director Resigns In Disgrace For Failing To Assassinate Trump.”
  • America Just Kinda Curious If President Alive.”
  • “Aides Struggling To Figure Out How To Break The News To Biden That He Dropped Out.”
  • Party Cheating In Primary Election Promises They Will Definitely Not Cheat In General Election.”
  • “Entire Microsoft Network Goes Down After Greg Removes USB Device Without Clicking ‘Eject’ First.
  • No one expects…spinning Ninja dog!

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • I’m still between jobs, so hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    Mayorkas-Linked NGO Tells Illegals To Vote For Biden

    Wednesday, April 17th, 2024

    Conservative have been asserting for years that Biden’s illegal alien invasion is to create new Democratic voters. Now there’s more proof.

    The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project posted an image on X of what they say is a flyer from a non-governmental organization operating in Mexico encouraging migrants to vote for President Biden once they arrive in the United States.

    “Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States. We need another four years of his term to stay open,” part of the flyer read.

    The Oversight Project said the flyer was initially discovered by a Muckraker journalist while touring the site of Resource Center Matamoras in Mexico.

    “They [flyers] also appear to be handed out when illegal aliens use the RCM for assistance in coming to the USA,” the group said.

    RCM founder Gaby Zavala told one of Muckraker’s journalists that she is trying to flood the US with as many illegal aliens as possible before former President Trump is reelected.

    “RCM bills itself as an operation which houses functions for Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), which helps illegal aliens enter the United States,” Oversight Project said, adding that disgraced Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “is a former board member of HIAS, which received numerous grants from Soros’ Open Society Foundation over the years.”

    Soros! What are the odds?

    Given the lousy economy of the Biden Recession, Democrats know they can’t win this election without cheating, so they’re going all out on that front, and amnestying illegal aliens is a key part of their strategy, no matter how many black and Hispanic American voters it alienates in the process.

    LinkSwarm for February 16, 2024

    Friday, February 16th, 2024

    More Biden corruption evidence, a would-be mass shooter turns out to be a pro-Palestinian Bernie Sis, a parent beats the snot out of a would-be child kidnapper, a top sniper dies, Disney gets sued, and Venus is feeling Zoove. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Another “Try to contain your shock” headline: “Joe Biden’s Classified Docs Provide More Evidence Hunter’s Pay-To-Play Was A Family Affair.”

    The special counsel report on Joe Biden’s unauthorized removal and disclosure of classified documents exposed much more than our president’s mental deficits and the breadth of his irresponsible handling of top-secret and classified information. The report revealed a close nexus between Hunter Biden’s influence peddling and his father’s responsibilities and access to intel during the elder’s term as vice president.

    On Thursday, Special Counsel Robert Hur released the results of his investigation into the president stemming from the discovery of top-secret and classified documents at Biden’s D.C.-based Penn Biden Center, his private Delaware home, and the University of Delaware. While the specific details in the recovered documents remain unknown, the nearly 400-page report provided an extensive enough summary of the materials to confirm an overlap in the timing and topics of Joe Biden’s vice presidency and Hunter Biden’s “business” enterprises.
    Ukraine Overlap

    Appendix A of the report provided a table summary of the documents recovered. Many of the top-secret and classified documents concerned Ukraine during the time frame when Hunter Biden acted as an intermediary between Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, and the vice president. Recall that Hunter’s business partner, Devon Archer, told the House Oversight Committee that in early March 2014, he met Zlochevsky while in Moscow. And soon after, he and Hunter Biden joined Burisma’s board, receiving $83,000 per month.

    The following month, Hunter Biden sent Archer an email dated April 13, 2014 — one week before Joe Biden would travel to Ukraine and meet then-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Referring to “my guys upcoming travels,” Hunter then elaborated on “22 points about Ukraine’s political situation, with detailed information about the upcoming election and predicting an escalation of Russia’s ‘destabilization campaign, which could lead to a full-scale takeover of the eastern region, most critically Donetsk,’” according to the New York Post.

    Among the material recovered from President Biden’s unauthorized storage locales were several top-secret and otherwise classified or confidential documents discussing Ukraine. One undated document discussed issues related to Russian aggression toward Ukraine. Another, dated Sept. 17, 2014, consisted of a “Memorandum for the Vice President from staff members, with subject ‘U.S. Energy Assistance to Ukraine.’” Also dated Sept. 17, 2014, was an “event memo” from a vice-presidential national security staffer, titled, “Lunch with Ukrainian President Poroshenko,” which was scheduled for the following day.

    The overlap between Joe Biden’s Ukraine-related work and Hunter Biden’s Burisma profiteering became more pronounced in 2015. On Dec. 2, 2015, the lobbying firm Blue Star Group, which Hunter Biden had arranged to work with Burisma, wrote to Burisma that it had “participated in a conference call today with senior Obama Administration officials ahead of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s trip to Ukraine next week.” The memorandum provided a summary of the conference call, telling Burisma that “Michael Carpenter, Vice President Biden’s Special Advisor for Europe and Russia, and Dr. Colin Kahl, the Vice President’s National Security Advisor, presented the agenda for the trip and answered questions about current U.S. policy toward Ukraine.”

    Two days after receiving this memorandum, Burisma executives Zlochevsky and Vadym Pozharskyi, on Dec. 4, 2015, pushed Hunter Biden to call his father. The Burisma executives, according to Archer, expressed concern over the pressure they were under from Ukrainian investigators.

    And there’s more, though very little that will be surprising to BattleSwarm readers. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “Joe Biden Met with Chinese Energy Firm Chairman around the Time of $3M Payment to Hunter’s Business Partner.” Of course he did.

    Joe Biden met with the chairman of the Chinese energy firm CEFC shortly after Hunter Biden’s business associate Rob Walker received a $3 million payment from the firm as part of a joint venture the pair were then trying to develop, according to a newly released transcript of Walker’s closed-door congressional testimony.

    Walker testified before the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees on January 26 about his role in Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings with Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC.

    Walker received roughly $3 million from CEFC in March 2017 through its State Energy HK account, bank records show. He recalled a meeting between Joe Biden and CEFC officials in spring 2017, around the time of the State Energy HK payment.

    “Did Joe Biden ever attend any location or meeting or place where CEFC officials were also there?” a staffer asked Walker, according to a transcript of the interview released Tuesday morning.

    “Yes,” Walker replied. He recalled the meeting took place in Washington, D.C., and Joe Biden, who had just left office as vice president, stopped by for lunch.

    “I don’t know the exact — it was 20- probably -17 at some point, but I don’t know exactly when,” Walker said.

    The meeting took place at a Four Seasons hotel in a private room. CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming and other associates were present at the meeting.

    “I don’t know if Zang was there, but I believe that Ye was there. I’m certain of it,” Walker testified.

    He did not know who the other CEFC associates were at the meeting. Walker firmly recalled Jianming and his translator, Hunter Biden, business associate James Gilliar, and Joe Biden attending the meeting.

  • Inflation higher than expected. Unexpectedly!
  • Well, what do you know? “Mail-In Ballot Fraud Study Finds Trump ‘Almost Certainly’ Won In 2020.”

    A new study examining the likely impact that fraudulent mail-in ballots had in the 2020 election concludes that the outcome would “almost certainly” have been different without the massive expansion of voting by mail.

    The Heartland Institute study tried to gauge the probable impact that fraudulent mail-in ballots cast for both then-candidate Joe Biden and his opponent, President Donald Trump, would have had on the overall 2020 election results.

    The study was based on data obtained from a Heartland/Rasmussen survey in December that revealed that roughly one in five mail-in voters admitted to potentially fraudulent actions in the presidential election.

    After the researchers carried out additional analyses of the data, they concluded that mail-in ballot fraud “significantly” impacted the 2020 presidential election.

    They also found that, absent the huge expansion of mail-in ballots during the pandemic, which was often done without legislative approval, President Trump would most likely have won.

    “Had the 2020 election been conducted like every national election has been over the past two centuries, wherein the vast majority of voters cast ballots in-person rather than by mail, Donald Trump would have almost certainly been re-elected,” the report’s authors wrote.

    Not news to those of us who watched returns into the wee hours, only to wake up to The Steal the next morning.

  • House Republicans finally impeach DHS Secretary Mayorkas for intentionally failing to secure the border.
  • Is there any doubt that Fani Willis lied her ass off?
  • Ukraine bags another Russian ship. “Ukrainian Magura V5 Marine Drones have sunk the Ropucha-class landing ship Cesar Kunikov near Alupka in Crimea in the Black Sea.”
  • Russia also had 59 planes and helicopters stolen.
  • Putin says he prefers Biden to Trump in the White House because he’s more predictable. I’m sure he does. Notice that both his Ukraine invasions occurred during Democratic presidential administrations.
  • Austin’s commie congressman Greg Casar wants to federalize Texas power grid.
  • Pervert tries to kidnap kid in a CVS, instantly receives beatdown from parent.
  • Another week, another teacher busted for child porn, this one in Klein ISD.
  • The woman who tried to shoot up Lakewood Church in Houston was a Bernie Sis who had “Free Palestine” written on her AR-15. “[Genesse I.] Moreno had a violent, extensive criminal history stretching back to 2005, according to court records reviewed by Townhall. She was previously arrested for assaulting a public servant, assault causing bodily injury, forgery, theft for stealing cosmetics from a store, evading police, and unlawfully carrying a weapon, among a slew of charges on Moreno’s decades-old rap sheet.”
  • “Soros network gave paid fellowship to head of anti-Israel center propping up terrorism.” Try to contain your shock.
  • Man swatted 47 times.

    Alan Winston Filion, 17, is suspected of targeting hundreds of high schools, mosques, historically Black churches, US senators and even the US Supreme Court with swatting attacks that placed thousands of people in the crosshairs of heavily armed police response teams.

    Prosecutors say the 6ft 3in teenager advertised his services under the pseudonym Torswats on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, charging as little as $40 to get someone’s gas shut off, $50 for a “major police response”, and $75 for a “bomb threat/mass shooting threat”.

    Mr Filion would then post chilling audio of the 911 calls on Telegram as a proof of purchase, according to court documents.

    Among the hundreds of “swats” that Torswats allegedly claimed credit for were multiple hoax callouts at the home of Patrick S. Tomlinson, a Milwaukee-based science fiction author who says he has been swatted dozens of times in the past four years as part of a targeted harassment campaign by a group of “sociopathic” stalkers.

    You’d think after five or six times, the guy would put up a sign in his front yard alerting police to the problem. (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Ohio cops go full T.J. Hooker.
  • “Court Orders Netherlands To Halt F-35 Parts For Israel As EU Says “Too Many People” Are Dying.” Excuse me? Does the Netherlands let their court interfere in foreign policy decisions and defense contracts based on events beyond their borders?
  • Army cancels FARA helicopter program, makes other cuts in major aviation shakeup.”

    The US Army is cancelling its next generation Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) program, service officials announced today, taking a potential multi-billion-dollar contract off the table and throwing the service’s long-term aviation plans into doubt.

    In addition, the Army plans to end production on the UH-60 V Black Hawk in fiscal 2025, due to “significant cost growth,” keep General Electric’s Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP) in the development phase instead of moving it into production, and phase the Shadow and Raven unmanned aerial systems out of the fleet, the service added.

    All told, it reflects a massive shift in the Army’s aviation strategy and upends years of planning. There is also an ironic sense of history repeating: the decision to end FARA comes two decades to the month after the Army ended its plans to procure the RAH-66 Comanche and nearly 16 years after it terminated work on the ARH-70A Arapaho, both aircraft designed to replace the Kiowa — the same helicopter FARA was supposed to, finally, replace.

    The reason for ending FARA, Army leaders told a small group of reporters ahead of the announcement, is a reflection of what war looks like in the modern era.

    “We absolutely are paying attention [to world events] and adjusting, because we could go to war tonight, this weekend,” head of Army Futures Command Gen. James Rainey told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday.

    “We are learning from the battlefield — especially Ukraine — that aerial reconnaissance has fundamentally changed,” Army Chief Gen. Randy George said in a press release. “Sensors and weapons mounted on a variety of unmanned systems and in space are more ubiquitous, further reaching and more inexpensive than ever before.”

    Many commenters here feared the Pentagon wasn’t taking the drone threat seriously. Maybe they are…

  • The Marine Corps’ all-time deadliest sniper, Chuck Mawhinney, has died at age 75.

    From 1968 to 1969, Mawhinney — still only a teenager — was credited with 103 confirmed kills.

    An additional 216 kills were listed as “probable” since the enemies’ bodies were risky to verify in the active war zone.

    Mawhinney had confirmed kills over 1,000 yards, with the average kill shot for snipers during the Vietnam War taken at a distance of 300 to 800 yards.

    He received a Bronze Star with Combat Valor, Navy Achievement Medal, Navy Commendation Medal with Combat Valor, and two Purple Hearts.

    Having more confirmed kills than Carlos Hathcock is pretty impressive. (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • “Rockwall County Sues to Undo $833 Million MUD Approved by Lone Voter With Criminal Record.” Perhaps the Texas legislature should create a MUD election review board, as these shenanigans have been going on for a while.
  • Disney sued over illegal, racist casting quotas.
  • The CW Network (which evidently still exists) just launched a 12 channel free streaming platform. Including, evidently, a Mystery Science Theater 3000 channel.
  • Someone misread an astronomy chart. Result? Venus now has a mini-moon named Zoove. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “Judge Orders Trump To Pay Whatever Amount It Takes To Bankrupt Campaign.”
  • Donkey + screaming rubber chicken = happy donkey.
  • Hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    LinkSwarm for October 6, 2023

    Friday, October 6th, 2023

    The job search continues, Buddy is healing nicely from his surgery, and we’ve finally gotten some decent cool weather. This week: More Biden border follies, social justice types getting stabbed by reality, and a double dose of doggy goodness. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • We touched on this earlier this week, but the Biden Administration has done a 180 and will allow Texas to construct a border wall.

    Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas waived 26 federal laws Wednesday, allowing border-wall construction in south Texas to resume under the Biden administration for the first time since former president Donald Trump left office.

    “There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” Mayorkas wrote in the notice.

    The new construction project will add an additional 20 miles to the border wall in Starr County, Texas, which has been reported as an area experiencing “high illegal entry.” Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector, in which the county is located, has seen over 245,000 illegal migrants enter the U.S. through that area during fiscal year 2023.

    Among the 26 laws that the DHS waived included the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and Endangered Species Act, all notable environmental laws that limited further construction of the wall. The project will be funded by a congressional appropriations package from fiscal year 2019, the notice stated.

    The announcement marks a noticeable flip from President Joe Biden’s original stance on the matter. “Building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution,” Biden said in January 2021, ending the national emergency over the border crisis when he first became president.

    While running against Trump in 2020, Biden emphatically stated, “There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration.”

    Of course the same overflowing conditions have been plaguing the border throughout the entirety of Biden’s term, but Democratic mayors we’re screaming for relief from their own “sanctuary city” policies until recently. Chalk up another win for Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s illegal alien busing policies.

  • Or maybe not? “Mayorkas Furiously Backpedals After Claiming ‘Acute & Immediate Need’ For Border Wall.”
  • The Biden border invasion, by the numbers.

    3 million people, more or less, were “encountered” by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which includes the Border Patrol, illegally entering the U.S. in fiscal year 2023 (which ended Sept. 30). On Mayorkas’ watch, we have set the record for the highest number of yearly illegal alien encounters in U.S. history. If those caught in 2023 formed a new city, it would the third biggest in America, behind only New York and Los Angeles.

    304,000 illegal aliens were encountered this August alone (the last month for which we have official government numbers). That’s the population of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

    75% of August’s inadmissible aliens were freely let in by President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security. Mayorkas has told the press and Congress many times that the border is not open. But if a door admits three of every four people who attempt to go through it, can we consider it closed? A philosophical question, perhaps. Maybe we can settle on “mostly open,” like the “mostly dead” Wesley in the movie “The Princess Bride” or the “mostly peaceful” riots of 2020.

    Read the whole thing. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Satanic Pedophile Extortion Cult Uncovered By FBI After NY Arrest.”

    A November 2021 arrest in Queens, New York led to the discovery of a satanic cult of pedophile extortionists known as 764, which has been linked to significant criminal activity around the globe. The organization, which goes byseveral aliases, was uncovered by the FBI while investigating alarming posts on social media made by 23-year-old Angel Almeida of Astoria, Queens, The Guardian reports.

    Almeida was flagged to the FBI by an anonymous tipster who was concerned over his social media accounts, which contained images of violence against children and animals. In one post, he expressed support for Charleston mass-murderer Dylann Roof. Another post showed him talking around with a shotgun while wearing a “a skull mask and crossed bandoliers of rifle ammunition across his chest with a flag in the background featuring an Order of Nine Angles symbol.”

    Almeida served 18 months in prison for third degree burglary in 2018, and was arrested for being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was detained in Brooklyn’s metropolitan detention center. In February 2023, federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment on child pornography and exploitation charges related to his involvement in the cult, as well as hundreds of thousands of digital files recovered from his residence.

    In new charges, Almeida is accused of coercing a teenage girl into having sex with an older man, and convincing another girl to cut herself on camera and send it to him.

    In one post, Almeida posts “For the 2k pedophile haters,” showing his finger over the trigger guard of a Taurus handgun.

  • FBI creates “MAGA Extremist” category to target Trump supporters.
  • I haven’t kept up with internal issues in Commie dystopian Venezuela, but evidently they’re having trouble with criminal gangs.

    Early in the morning of September 20, 11,000 members of the Venezuelan security forces deployed around the notorious prison of Tocorón in Aragua state, the home base of the country’s most powerful criminal structure, the Tren de Aragua.

    “The Bolivarian Government informs that the Cacique Guaicaipuro Liberation Operation has been underway since the early hours of the morning. Its objective is to dismantle and put an end to organized crime gangs and other criminal networks operating from the Tocorón Penitentiary, to the detriment of the tranquility of the Venezuelan people,” read an official communiqué.

    Residents living near the prison were awakened by the sounds of armored vehicles speeding towards the prison, in what is one of the largest deployments ever of the Venezuelan security forces.

    The simple fact that the operation, named after a legendary native chief of the 16th Century, needed 11,000 soldiers and officials speaks to the power of the Tren de Aragua and its leader Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias “Niño Guerrero,” in Tocorón.

    The prison, which is in the central state of Aragua and home to some 7,000 inmates, is one of the biggest in the country.

    This operation, the first against the Tren de Aragua, and the largest of its kind to date, is a clear show of force by the Venezuelan government.

    Tocorón has long been home to the Tren de Aragua and Niño Guerrero, who ran the prison like his personal fiefdom with the blessing of the prison ministry (Ministerio de Poder Popular para el Servicio Penitenciario). Niño Guerrero, imprisoned for murder, was the “pran” of Tocorón prison, essentially the criminal warden in a system set up by the first Prison Minister Iris Varela, now Vice President of the National Assembly. The pran system saw inmates take control of several prisons across the country in exchange for maintaining order, reducing homicides, and ending jail uprisings.

    This operation might signal the end of the pran system, something suggested in the official communique of the operation, which stated that the operation was to “restore and dignify the penitentiary system.”

    The question now is whether this operation will disrupt the leadership and running of the Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal structure with thousands of affiliates with a presence not only across Venezuela, but in Colombia, Peru, and Chile. The Tren de Aragua has projected power abroad, riding off the backs of the more than seven million Venezuelans who have fled the economic collapse and authoritarian regime presided over by President Nicolás Maduro.

    What has prompted Maduro to act after years of tolerating the criminal fiefdom of Tocorón? The Venezuelan president has long tolerated criminal structures operating in the country, both Venezuelan and Colombian, because he needed access to criminal rents to maintain the loyalty of key generals and political figures, as the state teetered on the brink of bankruptcy.

    However, since 2020, the Venezuelan security forces have moved against several defiant criminal groups, like the megabanda of Carlos Luis Revete, alias “El Koki,” and dissident elements of the rebel group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC), which set up drug trafficking infrastructure in the Venezuelan department of Apure. The operation against the ex-FARC saw the deployment of significant military forces, which ended up humiliated by the Colombian rebels, who captured eight soldiers and forced a military withdrawal. This might explain the apparent overkill with the Tocorón operation: Maduro clearly did not want any further defeats or humiliations.

  • “Philadelphia Journalist Who Mocked Concern Over Violent Crime In Democrat Cities Shot Dead In Home.”

    A left-wing Philadelphia journalist who mocked concern over rising crime in Democrat-run cities was shot to death in his home.

    Josh Kruger was shot seven times after someone entered his home, shot him at the base of his stairs, and then fled. Kruger ran outside seeking help from his neighbors and collapsed, where police found them after responding to call just before 1:30 a.m. on the 2300 block of Watkins Street.

    Kruger, 39, was rushed to the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he died just before 2:15 a.m.

    No arrests have been made, and there was no sign of forced entry into the home, according to Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore.

    “Either the door was open, or the offender knew how to get the door open,” he said. “We just don’t know yet.”

    Detectives believe his death may have been the result of a domestic dispute or may have been drug-related, according to three law enforcement sources with knowledge of the case. The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said police investigators recovered troubling text messages between Kruger and a former partner. Investigators also recovered methamphetamine inside Kruger’s bedroom, the sources said. -Inquirer

    Snip.

    Kruger frequently mocked conservatives on X, ironically calling Dilbert creator Scott Adams “Nostradamus” on Saturday for predicting that people would be dead “within the year” of Biden’s election.

    Kruger also mocked conservatives concerned over the city’s shootings, which he said were “dropping to levels not seen in years.”

  • Speaking of social justice supporters being shot: “Social justice activist fatally stabbed in front of girlfriend in Brooklyn. The search is on for the man who fatally stabbed Ryan Carson, who dedicated his life to fighting for social justice.” And that’s how social justice says “thank you.” (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Shellyne Rodriguez, the crazy social justice warrior Manhattan College professor who threatened a reporter with a machete is getting off with no jail time, because of course she is. (Previously.) (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar was carjacked at gunpoint in Washington D.C. on Monday night.
  • Paxton Endorses Primary Opponents of Incumbent Republicans Who Backed Impeachment. Paxton endorsed David Covey in his race against Speaker Dade Phelan and Wes Virdell in his race against Rep. Andrew Murr.”
  • Ruble hits penny parity again.
  • Starbucks is closing seven San Francisco stores. Gee, I wonder why. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ)
  • Turkish drone gets too close to U.S. troops in Syria. Turkish drone goes boom.
  • Dwight has a pretty nice post on the fallen at the Battle of Mogadishu, AKA Black Hawk Down.
  • It’s a ski jump competition, except for different types of tires. Oh, Japan, don’t ever change.
  • “Senator Feinstein Death Not Expected To Affect Re-election Campaign.”
  • Yo, dawg, we heard you like dogs, so we put your dog on your dog so your dog’s dog can dog while you dog, dawg.
  • The cutest rooster:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Here’s the tip jar, if you’re so inclined:





    Border Crisis Update For September 29, 2021

    Wednesday, September 29th, 2021

    More news bubbling up on the Biden Border Crisis, so let’s dig in:

  • Remember how stories said the Biden Administration was deporting those Haitian illegal aliens in Del Rio? Yeah, not so much:

    Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted on Sunday that more than 12,000 Haitian migrants who had been camped out under a bridge near Del Rio, Texas, have been released into the US and more may follow them.

    He told “Fox News Sunday” that there are about 12,400 Haitians in the process of having asylum claims heard by an immigration judge, while around 5,000 are being processed by the Department of Homeland Security.

    About 3,000 are being detained.

    “Approximately, I think it’s about 10,000 or so, 12,000,” Mayorkas responded when asked how many migrants have already been released.

    He added that the number could go beyond 5,000 as other cases are processed.

    Both the Biden Administration and his directory of “Homeland Security” seem to view illegal aliens as a precious resource that they must avoid deporting at all costs.

  • Speaking of Del Rio, Val Verde county has announced they’ve had enough and will join with other border counties to sue the federal government over their failure to enforce immigration laws:

  • The Biden Administration has ordered Border Patrol Agents not to use horses over the ginned-up whipping hoax.
  • Speaking of which, here’s a video on horses with the Border Patrol that Twitter kept censoring:

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Biden approval rating is 18 points underwater with Texas Hispanics:

  • Texas Governor Greg Abbott says he’s sending more National Guard resources to the border:

  • Think the situation is bad now? Things are about to get a lot worse when the Biden Administration fires every Border Patrol agent who refuses the Flu Manchu vaccine.