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!
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.”
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.
We're only starting to dig into the cover-up of Biden's cognitive decline. Everyone knows Kamala Harris is going to be under the microscope.
But key to the cover-up was Kim Cheatle. Look at her record (detailed below), and it's clear she was hired to help conceal from the… pic.twitter.com/Q9uHlhgm0E
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?
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.
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.”
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:
Democrats are rigging their own election. Does anyone still believe they didn’t rig the 2020 election? https://t.co/G3svXIpKmp
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.
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.
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.”
“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…
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.'”
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.”
The assassination attempt against President Donald Trump was less than a week ago and a ton of news has come down the pike since. Biden replacement rumors fly hot and heavy, Trump secures renomination, Windows machines across the globe are down thanks to CrowdStrike, a League of Assholes rises in Africa, Chuy’s gets sold, and we say goodbye to a comedy legend. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The 81-year-old president repeatedly lost his train of thought on the call and was dismissive of the Democrats’ concerns about his 2024 re-election campaign following his train-wreck debate performance last month, Puck reported Wednesday, citing multiple sources…
‘The call was even worse than the debate. He was rambling; he’d start an answer then lose his train of thought, then would just say “whatever.” He really couldn’t complete an answer. I lost a ton of respect for him,’ one person on the call said.
‘The president was rambling, dismissive of concerns, unable or unprepared to present a campaign strategy,’ added a second source, who is a member of Congress.
Joe Biden’s escalating dementia and the long media-political conspiracy to hide his senility from the public are the least of the Democrats’ current problems.
Biden’s track record as president may be more concerning than his cognitive decline. He has literally destroyed the U.S. border, deliberately allowing the entry of more than 10 million illegal aliens. His callous handlers’ agenda was to import abjectly poor constituencies in need of vast government services without regard for the current struggles of a battered American middle class and poor.
The widespread poverty of a vast new cohort of illegal immigrants could serve as indictments of a “racist,” “unequal,” and “unfair” America—as if the residents of East Palestine, Ohio or inner-city Chicago had anything to do with the centuries-long corruption and oppression of Mexico and Latin America that daily drives thousands of their own poorest citizens northwards to a society founded on very different ideas than those of their homelands.
Note that the left, neither in Mexico nor in America, never asks why millions of these impoverished people prefer to break into a supposedly racist America. Much less do they even distinguish those principles and values that once made America prosperous, free, and secure from their antitheses that have sadly made much of Latin America mostly poor, without freedom, and insecure.
Biden inherited near-zero real interest rates and inflation at 1.4 percent. Almost immediately, in nihilistic fashion, Biden did to a sound economy what he had done to a secure border. So, he recklessly printed money at a time of spiraling, quarantine-ending demand and supply chain disruption. Middle-class wages never caught up with Biden’s inflation, as prices for key staples are nearly 30 percent higher than when he took office.
The cost of servicing the ballooning national debt at high interest is now nearly $1 trillion per year. The world abroad is aflame, lit by Biden’s inexplicable withdrawal from Kabul, his mixed signals to Vladimir Putin on the eve of his invasion of Ukraine, his deliberate alienation of Israel, his appeasement of Iran and China, and his cuts in the defense budget, coupled with his woke war on mythical “racists” in the military.
Energy prices soared, even as Biden’s green agenda proved unworkable and prompted draining the strategic petroleum reserve and begging foreign oil despots before key elections. The “unifier” Biden by design needlessly alienated nearly half the country, and in his debate, he reiterated why Trump supporters do not deserve his concern. And more ominously and recently, Biden grossly told hundreds of his donors that “it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye”—just days before the attempt on Trump’s life.
The greatest absurdity of the Biden White House is the gaslighting talk of Biden’s “achievements.” Biden’s actions over the last four years are not offsets for his senility that warrant his continuance in office, but again, sadly, they serve as force multipliers, furthering claims of his dementia and for his removal.
I’ve been saying for a month or so now that I’m really impressed with the way that Trump has been conducting himself in this campaign. Yes, I was a fan before, but he’s really been hitting all the right notes this year, especially given the pressure of the the Democrats’ un-American lawfare assault on him.
The Donald J. Trump who took the stage in Milwaukee last night was a reflective, determined elder statesman and it was glorious. This is what my ultra mega super MAGA friend Kevin wrote about it:
Trump took to the stage with a bandage covering the wound left by the would-be assassin’s bullet. He kicked off his mesmerizing speech by thanking the GOP for the nomination and promising to stand for all Americans, stating: “We rise together or we fall apart.”
Trump’s speech was unlike any of his others. It lacked the bombast and sarcasm of earlier speeches, which I find entertaining. Instead, it focused on unity.
Trump’s sotto voce, conversational tone was perfect, and a counter to the angry maniac that the commies in the mainstream media like to portray him as. He was the adult in the room at a time when the Republic desperately needs that. His recounting of the assassination attempt provided yet another deeply emotional moment at this convention.
I’ve only briefly glimpsed some of the MSM hacks’ response to the speech, and it’s mostly been awful and not reality-based. They’re desperate and losing and their opinion doesn’t matter.
The man who accepted the Republican nomination last night is the man who this country needs to right the wrongs of the Biden administration’s wrecking ball reign of error.
Borepatch sees a preference cascade for Trump that may have the effect of minimizing cheating. “It’s one thing to stuff ballot boxes when you think that everyone on your side is on board and your guy is going to win – and any potential investigation will be done in the most slipshod manner. It’s quite a different thing when you wonder just how many of the guys on your side are actually going to go through with this, and if the other guy wins will you be facing 20 years in Club Fed.”
New York jury convicted Senator Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) on 16 felony charges on Tuesday, including obstruction of justice, acting as a foreign agent, bribery, extortion and honest services wire fraud.
Over the course of a two-month trial, prosecutors accused the three-term senator and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, of accepting bribes — including hundreds of thousands of dollars, gold bars, and a Mercedes-Benz convertible — from three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for help with a number of legal issues. Menendez was also accused of accepting bribes to work as a foreign agent on behalf of Qatar and Egypt while he served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Shortly after the verdict was handed down on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) urged Menendez to “do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country, and resign.”
You know it’s been a pretty news-packed week when the conviction of a Democratic senator on bribery charges is this far down the LinkSwarm…
Kamala Harris has the same approval rating among Black women as President Biden, according to a new poll, which must come as a blow to the Vice President as Biden’s electoral fortunes falter.
And it comes as a surprise, as Black women have been pivotal for securing Harris her spot on the ticket.
The poll, conducted by Split Ticket between July 12 and 14, asked Black voters in battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin about their opinions on Harris, as well as Biden and Donald Trump.
According to the poll, if the 2024 election was a toss up between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, 76 percent of Black voters would vote for Biden, compared to 17 percent for Trump. The gender split was 72 per cent of male voters and 79 percent of females backing Biden.
In contrast, 12 percent of Black women and 23 percent of Black men said they would vote Trump.
But if the election were a toss up between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the results were virtually the same, with an equal proportion of voters opting for Harris over Trump, and a split of 79 percent of Black women and 73 percent of Black men preferring the Vice President.
You know who else doesn’t want to vote for Democrats any more? Young male voters.
A years-long collapse in support for Democrats among young Gen Z “Zoomer” males accelerated to a dizzying speed during the Presidentish Joe Biden administration — and that’s before Donald Trump’s display of sheer damn manliness in the moments after Saturday’s assassination attempt.
The collapse began in 2016, the same year Donald Trump was elected to his first term in office — and, looking back, it seems almost inevitable. That was the year the American Left went from merely unhinged to flying off the rails like Doc Brown and Clara Clayton at the very end of “Back to the Future Part III.”
Daniel Cox — aka The Liberal Patriot — wrote Monday, “A mounting number of polls suggest that young voters are shedding their Democratic attachments” and that “the way young people relate to the two major political parties is undergoing a momentous change.”
A recent Pew study found that “young Americans are evenly divided between the parties: 47 percent lean towards or identify as Republicans and 46 percent identify as Democrats.”
Look at these other numbers from Gallup. They’re unsustainable for the so-called Party of Youth.
Democratic support among young men (18-29) collapsing
Federal appeals court blocks all of Biden student debt relief plan. “The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request, by seven Republican-led states to put on hold parts of the U.S. Department of Education’s debt relief plan that had not already been blocked by a lower-court judge.” Good. I don’t see how the Constitution allows the President to simply declare billions of dollars of subsidies to favored classes of individuals absent congressional approval. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Remember CrowdStrike, the company that helped wipe Hillary’s equipment? An update to their security product Falcon is blue-screening Windows machines across the world today. “The U.S. Emergency Alerts System said 911 lines in multiple states were down.”
Biden can’t remember the name of his own Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and calls him “The Black Man.” We all know this would be career-ending for a Republican, yet it’s just another expected “senior moment” for Slow Joe…
Here’s some news I missed a while back: China expelled a bunch of defense chiefs from the Communist Party in a “corruption crackdown.” “The moves against Li Shangfu and his predecessor, Wei Fenghe, follow a series of shake-ups at the top of the world’s largest military — Li was ousted from the role last year after disappearing without explanation.” Actual corruption, or simply suspicion of disloyalty to Xi?
Barry Diller has lost $9 million propping up The Daily Beast. I know a lot of political publications lose money, but I’m pretty sure you could prop up a leftist website for less than 1/10th that…
Welcome to Africa’s League of Assholes. “The military regimes of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso marked their divorce from the rest of West Africa Saturday as they signed a treaty setting up a confederation between them….All three have expelled anti-jihadi French troops and turned instead toward what they call their ‘sincere partners’ — Russia, Turkey and Iran.” More.
“Newly selected Austin City Manager T.C. Broadnax has presented his proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2025 that totals $5.9 billion — a record for the city.” You can look at the entire 1,162 page document here. Of course there’s plenty of line items for “equity” and “homeless.” That’s where some of the graft is…
Terry and her husband Max Boot, a Washington Post national security columnist, put up their tony Upper West Side apartment as collateral for her $500,000 personal recognizance bond as a condition of her release before trial.
The six-room, $1.8 million turn-of-the-century home features lavish wood paneling, built-in bookcase, stained glass windows and airy 10-foot ceilings, according to its StreetEasy listing.
The taste for such luxury is what allegedly drove Terry — a native of Seoul who formerly worked as a CIA analyst before becoming a prominent policy expert linked to several think tanks — to disclose US secret to South Korean spies, Manhattan federal prosecutors said.
Terry traded her access to information from top US officials, including US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, in exchange for luxury goodies such as a $3,450 Louis Vuitton handbag and a $2,845 Dolce & Gabbana coat, prosecutors said.
“Democratic Socialists Of America Withdraws Endorsement Of AOC.” Because she’s just not anti-Israel enough. Which has jack all to do with democracy or socialism. This is just another sign that victimhood identity politics has eaten the far left whole.
The US Army is seeking a wheeled, self-propelled 155mm cannon-based air defense system capable of firing cheaper hypervelocity rounds.
A cost-effective alternative to current capabilities based on surface-to-air missiles is being sought, particularly in expeditionary scenarios against the rising threat of cruise missiles.
Projectiles fired by the Multi-Domain Artillery Cannon (MDAC) will be guided by offboard sensors, eliminating the cost of onboard sensors in current rounds.
“Current air and missile defense munitions require onboard guidance and targeting components that drive high munition procurement costs,” a service request for information explains.
“In contrast, the MDAC seeks to significantly reduce munition costs and enhance expeditionary utility by developing a 155mm artillery cannon-based air defense system capable of firing Hypervelocity projectiles, integrated into a wheeled platform.”
Additionally, the system will be linked with an external Command and Control Battle Manager and the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System.
A prototype contract award is expected in the third quarter of 2025, with deliveries by the last quarter of fiscal 2027 and demonstration in fiscal 2028.
This is another case of “everything old is new again,” as Germany’s 88mm and 128mm flak cannons were generally considered very effective anti-aircraft weapons in World War II, and I bet 155mm is more than capable of putting a hurt on drones.
Ukrainian sniper takes record for world’s longest sniper shot, using a 12.7x114mm cartridge at 4,155 yards. (Hat tip: Reader John Zoch.)
Local TexMex chain Chuy’s is being bought by Darden Restaurants for $605 million. I didn’t know they actually had more than 100 locations. The food is good, but here in Austin they’ve been in the “no one goes there anymore, they’re too crowded” category for a while. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Generation Kill author Evan Wright RIP. That was a very solid book following a Marine recon unit into Iraq in 2003, and is well worth reading if you haven’t already.
Comedy legend Bob Newhart, RIP. I’m sure everyone and their dog will be posting the justly famous Newhart finale, but we’re going to kick it old school with a selection from his comedy albums.
Brits visit an HEB+. They’re astounded at the size and blown away by Blue Bell. They’re also amazed that a plain, fresh-baked tortilla can taste so good…
Blogger, owned by Google, has evidently decided that it, and not the individual bloggers that use it, are the ultimate arbiter of what those bloggers should be allowed to say, and they’ve started censoring Borepatch. From Friday, November 25, 2022:
In the ongoing effort to protect the world from Borepatch, the following actions have been taken by The Blogger Team.
https://borepatch.blogspot.com/2008/06/what-smells-good.html has been removed.
http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2011/05/america-do-your-part-to-when-harry-met.html has been put behind a warning wall.
http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2010/06/ouch.html has been put behind a warning wall.
As a blogger and Borepatch reader, this sticks in my craw, so here is a a Wayback Machine link to “What smells good.” What Google hopes to accomplish by censoring a 14-year old post to gun cleaning solvents is unclear.
As you may know, our Community Guidelines
(https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy) describe the boundaries for what we allow– and don’t allow– on Blogger. Your post titled “How do we know that Climate “science” is terribly weak?” was flagged to us for review. We have determined that it violates our guidelines and have unpublished the URL http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2014/07/how-do-we-know-that-climate-science-is.html, making it unavailable to blog readers.
Why was your blog post unpublished?
Your content has violated our Malware and Viruses policy. Please visit our Community Guidelines page linked in this email to learn more.
Reading the archived piece, I see nothing that could even be remotely construed as code.
It seems Google is using vague terms-of-service complaints to carry out ideological language policing in the name of crushing dissent against The Holy Narrative.
And it seems like a pretty good reason not to choose Blogger as your platform if you can choose something else.
Lots of “red flag” talk after the latest shooting panics, but Borepatch would like to remind us that such laws are stupid and useless.
The Parkland shooter was known to be a nutcase, having been reported to the local police some four dozen times (and twice to the FBI). Nobody took action, because the local (and likely national) government agencies thought that doing so would screw up the crime statistical goals that they were trying to achieve. While it’s very early after the event, it appears that lots of people knew that the Dayton shooter was a nutcase. Nobody did anything. The Air Force dishonorably discharged a guy because he was, well, a nutcase – but forgot to update the NCIC database with this information. The nutcase was able to buy a gun and kill a bunch of people in a church.
These are just the examples that come to mind; presumably a thorough analysis my the media or by social scientists would turn up many more examples. Of course, the media and social scientists don’t want to look into this because it would hurt their push for more gun control.
Research shows that any group of people identified as future violent criminals will contain many more who will not be violent (false positives) than they will (true positives). More true positives mean more false ones. Such groups also fail to identify many future violent criminals (false negatives).
We do not currently have the predictive tools needed to increase the number of true positives while reducing false positives. We may one day develop such tools, but how many false positives are we willing to tolerate until then to reduce the number of false negatives? Put another way: How many law-abiding people are we prepared to steal weapons to prevent another mass shooting?
For those who favor strict gun control, the answer may seem obvious. They believe it is worth it for 100 or 1,000 non-violent people to lose their weapons to prevent mass shootings. But those who view gun possession as a fundamental right under the Second Amendment – as the Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) – frame the problem differently. They ask: Can the government deprive a citizen of a constitutional right based on a prediction?
Red Flag laws run the risk of setting a dangerous precedent. If the government can take your weapons based on a prediction today, what will prevent it from taking your freedom based on a prediction tomorrow?
Indeed, everywhere on Twitter this week, the left have been saying two things:
1. We need to remove guns from the hands of racists, and
2. Everyone who voted for Trump is a racist.
Let me take a stab at providing answers to these questions from the “we should declare victory in the War on Drugs and go home” perspective. The proposal is that most or perhaps all drugs be decriminalized, offered for sale, and taxed.
Rule #1. Can the person proposing the law state what they think the law will accomplish? This is intended to accomplish five specific things:
Remove the perceived need to militarization of the police forces, no-knock raids, asset forfeiture, controls on how much you can deposit at your bank, etc. It’s caustic for the Republic and it costs us a lot of money. It’s an anti-tyranny goal.
Improve the purity of the drugs on the market which will reduce overdose deaths. Food and Drug purity laws would apply and so the heroin that Joe Junkie buys at the local Alcohol Beverage and Drug Emporium wouldn’t be the equivalent of bathtub gin. His gin isn’t adulterated (like it was during the Prohibition days) and his smack shouldn’t be either.
Lower the price of drugs, by eliminating the risk premium that must exist to cover expected loss from seizure, arrest, etc.
Eliminate the massive profits that are flowing to drug cartels, which fund a bunch (admittedly not all) of the violence associated with illegal drug use.
Generate a tax revenue stream that can be targeted towards providing detox centers for drug users who want to fight their addiction.
Laws about theft, driving under the influence, etc would fully apply to junkies who commit these crimes, just as they do today. Peter, Aesop, and Bill are entirely correct that today these are not “victimless” crimes.
Rule #2. Can the person proposing the law state how likely the law is to accomplish the goal from Rule #1? Let’s break these down by the five points above.
No doubt some agencies will resist this – police unions, prison guard unions, the DEA, etc will rightly see the reduction of public funding as a threat to them. However, this is more of a hinderance to getting decriminalization passed in Congress than in implementation. In any case, I don’t see any fundamental disagreement between the two camps in this as a goal.
This seems a no-brainer, as the illegal drug market is replaced by a legal one. It will be safer for both sellers and users, and legalization will probably attract big corporations who know how to mass produce pure products. I’m not sure you’ll see Superbowl advertisements for “The Champagne of heroin” but I don’t think you need to for success here.
This seems like an absolute no-brainer. You are eliminating some very costly parts of the supply chain (machine guns, private armies, etc). Not sure how big this is but it sure isn’t zero.
We saw this with the end of Prohibition. Today’s Al Capones are drug king pins.
Tax money is notoriously fungible and is often diverted by politicians, but we see tax revenue streams from legal pot in places where it was legalized (e.g. Colorado).
I endorse this line of thinking. I cannot, however, endorse Borepatch’s heinous use of two spaces after periods in the computer era…
My own two cents (familiar to regular readers) is that federal drug prohibition is unconstitutional on Ninth and Tenth Amendment grounds, being neither necessary nor proper for the federal government to enforce, and thus should be left to the states. This is especially true of federal prohibition of growing marijuana for personal use, as only the warped, grossly expansive interpretation of the commerce clause endorsed in Wickard vs. Filburn would give the federal government standing to determine what can and can’t be grown on a person’s private property for their personal consumption. Elimination of federal prohibition would allow states to experiment with the right mix of policies for narcotics. Let Utah try total prohibition, Portland complete legalization and deregulation, Maryland decriminalization and drug treatment, and Pennsylvania state owned drug dispensaries, and see which aspects of which approaches work best. That’s what federalism and subsidiarity are for.
Anyway, there’s a lot more over there, and a lot of links to all sides of the debate, that are worth pursuing.
Democrats should also understand that these public tantrums and other slights are simply bad politics. Voters don’t respond well to angry chanting losers harassing people, or to vulgar celebrities, or to threats verging on intimidation and violence. There is nothing inspirational about it, and it makes the targets of the anger look that much more reasonable. If Democrats think this crazed behavior will generate a “blue wave” in November, they are mistaken.
How did we get here? Two tracks converged to deliver us this dysfunction. The first is narrowly political. The Democrats, confident that they were on the right side of history, thought there was no harm in accelerating the rush to total victory. For years, Democrats practiced the rule that all is fair in judicial-confirmation battles, starting with the war on Judge Robert Bork in 1987. Then, under the leadership of Barack Obama and then–Senate majority leader Harry Reid, they did away with the filibuster on judicial appointments short of the Supreme Court, opening the door for Republicans to nudge it slightly more wide open.
The second track is longer. Starting over a century ago, progressives began emphasizing ends over means. If the Supreme Court could deliver wins unattainable at the ballot box and unsupported by the Constitution, so be it. Thus was born the “living Constitution” — the doctrine that holds that the magical parchment should mean whatever progressives need it to mean at any moment. This was how Anthony Kennedy became an (apparently temporary) gay-rights hero. After consulting his feelings, he found a constitutional right no one had found in the text before.
This idea that the Supreme Court is there to serve as a Praetorian Guard around progressive policies was on full display this week. Prior to Kennedy’s retirement announcement, the court issued a 5–4 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME, which held that public-sector unions can’t compel nonunion members to pay fees for union representation, thus violating the First Amendment.
Justice Elena Kagan caustically disagreed. For her, the problem with the decision was that “public employee unions will lose a secure source of financial support.”
“The First Amendment was meant for better things,” Kagan concluded in her dissent. “It was meant not to undermine but to protect democratic governance — including over the role of public-sector unions.”
In short: The Supreme Court isn’t there to protect the meaning of the First Amendment; the Supreme Court is there to protect a secure source of financial support for public-sector unions. If the First Amendment gets in the way, that’s okay.
The panic unfolding across the progressive landscape stems from the creeping fear that the Supreme Court might start doing its job — and not the job progressives have assigned it.
What will the #NeverTrump coalition in the Beltway (with an annex in New York) say now?
For a while, before tax cuts and regulatory reform boosted the economy, before defense spending increased, before Jerusalem was recognized as Israel’s capital, and before a “maximum pressure” campaign led to a detente with North Korea, #NeverTrumpers were fond of mockingly summarizing Trump supporters’ arguments as “But Gorsuch.”
This bit of childish taunting always struck me as an unknowing admission of ignorance about the role assumed by the Supreme Court in modern American governance. Even when 21 appeals court judges took their seats — orchestrated by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Republican colleagues — still the one-note pundits played on, only louder: President Trump was so awful and evil, and conservatives who supported him had done so for one lousy seat on the Supreme Court.
The implication from all the noise and a thousands posts was that “Gorsuch” wasn’t worth it. Now, after Justice Neil M. Gorsuch’s first year on the court, it will be impossible to overstate what his confirmation has meant.
While Justice Kennedy was usually a moderate conservative, there were areas of the law in which Justice Kennedy was not particularly moderate and others in which he was not particularly conservative. Particularly in areas touching on the freedom of speech and personal liberty, Justice Kennedy would swing for the fences. Justice Kennedy was easily the most speech-protective Justice on what was a quite speech-protective Court. Whether the speech at issue concerned political campaigns or product pricing, “offensive” messages or dishonest claims about military service, Justice Kennedy believed in uncompromising First Amendment protection. By some accounts it was Justice Kennedy who pushed the Court (and a reluctant Chief Justice) to invalidate the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, and this would be entirely consistent with what we saw in his First Amendment opinions.
Speech was not the only freedom that mattered to Justice Kennedy. He had a deep concern for Due Process, as shown in his embrace of habeas rights for alleged enemy combatants, his concerns about the application of capital punishment to some classes of criminal defendants, and his embrace of constitutional limits on punitive damages. He also, perhaps most famously, believed that due regard for individual liberty barred the government from adopting laws prohibiting or disregarding same-sex relationships, as in Lawrence, Romer, Windsor, and Obergefell. In these areas, there was nothing modest, moderate, or minimalist about Justice Kennedy’s views or the doctrinal rules he would embrace.
Given the makeup of the Roberts Court, as went Justice Kennedy, so went the Court. Where Kennedy was a moderate conservative favoring a minimalist approach, the Roberts court would tend to adopt a moderate conservative opinion. Where Justice Kennedy favored a more muscular approach, on the other hand, there were almost always at least four votes to go along. (NFIB v. Sebelius being a notable exception.) If Justice Kennedy wanted to recognize same-sex marriage or preclude the use of the death penalty for those convicted of non-lethal crimes, the liberals would agree. If Justice Kennedy wanted to protect campaign-related or commercial speech, the conservatives were there. so the Roberts Court was generally as conservative and as moderate as Justice Kennedy wanted to be.
Kurt Schlichter on the insanity gripping the Democratic Party:
There’s no sign of sanity. This week they turned the hate up to “11,” then cranked it to “17.” There are not many places to go once you reach “You are real live Nazis murdering children by not letting aspiring Democrat voters flow into the country at will!” At some point, instead of a few wild-eyed randos with crummy aim trying to off libs’ political/cultural opponents, they are going to start collectively going to go for the throat.
Our collective throat. Which I do not anticipate us Normals responding to in a huggy, loving kind of way.
Snip.
We’re already seeing it play out. The mainstream media quit even pretending to be honest – it’s in full scale fib mode. Look at the Time magazine cover of the little girl whose scumbag mom dragged her across the desert to help her break our laws (apparently without daddy’s permission and not for the first time). That Time cover is a lie, but it’s no surprise. The only surprise is that Time magazine is still a thing.
In fact, the whole manufactured outrage over Democrat-preferred criminals being treated like every other criminal was a lie. And the media not only doesn’t care but actively and consciously supports lying to you to support its liberal allies. But no one cares anymore. They can lie and lie and lie, and do, and we just smile and buy more guns and ammo.
So the leftists attempt to intimidate us into submission, showing up at people’s houses and screaming at them in restaurants. Take that, Sarah! The idea is since the leftists can’t convince Normals with the power of their ideas – because leftists’ ideas inevitably involve Normals ceding more of their rights and money to leftists – the left wants to make submission and obedience the price for being able to participate in the culture. But what’s inevitable is that us newly militant Normals, whose power is political rather than cultural, are going to respond pursuant to the New Rules and demand that leftists bake us a cake.
The craziness among Democrats can be explained by the behavior of cultists after a prophecy fails: the moderates, the ones who were the biggest brake on untrammeled lunacy, are the ones out the door first.
The more lukewarm Democrats are either keeping their mouths shut or are disappearing from the Party. The ones who remain are the ones who are more committed (translation: barking mad moonbats) who are the ones we hear talking about impeachment, banishing Trump supporters from the public square, protesting at Republican’s houses, etc.
It also explains why Democratic Party big wigs are losing primary challenges to candidates of the more barking mad persuasion (e.g. Joe Crowley, one of the biggest of the Democratic House big wigs who lost to someone who can only be described as a commie).
Speaking of which, the House’s fourth-ranking Democrat just got knocked off by a woman who wants to abolish ICE. “The objection of the hard Left is not to the current style or kind of immigration enforcement; their objection is to the existence of immigration enforcement.”
Mega Turbo Democrat Dumbass: “I’m going to find the Congressman’s kids and kill them. If you’re going to separate kids at the border, I’m going to kill his kids. Don’t try to find me because you won’t.” Yeah, that last bit turned out to not be the case: The FBI arrested him within hours.
A judge ordered a do-over of a contested Democratic primary runoff race in South Texas after invalidating the runoff results due to voter fraud. The runoff was decided by six votes.
Ofelia “Ofie” Gutierrez contested the results of the May 22 Democratic primary runoff for Kleberg County Justice of the Peace Precinct 4 after losing to incumbent Esequiel “Cheque” De La Paz by a vote of 318 to 312.
Gutierrez alleged that more than six illegal votes were counted, cast by people who didn’t reside within Precinct 4 and therefore weren’t eligible to vote in the election.
On Tuesday, visiting Judge Joel Johnson threw out seven of the 16 ballots Gutierrez challenged in court. All seven were cast by voters related in some way to De La Paz.
Speaking of Iran, protests there continued for a sixth day following a currency collapse. “On Sunday, the rial plunged 15 percent to IRR 89,000 against the dollar on the black market. Since the U.S. withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal on May 8, the rial has lost more than 40 percent of its value.”
The dumbasses at the Austin City Council approved building a soccer stadium. Because subsidizing a popular sport just wasn’t insulting enough to taxpayers…
What it’s like to service an SR-71. “Our last structural integrity review was in 1987, and it declared that the aircraft was about 180 percent stronger than the day it was made. The higher and faster you flew it, the stronger the titanium became.”
Black man being arrested for shoplifting calls police Nazis. So they charged him with a hate crime. All hate crime laws are stupid, but those that criminalize free speech are an order of magnitude stupider. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
A Tweet with some numbers from the latest Harris poll:
Wow! Even after last week's fever pitch smear of the Trump administration, 70 percent say we need STRICTER enforcement of our immigration laws. Only 30 percent say looser.
When I realized that the left was trying to convince me that all my non-left family members were hateful, racist, sexist xenophobic bigots, I had to #WalkAway
Multiculturalism Watch: Excavating the Aztec’s ceremonial skull rack, which the Spanish conquistadors estimated as holding 130,000 skulls from human sacrifices. “Gomoz Valdas found that about 75% of the skulls examined so far belonged to men, most between the ages of 20 and 35—prime warrior age. But 20% were women, and 5% belonged to children. Most victims seemed to be in relatively good health before they were sacrificed.”
The Global Elites are feeling threatened all over, just like the Roman Emperors did in 250 AD. The elections of Donald Trump, Brexit, and populist revolts across western Europe show that the “glue” holding together the current Western Progressive Empire is breaking down. The diverse populations that once accepted the rule of the Global Elite are now restive, and questioning the legitimacy of that elite.
And so the people must sacrifice to the Emperor or pay the consequences.
That means publicly mouthing the required platitudes about globalism, progressivism, diversity, and the rest of the pantheon of Imperial propaganda – this is to demonstrate the citizen’s allegiance to the anointed rulers.
And those who don’t – who, say, have a popular TV show that showcases conservative or libertarian or populist ideas running counter to that propaganda? They have to go. The elites must make an example of them, to influence weaker minds that might be wavering from full public support of the official Imperial propaganda.
It won’t work, of course, any more than it worked for Decian or his successors. What it did then was to harden the resolve of the persecuted Christians and build support for them among their non-Christian neighbors who were revolted at the senseless cruelty of the persecutions. It is doing this today, as the legitimacy of the global elite and its imperial propaganda is rejected by a growing number of Deplorables, world wide. We know this because we see the persecutions, which are a result, not a cause.
Success as a reporter on the CIA beat inevitably meant finding out government secrets, and that meant plunging headlong into the classified side of Washington, which had its own strange dynamics.
I discovered that there was, in effect, a marketplace of secrets in Washington, in which White House officials and other current and former bureaucrats, contractors, members of Congress, their staffers, and journalists all traded information. This informal black market helped keep the national security apparatus running smoothly, limiting nasty surprises for all involved. The revelation that this secretive subculture existed, and that it allowed a reporter to glimpse the government’s dark side, was jarring. It felt a bit like being in the Matrix.
It’s a long and informative piece, even if you don’t accept all of reporter James Risen’s analysis. And it really does show how badly our national security agencies leak…
The recently discovered vulnerability in Intel chips is really, really bad. And fixing it requires about a 5-30% performance hit on every OS that runs atop Intel processors. (Here’s a nice layman description).
Germany outsources censorship. Evidently you’re not allowed to say anything critical of Muslims or “Muslim refugees,” ever. “How the Germans can’t see that such a law, in the hands of the wrong party, could be devastating is a mystery. I can only conclude such occurrences have no precedent in their country from which they could draw obvious lessons.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinds Obama-era memorandums on state-level legalized marijuana. Popehat thinks this is, at present, mostly cosmetic due to the Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment. I oppose federal marijuana prohibition on constitutional grounds: Regulating marijuana is not an enumerated power of the federal government, regulation is neither necessary nor proper (thus no 9th Amendment justification), and thus a matter entirely for the states absent any interstate commerce under the 10th Amendment.
“Mayor Sylvester Turner’s press secretary was suspended for two weeks without pay after she failed to turn over thousands of documents required to be released under Texas law. Darian Ward was asked to turn over emails relating to her work on non-city related projects, including a private side business called ‘Joy in Motion Productions.'” She must have gone to the Hillary Clinton School of Email FOIA compliance…
Dave Chappelle has a point. As gross, disgusting and socially unacceptable as having Louis C.K. masturbate on the phone with you is, if you let that dissuade you from pursuing a career in a field as hotly competitive as standup comedy, that’s on you. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Via Borepatch comes news of some super geniuses in Greenpeace who can’t understand why they’re sitting in a Russian jail. They illegally boarded a state-owned oilrig as part of a protest and were promptly arrested for piracy.
“They had never expected that they would face such consequences for their peaceful protest in a democratic state.”
There are two tiny little problems with that statement:
Illegally trespassing on someone else’s property is not exactly “peaceful.”
Russia is not a democratic state, it’s dictatorial state with a thin veneer of democratic trappings. Did they not notice all the people that Putin has had bumped off over the years?
Now they’re sitting in jail awaiting trail, wonder why they haven’t received the slap on the wrist they regularly get from other countries.
Real activists should expect to do time in jail. Vaclav Havel spent plenty of time in jail, as did Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King. And they were pushing for real social change, not pie-in-the-sky trust fund environmentalism.
Actions have consequences. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time…
