Posts Tagged ‘Buffalo’

Biden’s America: Buffalo Looters Sack Family Dollar

Tuesday, December 27th, 2022

Looting and rioting are both signs of societal breakdown. Recent election cycles have seen the hard-left wing of the Democratic Party encourage (and the rest of party at least tolerate) such behavior, seemingly on the working assumption that doing so helped keep black voters pulling the “D” lever, no matter how destructive it might be for economic opportunity and community cohesion in the long term.

Putting aside morality, it’s easy to see the “nature red in tooth and claw” cost-benefit analysis of looting when no one is getting prosecuted. If everyone is looting and you’re pretty sure you’re not going to be popped for carrying away the big screen TV, hey, free TV!

But how far have the bonds of citizenship eroded when people feel free to loot a Family Dollar in broad daylight?

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown had sharp words for looters Monday who have broken into and stolen items from several stores around the city during the Blizzard of 2022.

Videos of ransacked stores and businesses with people running out with various items have been shared broadly on TikTok, Facebook, and other social media platforms.

The mayor called these people the “lowest of the low.”

“People who are out looting when people are losing their lives in this harsh winter storm it’s just absolutely reprehensible I don’t know how they can live with themselves,” said Mayor Brown during a joint press conference with Erie County and State Officials including Governor Kathy Hochul.

Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia who also spoke at the press conference said that police are aware of these incidents and working to get a full count of how many there have been.

“We have made a few arrests we have intervened in some of those, we’ve assisted with at least one location that I am aware of in getting a store boarded up so our officers are out there,” said Commissioner Gramaglia.

That store is believed to be Rick’s Sports Apparel near Allen Street and Elmwood Avenue according to a tip shared with 2 On Your Side. The store had its windows broken, got looted, and was boarded up Monday night.

The Commissioner added that officers are starting to get back to their patrol duties which would include monitoring looting and theft. Since Friday the focus has been on the snow emergency and saving lives.

“It’s heartbreaking. When this is all over the community will have nowhere to go to get the things they need,” said Robert Smallwood, an employee at Camellia Meats.

Smallwood had flagged down 2 On Your Side’s Dave McKinley Monday morning and said that the Family Dollar at Genesee Street and Zenner Street was in the middle of being looted. Several videos show people with bags of items who had just exited the store.

Of course there’s video:

Not only do looters seem in no danger of imminent starvation, they also show no fear at the police siren and show no inclination of dropping the looted goods.

Looting generally qualifies as third degree burglary under New York law, which is still a felony that can earn you seven years in jail. So what sort of person would risk that to loot a Family Dollar? You know, where almost everything is a buck? How far down the scale of civilization do you have to slide before grabbing armfuls of cheap goods and running off seems like a viable life strategy?

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown has the right attitude toward such criminality, but I note that his party, the Democratic Party, has ruled Buffalo since January 1, 1966, and Democrats have occupied the New York Governor’s mansion since January 1, 2007. And it’s not like Buffalo hasn’t suffered through previous blizzards.

Why is looting a Family Dollar now considered acceptable behavior?

LinkSwarm for June 10, 2022

Friday, June 10th, 2022

Democrat tries to murder Brett Kavanaugh and Pelosi shrugs, human traffickers busted in Texas, another Democrat convicted of voting fraud (in Philadelphia, naturally), WaPo finally draws a line it won’t let SJWs cross, and an 8K computer that can be yours if you have somewhere north of a quarter million dollars. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Another month, another four decade high inflation rate. “The Consumer Price Index (CPI) went up by 8.6 percent in May, the highest year-over-year increase since December 1981.”
  • Democrat arrested for attempting to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh

    Nicholas John Roske was charged with attempting or threatening to murder or kidnap a Supreme Court justice Wednesday after traveling to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home armed with a Glock handgun, intent on killing the justice over his expected rulings in ongoing cases related to abortion and the Second Amendment.

    Roske, 26, of Simi Valley, Calif., was identified as the suspect in an affidavit unsealed Wednesday afternoon. Roske told law enforcement that he called 911 to turn himself in because he was having suicidal thoughts, also telling the operator that he intended to kill a “specific” Supreme Court justice, according to the affidavit.

    Roske was subsequently arrested, and officers found a Glock 17 pistol with two magazines, as well as a tactical knife, pepper spray, and other items.

  • Naturally, Democrats stalled a bill to provide additional security for Supreme Court Justices.
  • In another sign of the Democratic Party’s reasonable and measured approach to the abortion debate, pro-abortion terrorists firebombed a pro-life Christian pregnancy center in Buffalo.
  • Speaking of saving children, “70 Children Rescued in West Texas from Human Trafficking by State and Federal Authorities,” the youngest ten years old.
  • A former Democratic congressmen convicted and expelled for taking bribes has now been convicted of committing that voting fraud that Democrats swear up and down doesn’t exist.

    A former Democrat congressman, who was expelled from the House of Representatives in 1980 after getting caught taking bribes in what turned out to be an FBI sting, pleaded guilty to multiple election fraud charges this week after the U.S. Department of Justice charged him with bribery, falsifying voting records, stuffing ballot boxes, and more election crimes in Pennsylvania.

    According to U.S. Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams, 79-year-old Michael “Ozzie” Myers admitted to bribing Philadelphia election judge Domenick J. Demuro, who already pleaded guilty in 2020, during the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 state elections for $300 to $5,000 per election and then telling him to lie about falsely inflating votes.

    Demuro, who “was responsible for overseeing the entire election process and all voter activities of his Division in accord with federal and state election laws,” then manipulated the voting machines in his respective ward and division in a way that satisfied Myers’ desire to “illegally add votes for certain candidates of their mutual political party in primary elections,” especially those clients who paid him “consulting fees.”

    “Some of these candidates were individuals running for judicial office whose campaigns had hired Myers, and others were candidates for various federal, state, and local elective offices that Myers favored for a variety of reasons,” the DOJ noted in a press release.

    Myers pulled the same stunt with another South Philadelphia election judge Marie Beren, who also pleaded guilty in 2021 to her role in the fraud.

    “Myers acknowledged in court that on almost every Election Day, Myers transported Beren to the polling station to open the polls. During the drive to the polling station, Myers would advise Beren which candidates he was supporting so that Beren knew which candidates should be receiving fraudulent votes. Inside the polling place and while the polls were open, Beren would advise actual in-person voters to support Myers’ candidates and also cast fraudulent votes in support of Myers’ preferred candidates on behalf of voters she knew would not or did not physically appear at the polls,” the DOJ stated.

    The pair also used cell phone communication to notate in real-time how many votes they faked versus how many were real.

    “If actual voter turnout was high, Beren would add fewer fraudulent votes in support of Myers’ preferred candidates. From time to time, Myers would instruct Beren to shift her efforts from one of his preferred candidates to another. Specifically, Myers would instruct Beren ‘to throw support’ behind another candidate during Election Day if he concluded that his first choice was comfortably ahead,” the press release continued.

    Much like Demuro, Beren then falsified poll books “by recording the names, party affiliation, and order of appearances for voters who had not physically appeared at the polling station to cast his or her ballot in the election” and balanced the list with the ballots recorded by voting machines before certifying the tainted results.

  • In a story that launched a thousand “Bye, Felicia” jokes, Washington Post Social Justice Warrior “reporter” Felicia Sonmez was fired for insubordination and constantly attacking her co-workers for victimhood points.

    The workplace drama began on June 2 when Sonmez publicly took colleague Dave Weigel to task after he retweeted a joke from YouTuber Cam Harless that said “every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.”

    Sonmez posted a screenshot of the retweet, captioning it “fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!”

    Weigel deleted the retweet, and explained that he “did not mean to cause any harm.” Nevertheless, the Post handed down a one-month unpaid suspension to punish Weigel for his retweet.

    Post reporter Jose A. Del Real then waded into the controversy to criticize Somnez for continuing to tweet about Weigel and the paper even after it took action against Weigel. He accused her of public bullying and “clout chasing,” leading Sonmez to accuse Del Real of violating the paper’s social-media policy.

    With the drama hitting a boiling point, Post executive editor Sally Buzbee sent an internal memo to staff saying, “we do not tolerate colleagues attacking colleagues either face to face or online.”

    The memo seemed to spark a flood of pro-Post tweets from its reporters, who used similar language to laud the paper’s “collegial” work environment.

    Sonmez evidently took offense to her colleague’s tweets saying they were proud to work at the paper.

    “The reporters who issued synchronized tweets this week downplaying the Post’s workplace issues have a few things in common with each other,” Sonmez wrote on Twitter on Thursday morning. “They are all white . . . They are among the highest-paid employees in the newsroom, making double and even triple what some other National desk reporters are making, particularly journalists of color . . . They are among the ‘stars’ who ‘get away with murder’ on social media.”

    Will this be a cause for soul-searching among MSM outlets over the wisdom of staffing their newsrooms with social justice warriors? Of course not. Sonmez dared to make the mistake of going after higher ranking members of the Clerisy.

  • Speaking of crazy, sloppy social justice warrior attack dogs employed by the Washington Post, Taylor Lorentz was very, very upset that other people were right about Amber Heard against her wishes.

    Taylor Lorenz and the Washington Post are attempting a third adpocalypse. They’re attempting to take out rivals to the leftwing legacy media — specifically, YouTubers who sided more with Johnny Depp during the Amber Heard defamation trial. The leftwing media, of course, had uncritically championed Amber Heard, as they’d championed all #MeToo allegations, #BelievingAllWomen without asking for any evidence.

    In fact, the defamatory opinion piece Depp sued Heard for appeared in the Washington Post. They just added a stingy “Note” to their defamation.

    So Lorenz is now attempting to paint it as dangerous for people to openly question #MeToo allegations on YouTube, and to suggest there’s something wrong with non-legacy-media outlets making money off of a major media story. There’s nothing wrong with the Washington Post making money off it, of course — because they take the proper leftwing view of things.

    But people like Rekieta or YellowFlash or That Umbrella Guy, the people who thought that Amber Heard was lying? Which, of course, a jury found to be the case?

    They’re dangerous and they shouldn’t be allowed to make money off it. And damnit, YouTube has got to control who is allowed to make money from these news events!

    By the way: The entire Depp/Heard story was already heavily censored by YouTube. Videos would be demonetized — denied advertising — if they discussed it all. Because of this, YouTubers were forced to resort to the childish tactic of referring to Depp as “The Pirate Guy” and Heard as “the Aqua Lady” to avoid censorship and demonetization. They had to avoid saying the names of the people they were talking about.

    No, I’m serious.

    But that’s not enough for Taylor Lorenz and The Washington Post.

    Either they have to declare “The Aqua Lady is telling the truth and The Pirate Guy is an abuser,” or they must be deplatformed!

    And Lorenz, in making the case that only she, a nobody, barely-educated semiliterate wannabe influencer who pretends to be a tweenager online and gets away with it because she is effectively developmentally delayed, should be allowed to weigh in on the Depp-Heard trial, and that actual trial lawyers like Rikieta and LegalBytes should not be so allowed, is on a scorched earth campaign to make them toxic to advertisers.

    And of course she’s also up to her old tricks of claiming she reached out to her subjects — I mean, targets and victims — for comment.

    Spoiler alert: She did not reach out to her targets and victims for comment.

  • “How The Virginia Project Helped Engineer the 2021 GOP Wins in Virginia.”

    Gordon decided to take a strategic approach to make the Virginia GOP a party that could attract serious, intelligent, capable candidates, run them, and win. He founded The Virginia Project (TVP) with the mission to create a 21st-century party infrastructure capable of competing effectively and rolling back Democrat Party influence.

    Once Gordon realized that Republicans failed to field candidates in 25% of races with a Democrat incumbent in 2019, he made running a candidate in every race a mission point. Other objectives of TVP included taking a complete accounting of GOP performance in every election district and providing a baseline level of support for every GOP candidate in the state. The group also wanted to share tools and best practices to optimize branding, marketing, messaging, voter outreach, and mobilization throughout the state. The goal was to disrupt the Democrats’ narratives and force them to play defense.

    After the 2020 election, Gordon realized that to put Democrats on their heels, TVP would have to go on offense. There was no way to verify the vote in Virginia after nearly 60% of Virginians voted early or by mail. The window for challenging congressional elections closed in 25 days. There was no point in fielding candidates across the state without shoring up election integrity. So with the help of Ned Jones, Gordon and TVP set about securing Virginia’s elections.

    The group forced the implementation of voter roll management laws already on the books. TVP ensured the process was logged, transparent, and consistent in every Virginia county and removed a half million bad entries from the voter rolls statewide. Then TVP made sure a system was in place for 2021 that had what Gordon refers to as “Eyes on Every Ballot.”

    Challenging elections after the fact proved fruitless at the state and national levels in 2020. The key would be to challenge violations on the spot rather than post facto. TVP prepared and delivered training for election observers. The Virginia GOP went from 33% to 95% observer coverage. Gordon said, “The worse Biden gets, the more people volunteer. A good look in some of the disputed states in 2020 also motivated people to get involved.”
    The success in recruitment and training allowed the GOP to challenge every suspected violation on election night 2021. As a Twitter thread from TVP noted, “[DNC lawyer Marc] Elias’ now-legendary losing streak started with us stopping him. We fought for and won every legal stipulation needed to enforce our rights.”

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Seven NEW Hunter Biden Scandals the Nets Refuse to Report On.” A lot of these I had heard of, but this one is new:

    President Biden unveiled new sanctions Thursday targeting influential Russians and President Vladimir Putin’s yachts on the 99th day of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine — but two oligarchs linked to his son Hunter Biden again were spared.

    The slow rollout of sanctions comes despite the president threatening “swift and severe” penalties ahead of the invasion, which began Feb. 24.

    New US-targeted individuals include the steel and gold-mining oligarch Alexey Mordashov, Putin-linked money manager Sergei Roldugin, billionaire property developer God Nisanov, electronics executive Evgeny Novitsky, banker Sergey Gorkov and Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. The Treasury Department also sanctioned two yachts that Putin allegedly co-owns and the Monaco-based yacht brokerage Imperial Yachts and its Russian CEO, Evgeniy Kochman.

    It remains unclear why Hunter Biden’s alleged Russian business associates — the billionaire oligarchs Yelena Baturina and Vladimir Yevtushenko — eluded the latest round of US sanctions against members of Russia’s business elite.

    It’s a great mystery.

    Baturina, whose wealth derives largely from construction, in 2014 paid a firm associated with Hunter Biden $3.5 million, according to a 2020 report written by Republican-led Senate committees. She is the widow of former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, and documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop indicate she may have attended a 2015 dinner in DC with then-Vice President Joe Biden.

    Yevtushenkov, who owns a nearly 50% stake in Russian conglomerate Sistema — which has telecom, retail, banking, food and health interests — faces UK sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but hasn’t yet been targeted by the Biden administration. He met with Hunter Biden in 2012 at Moscow’s Ritz-Carlton hotel, but recently claimed they had no subsequent contact.

  • “Meet the Guardsman Helping Ukrainians Blow Up Russian Tanks over the Phone.”

    Before the war, [Sgt. 1st Class Chris] Freymann, a cavalry scout in the Washington state National Guard, had been the lead instructor in the U.S. military’s program that trained soldiers in Ukraine how to use the shoulder-fired tank-killing missiles. He trained about 200 Ukrainian troops during his months with the program.

    Russia launched its invasion in February, after U.S. trainers left. But the relationships Freymann made remained. His former students — now troops fighting on the front lines — again reached out for help on operating the Javelins as they encountered technical issues or forgot details.

    “When the war started, I had a lot of guys hitting me up on WhatsApp,” Freymann told Military.com. “One of our linguists, her husband was one of the few soldiers who were left. A lot of the students trained by the other [Guard units] died.”

    Freymann would relay information on operating the Javelin to the linguist. Her husband, who was in the fight, would then send Freymann photos and videos of destroyed Russian tanks. Freymann says at least four tanks were destroyed after some of his over-the-phone coaching.

  • Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Americans are abandoning high tax states (New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey) and moving to low tax states (Florida, Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, Tennessee). (Hat tip:Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • “Pizza Hut is featuring a book about ‘drag kids’ as one of the books promoted by its ‘Book It!’ reading incentive program aimed at children in pre-kindergarten through 6th grade.”
  • Louisiana Transgender Sports Ban To Become Law.” Good. If you have XY chromosomes, you shouldn’t be competing in women’s sports.
  • Speaking of obvious truths vs. radical transsexism: “Norwegian Feminist Faces Three Years In Prison For Saying Biological Men Can’t Be Lesbians.”
  • Ilya Shapiro resigns from Georgetown University rather than work with a Social Justice Warrior Sword of Damocles hanging over his head.
  • Brandon Herrera fires a rare Barrett .50 BMG designed to take out helicopters.
  • How bad is the new Lord of the Rings TV series? This bad.
  • And Disney is about to just churn out an endless conveyor belt of garbage.
  • Ouch!

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Not news: Real estate owners in New York City jacking up rates. News: Jacking up New York real estate. Namely jacking a landmark Broadway theater up 30 feet to put retail space underneath it.
  • Houston YouTube rapper who bragged about robbing ATMS arrested for robbing ATMs. What are the odds? (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Speaking of Dwight, he’s showing off his new gun purchase, a Smith and Wesson Model 38 Bodyguard Airweight in .38 Special.
  • Got over $200,000 lying around? Then you still have time to bid on an original Apple-1 computer signed by Steve Wozniak.
  • Boys und Panzer.
  • 2021 Post-Election Tidbits

    Thursday, November 4th, 2021

    More post-election news:

  • Democrats take a good, hard, sober look at their policies to determine why voters abandoned them in drove. Ha, just kidding! It’s all racism all the way down:

    In response to Republican Glenn Youngkin’s win in yesterday’s Virginia gubernatorial race — as well as Republican wins all the way down the ballot — left-wing pundits and celebrities immediately began to assert that the Democratic losses were the result of voters’ white-supremacist sympathies.

    Yeah, that’s the reason voters turned out in droves to elect a black Republican Lt. Governor: white supremacy.

    Even Politico writers got in on the action, asserting in this morning’s newsletter that Youngkin’s strategy included “racial appeals to working-class white voters.” During elections results coverage last night, MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace asserted that “critical race theory, which isn’t real, turned the suburbs 15 points to the Trump-insurrection endorsed Republican.”

    Also on MSNBC last night, host Joy Reid spent much of the evening insisting that the education issue, an enormous part of Youngkin’s successful appeal to Virginia parents, was a dog whistle for racism. Plenty of progressives, including Reid herself, began pushing this line well before Election Day.

    And that worked out so well for them.

    Already, progressives are pointing to exit polls showing an enormous swing to the GOP among white working-class women, who voted for Joe Biden last fall but supported Youngkin this time around — the nasty implication being that these women were motivated to vote by Republicans’ supposedly racist agenda. Totally ignored, or even outright dismissed, are the many nonwhite voters who backed the GOP.

    McAuliffe himself obliquely indulged in this fantasy in his statement conceding the election.

    On several counts, progressives have begun to coalesce around a narrative that doesn’t hang together — one that displays a shocking unwillingness to grapple with the problems facing their party. For one thing, it makes little sense to assert both that critical race theory doesn’t exist and that parents who oppose it are doing so because they don’t want their children to learn about race or slavery.

    If progressives admit that CRT exists at all, they pretend that it’s merely an effort to teach school children about the complicated history of race in our country. In fact, a quick investigation reveals that the proposed curricula contain, in most cases, highly inaccurate history aimed at indoctrinating kids into racially divisive identity politics.

    Parents have legitimate concerns about such curricula, including understandable resistance to misrepresenting history, stoking guilt and division among children, and perhaps even encouraging race-based bullying. Dismissing these parents as white supremacists for having these concerns is unlikely to succeed either in persuading them to think differently about the curriculum in question or to vote for Democrats the next time around.

    Finally, the “white supremacist” theory for Democratic losses intentionally ignores that two of the top Republican candidates voted into office were Winsome Sears, a female Jamaican immigrant elected lieutenant governor, and Jason Miyares, a Cuban American who was elected attorney general. It’s hard to imagine why Virginians voting en masse for the GOP out of thinly veiled racial animus would throw in their lot with this ticket.

    Logic has never been the Democratic Party’s strong suit.

  • “Glenn Youngkin Defeated Terry McAuliffe Because Democrats Betrayed Parents.”

    While former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s loss to Republican challenger Glenn Youngkin was cemented very late on election night, in practice the day that he forfeited the gubernatorial race was September 28. That was when, during a debate with Youngkin, McAuliffe, a Democrat, made the statement that “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

    That was his response to questions about school curriculum and the fury that had taken hold at many local school board meetings, where irate parents assailed education leaders for allegedly supporting what has been termed “critical race theory” by right-wing activists who oppose it. CRT is a divisive concept, in part because progressives and conservative disagree sharply about what it even is. Many members of the liberal media don’t even believe it exists, and have accused the GOP of fabricating the issue. As Youngkin’s victory became apparent, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace lamented that critical race theory, “which isn’t even real,” had swung the suburbs 15 points in Republicans’ favor.

  • Dr. Carol Swain on voter rejection of critical race theory:

    Well, they can’t really racialize it because a number of Black parents and immigrant parents have stood with their White brothers and sisters to reject critical race theory, which is very harmful to Black and minority children. It’s a violation of our civil rights laws. It’s un-American because it involves shaming and bullying children and it runs counter to our Constitution. And so, they can say what they want with their Marxist agenda and their false narratives but the American people spoke in my home state of Virginia and I could not be more proud of them.

    (Hat tip: TPPF.)

  • More Twitter reactions:

  • One Democratic not screaming racism: ragin Cajun James Carville:

    Democratic political strategist James Carville blamed his party’s recent losses and weak performance in state elections on “stupid wokeness” on Wednesday.

    “PBS NewsHour” host Judy Woodruff asked Carville what went wrong for the Democratic Party in the Virginia gubernatorial race in which Republican Glenn Youngkin beat former Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

    “What went wrong is just stupid wokeness. Don’t just look at Virginia and New Jersey. Look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis, even look at Seattle, Wash. I mean, this ‘defund the police’ lunacy, this take Abraham Lincoln’s name off of schools. I mean that — people see that,” Carville said.

    “It’s just really — has a suppressive effect all across the country on Democrats. Some of these people need to go to a ‘woke’ detox center or something,” he added. “They’re expressing a language that people just don’t use, and there’s backlash and a frustration at that.”

    Will Democrats heed his warning and abandon their suicidal drive for social justice, forced transgenderism and critical race theory?

  • Other news I missed: The Alexandria Ocasio Cortez-backed socialist running as a Democrat for mayor of Buffalo lost, despite being the only candidate on the ballot.

    The incumbent Democratic mayor of Buffalo, running as a write-in candidate, declared victory Tuesday night as he held a nearly 20-point lead over his Democratic Party opponent.

    India Walton, a socialist backed by many high-profile progressives, refused to concede to Mayor Byron Brown in the highly publicized contest until her campaign sees “all the votes,” her spokesman Jesse Myerson told The Post via text.

    Brown, 63, who lost to Walton in the June Democratic primary, claimed what would be a stunning victory in a speech to supporters from his campaign headquarters shortly after 11 p.m.

    “Today’s election, it’s not just a referendum on the future of the city of Buffalo, it was a referendum on the future of our democracy,” Brown said.

    Both Walton and Brown are black, so I’m sure the reason he won was racism…

  • Another sign of discontent with Democrats: Republicans win four New York City Council seats, and may pick up a fifth.

    Republicans won four contested City Council races in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island and had a shot at taking a fifth in a potential upset.

    Republican Inna Vernikov thumped her Democratic opponent Steve Saperstein for an open seat in southern Brooklyn’s 48th Council District by nearly 30 points.

    With 87 percent of the vote in, Vernikov, a 37-year-old lawyer and Ukraine native, garnered 10,768 votes, or 65 percent of the vote, to 5,870 votes, or 35 percent, for Saperstein.

    She will succeed ex-Councilman Chaim Deutsch, who forfeited his seat earlier this year when he was convicted of tax fraud.

    The district includes many Russian-speaking and Jewish immigrants in the communities of Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach, Sheepshead Bay and Homecrest.

    Vernikov ran as an unabashed supporter of former President Donald Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. endorsed her in a robocall to voters. She also opposed coronavirus vaccine mandates.

    “I’m very excited. This election victory shows that the people are fed up with the progressive policies that have destroyed our city and district,” Vernikov told The Post last night.

    Snip.

    Vickie Paladino led former Democratic Councilman Tony Avella with 99 percent of the votes in. Paladino had the support of 12,143 votes, or 50 percent, to 10,490, or 43 percent, for Avella. John-Alexander Sakelos, running on the Conservative and Save Our City lines, received 1,729 votes or 7 percent.

    Snip.

    In another shocker, Democratic Councilman Justin Brannan, who is running to become the next council speaker, is fighting for political survival.

    With 95 percent of the vote in, Brannan was locked in a dead heat with Republican Brian Fox in the 43rd District that takes in communities including Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights.

    Other Republicans holding onto GOP seats: David Carr (not the former Texans quarterback) and Joann Ariola, who beat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-backed Felica Singh.

  • Another shocking loss for the hard left in deep-blue Seattle: “Republican Ann Davison is leading police- and jail-abolitionist Nicole Thomas-Kennedy in the race for city attorney.” Also, in the Mayor’s race, “Bruce Harrell, a former City Council president who urged adding police, including unarmed officers, rather than cutting funding, held a commanding lead of nearly 30 percentage points over current Council President Lorena González as additional ballots were counted Wednesday.” To be fair, Davison is a pretty nominal Republican.
  • Though it looks like Murphy will hold on to the governor’s mansion in New Jersey, “Republican Edward Durr, Truck Driver Who Spent $153 on Campaign, Defeats New Jersey Senate President Stephen Sweeney.”
  • Three of four Fort Worth bond packages fail.
  • Closer to home, Leander ISD voters turned down two of three bond issues:

    The second-largest school bond in the state faced a narrow defeat Tuesday night as Leander ISD voters rejected the $727.2 million proposition. The proposal would’ve financed the construction of new buildings, including five new schools, and the renovation of two existing schools to expand capacity.

    The final margin was one percentage point, amounting to 215 votes difference in the school district with over 40,000 students. Leander ISD said the bond, along with two others on the ballot Tuesday, was necessary for the population growth the district expects to come.

    Those other two finished with slim margins, as well. Proposition B, a $33 million bond to finance technology upgrades including laptops for students and faculty, passed by 805 votes, and Proposition C, a performing arts center upgrade, failed by 765 votes.

    (Hat tip: Holly Hansen)

  • Voters in The Woodlands reject incorporation, will remain a township.
  • Few things infuriate leftwing racists more than black republicans who refuse to bend the knee:

  • LinkSwarm for September 9, 2016

    Friday, September 9th, 2016

    A short LinkSwarm for a short week…

  • Trump up by two in CNN poll.
  • Democrats on the verge of panic. Usual WSJ hoops apply. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • In the course of mocking Gary Johnson for not knowing which Syrian city is which, New York Times actually ends up making a worse mistake, eventually making a correction to their correction’s correction.
  • Conservative State Senator Andy Biggs wins his race for Arizona’s 5th Congressional District by 9 votes over more liberal GoDaddy executive Christine Jones, which will trigger an automatic recount.
  • NHS Rations health care to obese people and smokers. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “Muslims in Buffalo, NY Say “F**k America!” After Being Arrested for Food Stamp Fraud.”
  • Muslim immigrants and the decline of Buffalo.
  • Dr. Paolo Macchiarini is an expert in regenerative medicine. And by “regenerative medicine” I mean academic fraud and killing patients. And that’s not all! He’s also a liar of such epic proportions he convinced his girlfriend that they were going to be personally married by the Pope…
  • The Swiss watch industry is doomed. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Nuclear ant colony hell. (Hat tip: Moe Lane)
  • This Week in Jihad for January 27, 2011

    Thursday, January 27th, 2011

    The big Jihad news this week, of course, was the Moscow bombing. But that was hardly the only thing of note:

  • The Moscow bombers were evidently trained in Pakistan. “An al-Qaeda linked website said that the group Islamic Caucasus Emirate, led by the rebe Doku Umarov, was poised to claim it had staged the attack. It said that Russia’s harsh military measures against independence activists in the Caucasus had provoked the attack. It said: ‘You disbelievers are the firewood of Hell. You will enter it.'” (I’m guessing “rebe” is short for “rebel,” though I have not heretofore heard it used.)
  • Short, interesting analysis of successes and failures of Russia’s own war on terrorism.

    Dokka Umerov has repeatedly made it very clear that he wants nothing to do with al Qaeda, or bin Laden.

    The latter point reveals the following about the global War on Terror. First, the US and British efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq have succeeded in destroying al Qaeda’s reputation amongst Islamist organizations. If an Islamist cause as major as the Caucasus Emirate wants to stay clean of al Qaeda, it means that al Qaeda equals trouble. Al Qaeda involvement means interference from the world’s great powers.

    Second, Russia’s situation reveals that the US and British efforts have failed to do significant damage to the ideology of Islamism. If a nationalist movement turns itself into a movement with Islamist objectives in order to make itself stronger, then it proves that the ideals to which al Qaeda subscribes have not been significantly damaged.

  • UK man arrested “on suspicion of using racially aggravated threatening words or behaviour,” i.e., burning a Koran.
  • Pro-Jihadist forces organizing in North Africa. Wait, did I say “North Africa”? I meant “Norway.”
  • JihadWatch (from whom I regularly steal a very significant fraction of the stories listed in these weekly Jihad roundups) interview Robert Reilly, author of The Closing of the Muslim Mind.
  • Hezbollah moves closer to control of the Lebanese government.
  • Lots more on that subject from the invaluable Michael Totten (just keep scrolling).
  • UK Jihadists evidently don’t like being filmed.
  • Australian artist receives death threats from left-wingers and islamists for anti-burqua mural. Once again we see the alliance of the left and radical Islam.
  • Danish Judge to Kurt Westergaard: Don’t you dare call the man who tried to kill you with an axe a terrorist.
  • U.S. border authorities arrest Jihadi Muslim cleric who was deported from Canada to Tunisia three years ago when he tried to sneak into California inside the trunk of a BMW.
  • Jihadists kill four in attack on army base in Thailand.
  • Also in Thailand, nine Buddhist wild pig hunters were killed by a roadside bomb. In other news, there are Buddhist pig hunters.
  • Jihadists also killed six in Nigeria. With machetes.
  • Wyoming joins Oklahoma in proposing law outlawing Sharia.
  • A similar law has been proposed in South Carolina.
  • New Imam of Ground Zero Mosque says that all apostates from Islam should be jailed. This is a great improvement from the standard clerical opinion that they should be killed…
  • He also says that most gays were abused as children. Strangely enough, some people have a problem with this.
  • All you Islamophobes who say Mohammed was a pedophile are way off base. Sure, Mohammed married a 6 year old, but all Islamic experts agree that he refrained from having sex with her until she reached the ripe old age of 9.
  • Islamic man in Buffalo texts his wife that he can’t live without her. Twenty minutes later he beheaded her.
  • Batman to get Muslim sidekick. Presumably one that doesn’t murder Muslim girls for daring to date non-Muslim men…
  • Muslim Minneapolis police officer arrested for assaulting his wife.
  • Bin Laden threatens France. Insert your own joke here.