For some reason, the egos of disgraced New York Democratic politicians are so large that they never seem to think they’re too disgraced to run for office again. Just like Anthony Weiner before him, disgraced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo thinks he can run for New York City mayor and people will forget the sex scandal that drove him out of office.
I don’t know who he’s running against, but this commercial ought to knock him out of the race in short order:
FADE IN: Picture of Andrew Cuomo.
NARRATOR (V.O.): Andrew Cuomo resigned the Governor’s office in disgrace. Now he wants to be mayor. Does he think we forgot what he did?
CUT TO: INT. POLITICIANS OFFICE
Cuomo standing next two men in suits with a legend under them reading MEDICAL SPECIAL INTERESTS. Legend at bottom reads 2020.
MEDICAL SPECIAL INTEREST GUY 1: We don’t want old people dying of Covid in our hospitals. It’s bad for business.
MEDICAL SPECIAL INTEREST GUY 2: Here’s a giant bag of money. (HANDS CUOMO A GIANT BAG OF MONEY) Can you shove them into nursing homes so they die there instead?
CUOMO: Boy, can I!
CUT TO: INT NURSING HOME NIGHT.
Several elderly women sitting peacefully watching TV.
CUT TO: (Andrew Cuomo violently slams open the door, then pulls two knives out of his suit pockets)
CUOMO: Wake up, grandma! Time to die!
CUT TO: (Cuomo violently plunges the knives into the first elderly woman. She screams as geysers of blood shoot out of the wound.)
CUT TO: (Montage of Cuomo stabbing the remaining woman in the nursing home, slitting their throats, decapitating, etc., while the voice over narration plays)
NARRATOR (V.O.): Andrew Cuomo received more than $1 million from the Greater New York Hospital Association, then directed nursing homes to take in Covid patients rather than sending them to hospitals. Over 15,000 of them died. Does he think we forgot?
CUT TO: (Closeup of a blood-drenched Andrew Cuomo.)
CUOMO: Hi, I’m Andrew Cuomo, and I’m running for mayor of New York City!
CROSE-FADE TO CLOSING TAG
TAG, RED LETTERS ON GRADUATED GRAY AND BLACK BACKGROUND: Who will he kill next?
THE END
That should shove Cuomo’s campaign right off the platform and onto the third rail in short order…
As when Elon Musk dismantled the censorship apparatus at Twitter, leftists are bemoaning Meta/Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg ending “fact checking” at Facebook as though it was the end of some sort of golden age. What they are actually bemoaning is that they will no longer be able to suppress political opinions they disagree with.
Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan to spell out just how the Biden Administration’s censorship regime worked.
I don’t necessarily trust Zuckerberg’s assertions that Facebook’s original intentions were pure as the driven snow when he started putting fact checkers in place (and that’s one reason I’m not editing out things like “um,” “like,” and “you knows,” as these may be verbal tells when he’s glossing over or eliding information rather than just verbal throat clearing), but I think his depiction of how government pressure for censorship came down is probably accurate.
Mark Zuckerberg: “We’re just going to have the system where these these third party fact checkers and they can check the worst of the worst stuff right, so, um, things that are very clear hoaxes…so so that was sort of the original intent we put in place the system, and it just sort of veered from
there.”
MZ: “I think to some degree it’s because some of the people whose job is to do factchecking, a lot of their industry is focused on political factchecking so they’re just kind of veered in that direction.” Left unsaid is that everywhere in the MSM, that “fact checking” is slanted to the left and has been for a long time.
MZ: “I think people just felt like the fact checkers were too biased. Not necessarily even so much in what they ruled, although sometimes I think people would disagree with that a lot of the time, it was just what types of things they chose to even go in fact check in the first time, in the first place.”
MZ: “After having gone through that whole exercise, it, um, I don’t know, it’s something out of, like, you know, Nineteen Eighty-Four. One of these books where it’s just, like, it really is a slippery slope, and it just got to a point where it’s just ‘OK, this is destroying so much trust, especially in the United States, to have this program.” Maybe it’s just me, but I kind of feel that when the guy forced to institute the censorship regime compares the censorship regime instituted under his watch to Nineteen Eighty-Four, maybe we ought to consider taking him at his word and not automatically write it off as hyperbole.
MZ: “Covid was the other big one, where that was, that was also very tricky, because you know at the beginning it was, you know, it’s like a legitimate public health crisis.”
MZ: “We didn’t know at the time how dangerous it was going to be, so at the beginning it kind of seemed like, OK, we should give a little bit of deference to the government and the health authorities on how we should play this.”
MZ: “But when it went from, you know, two weeks to flatten the curve to, um, you know, in…like in the beginning, it was, like, OK, there aren’t enough masks, masks aren’t that important to then it’s like oh no you have to wear a mask and, you know, all, the like, everything was shifting around.”
MZ: “It just become very difficult to kind of follow, and this really hit the most extreme, I’d say, during the Biden Administration, when they were trying to roll out um the vaccine program.”
MZ: “I’m generally pretty pro rolling out vaccines. I think, on balance, the vaccines are more positive than negative. But I think that while they’re trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who was basically arguing against it, and they pushed us super hard, um, to take down things that were honestly were true.”
MZ: “They basically pushed us and said, you know, anything that says that vaccines might have side effects you basically need to take down.”
Joe Rogan: “Who’s ‘they?’ Who’s telling you to take down things that talk about vaccine side effects?”
MZ: “It was people in the in the Biden Administration.”
Rogan talks about the difficulty of moderating at scale. Zuckerberg says one-third to one-half of the planet use one of Meta’s services on a daily basis.
MZ: “They wanted us to take down this meme of Leonardo DiCaprio looking at a TV, talking about how 10 years from now or something, um, you know, you’re going to see an ad that says OK, if you took a Covid vaccine, you’re eligible [for] this kind of payment, like this sort of like class
action lawsuit type meme. And they’re like ‘No you have to take that down.’ We just said no, we’re not we’re not going to take down humor and satire. We’re not going to take down things that are that are true.”
MZ: “It flipped a bit. Biden, when he was, he gave some statement at some point, I don’t know if it was a press conference or to some journalist, where he basically was like these guys are killing people and, and um, and I don’t know. Then, like, all these different agencies and branches of government basically just like started investigating and coming after our company it was it was brutal it was brutal.”
Rogan slamming government supressing basic disease recovery mechanisms to boost the vaccine snipped. That “red-pilled a lot of people.”
MZ: “Trust in media has fallen off a cliff.”
Should we trust Zuckerberg? To quote Omar Little from The Wire, “I trust his fear.” As I noted in Friday’s LinkSwarm, the MAGA winds must be blowing very strong indeed for Zuckerberg to flip so quickly and completely. Zuckerberg probably had misgivings while these things were going on, but unlike Musk, would never have voiced them so openly had Trump not won.
Also, as Tim Pool noted, “Facebook built a portal for Feds to log into their system to flag ‘misinformation.’ For more than a decade, the federal government, the FBI, the CIA, I think the NSA, had backdoor access to Facebook as well as other companies.”
Time for an update to this old classic
The Jim Jordan report Zuckerberg references is the final committee report on the weaponization of the American government to censor opposing political viewpoints. The report is not only hard to find online (it’s not in the first page of Google results), it is so large (17,014 pages) that it seems to be literally unreadabe in Firefox, as whatever Acrobat window thing they have wants to jump back when you scroll to the second page. As a partial remedy, I have (with a bit of difficulty) captured the introduction and posted it here, though the paragraph breaks may not be exact.
The founding documents of the United States articulate the ideals of the American republic and guarantee to all American citizens fundamental rights and liberties. For too long, however, the American people have faced a two-tiered system of government—one of favorable treatment for the politically-favored class, and one of intimidation and unfairness for the rest of American citizens. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, the contrast between these two tiers has become even more stark.
To stand up for the American people, the House of Representatives authorized the creation of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government within the Committee on the Judiciary. During the 118th Congress, the Select Subcommittee worked to “bring abuses by the Federal Government into the light for the American people and ensure that Congress, as their elected representatives, can take appropriate action to remedy them.”2 The mission of the Select Subcommittee has been to protect and strengthen the fundamental rights of the American people.
By investigating, uncovering, and documenting executive branch misconduct, the Select Subcommittee has taken important steps to ensure that the federal government no longer works against the American people. This work is not complete, but it is a necessary first step to stop the weaponization of the federal government. From its inception, the Select Subcommittee sought to protect free speech and expand upon the constitutional protections of the First Amendment. Throughout the Biden-Harris Administration, multiple federal agencies, including the White House, have engaged in a vast censorship campaign against so-called mis-, dis-, or malinformation.
The Select Subcommittee revealed the extent of the “censorship-industrial complex,” detailing how the federal government and law enforcement coordinated with academics, nonprofits, and other private entities to censor speech online. The Select Subcommittee also revealed how the Stanford Internet Observatory’s Election Integrity Partnership—created “at the request of” the Department of Homeland Security3—urged Big Tech to censor Americans online.
The Select Subcommittee’s oversight has had a real effect in expanding the First Amendment. In a Supreme Court dissent, three justices noted how the Select Subcommittee’s investigation revealed “that valuable speech was . . . suppressed.”4 In a letter to the Committee and Select Subcommittee, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the Biden-Harris Administration “pressured” Facebook to censor Americans.5 Facebook gave in to this pressure, demoting posts and content that was highly relevant to political discourse in the United States. In response to the Select Subcommittee’s oversight, universities and other groups shut down their “disinformation” research and federal agencies slowed their communications with Big Tech.
Pursuant to its mission, the Select Subcommittee also examined the weaponization of federal law-enforcement resources. Many FBI whistleblowers have disclosed to the Select Subcommittee examples of waste, fraud, and abuse at the FBI. When these whistleblowers came forward, the Bureau brutally retaliated against many of them for breaking ranks—suspending them without pay, preventing them for seeking outside employment, and even purging suspected disloyal employees. Through its oversight, the Select Subcommittee revealed how the FBI abused its security clearance adjudication process to target whistleblowers, with the FBI even admitting its error and reinstating the security clearance of one decorated FBI employee.
The Select Subcommittee also investigated the executive branch’s actions in intruding on and interfering with Americans’ constitutionally protected activity. The Select Subcommittee revealed and stopped the FBI’s effort to target Catholic Americans because of their religious views, detailed the Justice Department’s directives to target parents at school board meetings, stopped the Internal Revenue Service from making unannounced visits to American taxpayers’ homes, caused the Justice Department to change its internal policies to respect the separation of powers and limit subpoenas for Legislative Branch employees, and highlighted the vast warrantless financial surveillance of Americans by federal law enforcement.
The Select Subcommittee has examined the federal government’s efforts to interfere in our elections, highlighting the FBI’s fervent efforts to “prebunk” a story about the Biden family’s influence peddling scheme in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election. The Select Subcommittee’s work also demonstrated how the Biden campaign colluded with the intelligence community to falsely discredit this story as “Russian disinformation.”
This report accumulates and presents the findings of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government during the 118th Congress. The federal government must work for all Americans, not just the favored few. As the country moves forward from the disastrous policies of the Biden-Harris Administration, it is important that policymakers ensure that the federal government can no longer be weaponized against American citizens. “Freedom is fragile thing,” Ronald Reagan warned in 1967, “it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.”6 The Select Subcommittee’s work in the 118th Congress has been a start to a long and difficult process to better protect Americans’ fundamental freedoms. But our work is not the end. More must be done to ensure that our fundamental liberties and cherished rights continue for Americans to come.
1 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE para.
2 (U.S. 1776). 2169 CONG. REC. H130 (daily ed. Jan. 10, 2023) (statement of Rep. Tom Cole).
3 STAFF OF SELECT SUBCOMM. ON THE WEAPONIZATION OF THE FED. GOV’T OF THE H. COMM. ON THE JUDICIARY, 118TH CONG., THE WEAPONIZATION OF ‘DISINFORMATION’ PSEUDO-EXPERTS AND BUREAUCRATS: HOW THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PARTNERED WITH UNIVERSITIES TO CENSOR AMERICANS’ POLITICAL SPEECH (Comm. Print Nov. 6, 2023) [hereinafter “NOV. 6 REPORT”].
4 Murthy v. Missouri, 603 U.S. 43, 78 (2024) (Alito, J., dissenting).
5 Letter from Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Exec. Officer, Meta, to Rep. Jim Jordan, Chairman, H. Comm. on the Judiciary (Aug. 26, 2024).
6 Governor Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address (Jan. 5, 1967).
And remember this was all part of a coordinated international censorship regime. The recently shut down Center for Global Engagement, started under Obama, was a a key proponent of this censorship regime.
When lefties bemoan the change in Facebook, this is what they’re lamenting: The ability to censor the free speech of fellow Americans under the direct mandate of federal government agencies working on behalf of the Democrat Party to suppress the speech of their ideological opponents.
Happy New Year! The Biden Administration is made of lies (which you already knew), a few links about guns, mysterious deaths in Tarrant County jails, Russian finds new, embarrassing ways to lose equipment, Hasbro destroys D&D’s legacy, and a look at biblical werewolves. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
One of Biden’s main legacies: Corrupting official government economic statistics:
Another 653,000 fake jobs revised away by govt statisticians. They were faking the data during 2023 and 2024 to try to boost Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
In the revisions, they have also admitted to 818,000 fake jobs being removed from the 2023 data.
A brand new investigation from the Wall Street Journal has revealed that scientists knew early on that the COVID-19 virus was an engineered virus that escaped a lab, but the information was suppressed by intelligence agencies and removed from all presidential briefings on the matter.
Three scientists from the National Center for Medical Intelligence, John Hardham, Robert Cutlip and Jean-Paul Chretien, had reported their findings that the virus was manipulated in a lab. They shared their findings with the FBI, but were soon told to stop.
In August of 2021, Biden was briefed on the origins of COVID-19 after a 90-day investigation from intelligence agencies. National Intelligence Director Avril Haines briefed the President and left out all research pointing to a lab leak from her briefing.
Sarah Hoyt has a pretty good plan moving forward: We win, they lose.
It’s going to take a long time for us to stop flinching and deciding we’re going to be betrayed. 2020 left scars in the collective psyche, and scars take a long time to fade if they ever do.
The last four years we were hunching our shoulders and just enduring the blows, and that will take a long long time to fade.
And sure, there are things that won’t go our way. But you shouldn’t worry too much about that.
Look, the edifice that supports the boot on our necks is not only rickety. It always was rickety.
Keeping the big lie of the all powerful centralized government in place was a full scale production, and it required a fully coordinated media, fully coordinated panels of “experts”, and a trusting public that believed all of it. Or at least a majority of the public that believed all of it.
It has been eroding for a while, since social media and blogs got really big in the wake of 9/11. Despite their best efforts at censorship, a massed multitude of — what did they call us? — hobbits is harder to control than a few journalists who want to be invited to the right parties.
Trump’s election in 2016 was the first time the media lost to the hobbits. Really lost, publicly. They didn’t like it. The hell the establishment has put us through since is their payback.
It came with unexpected consequences though. The main ones being: their masks were yanked off; and we don’t believe them anymore.
This is the sort of thing that not all the king’s horses and not all the king’s men can put together ever again.
Sure, we’ll “lose” some. Sure, they’re making cunning plans to thwart the will of the people.
But be not afraid. If we win even a few places, it’s enough for the whole edifice of oppression and lies to come tumbling down.
It has been tumbling down, already, even while they were nominally in power, which is why we won 2024.
Be not afraid. This is very important. The rest will fall into place, provided you keep your heads and remember you’re Americans.
Until a few years ago I was working as a mid-career research scientist, no I won’t tell you what field. Within my collaboration I was known for being extremely productive. I’ve seen jaws drop when I show colleagues my publication list.
Then it came time to start applying for junior professor positions.
Got a few interviews, but doors kept getting slammed in my face. It’s a very opaque process ofc, they never tell you why. In one case however I had the dean – a portly Hispanic woman – tell me two minutes into the interview that “women in STEM are very important to me”, and ultimately heard informally from one of the profs at that dept that I hadn’t been hired because of interference from the dean, despite all of the profs on the committee wanting me, and that instead they’d hired … no one.
One of the many controversial chunks of the short-term spending bill that sparked debate recently included funding for the State Department’s Global Engagement Center.
But what’s the problem? After all, who doesn’t like “Global Engagement”?!
Well, this agency — formed by Barack Obama — has been moonlighting as a censorship czar, handing out taxpayer dollars like candy to groups that spend their time suppressing conservative voices online.
(In other words, your average Obama administration government office.)
But after widespread backlash, the new version has no room for the Global Engagement Center.
Snip.
Reports from the Washington Examiner indicated that the GEC bankrolled groups like the Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard, organizations that basically police speech with the finesse of a drunk mall cop. The Federalist and the Daily Wire even sued the GEC over its role in suppressing right-leaning voices.
Thanks to the new continuing resolution, the GEC finally met its own doom, with yet another scrap of Barack Obama’s legacy shuffling off into the sunset like Joe Biden’s last remaining marble.
Sounds like some companies are asking for a lawsuit:
Just got a dm from someone who works in recruiting at one of big tech companies. He said it's internal policy within the team he works for to reserve roles for what they call “outside talent”.
They are not allowed to recruit Americans for these roles but must go through the…
Suspicious. “North Texas Activist Is Latest to Die in Tarrant County Jail. Mason Yancy was the ninth person to die in Tarrant County Jail custody this year….Yancy was well known to grassroots activists in North Texas and across the state as an advocate for limited government and First and Second Amendment rights. He co-founded Open Carry Texas with activist-turned-attorney CJ Grisham.”
Anti-Chinese riots in Africa, following a disputed election in which Daniel Chapo of the ruling FRELIMO (socialist, formerly communist) party was declared the winner. Seems like the citizens of Mozambique aren’t big fans of Belt and Road…
Waterloo records in Austin is relocating under new ownership. “Caren Kelleher, founder and president of Gold Rush Vinyl, confirmed Thursday she and business partner Trey Watson (CEO of Armadillo Records) will be taking over Waterloo Records. The vinyl shop has operated in Austin for more than 40 years, including 35 years at its current location along West Sixth Street and North Lamar Boulevard.” I used to spend a fair amount of time searching their used CD bins, but I all but stopped going downtown during the “homeless camping” fiasco. (Hat tip: .)
We’ve previously covered that China’s demographics are in severe decline and that China’s GDP may be overstated by 60%. Now a researcher says that China’s population could be overstated by 37-50%.
(Before we dig in, two caveats: First, the channel is Lei’s Real Talk, from someone who came over from communist China and was a student in the U.S. during the Tiananmen Square crackdown, but she doesn’t use her full name, which she says is to protect her family back in China. Second, she’s using AI to answer some of her questions. Still, the math-based questions don’t seem conducive to the “AI hallucinations” we see elsewhere, but some caveat lictor seems in order.)
“We know China is facing a series of economic challenges. Weak consumer, confidence falling real estate prices, high debt, industrial overcapacity, sluggish exports, and so on and so forth. But the underlying issue of the faltering economy, in my opinion, is a severe population crisis.”
“China’s actual population is far below than the official figure of 1.4 billion.”
“I want to compare China and India’s population between the 30-year period from 1990 to 2020. Let’s also compare their average fertility rate between the two countries and their medium age.” If you run those very basic numbers, things don’t add up.
“In 1990, China’s population is over India is by about 270 million [1.14 billion vs. 870 million], and 30 years later China’s population is still over India by 30 million [1.41 billion vs. 1.38 billion].”
“However, if you look at the fertility rate, India’s average fertility rate [2.97%] during the 30 years years is so much higher than China’s [1.70].” All these are the official published rates.
“With that kind of fertility rate in India consistently over 30 years, India’s population should be larger than China’s. Mathematically it’s impossible that China’s population is still greater than India’s.”
I’m skipping over a detailed breakdown of the two country’s respective fertility rates by decades.
“I asked GPT to apply the fertility rates for each country and give me the total population in 2020 for India and China respectively, and this is the results it generate. In 2020 population, India’s population was 1.38 billion, China’s was only 890 million.” India’s number is off the official figure by 4%. China’s number is off by 37%, or 520 million people. And this is at a time when life expectancy for China has been increasing.
Analysis of various other population factor considerations snipped.
“I asked AI to recalculate everything by replacing the official fertility of 1.7 and 1.5 from the year to 2000 to 2010 replaced them with Dr. Yi Fuxian [University of Wisconsin Madison demographic researcher whose work we previously mentioned here] fertility assessment of 1.1. It came up with a shocking total population of 695 million, and that’s less than half of the announced population of 1.4 billion.”
We didn’t see a huge drop in economic output because China’s economy is investment driven.
“Population loss took place over 30 years, and particularly started since 2000, and this reduction in population didn’t show up as reduction in consumer spending until this generation reached the age of 18, or even older, when they started to spend money. So now we start to see the impact on consumer spending because there’s a time lag.”
Plus Flu Manchu deaths.
“China suddenly saw a wave of kindergarten closures, so in some cases private kindergartens have been shrunk by 20% in some regions.”
“So for all these factors combined, I think China’s real population may be between 600 million and to 800 million.”
Given the GDP overstatement estimates, this enormous overstatement of China’s population seems plausible. It also makes all those wild claims of “China will soon overtake the US economically” look even more ridiculous.
China’s “one child per couple” policy will be seen by future generations as one of the greatest self-inflicted catastrophes in history.
Flu Manchu lockdowns bankrupted numerous American businesses (restaurants were particularly hard hit), but the firehose of taxpayer money the feds turned on also made a whole lot of people rich, including several fraud artists.
A Louisiana-based rap artist pleaded guilty Monday to his role in a large-scale prescription drug fraud ring that operated out of his multimillion-dollar home in Utah.
Rapper NBA YoungBoy, whose real name is Kentrell Gaulden, walked into a courtroom in Logan, Utah, with his head hung low as he entered the plea for his part in the alleged scheme, KTVX-TV reported.
The 25-year-old rapper was originally charged in the Logan District Court with 46 charges related to the alleged crime. On Monday, he pleaded guilty to two counts of third-degree felony identity fraud, two counts of third-degree felony forgery and six counts of misdemeanor unlawful pharmacy conduct. Gaulden entered a “no contest” plea to the remaining charges.
As part of a plea deal, Gaulden will not serve prison time in Utah. Instead, his four felony charges were reduced to Class A Misdemeanors and he was ordered to pay a $25,000 fine, the television station reported.
District Judge Spencer Walsh agreed to suspend a prison sentence as Gaulden is expected to serve a “substantial” 27 months in federal prison for related charges in a case stemming out of Weber County, Utah. Following his release, Gaulden will then be placed on five years of federal supervised probation.
Closer to home, another Harris County official was indicted for fraud that involved a coronavirus testing program.
Former Harris County Public Health Executive Director Barbie Robinson has been charged with felony misuse of official information in what may have been yet another bid-rigging scheme coordinated with county contractors.
Fired from her post last September, Robinson allegedly used her private email to coordinate with International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) officials regarding a $31 million contract to craft a social services program called Accessing Coordinated Care and Empowering Self Sufficiency (ACCESS) that the company would later bid to provide.
Last week Robinson was charged with misuse of official information, a third-degree felony which carries a possible sentence of two to 10 years in jail and fines of up to $10,000.
Before working for Harris County, Robinson had previously served as the director of the Sonoma County Department of Health Services where she also worked with IBM to create a nearly identical ACCESS program to coordinate county services for low-income residents.
According to emails obtained by the Texas Rangers, Robinson appears to have exchanged emails with IBM officials shortly after she was hired by Harris County in the spring of 2021. Communications included discussion of “sole-source” contracts that might be exempted from competitive bids.
In July 2021, the county paid IBM $45,000 to put on a workshop to discuss creation of an ACCESS-style program, and in early November 2021 Robinson continued to use her personal email to coordinate with IBM to craft a scope of work document in the weeks and days before the county issued a public request for proposals.
Robinson came under fire earlier this year for communications surrounding a $6 million contract awarded to DEMA, a California-based company, to run Harris County’s Holistic Assistance Response Teams (HART).
According to scoring documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle, DEMA won the contract for HART services by a fraction of a point over The Harris Center for Mental Health and Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, a state-funded agency with experience in responding to 911 calls. DEMA’s overall score was 72.88, while the Harris Center earned 72.5. Robinson awarded DEMA 70.5 out of 100 points compared to 66.5 for the Harris Center, and she and other evaluators awarded points to DEMA for a list of references.
DEMA was awarded more than $26 million in no-bid contracts in Sonoma County but lost the contracts after a 2023 investigation by The Press Democrat found billing of at least $800,000 for non-existent positions.
Early in 2021, Robinson had been instrumental in bringing DEMA to operate COVID-19 testing sites in Harris County. In a September 2021 email, DEMA CEO Michelle Patino offered her a contract for legal consulting, even though Robinson is not a practicing attorney.
Last June a Harris County auditor’s report found that nine invoices had position titles and rates that were not supported by the contract, that DEMA was not registered to conduct business in Texas when the contract was executed, and that the company did not have required insurance coverage.
In response to a Texas Public Information Act request from The Texan for scoring documents related to the IBM contract for ACCESS Harris County, the county attorney’s office appealed to the Texas Office of the Attorney General for an exemption.
Earlier this year, The Texan learned that in January 2024, Robinson also contracted with Yuba County, California to provide services for a three-year period. Robinson’s work for Yuba County’s public health department provided her with nearly $200,000 in compensation for hundreds of hours of work, all while managing Harris County’s public health department.
In response to the indictment, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo accused District Attorney Kim Ogg of “weaponizing” the district attorney’s office and claimed that Ogg simply did not like the successful program created by Robinson.
It seems like Democratic activists view every government program as a potential source of graft to line their pockets with, and Flu Manchu funds were passed so quickly and with such little oversight that they provided especially tempting targets for the usual suspects to stick in their snouts.
Hopefully unsupervised barrels of money like this are going to be on DOGE’s chopping block in the incoming Trump Administration.
In his Joe Rogan interview, President Trump said that his biggest mistake from his first term came from appointing “disloyal” people to important positions based on advice from career Republican politicians. So naturally this time around he’s picking people based in large measure on personal loyalty to him. The result is a much better cabinet than his first, but not a perfect one. I’ll go through the top picks with quick reaction on each.
Secretary of State: Marco Rubio. Meh. Marco has always struck me as an intellectual lightweight. He will doubtless be a much better Secretary of State than Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first choice, as well as all Democratic secretaries of state back to at least Cyrus Vance (if not further), but in terms of actual ability I’m not sure he’s better than Trump’s second Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. I would prefer someone like Victor Davis Hanson. Or even (dare I say it?) Rick Perry. This also starts the run of “Sure is a lot of people from Florida on this list.”
Secretary of Defense: Pete Hegseth. “Before joining Fox in 2014, Hegseth served as an Army National Guard captain in Afghanistan and Iraq and earned the Bronze Star medal for his service in the latter.” I don’t watch Fox (or network or cable news in general), so I wasn’t previously aware of him, but he wants to completely purge wokeness and DEI, so I’m firmly on Team Hegseth now.
Attorney General: Florida congressman Matt Gaetz. Boy, this one really has the left freaking out. As well it should. While I’m confident Gaetz has the steel to launch investigations of the Russian collusion hoax, the Trump assassination attempts, the lawfare waged against him, censorship efforts, January 6, etc., I worry that he hasn’t run a state attorney generals office, and thus won’t know how best to bring “resistance” staffers to heel. I suspect a seasoned Republican state attorney general like Ken Paxton might have been a better choice, but Texas conservatives won’t complain about getting to keep Paxton in his current job.
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security: South Dakota governor Kristi Noem. Meh. I liked Noem back when she kept her state open during the Flu Manchu panic, but then she went off tranny pandering by vetoing a bill banning men from women’s sports she had promised to sign. She later made amends, but the initial pander of caving to radical social justice pressure makes me worry that she doesn’t have the necessary gumption for such an important job.
Department Of Government Efficiency: Elon Musk And Vivek Ramaswamy. Putting aside why this isn’t simply the Office of Management and Budget (maybe to staff a new department from the ground up without “resisters”), this one Trump hit out of the park. Both Musk and Ramaswamy are going to bring outsider energy from two guys who simply don’t care what the MSM and the DC chattering classes have to say about them. Ramaswamy is the ideological firebrand that won’t be diverted from the task, and Musk is the radical innovator who’s not afraid to to make rapid, radical changes. Every Republican President since Reagan has said they’re for a balanced budget, yet somehow the goal has eluded every single one of them. Trump did not pursue a budget cutting agenda in his first term, but having been targeted by multiple tentacles of the deep state leviathan, I’m pretty sure he’ll come in with a newfound zeal for chopping the federal government down to size. And Musk has a talent for both management and radical disruption, which the federal government badly needs.
Director of National Intelligence: Tulsi Gabbard. I’m skeptical this one works out. Tulsi is clearly sharp, and after this election she clearly needs some role in the Trump 2: The Venging administration. And she drive feminists crazy simply by standing there and looking pretty. But directing the national intelligence apparatus, especially one that will be institutionally hostile to reform from the git go, will take a very special, and very tough, director to fill that role, and I’m not sure Gabbard has the intestinal fortitude for the sort of brutal inter-agency knife-fighting necessary to defeat the Deep State. Very few men do, and even fewer women, and having served in the military isn’t sufficient to assure that. For a woman to succeed in this role, she’s going to need to fall somewhere on the Margaret Thatcher to Nancy Pelosi Iron Lady to Stone Cold Bitch spectrum, and I’m skeptical Tulsi meets that threshold. Maybe I’m wrong and she’ll suprise us all.
Robert K. Kennedy, Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. No. Like Tulsi, you have to give him some role, and he probably has some good points to make about over-medication, junk food additives, and how the pharmaceutical industry has misled the public (especially over Flu Manchu vaccines and side effects) and commits regulatory capture of the people who should be overseeing it, but he has too many fringe, scientifically supported ideas, and he seems to support ObamaCare. There’s still a chance this selection works out, assuming the Assistant Director is someone who can keep Kennedy’s worst impulses in check, and having him as the designated bad cop may force the medial industry get its shit together (and give up its push to mutilate children for funny, profit and virtue signaling brownie points entirely). Then there’s this via Instapundit:
God forbid we let RFK Jr. be in charge of HHS, otherwise he might do something crazy like fund experimental gain-of-function research in Chinese laboratories and cause a global pandemic
But this could still blow up in Trump’s face. Rand Paul would have been a much better pick here, assuming he could be persuaded to leave the senate.
Border Czar: Former ICE director Tom Homan. Yeah, he’s got the starch.
Let a thousand ten million deportations bloom.
So I find it a pretty mixed bag.
Athena Thorne notes that all those selected were unfairly targeted by the very agencies they’re being tasked to oversee, and that probably does provide powerful motivation, as well as insight on the types of abuse that need to be rooted out. I’m just not sure that’s sufficient…
Here’s a short, interesting video of a black, female YouTuber with a punk rock haircut who goes by Gothix, who found herself inadvertently red-pilled.
“I never really was into politics at all, but I had a lot of opinions about politics. To give you some context, I had severe Trump Derangement Syndrome. I hated Trump. I hated everyone who voted for Trump. I actually cut off one of my best friends. I didn’t speak to her for like a year because I could not understand how my white friend would vote for someone who was against my people being black people. And so and so.”
“My political awakening pretty much happened over the course of, maybe, like, two years. It started when Disney announced that they were going to be doing a live action remake of The Little Mermaid. I was wondering why they made Ariel black. I was very confused by this, so naturally I go online I ask this question, and I started to get a lot of pushback from people who were my fans.”
“A lot of them were black fans, and they they couldn’t understand why I had such a problematic anti-black opinion.”
“I’m, like, ‘My audience just turned on me for a very reasonable question.’ And I also didn’t like how if anyone opposed Ariel being turned black, you were automatically a racist. And that doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“A few months later Covid starts, and we’re told to stay home and flatten the curve. Meanwhile, the BLM protest starts, and now all of a sudden you can go out as long as you are protesting to end racial Injustice or something like that. So that hypocrisy didn’t make any sense to me. Either Covid is deadly or it’s not. Either we stay home or we don’t. We don’t get to pick and choose.”
“Once again I brought up the question: What does stealing a 70 inch TV have to do with ending police brutality? And once again I got hate. And then it dawned on me: ‘Hold on! I keep getting pushback from black leftists. There is something going on about this.'”
“So then I started going down a rabbit hole, and I started literally researching ‘black people who stopped being Democrat’ and the amount of stuff that I got it was crazy. The first thing that I watched was the Uncle Tom documentary, and what I came to realize after watching that is that we have been lied to about history.”
“There’s something called the black card, and there’s sort of like this expectation that you’re supposed to behave in a certain way, and that trickles down all the way to who you vote for.”
“When you are born black in America, it’s sort of insinuated that you will be voting Democrat. Don’t ask questions, just vote Democrat. Which is exactly what I did when Obama was running. I voted for him because he’s black. Knew nothing about his policies, but he’s black and I need to help my people or something.”
“That process got me to start really considering all the things that I used to believe. One of the things was about Trump, and then I realized that ‘Oh, wow, the media is lying about him they’re taking these clips and they’re using clickbait and distorting it taking it totally out of context.’ And they’re emotionally extorting people who wear their identity on their sleeve. If you are black and you see a a video of some guy in office talking about, uh, anything racist, of course you’re going to oppose him, right?”
“And then that makes room for a political savior to come in who makes empty promises about ending white supremacy. I just came to realize that the media is not on our side, they’re not there to tell us the news, they’re not there to keep us informed, they’re there to get us emotionally riled up so then they can use that to get us marching to the ballot box. They don’t actually care about us.”
If you know a white liberal who reflexively calls Trump a racist, send them a link to this video.
And I’ll have to track down that Uncle Tom documentary…
I follow neither rap music nor Hollywood gossip, so I was only vaguely aware of Sean Combs, AKA Puff Daddy, AKA P. Diddy, AKA Diddy. I knew he was a rapper and a rap mogul with his own label, but that was about it, except for noting he was raided by the FBI back in March. And I’m never surprised when a rap star (or really, just about any rich entertainment figure) is involved in a drug or sex scandal.
But the sheer range of Mr. Combs alleged criminality is fairly breathtaking:
Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and William S. Walker, the Acting Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Office of Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”), announced that SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” was arrested last night and charged in a three count Indictment with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. The Indictment unsealed today alleges that between 2008 and the present, COMBS abused, threatened, and coerced women and others, and led a racketeering conspiracy that engaged in sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice, among other crimes….
According to the Indictment unsealed today:[1]
From at least 2008 through the present, COMBS led a criminal enterprise that existed to facilitate his abuse and exploitation of women, to protect his reputation, and to conceal his conduct. As part of that criminal enterprise, COMBS, along with other members and associates of the enterprise, committed crimes including sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice.
Among other things, COMBS’ sexual abuse of women included causing them to engage in frequent, days-long sexual activity with male commercial sex workers, some of whom were transported over state lines. These events, which COMBS referred to as “Freak Offs,” were elaborate sex performances that COMBS arranged, directed, and often electronically recorded. To ensure participation in Freak Offs, COMBS used violence and intimidation, and leveraged his power over victims—power he obtained through obtaining and distributing narcotics to them, exploiting his financial support to them and threatening to cut off the same, and controlling their careers. COMBS also threatened his victims, including by threatening to expose the embarrassing and sensitive recordings he made of Freak Offs if the women did not comply with his demands.
COMBS’ efforts to control women included repeated physical abuse. COMBS assaulted women by, among other things, striking, punching, dragging, throwing objects at, and kicking them. COMBS similarly assaulted witnesses to his abuse. These assaults often resulted in injuries to the victims, which took days or weeks to heal.
To commit these crimes, COMBS relied on his power as the leader of a multi-faceted business empire. Employees of COMBS’ businesses—including high ranking supervisors, security staff, personal assistants, and household staff—acted as COMBS’ intermediaries to, among other things, arrange travel and hotel rooms; stock the hotel rooms for COMBS’ commercial sex activity; contact or locate women and other individuals whom he targeted for abuse; and conceal and cover up the abuse. This criminal concealment included efforts to prevent law enforcement from learning about his abuse.
If you believe you are victim of a crime perpetrated by Sean Combs, please contact HSI at Sextrafficking_outreach@hsi.dhs.gov or via their mobile tip-line at 1-877-4-HSITIP, and reference this case.
* * *
COMBS, 54, of Miami, Florida, is charged with one count of racketeering conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison; one count of sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison; and one count of transportation for purposes of prostitution, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
That’s a fairly breathtaking array of sleazy, slimy criminality. And it doesn’t even mention some of the other allegations against Combs, so here are not one, not two, but three videos covering his illegal, unsavory antics.
First up, the originally Penguinz0 video that first clued me in to the magnitude of Combas alleged misdeeds.
“This is a moment for celebration. For so long, P. Diddy has gotten away with heinous crimes that tons of people knew about, from car bombs to assaults to sex crimes. It’s like P. Diddy was going for some kind of high score, trying to catch every possible crime like a Pokemon.”
“The allegations mirror 11 civil complaints filed against him since 2023.”
“Really, that’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the P Diddy lore.”
“Also mentioned is that he had thousands of bottles of lube and baby oil that were seized from his home during those raids as part of his freak off supplies.”
“He also had tons of narcotics as well.”
“Diddy became infamous for his freak off parties that would go on for days, where he’d force attendees to not only stay there and perform non-consensual sex acts in front of him, but he would just be pumping them full of drugs and he would be watching while furiously masturbating like a coked-out goblin.” Sounds like the MO of Democratic megadonor and convicted sex offender Ed Buck.
“He’d allegedly distribute cocaine, Oxy, Xanax, GHB, MDMA and Ketamine.”
“He was like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but drugs instead of candy.”
Oh, and he also had “Puffy Flavor Camp” for kids. I would really rather not imagine what went on there…
“They done caught the diddler.”
“50 Cent has been like, I would say, an elite level hater of P Diddy for quite a while.”
“In plain sight, right under everyone’s nose for years. Finally, though, they’re acting on all of this shit. Much like Epstein, it feels like everyone knew he was on some heinous shit, but no one came forward, cuz he’s so influential.”
“He had like a lot of dirt on everyone through throwing his Diddy parties, so I think that was a big piece of leverage for him and keeping people quiet for so long. But yeah, tons of people knew all about Diddy and the terrible shit.”
One young artist was told to perform sex on Diddy’s bodyguard in exchange for a record contract, only to be told it was a joke just before following through. “Which shows you how things have worked in Hollywood for literally ever. People use the impression of power and access in order to get people to do truly awful things with one another, and celebrities fall right into it, because when you’re a celebrity, they let you do what they want.”
Here’s a much longer Penguinz0 video on Diddy that goes into more details about the allegations, including the car bomb (you would think something like that would attract the attention of the authorities) and other women he’s abused. I haven’t watched all of it, but plunge on in if you need more details of Diddy’s Depravities.
Finally, a video from none other than Ben Shapiro:
“Here is my theory: everyone in Hollywood knew about all of it. And not only do they they know about all of it, they all participated in it. I don’t know what else to take away from many of the pictures of these so-called white parties.”
Video has surfaced of Diddy telling his guests to take their children home so the “real” party could begin.
“And the the pictures of the people who showed up to this thing are just amazing. I mean, he was dating, at one point, Jennifer Lopez from like 99 to 2001. But one picture alone at one white party was Kimora Lee Simmons, Russell Simmons, Damon Dash, Aaliyah, Diddy, Jennifer Lopez, Lisa Zane, Billy Zane, Victor Matthews, Matthew Broderick, Sarah Jessica Parker, Andre Harell and Veronica Webb.”
“Photos of the gatherings are like a time capsule of the late 90s. Howard Stern, Kelly Osborne, Aretha Franklin, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martha Stewart, Jay-Z and Beyonce, Mariah Carey and husband Nick Cannon, Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson, a young Kim Kardashian.”
“The parties were separated into tiers of access. There was general admission, then a series of tiers ending with entrance to the inner sanctum where the real partying went on.”
Khloe Kardashian tells a story on video about attending a party where “half the people were butt naked” and name checks Justin Bieber, “Quincy” (I’m assuming Jones), (Hannah?) Montana, etc. (I apologize. When I began this post, I didn’t realize it would have Kardashians in it…)
Bieber’s presence is not a shock because Diddy was “preying on young men.” There’s a supercringe video where Diddy brags about “hanging out” with Bieber for 48 hours. “We can’t really disclose, but it’s definitely a 15 year old’s dream.” He also talked about having legal guardianship of Usher. “It would be hard to imagine Justin Bieber was not abused by Diddy.”
“Free people of their morality and give them insane levels of power and wealth, and it turns out they do awful things with those things.”
“The story here, once again, is as it was with Jeffrey Epstein. The story about Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t really about Jeffrey Epstein, it was about who’s in the little black book. The story about Diddy here is not just about Diddy being abusive and awful, the story is who knew when and what did they do about it.”
“I don’t know when it became a de rigueur for powerful people in our society to simply go to random drug and sex parties as though this is the late Roman Empire, but that’s effectively what we have here, and again it’s not restricted to Hollywood.”
“We now know that [Dr. Jay Varma], the head of the New York City Health Commission was going to sex and drug parties in the middle of the pandemic in violation of covid protocols that he himself had written.”
The real Diddy story is that we have one of the worst “elite” classes in history.
Did Diddy contribute money to Democrats? Of course he did, but by the standards of celebrity music moguls, the amounts were rather paltry. $1,000 to Hillary Clinton in 1999 (remember how she became a New Yorker to run for the senate?), $2,000 to Al Sharpton in 2003, and $2,900 to Nina Turner (two ran two unsuccessful runs for Ohio’s 11th congressional district) in 2021. (I’m assuming the Sean Combs donations from Ohio, Arkansas and D.C. are from other people, as are the two donations from a Sean Combs in Los Angeles, 90048, because one is listed as “Sean L. Combs” and Diddy’s middle name is John. And I’m betting that Sean L. Combs is pretty pissed at his nomenganger’s crimes right now…)
Bonus from The Babylon Bee: “Justice Department Assures Americans Diddy Is Securely Locked Away In Epstein’s Old Cell.”
Edited to add: Please note that a photo being circulated of Kamala Harris standing with Sean Combs at an awards event is fake, as the original image showed her standing with Montel Williams.
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…
Welcome to spring! More evidence the Biden clan lied under oath, lots of illegal alien news, Ukraine hits more Russian oil refineries, and BlackRock and Planet Fitness enjoy the consequences of getting woke. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
In his opening statement before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, Hunter Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski publicly accused the first son and his uncle, Jim Biden, of lying under oath about the nature of their business dealings with Chinese conglomerate CEFC.
Bobulinski is testifying on Wednesday about the Biden family’s foreign business dealings, the subject of the House GOP’s impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. He testified behind closed doors last month and vividly recalled meeting Hunter, Joe, and James Biden in May 2017 to discuss a proposed joint venture with CEFC.
Bobulinski cited three examples of alleged perjury from Hunter Biden’s sworn testimony last month, accusing Hunter of lying about: the timeline of his business relationship with CEFC, his father’s interactions with his business associates, and the threatening text he sent a Chinese businessman in which he demanded payment and said he was sitting next to his father.
“Hunter Biden gave his transcribed interview to the House Oversight Committee on February 28 and lied throughout his testimony,” Bobulinski said in his written testimony.
Hunter Biden said his work for CEFC began with a retainer in 2017. However, Bobulinski insists, based on conversations he said he had with Hunter, that the Biden business relationship with CEFC goes back further, possibly to Joe Biden’s time as vice president.
Hunter Biden claimed his father never interacted with his son’s business partners and repeatedly denied his father’s involvement in those dealings. However, Hunter Biden confirmed Joe Biden met Bobulinski and multiple foreign business partners, and spoke to business associates on speakerphone.
James Biden denied in his closed-door testimony that he attended that May 2017 meeting, contradicting Hunter’s sworn testimony.
“The sole reason Hunter wanted me to meet his father was because I was the CEO of SinoHawk, the Bidens’ partnership with CEFC. I was a business associate. In his transcript, Hunter confirms that that meeting with Joe took place and incriminates his Uncle Jim for perjury by confirming it,” Bobulinski’s statement reads.
In his written testimony and the opening statement he delivered, Bobulinski also accuses Hunter of lying about the details of a text he sent to a Chinese business associate in July 2017 where he appeared to leverage his father’s influence. Hunter Biden testified that he was embarrassed by the text and claimed he sent it to the wrong Chinese business partner, a person not connected to CEFC.
“He leveraged his father’s presence next to him in that infamous text to strongarm CEFC into paying Hunter immediately,” Bobulinski said.
In March 2017, Hunter Biden’s then-business partner Rob Walker received a $3 million payment from State Energy HK, an account linked to CEFC.
Walker distributed roughly $1 million of the State Energy HK funds to bank accounts linked to Hunter Biden and other members of the Biden family, bank records show. The $3 million wire to Walker took place after Hunter Biden and his business associates held meetings with CEFC and helped explore business deals, according to Walker’s testimony and Hunter Biden’s federal tax indictment. Joe Biden’s vice presidency concluded only weeks before the State Energy HK payment came in.
Bobulinski also accused James Biden of lying under oath about the details of his involvement with Bobulinski and CEFC.
Testifying behind closed doors last month, James Biden repeatedly denied meeting Bobulinski, contradicting the testimony given by Bobulinski and Hunter Biden, according to a transcript of his testimony. Despite being shown exhibits to the contrary, James Biden doubled down on his denial that the May 2017 meeting with Bobulinski and Joe and Hunter Biden took place. Likewise, James Biden denied signing any agreement to get into business with Bobulinski through Oneida Holdings, a holding company created for the CEFC proposal.
When presented with a signed copy of the Oneida agreement, James Biden said he could not recall being part of the Oneida arrangement. The CEFC proposal involving Bobulinski fell apart, and the Bidens entered a separate joint venture with CEFC called Hudson West III to help CEFC explore U.S. energy deals.
“There are many other examples of Hunter’s and Jim’s lies, which I am happy to discuss during my testimony here today, and I hope this Committee will hold them accountable for their perjury before you,” Bobulinski’s written statement adds. When questioned by Republican lawmakers, Bobulinski repeated his accusations Hunter and James Biden committed perjury during their closed-door testimonies last month.
Alongside Bobulinski, imprisoned former Biden associate Jason Galanis is testifying virtually about the business enterprise he worked on with Hunter Biden and other business partners. Galanis’ opening statement on Wednesday mirrors private testimony in which he claimed Joe Biden helped his son finalize deals with Chinese and Russian business partners.
“The entire value-add of Hunter Biden to our business was his family name and his access to his father, Vice President Joe Biden,” Galanis testified. He believes he is risking his safety to testify because of alleged retaliation by the Justice Department during his time in prison for participating in a fraudulent bond scheme.
Bobulinski’s testimony will be no surprise to regular BattleSwarm readers following the scandal.
I’ll confine myself to one typical example, although many could be cited. On page 55 of the transcript, Hur asks Biden in what workspaces he kept documents at the vice president’s residence (the Naval Observatory); Biden’s response runs seven pages — although it was not a sensible response to the very simple question asked.
The president began by recounting that “I was the guy who wrote the Violence Against Women Act”; that agriculture is “a $4 billion industry in Delaware and the Delmarva peninsula”; that in a law-school torts class he was applauded for speaking ten minutes about a case he had not read; that “to make a long story short” he got a job out of law school at a firm in Delaware; and that “to make a long story not quite so long” he participated in a case while he was waiting for his bar results involving “this poor kid [who was] down a hundred-foot vessel, chimney, scraping the hydrogen bubbles off of the inside” but “was wearing the wrong pants, wrong jeans, and he —a spark caught fire and got caught in the containment vessel and he lost part of his penis and one of his testicles and he was 23 years old.” The senior partner told Biden to write a memo supporting a motion to dismiss the case, “and son of a bitch, it prevailed,” whereupon Biden thought “son of a bitch I’m in the wrong business, I’m not made for this.”
Thereupon, the senior partner invited him to go to the Wilmington Club, where “no blacks, Catholics are allowed — have been allowed to be members. The DuPont family name.” (Biden elsewhere in the seven pages repeatedly refers to the DuPont family, whom he describes as “Rockefeller Republicans” highly influential in Delaware.) Biden recalled being so taken aback by the Wilmington Club invitation that, in “the only time I ever lied that I can remember looking somebody in the eye,” he made up a story that his father was coming to visit that day. Then he immediately walked through “the basement on a public building and walked in with a guy named Frank and I said I want a job as a public defender.” This began “what got me — I had been involved in the civil-rights movement. That got me deeply involved in trying to reform the Democratic Party, which was a southern Democratic Party. We were a slave state by law.”
“And the whole point of telling you all this,” he continued, “is that I had a lot of material that I kept notes on” about the Democratic Party. And at that point, when he was 26 or 27 years old, Biden elaborated, “I went to work part time for a criminal-defense firm mainly, a real estate — there were five people. And so I was no longer a public defender. . . .” Then “one thing led to another” and Biden joined a group seeking to reform the Democratic Party. Even though he was young, they wanted him to run for the state senate. But he wanted to start his own law firm instead. “So to make a long story short,” he ended up running for county council, but “wanted to be sure that I was going to lose,” so he ran in a district that no Democrat had ever won. “And I won it. And next thing you know, I’m in a tough position. My generic point was that there was a lot of material that I had amassed that I wanted to save. I probably still have it somewhere. And so that stuff would travel wherever the hell I was.”
At that point, mercifully, Hur interjected, “trying to steer us back to the end of your vice presidency.”
To repeat, what I’ve outlined above comes from a single, uninterrupted, utterly non-responsive answer to a question about where Biden kept documents while living in the Naval Observatory circa 2016.
I would say that Grandpa Simpson is running the country, except it’s his Obama-retread aides who are doing that, and Grandpa Simpson is markedly more focused and coherent than Slow Joe is now. (Hat tip: Powerline.)
A senior official with United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) revealed Wednesday that CBP agents in El Paso arrested a man for attempting to enter the country illegally, and a further search led to the discovery of gang connections and alarming images contained on the man’s phone.
CBP Chief Jason Owens announced the arrest on social media, saying the man was from Colombia and shared images of tattoos that connect him with the Clan Del Gulfo (CDG) cartel.
A federal law, Section 922 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, bars illegal immigrants from carrying guns or ammunition. Prosecutors charged Heriberto Carbajal-Flores, the illegal alien, in 2020 after he was found in Chicago carrying a semi-automatic pistol despite “knowing he was an alien illegally and unlawfully in the United States.”
U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman rejected two motions to dismiss, but the third motion, based on a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, triggered the dismissal of the case on March 8.
“The noncitizen possession statute, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(5), violates the Second Amendment as applied to Carbajal-Flores,” Judge Coleman, appointed under President Barack Obama, wrote in her 8-page ruling. “Thus, the court grants Carbajal-Flores’ motion to dismiss.”
“Tyson closed down a pork plant in Iowa to hire ‘asylum seekers’ in New York. Tyson Foods just axed 1,200 jobs in Perry, Iowa, a town of just a few thousand people, and have moved those jobs, as well as others, to places like New York where they know there are ‘asylum seekers’ ready to replace American workers.”
The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it will impose the strictest vehicle-emissions regulations ever enacted as part of an effort to push the American car industry toward electric vehicles.
The emissions standards, which will cover light-duty vehicles — cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks — are set to apply to models produced from “2027 through 2032 and beyond,” the Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement.
The new rules set targets for the number of electric models produced in the United States as a percentage of all light-duty vehicles created each year. For instance, in 2030, hitting the EPA’s new targets would require somewhere between 31 percent and 44 percent of new cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks to be fully electric, with the exact percentage depending on the amount of emissions from other vehicles.
Though the regulations announced Wednesday are the strictest in the country’s history, they are a step back from the EPA’s April 2023 proposal, at least in terms of the rollout speed. While the target in 2032 is still for carbon emissions to be cut in half from the total produced by cars that went on sale in 2026, the shift will be more gradual than the changes the administration proposed last year and the targets in the earlier years easier to meet.
Another difference is the inclusion of hybrid vehicles. The April 2023 proposal called for two-thirds of cars sold in 2032 to be electric, but the new regulations amend that number to 56 percent of cars sold being electric and another 13 percent hybrid.
The electric car market is already saturated and EV sales are falling. Americans don’t want them, so the Biden administration is going to punish (and possibly destroy) the American car industry in their relentless pursuit of green graft.
“Texas School Fund Divests $8.5 Billion From BlackRock Over Anti-energy Policies. State Board of Education Chairman Aaron Kinsey said BlackRock was not in compliance with new legislation that prohibits state funds from being given to organizations that boycott energy companies.” Good. BlackRock’s “Environmental Social Governance” is bad for investors and bad for America.
2016: 51% young men ID Democrat
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