Happy Friday the 13th! Harris continues to slip behind Trump despite (because?) of their debate on the network of her Best Friend Forever, Haitian immigrants in Ohio accused of eating roof rabbit, Texas blasts Biden Administration overreach (again), Conor McGregor steps into a different kind of ring, a worse than usual remake idea, and American cats meet a variety of grisly ends.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
You know that Harris bounce? Nate Silver says not so much. “I’d also note that Harris’s raw polling averages have DECLINED in most swing states since the start of the DNC. This data is NOT subject to the convention bounce adjustment. She’s had a run of pretty mediocre state polling.”
It’s not surprising that the snap polling, including by groups that conservatives trust, like Trafalgar, is showing that Harris “won” the debate. And I think that’s true. She was more polished, more prepared; she had her canned barbs. But there’s something strange going on here. While she won the debate, Democrats always come across in snap polling as winning the debates. I saw people sharing on X the history of snap polling after debates with Donald Trump, first with Hillary and then with Biden. In every one of those debates—six in total—clear majorities said that Trump lost the debate. I’m not sure what to read into that.
So, it was anger at the moderators, frustration that Trump wasn’t making a lot of the points I thought he could have made, but he was being Trump. And I’ve misjudged his appeal to voters and his electoral success so many times, so it is what it is.
But there’s something else I took away from this—and it’s showing on the screen just to the side of me here. One thing I really noticed throughout was the faces that Harris was making—very condescending, very mocking, very childish, actually. I think that’s the one thing I remember more than anything about the debate.
Now, I think Trump did a very good job, even though he didn’t make the points I thought he could have, like showing how she flip-flopped. He hit hard on the border and the economy, and I think that may have a lasting impact.
What’s showing up in the focus groups—ones I’ve seen not by right-wing groups, but CNN, Reuters, NBC—there seems to be a disconnect between who they think won the debate and how they’re reacting substantively.
Trafalgar was consistent with the others, showing a 15-point win for Harris in terms of who won the debate, but no movement in who people were going to vote for. CNN was interesting—they had an even larger, 20-plus-point win for Harris, but found that on the key issue—voters’ most important issue—the economy, Trump actually improved over pre-debate polling. Similar findings came from Reuters and NBC.
Dana Walden, a senior Disney executive whose portfolio includes ABC News, is one of Vice President Kamala Harris’ “extraordinary friends,” according to a report in the New York Times.
Walden and Harris have known each other since 1994, while their husbands, Matt Walden and Doug Emhoff, have known each other since the 1980s.
Dana Walden has donated to dozens of Democrats and contributed to Harris’ political campaigns since at least 2003, when she ran for district attorney in San Francisco.
While the legacy media has yet to find any evidence of pet consumption that it’s willing to accept, there are some much larger issues regarding the crisis that has been created in Springfield through the importation of nearly 20,000 Haitian illegals.
Former Ohio State Representative Kyle Koehler has sounded a warning regarding the consequences that have followed the Biden administration’s policy that gave temporary protected status to more than 100,000 Haitian migrants, including those relocated to Springfield.
BREAKING:
Former Ohio State Rep. Kyle Koehler (@repkoehler) has made SHOCKING revelations about the illegal Haitian crisis in Springfield, Ohio during a recent speech.
1.) The Haitian illegals in Ohio are given $600-$1600 per month on Debit Cards through the Refugee Cash… pic.twitter.com/aWDyVcx7b3
Among the concerns raised by Koehler are the strain on the local school system with more than 1,600 non-English speaking students now enrolled and Haitian refugees who are 20 years old being placed Freshman High School classrooms with 13 year old kids.
Koehler also voiced concern over an individual who is renting his 63 homes to the relocated Haitians for as little as $250 per month, with 20-25 individuals living in each home.
Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) has also weighed in on the controversy, saying that he too has heard from Springfield residents complaining that pets and wildlife were being abducted and that health services are being severely strained by an influx of individuals with communicable diseases like TB and HIV.
The community of 60,000 residents is clearly facing serious issues related to the open border policies of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
When tales of Haitian immigrants eating cats emerged on social media this week, it suddenly focused attention on the city of Springfield, Ohio, but now we are learning there’s more to the story:
“Those 20,000 Haitians did not show up overnight or uninvited. Though flown in by the federal government, they were not forced on the city by the federal government. Elections have consequences. Springfield voted for this. They signaled their virtue, their signal was seen, and virtue arrived. This is what they wanted. This is what they got. They’ll have to deal with the consequences.”
(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Much commentary has focused on whether it’s true that pets are being killed and eaten by the Haitians, but that’s not really the point. The point is why Springfield became the destination for thousands of Haitians (who may or may not eat cats).
It’s a long story. First of all, you’ll find liberals insisting that these Haitians are not illegal immigrants. Research further, however, and you learn that most of them entered the country illegally, crossing the U.S.-Mexico border after making their way through Central America. After Haiti descended into its latest crisis, the Biden administration granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to all Haitians in the U.S., so you may say that they have been retroactively (but temporarily) “legalized.”
Now let’s talk about Springfield, which is a “blue” island of liberalism in a sea of Republican “red.” Ohio was once a battleground state, closely contested in every presidential election, and then Trump came along and the Buckeye State has now become a GOP stronghold. Springfield was a city of 58,662 residents before the Haitian influx, and the city sits in Clark County (population 136,000) which voted 61% for Trump in 2020.
You see that, if the Democrats can turn these Haitians into voters, they can make Clark County “blue,” and a similar calculus is being applied nationwide by the Biden administration’s immigration policy. Democrats insist that the “Great Replacement” is a right-wing conspiracy theory, but we can see them doing it — blatantly, deliberately, in front of our eyes — in places like Springfield. And this brings us to the late Warren Copeland.
For most of the past three decades, Copeland was the mayor of Springfield. He was a professor at Wittenberg University, a local institution affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Anyone who knows anything about the ELCA will tell you it is the pluperfect example of degenerate liberal Protestantism. “The ELCA has drifted so far into pagan goddess worship that to call it ‘Lutheranism’ is an insult to Luther; to call it ‘Christian’ is blasphemy,” as I wrote in 2016. Copeland was a radical obsessed with “social justice,” and the fact that Springfield repeatedly elected him as their mayor tells you something about the politics of the city. Indeed, Springfield eagerly welcomed the influx of Haitians. Read this article from December 2022:
A surge in the number of Springfield residents from Haiti has resulted in an outpouring of language assistance and additional forms of help from the Springfield City School District and others who are trying to meet their needs.
Social Justice destroys everything it touches.
Citizens have questions to City Council about vetting of Haitian refugees in Sylacauga, Alabama. City Council: “Meeting adjourned.”
For the first time in EU history, Germany is at the forefront of immigration suspension. Other EU countries will follow.
The Schengen Area…is an area encompassing 29 European countries that have officially abolished border controls at their mutual borders.
Reuters reports Germany Tightens Controls at All Borders in Immigration Crackdown.
Germany’s government announced plans to impose tighter controls at all of the country’s land borders in what it called an attempt to tackle irregular migration and protect the public from threats such as Islamist extremism.
The controls within what is normally a wide area of free movement – the European Schengen zone – will start on Sept. 16 and initially last for six months, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on Monday.
The government has also designed a scheme enabling authorities to reject more migrants directly at German borders, Faeser said, without adding details on the controversial and legally fraught move.
The restrictions are part of a series of measures Germany has taken to toughen its stance on irregular migration in recent years following a surge in arrivals, in particular people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East.
Recent deadly knife attacks in which the suspects were asylum seekers have stoked concerns over immigration. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a knife attack in the western city of Solingen that killed three people in August.
Polls show it is also voters’ top concern in the state of Brandenburg, which is set to hold elections in two weeks.
Scholz and Faeser’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) are fighting to retain control of the government there, in a vote billed as a test of strength of the SPD ahead of next year’s federal election.
“The intention of the government seems to be to show symbolically to Germans and potential migrants that the latter are no longer wanted here,” said Marcus Engler at the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research.
Seems like Germans are getting tired of all that vibrant raping and stabbing diversity…
On Wednesday, a federal court ruled in favor of Elon Musk’s X Corp in its case challenging California’s content moderation laws, citing free speech violations. X Corp filed a lawsuit to block the controversial law, which took effect on January 1, 2024.
The legislation requires social media companies to disclose details of their content moderation policies to the state or face civil penalties.
The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned a previous lower court’s decision that ruled against pausing enforcement of the state law. The panel of three judges decided the law facially violated the First Amendment, Reuters reported.
“X Corp. is likely to succeed in showing that the Content Category Report provisions facially violate the First Amendment,” Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr. wrote in his case opinion.
In the complaint filed in Sept. 2023, X Corporation argued that Assembly Bill 587 violates the company’s First Amendment rights because it pressures “companies such as X Corp. to remove, demonetize, or deprioritize constitutionally-protected speech that the State deems undesirable or harmful” which “interferes with the constitutionally-protected editorial judgments” of the company.
For free speech advocates, we often feel that other citizens have become passive observers as an anti-free speech movement grows around us, threatening our “indispensable right.”
One of the most infamous figures in this movement has been former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has long been the smiling face of censorship. As the head of the Labour Party, Blair pushed through some of the early crackdowns on free speech in the United Kingdom. He is now calling for global censorship to expand these efforts.
In an interview on LBC Radio, Blair declared:
“The world is going to have to come together and agree on some rules around social media platforms. It’s not just how people can provoke hostility and hatred but I think… the impact on young people particularly when they’ve got access to mobile phones very young and they are reading a whole lot of stuff and receiving a whole lot of stuff that I think is really messing with their minds in a big way.”
Remember, when the want to crackdown on “misinformation,” the sort of things they want to ban are opinions contrary to their social justice agenda. Such as “the Chinese coronavirus came from a lab” or “there are only two biological sexes.”
More of that voting fraud Democrats swear doesn’t exist. “Illegal Alien Charged With Stealing U.S. Citizen’s Identity to Vote in Elections. She voted in the 2016 and 2020 primaries and general elections.”
The Biden Administration wants Texas to cede Fronton Island to federal control. Texas Governor Greg Abbott told them to get stuffed.
I am in receipt of a letter from the U.S. section of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) to the Texas General Land Office (GLO) … given that it concerns actions taken under Operation Lone Star to secure Texas’ southern border around Fronton Island against the ongoing invasion of Texas by transnational criminal cartels — a crisis created and incentivized by your Administration,” Abbott wrote.
Abbott added that the letter “alleges that GLO has altered the flow of the Rio Grande by engaging in activities on Fronton Island without USIBWC’s approval.”
“It also alleges that [the] GLO trespassed on federal land in the process of facilitating cleanup and security efforts on the Island … That agency responded in a letter … detailing that GLO has not engaged in construction activities at all, and, in any event, Fronton Island is state-owned land.”
Abbott then responded to the United States Section of the International Boundary and Water Commissioner Maria-Elena Giner’s request that Fronton Island be returned to its pre-construction conditions: “You are either unaware of, or indifferent to, what those ‘pre-construction conditions’ were.”
Before Texas secured Fronton Island, Abbott wrote, “[T]ransnational criminal cartels had assumed practical control of the densely vegetated Island and used it to terrorize Texas communities.”
He recounted occasions when authorities found the criminal cartels to be using the “thick vegetation” to “stash weapons, plant explosives, evade apprehension, and engage in open warfare against rival cartels and against state and federal officers.”
“Are you aware that your appointee is asking Texas to return grenades and rocket launchers along with IEDs to the Island?” he asked the Biden administration.
Abbott continued, “Your open-border policies have allowed an invasion at the southern border and incentivized criminal activity that threatens the lives of Texas law enforcement, soldiers, and citizens.”
“Yet … the federal government has refused to enforce federal laws — even in dangerous areas like Fronton Island.”
“I determined that Texas could not ignore an ongoing invasion of its sovereign territory,” Abbott said of his decision on October 5, 2023 to move a “heavily armed invasion force” onto Fronton Island.
He then addressed USIBWC’s complaint that Texas had built “two sediment bridges.”
“Your Administration’s letter betrays a basic misunderstanding of facts on the ground, and its claims are unsupported by either science or common sense.”
Dwight has been sending me tidbits on the ongoing meltdown among government officials in New York City following FBI raids. Like this: “Paranoid police officials meeting in parking lots as fed raids leave NYPD, City Hall in shock.” “Law enforcement sources telling The Post that they’re afraid NYPD headquarters is bugged and their words are being recorded.” Plus New York City Mayor Eric Adams evidently has several burner phones, which is both highly suspicious and probably justified. And since Adams is reportedly using the messaging app Signal, presumably they’re modern Android or iPhones, which are: A.) More expensive than classic burner phones, and B.) Probably not conducive to quick SIM card swaps, ala Stringer Bell on The Wire.
Anyway, NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban just resigned.
Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori dead at 86. Fujimori revived Peru’s economy and destroyed the Maoist Shining Path guerillas, but in the end he too fell prey to Peru’s long history of government abuse of power and corruption. In the end, he too was corrupt and committed human rights abuses…and was still arguably the most successful (and important) President in Peru’s troubled history.
“The head of the UN wants to create a fake bank that will circumvent EU and US sanctions against Russian banks.”
Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham pushed back against a Biden-Harris administration proposal to “lease nearly 150,000 offshore acres to an energy company (Hecate Energy) with no experience in wind projects.” But it’s easy to understand why the Biden Administration wants to hand the assignment to Hecate: They donate lots of money to Democrats.
Alan Dershowitz announces he’s leaving the Democratic Party over its “anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, anti-Zionist convention.” One wonders what took him so long.
Remember Taral Patel the Ft. Bend democrat who faked hate crimes against himself? Now he’s facing even more felony charges. “Last week a grand jury indicted him on four felony counts of Online Impersonation and four misdemeanor charges including Online Impersonation and Misrepresentation of Identity with intent to ‘harm.'”
Self-cleaning litter box has the unfortunate downside of killing your cat.
Rick Beato interviews bassist Tony Levin of Peter Gabriel and King Crimson fame. It’s an interesting interview, especially the part about how he sold all his stuff to go on tour with Buddy Rich, only to find out that Rich’s old bassist had agreed to come back, so he was out of a job…
“Optronic Technologies, Inc., better known to backyard astronomers as the parent company of both Orion Telescopes & Binoculars and Meade Instruments, has shut its offices and storefront in Watsonville, California.” Actual manufacturing was done in Tijuana, so I’m not sure how much California’s new minimum wage law had an effect.
There are rumors that Barbie director Greta Gerwig wants to make an all female Fight Club remake. That’s about as good an idea as an all-male reboot of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
Comedian Kevin Hart’s chain of vegetarian restaurants in LA closed down. 1. How’s that minimum wage working out for you, California? 2. Vegetarian restaurants aren’t even profitable in LA. 3. Stick to comedy. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
It may be a stretch to say that everyone’s favorite bombastic Brit petrolhead-turned-farmer is saving UK farming, but he certainly seems to have drawn attention to its post-Brexit, regulation-strangled plight.
“In 2008, during the peak of Top Gear, Jeremy bought a thousand acres of land and farm called Curdle Hill Farm in Oxfordshire England, near Chipping Norton in the Cotswalds. The land came up for sale during the 2008 financial crash and was going for a lot cheaper than usual. When I say ‘cheaper,’ I mean £4.25 million.”
Clarkson: “The truth of the matter was that land almost never comes up for sale around here, and 2008 was the big financial crash, and this came up for sale, and I just thought ‘nobody’s making more land,’ so many people are moving out from London. But it was a lot, lot, lot, lot, lot less then, so I just thought ‘may as well get it.'”
Also for something to leave to his children, since you don’t pay estate taxes on agricultural land.
The guy Clarkson was paying to farm the land for him retired in 2019. That and Flu Manchu gave birth to Jeremy Clarkson, Novice Farmer and newly rechristened Diddly Squat Farm.
I’m going to skip over the details of his farmhouse renovation…
…and note that the new house has a basement theater, among other amenities, so he’s not exactly roughing it.
“Due to the weather, the farm’s crops brought in £90,000 less than the previous year, leaving them with only a profit of £144.”
“When the show released the following year Clarkson’s Farm became the most watched Prime Video Original Series in the UK.” It’s also been at the top of the ratings heap in the U.S. as well, getting much better ratings than things like The Rings of Power, which has to be something like one or even two orders of magnitude more expensive to film.
Clarkson: “What’s happening to farming in this country is ethnic cleansing. That’s a strong thing to say, but it sort of is happening. The government is trying, really, to drive farmers off their land.”
“In five years, the subsidies, the grants, are stopping, so farms have to think of new ways of making money.”
Another farmer: “Most farmers like me are 66 years old. We’re throwing in the towel. Let’s just take the government money. It won’t be our problem if people starve.”
“We’ve been paid to grow wild flowers. We need to have food produced and made in the UK, but people say well we can import from aboard. The same madness is happening in Europe, they’re asking farmers to plant wild flowers instead of food.” This appears to be done under a Sustainable Farming Incentive program, which offers subsidies for “Flower-rich grass margins, blocks, or in-field strips” and “Herbal leys.”
One of the continuing plotlines on Clarkson’s Farm is how the local council opposes every single one of Clarkeson’s money-making farm enhancements in the name of “tradition,” from a farm shop selling locale produce to a restaurant using the farm’s ingredients. This makes for great TV, but I can only imagine how difficult such a battle would be for a farmer without Clarkeson’s fame and resources.
“Clarkson has done more for the farming community to bring attention to their case with just two seasons than any farming organization has done in decades.”
“Farmers across the world have praised the show for highlighting the struggles they have to go through.”
“The many bases that this show covers is pretty incredible, from animal conservation, bureaucratic jargon, climate change, and just generally detailing how difficult it is to run a farm, especially in these current times.”
“It’s educated the masses about an industry that gets easily neglected, despite its glaringly obvious necessity.”
Someone needs to save farmers, not just in the UK but here as well, from the global warming fanatics who would drive them out of business.
Farmers blockaded Paris to protest the impossible mandates being handed down to them by both Paris and the EU in the name of fighting “global warming.”
“Farmers are laying siege to Paris, as they put it, at eight points around the capital. And they say they won’t budge until the government gives them more concessions.”
“We need one of our French celebrities to do the same thing as Jeremy Clarkson.”
He said Clarkson “exposed the red tape in relation to the environment. Everything he explained, we’re going through in France.”
“It’s about bureaucracy, it’s about the European Union.”
He says farmers in the UK are still waiting for promised post-Brexit support.
“Everything in relations to environmental requirements is exactly the same in France, maybe even worse.”
“We are fed up with the admin, which is excessive in our country with regards to our work, the red tape that France adds in addition to the EU requirements.”
The farmer interviewed says they (i.e. FNSEA, the largest French farming union) have a list of 140 demands. Try as I might, I can’t find a list of those demands, in English or even French. This seems to hit on key grievances, but there’s a fair amount of highfalutin generalities in the English translation. This seems to be a key point: “In Europe, the very philosophy of the Green deal which assumes degrowth needs to be reviewed to restore visibility to farmers.”
If previous demands from other Eurostrikers are any guide, the demands are probably a mix of good (stop with the green insanity, lower taxes and eliminate red tape) and bad (more subsidies).
The French farmers said President Emmanuel Macron’s government now needed to act fast on its pledges, which have included scrapping plans to raise tax contributions on tractor diesel, an easing of pesticide regulations, a pause on new fallow land rules, and more safety checks on food imports.
If you had told some one five years ago that “French farmers will be hailing Jeremy Clarkson as a hero,” no one would have believed you…
Here’s Texas Scorecard’s roundup, with input from Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, True Texas Project, and the Huffines Liberty Foundation and links to Texas Legislative Council Analysis of the amendments. The Texan also has a roundup.
Here’s my quick and dirty list of propositions and recommendations.
Proposition 1 (HJR 126): Protecting the right to engage in farming, ranching, timber production, horticulture, and wildlife management. This is the “right to farm” bill, which provides a bulwark against local, state and federal interference in food-growing activities, such as were messed with by some states during the 2020 Flu-Manchu panic (such as Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer banning seed sales. And remember, such interference in people growing food on their own land was blessed by the Supreme Court in Wickard vs. Flburn. Recommendation: Vote FOR Proposition 1.
Proposition 2 (SJR 64): Authorizing a local option exemption from ad valorem taxation by a county or municipality of all or part of the appraised value of real property used to operate a child-care facility. Another subsidy for a favored industry. Recommendation: Vote AGAINST Proposition 2.
Proposition 3 (HJR 132): Prohibiting the imposition of an individual wealth or net worth tax, including a tax on the difference between the assets and liabilities of an individual or family. A wealth tax is total commie bullshit. Recommendation: Vote FOR Proposition 3.
Proposition 4 (HJR 2 from the second special session): Authorizing the legislature to establish a temporary limit on the maximum appraised value of real property other than a residence homestead for ad valorem tax purposes; to increase the amount of the exemption from ad valorem taxation by a school district applicable to residence homesteads from $40,000 to $100,000; to adjust the amount of the limitation on school district ad valorem taxes imposed on the residence homesteads of the elderly or disabled to reflect increases in certain exemption amounts; to except certain appropriations to pay for ad valorem tax relief from the constitutional limitation on the rate of growth of appropriations; and to authorize the legislature to provide for a four-year term of office for a member of the board of directors of certain appraisal districts. Well, that’s a mouthful. I don’t care for the little unrelated special interest payoff shoved in at the end, but do appreciate the tax relief, temporary though it may be. Recommendation: Vote FOR Proposition 4.
Proposition 5 (HJR 3): Relating to the Texas University Fund, which provides funding to certain institutions of higher education to achieve national prominence as major research universities and drive the state economy. Our social justice-infected universities need less money, not more, and if they’re not willing to give up being factories for radical leftwing indoctrination, they need hard reboots. Recommendation: Vote AGAINST Proposition 5.
Proposition 6 (SJR 75): Creating the Texas water fund to assist in financing water projects in this state. While there’s a need for various water projects around the state, “creating fund X administered by agency Y for the benefit of entity Z” type schemes always offer the opportunity of abuse, and the principle of subsidiarity demands that local entities pay for their own damn water projects, not rely on off-general budget slush funds. Recommendation: Vote AGAINST Proposition 6.
Proposition 7 (SJR 93): Providing for the creation of the Texas energy fund to support the construction, maintenance, modernization, and operation of electric generating facilities. While Texas needs more reliable grid, I see nothing about this proposition that would prevent the fund from being used to subsidize more of the unreliable “green” energy lawmakers already seem to love subsidizing. To quote the Huffines Foundation: “Proposition 7 would increase the cost of electricity without improving the reliability of the electric grid. It would also accelerate the trend toward ending market competition and putting Texas politicians and bureaucrats in control of the Texas electricity market. Texans should reject more subsidies for electric generators and let politicians know that grid reliability should be increased by ending renewable energy subsidies.” Recommendation: Vote AGAINST Proposition 7.
Proposition 8 (HJR 125): Creating the broadband infrastructure fund to expand high-speed broadband access and assist in the financing of connectivity projects. More corporate welfare for things the state shouldn’t be subsidizing. Recommendation: Vote AGAINST Proposition 8.
Proposition 9 (HJR 2 from the regular session): Authorizing the 88th Legislature to provide a cost-of-living adjustment to certain annuitants of the Teacher Retirement System of Texas. TFR and TTP came out as neutral. While not philosophically opposed, I suggest voting against until there’s an outside audit to confirm that none of this money is being siphoned off into ESG investing. Recommendation: Vote AGAINST Proposition 9.
Proposition 10 (SJR 87): Authorizing the legislature to exempt from ad valorem taxation equipment or inventory held by a manufacturer of medical or biomedical products to protect the Texas healthcare network and strengthen our medical supply chain. More special interests carveouts. Vote AGAINST Proposition 10.
Proposition 11 (SJR 32): Authorizing the legislature to permit conservation and reclamation districts in El Paso County to issue bonds supported by ad valorem taxes to fund the development and maintenance of parks and recreational facilities. El Paso should pay for it’s parks out of general funds, not bonds, since parks don’t generate revenue to pay back bonds. Vote AGAINST Proposition 10.
Proposition 12 (HJR 134): Providing for the abolition of the office of county treasurer in Galveston County. Normally, I’d be for anything that eliminates a government official. But there’s this from TTP: “AGAINST –The current Treasurer campaigned on a promise to eliminate his position, which prompted this legislative action. Since one less government position means less government, we initially supported this amendment. However, we then heard from many conservative activists in the Galveston area who said they don’t want the position to be dissolved because there will be no more accountability to the office and it will be handed to cronies.” I sort of believe this, since my late uncle (who ran a restaurant there) said Galveston was corrupt from top to bottom. No recommendation.
Proposition 13 (HJR 107): Increasing the mandatory age of retirement for state justices and judges. AGAINST. Turnover at least offers the opportunity of breaking up entrenched power.
Proposition 14 (SJR 74): Providing for the creation of the centennial parks conservation fund to be used for the creation and improvement of state parks. More off-budget shenanigans. Vote AGAINST Proposition 12.
Williamson County early voting locations can be found here. Travis County early voting locations can be found here.
A Chinese company based out of Hong Kong which paid at least $3 million to several members of the Biden family has since been revealed to have ties with the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
According to the Daily Caller, State Energy HK Limited sent $3 million via wire transfer to Robinson Walker LLC, a company run by an associate of the Biden family named John Robinson Walker. The wire transfer took place in March of 2017, shortly after Joe Biden’s term as Vice President came to an end, according to a report released on Thursday by the House Oversight Committee.
One of the direct subsidiaries of State Energy HK is State Energy Group International Assets Holdings Limited (SEIAH). At the time of the wire transfer, SEIAH’s chairman was Ren Qingxin, who previously worked for the CCP as a representative at a business organization.
Shortly after the $3 million transfer, Ren was succeeded in his leadership position by Lei Donghui, who had been a member of the CCP since 2002, where he served as Secretary General of the International Engineering Business Bureau of China State Construction (CSC). CSC has since been designated by the Department of Defense as a “Communist China military company.”
Subsequently, the $3 million sent to Robinson Walker was then transferred to four different members of the Biden family: Joe Biden’s son Hunter, brother James, daughter-in-law Hallie, and a fourth unidentified family member, the Oversight Committee reports. The transfers were sent in several transactions, both to the family members directly and to several of their companies, including Owasco PC, JBBSR Inc, and RSTP II, LLC.
The previously-unknown involvement of Hallie – the widow of Biden’s elder son Beau, who later became Hunter’s girlfriend after Beau’s death – has proven to be one of the biggest bombshells yet in the GOP’s investigations into Biden family corruption.
Dutch Farmer’s Party poised to win 16 or 17 seats in parliament thanks to opposing that country’s mad global warming anti-meat mandates. “The Boer-Burger Beweging (BBB), or Farmer-Citizen Movement, is set to become the largest party in the country’s senate, winning more seats than Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s ruling conservative VVD party.”
Red Guards come to Maine. “Kristen Day said students affiliated with one of RSU 14’s Civil Rights Teams harassed her daughter. When her daughter refused to speak about her sexuality, two students affiliated with the club began to bully her and call her homophobic.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Eric Weinstein on Joe Rogan about what really happened with Kayne West. He suggests that West’s Hitler comments were simply him trying to channel Thomas à Kempis.
Daily Mail online carried a headline on the 8th of June: Healthy young people are dying suddenly and unexpectedly from a mysterious syndrome – as doctors seek answers through a new national register.
This is SADS – an acronym that stands for Sudden Adult Death Syndrome – and according to the Royal Australian College of GPs, it occurs most commonly in people under 40. This is properly scary; I don’t mind telling you. Healthy young people are going to their beds of an evening and not waking up ever again, or otherwise going about their everyday business and dropping dead, for no identifiable medical reason.
The best anyone in the health professions can apparently do is describe it as mysterious, baffling even, that there are people under 40 dropping in their traces for no known cause. At the same time, around the world, there have been reports of many hundreds of sports men and women dying suddenly and unexpectedly in the past year – super fit individuals uniquely focused on their own health – keeling over dead, often on the field of play.
Here at home we have had updated information campaigns about how important it is to be aware of the incidence of heart attacks and strokes. It has been deemed appropriate to remind us as well that heart attacks are not unknown in children. It’s almost as if we’re not to be unduly alarmed by the sight of passers-by dropping to their knees and clutching at their chests. Elsewhere there is a poster campaign about a rise in the number of cases of shingles. The small print on the posters mentions shingles may strike people with lowered immune systems. Fancy that.
Deaths have been attributed by coroners to the Covid vaccines. The numbers are disputed, but people have died on account of the jabs. That much at least is undeniable. Around the world there are millions of cases of alleged adverse reactions to the jabs – lives severely compromised in some cases. I won’t get into the numbers, because those are always disputed too – but the facts remain. People are dying.
The elephant in the room here is the Covid-19 vaccines – and again I make no apology at all about banging on about this topic week after week. The push to move on, to leave all talk of Covid and pandemic behind us, is palpable and, I would say, downright sinister. I am nowhere near ready to move on – not while there is still so much we do not know, so much we are not allowed to say, think and ask.
We are told all about Covid 19 – and all manner of ways in which it might affect health long after a person has recovered from the initial infection. But as well as the pandemic, the other momentous arrival among us – indeed in just the past year and a half – is the biggest mass vaccination campaign in the history of the world – vaccination with products that had emergency approval, but in my opinion are experimental and for which no long-term data is available – on account of their being brand new and just out of the box.
Billions of people around the world have submitted to the procedure. In a coercive and bullying atmosphere created by politicians and the media, that was mandatory in feel, if not in fact, unknown and unknowable numbers of people did so simply to keep their jobs, to get on a plane and go on holiday or to a gig – and yet in the midst of one report after another of otherwise unexplained sudden deaths in the past 18 months or so, the only emergent variable, the only new thing in the world that we are not allowed to discuss, absolutely not allowed to discuss far less point accusatory fingers at, is the mass vaccination programme.
Again, I ask the question I posed at the top of this piece – are we stupid? Or are we just being treated as if we’re stupid? Which is it?
Sri Lanka was a product of that government following, you know, the the madness of [World Economic Forum] inspired policies: Net Zero, the stripping of fertilizers, and all the rest of it…wholesale strife, collapsing crops and all the rest of it. You would think in a sane world the politicians in each of the countries would respond to the people, but I suspect they won’t. We saw something similar in Canada with the trucker’s freedom convoys, but look what happened there. Obviously Justin Trudeau was was told to get a grip of that situation. He clamped down on it violently, arrested bank accounts and took away the funding for that movement.
Bit on Sri Lanka skipped.
I think what you’re looking at in The Netherlands, for example, is the deliberate dismantling of the land owning class. 85% percent of the of the land in The Netherlands is held by farmers, and has been for generations, and that’s an inconvenient situation for globalist leftist politicians who’ve got other ideas for the land, which is specifically to build houses to cope with the with the levels of immigration that are going on. They’ve empowered themselves the politicians to help themselves to 30 percent of the Dutch farmer’s land, and surprise, surprise! Just as I suspect you would or I would, if the government came into our homes and said they were taking 30% everything we had we owned and had worked for, the farmers have said no…It’s a blatant land grab.
It gets harder and harder to ignore the intent by by leftist globalist governments to return us to some form of feudalism. All these people like us owning property, owning homes, living lives independent of the state. You know what the intention is there, to take people’s independence away. Take away their property, take away the land, and if you control the farmland, you control the food. And if you control the food, you control the people. So you can plainly see what the agenda is.
One need not agree with every one of Oliver’s conclusions to agree that the pattern he deduces, of elites acting against the best interests of the countries they govern and the people they ostensibly serve, seems very real.
This is a small rabbit hole that proved more interesting than I thought.
I’m on all sorts of auction mailing lists because I buy and sell science fiction first editions, but on some of the aggregate mailing lists, things other than books show up. One auction was for a piece of farm equipment called a tedder, and since I had no idea what a tedder is I did some research. It turns out it’s a tool made in making hay, specifically one to spread out the hay for drying and uniformity before the actual baling operation.
Since I didn’t know the details of how baling works, I went searching for some videos on it. I came across this video on the economics of baling hay on a ranch in Wyoming, where the cold weather and low precipitation means the window for baling is very short.
Ironically, maybe because of the low precipitation, he doesn’t seem to use a tedder…
Five of the top ten U.S. cities in economic growth in 2014 were in Texas: Austin, Houston, Ft. Worth. Dallas and San Antonio. (There were also two in California: San Francisco and San Jose.)
The Texas Comptroller has released the Biennial Revenue Estimate 2016-2017, which estimates $113 billion in general revenue-related funds available. The report details also notes that “In the past six years, Texas created two-thirds of all net new jobs in the U.S.”
By contrast, with the California budget more or less temporarily balanced, Democrats want to start spending like drunken sailors with a stolen credit card again. Legislative analyst: You don’t want to do that.
The average CalPERS pension is up to five times comparable Social Security payouts.
Jerry Brown says he wants to tackle California’s pension crisis. Good luck with that. While Brown has occasionally been willing to buck his party, and may feel he has nothing to lose in his last term, there’s no reason to believe the Democrat-dominated state House and Senate share his sentiments. I predict a few cosmetic measures passing combined with a whole lot more can kicking until actual default looms. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
BREAKING:
(@EvanAKilgore) September 9, 2024
