Posts Tagged ‘Global Engagement Center’
Friday, January 3rd, 2025
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:
Try to contain your shock: The Biden Administration hid the lab leak origins of Flu Manchu.
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.
Mike Johnson reelected as Speaker of the House. And that was after National Review sent out an email that he hadn’t, so there was a bit of confusion around the event. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Powerline illustrates Why Democrats Lost for Dummies.
How DEI is ruining careers in academia.
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.
(Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
Obama’s Ministry of Censorship gets shut down.
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:
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
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…
Ford’s account gets hacked.
John Richardson, of No Lawyers, Only Guns and Money, is a reform candidate for NRA’s board of directors.
Russian SAM system final engages a target it can take down: A Russian helicopter.
Russia loses vehicles in Ukraine every day, but usually they’re not getting stolen. And their troops don’t usually put up missing posters for them…
Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger: “Wikipedia made a real effort at neutrality for I would say its first five years or so, and then it began a long, slow slide into what I would call leftist propaganda.”
The top selling guns of 2024 on GunBroker.com. I actually own the top-selling gun, the Sig Saur P365 9mm, which feels…weird.
Buyer beware: Fake ammo scam. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
It’s easier to get car parts for a 2007 Ferrari 599 than a 2016 Hellcat.
Net Neutrality loses in court again.
Oopsie! “Texas Governor Greg Abbott mistakenly sent a message of condolences to Jimmy Carter’s dead wife.”
Hasbro pimps out D&D for a gambling app. (Hat tip: Clownfish TV.)
Asking biblical questions no one else is asking: “Was Benjamin, Jacob’s youngest son, a werewolf?”
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: .)
“Trump Names Buc-ee’s Beaver Secretary Of Transportation.”
“Biden Finally Claims Title Of Worst Living President.”
“White House Insists Jimmy Carter Is Still Sharp And Focused Behind Closed Doors.”
Wormsign!
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Tags:Austin, Avril Haines, Babylon Bee, Buc-ees, cars, censorship, China, coronavirus, Crime, Daniel Chapo, DEI, dogs, Dungeons and Dragons, Economics, education, Ford, fraud, FRELIMO, gambling, Global Engagement Center, Greg Abbott, Guns, H1B visa, handguns, Hasbro, Jean-Paul Chretien, Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden, John Hardham, John Richardson, Larry Sanger, LinkSwarm, Mason Yancy, media bias, Media Watch, Military, Mozambique, NRA, Obama, open carry, retail sales, Robert Cutlip, Rosalynn Carter, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Sarah Hoyt, scam, Second Amendment, Sig Saur, statistics, Stellantis, supply chain, Tarrant County, Texas, Ukraine, unemployment, werewolves, Wikipedia, Wuhan Institute of Virology
Posted in Austin, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Military | 3 Comments »
Friday, February 23rd, 2024
Lots of travel yesterday and today, so now I’m pooped, so enjoy this slightly shorter than usual LinkSwarm.
“State Department Threatens Congress Over Censorship Programs.”
A year after its censorship programs were exposed, the Global Engagement Center still insists the public has no right to know how it’s spending taxpayer money…
The State Department is so unhappy a newspaper published details about where it’s been spending your taxes, it’s threatened to only show a congressional committee its records in camera until it gets a “better understanding of how the Committee will utilize this sensitive information.” Essentially, Tony Blinken is threatening to take his transparency ball home unless details about what censorship programs he’s sponsoring stop appearing in papers like the Washington Examiner:
The State Department tells Congress, which controls its funding, that it will only disclose where it spent our money “in camera”
A year ago the Examiner published “Disinformation, Inc.”, a series by investigative reporter Gabe Kaminsky describing how the State Department was backing a UK-based agency that creates digital blacklists for disfavored media outlets. Your taxes helped fund the Global Disinformation Index, or GDI, which proudly touts among its services an Orwellian horror called the Dynamic Exclusion List, a digital time-out corner where at least 2,000 websites were put on blast as unsuitable for advertising, “thus disrupting the ad-funded disinformation business model.”
JP Morgan jumps off the Green Nude Eel.
Mega-bank JP Morgan has officially left a $68 trillion investor coalition that is “focused on pressing the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases to decarbonize,” according to Bloomberg.
In other words, the “fight” to decarbonize is imploding.
JP Morgan said it is leaving the Climate Action 100+ because it has “made significant investments in developing its own climate risk engagement framework”, the report says. The bank claims to have 40 professionals now focused on sustainable investing.
And the damage for the Climate Action 100+ may only be getting started. Lance Dial, a Boston-based partner at law firm K&L Gates LLP, told Bloomberg: “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more defections, especially given that there’s now a cost, such as potential litigation, that wasn’t there when companies joined.”
He added: “Attorneys general have subpoenaed firms about their membership of these groups.”
Try to contain your shock, but cell phone data appears to prove Fani Willis and Nathan Wade lied under oath about when they did the nasty. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Remember that Chinese invasion we talked about earlier in the week? Republican U.S. Representative Tony Gonzales thinks it uses Sinaloa cartel.
In FY 2023, over 37,000 illegal Chinese aliens were encountered at the porous southern border, with an additional 20,000 having crossed since October when FY 2024 began. The federal data shows that the United States is seeing foreign invaders from more countries than ever before.
According to Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-Texas), he believes the illegals crossing into California may indeed be staying there, he told the Daily Mail.
“As I’ve spoken to different agencies about why some communities [groups of migrants] to one place and others go another, one: it depends on what cartel controls that pipeline,” Gonzalez said.
‘It’s very clear that the Sinaloa Cartel is the one controlling that operation and sending Chinese more toward the California corridor…California/Arizona corridor that they control. That’s half the equation.’
Another theory: “[Oriel Ortega], the former director of Panama’s border patrol told The Epoch Times that the United Nations’ migration agenda is behind the chaos at the U.S. southern border and that U.N. partners are making things worse instead of better.”
More “refugees” behaving badly, with Eritrean, East African, gangs battling it out at an opera house in The Hague.
Results: “Six of Ohio’s eight largest cities experienced a drop in gun crime after the state allowed its citizens to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.”
Why on earth would Dr. Alexander Eastman, the chief medical officer for Customs and Border Protection pressure his staff to smuggle fentanyl lollipops to a September United Nations General Assembly Meeting in New York? I can think of many possibilities, none of them good…
Shootout between the Mexican Army and Gulf Cartel leaves 12 dead in Miguel Aleman, which is northwest of Laredo.
Contra Costa County Library’s Antioch Branch in California closes due to drug use, robberies and public sex. Libraries have changed a lot since I visited one…
Oopsie!
New AceMagic mini gaming PC comes with something extra. Namely password stealing malware.
Paramount to cut 800 jobs. Hopefully they’re all out of the “Ruining Star Trek” division.
Beach Boy legend Brian Wilson evidently has dementia, and his family is applying for conservatorship.
Speaking of California musicians who may have done drugs, a trial is brewing over who actually owns the handwritten first draft of lyrics for The Eagles “Hotel California.”
I literally searched for “Hotel California Meme” and the Internet did not disappoint.
Tags:Alexander Eastman, Antony Blinken, Border Controls, Brian Wilson, California, China, Constitutional Carry, Contra Costa County, Crime, data security, Democrats, drugs, environmentalism, Fani Willis, Fentanyl, Georgia, Global Engagement Center, Global Warming, green subsidies, Gulf Cartel, Guns, JP Morgan, Laredo, layoffs, LinkSwarm, Media Watch, Mexico, Miguel Aleman, music, Nathan Wade, Netherlands, Oriel Ortega, Panama, Paramount, Sinaloa Drug Cartel, State Department, Texas, The Hague, Tony Gonzales, UN
Posted in Budget, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Global Warming, Guns, Media Watch, Military, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas | 4 Comments »