We’re in the last stretch of the 2024 campaign, Joe Rogan did a great interview with J. D. Vance, all sorts of sketchy voting problems surface, IDF dirtnaps another Hamas terrorist scumbbag, Nvidia replaces Intel, and influencers prioritize selfies over survival. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Joe Rogan did a really great interview with J.D. Vance. The Trump interview was good, but Trump did his usual looping and weaving thing. Vance comes across as not only smart and confident, but seems (unlike Kamala Harris) extremely comfortable in his own skin.
A large number of suspicious voter registration applications were dropped off at the county elections office near Monday’s deadline, county officials said. An investigation by the district attorney’s office found incorrect addresses, false identification information, false names and names that did not match Social Security information.
Shenanigans: “Kentucky County Clerk Confirms Voting Booth ‘Glitch’ Shifted Trump Votes To Kamala.”
A victory. “Supreme Court Allows Virginia to Remove Noncitizens from Voter Rolls before Election.”
We’ve passed the peak of woke politics in the U.S., and the Harris for president campaign is the leading indicator.
Of all the things that Kamala Harris wants you to know about her — that she grew up in a middle-class family, that she’s not Joe Biden, that she has a “to-do list” for the American people — perhaps foremost among them is that she’s not woke.
She doesn’t have any rote line asserting this, but achieving distance from the fashionable left-wing politics that defined the Trump years and their immediate aftermath motivates much of what she says and does.
That Harris now feels compelled to disavow so many of the ideas that she once embraced is powerful testament to their political toxicity.
An idea has won or lost in American politics when both parties favor or oppose it, or simply don’t want to fight over it anymore. Ronald Regan’s economics truly prevailed when the Democratic Party, via Bill Clinton in the early 1990s, accepted his basic approach. Gay marriage won politically when Republicans decided to stop talking about the issue.
By this standard, woke attitudes and policies are in marked decline, and Kamala Harris is Exhibit A.
Except for her abortion radicalism, she’s turned her back on much of what she once professed to believe or sympathize with.
Defund the police? Absolutely not.
Abolish ICE? No way.
DEI? Haven’t heard of it.
Medicare for all? That was a long time ago.
The Green New Deal? Let’s not get carried away.
She has backed off her extravagant positions on the trans issue and the border. She now insists that rather than pushing the envelope on either, she simply wants to follow the law. You could be forgiven for thinking the only pronouns she knows are she/her and he/him.
Harris doesn’t bring up identity politics at all. Not only does she not talk about the once-ubiquitous concepts of white privilege or “equity,” she doesn’t even talk about breaking the glass ceiling or the history-making nature of her candidacy. Listening to her campaign, you’d have no idea that the twin -isms, racism and sexism, have been consuming obsessions of the Left for years now.
But if she gets elected, just like Obama, she’ll abandon all of her moderate positions and rush back to her radical roots.
Former President Donald Trump says that if reelected, he’ll create a government efficiency task force — and that Elon Musk has already agreed to lead it. During a speech in New York on Thursday, Trump said the new efficiency commission would conduct a “complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government” and make recommendations for “drastic reforms.”
I hope Musk gets out a big axe and that the Trump Administration actually balances the budget. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
The Green New Scam is dying. Color me skeptical as long as there’s graft to rake off…
Who watches the watchmen? “Eagle Pass Detective Sentenced to 10 Years for Hiding Illegal Aliens in Rental Properties. Hazel Eileen Diaz ran stash houses for a human smuggling organization.”
The IDF eliminated Hamas’s National Relations head Izz al-Din Kassab on Friday in Khan Yunis, Gaza, who was also one of the last remaining members of the terrorist organization’s political bureau still inside the Palestinian enclave.
The strike that killed Kassab was completed based on IDF and ISA intelligence. His assistant Ayman Ayesh was also killed in the strike.
He was also responsible for Hamas’s relations and cooperation, whether strategic or military, with other terrorist organizations within the Gaza Strip such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The rise and fall of China’s “mistress villages.” Bonus: The Hong Kong businessmen who used to keep mistresses in Shinjin are now evidently buying houses for a new generation of them in the Rowland Heights area of Los Angeles…
Rapper and big money Cook County Democratic Party donator Lil Durk, AKA Durk Devontay Banks, has been arrested in a murder-for-hire scheme against a fellow rapper. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Records show the investment arm of two major Texas universities bought shares in more than 50 Chinese companies.
On September 23, the American Accountability Foundation exposed how the University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Company’s asset managers advanced leftist ideology through their shareholder resolutions.
On October 17, UTIMCO President and CEO Richard Hall told state senators that he was “not happy with those votes” and the firm “would do better.”
However, a deeper dive into the records AAF acquired also revealed concerning investments. According to records, UTIMCO has invested money in Chinese companies.
UTIMCO allocated some of its assets to the following entities: Connor, Clark & Lunn Investment Management, JP Morgan Asset Management, and Acadian Asset Management. The three asset managers participated in shareholder votes in China-based companies, revealing the UTIMCO investments in these businesses.
In October 2023, Connor, Clark & Lunn participated in a shareholder vote for Topsec Technologies Group, a China-based cyber security company. Reuters reported that Topsec provides “network security products, big data products, and cloud services to customers in various industries such as government, finance, operators, energy, health, education, transportation, and manufacturing.”
There were shareholder votes for Huaneng Power International, Inc., a power company that boasts of being “one of the largest listed power producers” in China. Their parent company is China Huaneng Group Co., Ltd., which owns more than 50 percent of HPI shares. According to their website, the company is “a key state-owned company established with the approval of the [China] State Council.”
In December 2023, the management company Connor, Clark & Lunn Investment Management voted 19 times for electing various individuals as directors or supervisors of the Chinese company.
Snip.
AAF records showed other investments into China by UTIMCO fund managers, including BOE Technology Group Co., Ltd., Haier Smart Home Co., Ltd., Opple Lighting Co., Ltd., and LONGi Green Energy Technology Co., Ltd.
A million-dollar cheating ring resulted in at least 210 unqualified teachers, including two sexual predators, receiving teacher certifications. The ring was exposed this week after the Harris County District Attorney’s Office filed charges against five individuals involved.
The alleged ringleader is Vincent Grayson, the head boys basketball coach at Houston’s Booker T. Washington High School.
Also charged are Tywana Gilford Mason, the teacher certification test proctor; Nicholas Newton, an assistant principal who served as the proxy test-taker; Darian Nikole Wilhite, another proctor; and LaShonda Roberts, an assistant principal at Yates High School who helped recruit would-be teachers.
All are charged with two counts of engaging in organized criminal activity.
Allegedly, candidates seeking certification would pay Grayson $2,500. He would then give a 20 percent portion to Gilford Mason, who would then allow Newton to sit for the test under the teacher’s name. The candidates would be given a testing time and location by Gilford Mason, then show up, sign in, and leave. Newton would then arrive and take the test for them.
And now the unqualified teachers who got in on this scheme are out there teaching children…
Sony shuts down studio that released disastrous $400 million woke shooter Concord.
Big news for your portfolio: “Nvidia To Replace Intel In The Dow Jones Industrial Average.” Nvidia has certainly been on a tear as of late, but if Intel hadn’t screwed up their sub 10nm process, this wouldn’t be happening.
It would take a heart of stone not to laugh. “These influencers refused to wear life jackets on a yacht because it would ruin their selfies. They drowned when their boat sank.”
Hunter Biden intends to plead guilty to criminal tax charges to avoid a potentially damaging trial that would have brought his lucrative foreign business dealings and lavish lifestyle back into the spotlight.
Defense attorney Abbe Lowell announced Thursday morning that the younger Biden will be reversing his not-guilty plea on the first day of jury selection for the tax trial. He will be entering an “Alford plea” agreement where he maintains his innocence but accepts a sentence from federal judge Mark Scarsi, who has yet to sign off on the arrangement, CNN reported. The tax charges, three felonies and six misdemeanors, carry a maximum of 17 years in prison.
Special counsel David Weiss is prosecuting Hunter Biden on nine federal tax charges based on his alleged failure to pay more than $1.4 million of taxes in a timely manner over a four-year period last decade. Along with tax-evasion, Biden was charged with filing false tax returns for attempting to deduct expenses incurred from his drug-fueled escapades.
Most of Biden’s income from that time period came from foreign business dealings with individuals and entities in Ukraine, Romania, and China. Those business dealings and his messy divorce from ex-wife Kathleen Buhle were laid out in a searing indictment last year that gave a detailed look into the exorbitant amounts of money Biden spent on his lavish lifestyle and sexual deviancy.
Leading up to the trial, federal prosecutors spotlighted Hunter Biden’s Romanian dealings in court papers laying out how he his business partners agreed to lobby U.S. officials on behalf of a Romanian oligarch accused of corruption. Biden’s attorneys disputed the Justice Department’s characterization of the agreement and suggested that the court papers were meant to generate headlines.
In June, Weiss’s team won a conviction against Hunter Biden on three federal gun charges for lying about his crack-cocaine addiction on gun paperwork and possessing a firearm while he was addicted to crack almost six years ago. Biden’s sentencing for the gun charges is scheduled to take place in November. He faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison on the gun charges, but will likely receive a lesser sentence as a first-time, non-violent offender.
The tax trial was expected to be politically damaging for Hunter’s father, President Joe Biden, until he dropped out of the presidential race in July following a public Democratic Party revolt over his apparent mental decline.
Given their shady dealings in Russia, Ukraine and China, I can certainly see why the Biden Crime Family wouldn’t want the bright sunlight of a high profile trial directed at their dealings, so a plea deal was always going to be the smart way to go. After all, Joe Biden isn’t going to be able to get the memory care he obviously needs if he’s behind bars.
The question is just how much of a sweetheart deal can the DOJ get away with offering Hunter. The average jail time for federal tax evasion is evidently 3-5 years, so I’m guessing Hunter gets 1-3 years, and that probably at a relatively cushy minimum security prison. If it’s merely probation, then the fix is truly in…
It would appear that Hunter Biden doesn’t have a nicely arranged plea deal with the DOJ after all – as prosecutors have urged the judge in the case to reject his proposal to plead guilty.
Of note, Hunter is attempting to plead guilty via an “Alford plea,” which would have to be approved by the prosecution and higher-ups at the DOJ.
It appears they were caught off guard.
So it’s not a done deal, just something Hunter’s side has floated. Developing…
Real inflation is running about 20%, Kamala parties like it’s 1971, the New York Times is shocked, shocked to discover Hunter Biden asking for state favors for foreign cronies, gold hits new highs, laughing at an old SNL skit is now a thoughtcrime, and an update on Intel’s woes.
The New York Times reports that the federal government is accelerating the naturalization of immigrants in America as part of a process of “reshaping the electorate, merely months before a pivotal election,” according to one observer quoted in the piece.
“The federal government is processing citizenship requests at the fastest clip in a decade, moving rapidly through a backlog that built up during the Trump administration and the coronavirus pandemic,” reports the newspaper.
One Honduran woman marveled at the fact that authorities were able to process and approve her application in as little as six months.
The story highlights how many of these new citizens will immediately become eligible to vote in key battleground states, including Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
The piece includes a very revealing quote from Xiao Wang, chief executive of Boundless, a data analysis company.
“The surge in naturalization efficiency isn’t just about clearing backlogs; it’s potentially reshaping the electorate, merely months before a pivotal election,” said Wang.
“Every citizenship application could be a vote that decides Senate seats or even the presidency,” he added.
In other words, knowing that immigrants are far likelier to vote Democrat, the Biden administration is importing them at breakneck speed in order to tip the scales for Kamala Harris.
3.3 million immigrants have become citizens during Biden’s time in office, with data showing that more will vote Democrat than Republican.
This has partly driven the Trump campaign’s efforts to appeal more to “Jamal” and “Enrique,” and not so much “Karen,” although the strategy has caused division amongst Trump’s base.
The legacy media has consistently denounced the idea of mass migration being a deliberate ploy to increase the voter base for Democrats as part of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, while simultaneously admitting it’s happening.
Democrats have declared that they have no confidence in the electorate and must create a new one…
Restaurant owner says that the real inflation rate is closer to 20% over six months:
The owner of four restaurants made this video when inflation was at 3.5%. Today, we’re told that inflation is at 2.9%. He looked at the prices of some products and concluded that the government’s inflation numbers don’t make sense. Since February, food prices have increased:
How does Kamala Harris plan to combat inflation? By channeling Richard Nixon from 1971 and imposing wage and price controls.
After the unoriginal Vice President Kamala Harris stole former President Trump’s proposed ‘no tax on tips’ policy, she’s at it again with yet another recycled idea. This time, she’s echoing President Biden’s actions and rhetoric to crack down on sky-high food prices by proposing the first-ever federal ban on “corporate price-gouging in the food and grocery industries”—a move that reeks of socialism.
“There’s a big difference between fair pricing in competitive markets, and excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business,” the Harris campaign wrote in a statement, adding, “Americans can see that difference in their grocery bills.”
The Harris campaign said the vice president will unveil the new federal proposed ban on Friday at a campaign rally in the battleground state of North Carolina as part of a broader economic policy platform. The proposal will ensure food companies can’t exploit consumers to increase profits, according to CBS News, citing Harris-Walz campaign officials.
Harris’ policy speech will also call on the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys to examine corporations violating price-fixing rules. Her remarks are expected to echo Biden’s actions and rhetoric, especially with his war against meat processing companies that he alleges are responsible for higher burger prices at the supermarket.
VP Harris’ campaign argues that lowering Americans’ costs is a function of socialist-style price controls. Yet this is the quickest way to understand that Harris’ economic team has no actual understanding of inflation.
Heritage Foundation’s EJ Antoni explained, “Here’s your “price gouging” narrative: average costs paid by businesses have risen just as much as costs charged to consumers – if businesses are being “greedy,” they’re doing it all wrong…”
Instead of curbing out-of-control government spending, which debt rises $1 trillion every 100 days, and understanding that monetary inflation driven by the Federal Reserve’s money creation is the root cause of inflation, Harris deflects the actual problem: The Fed. She instead goes after big corporations for ‘illegal price gouging.’
Thus unable to understand the disasterous economic policies of the past are doomed to repeat it…
“Conversation Between Musk And Trump Generates Over A Billion Views.” You can see a transcript of the interview here.
In a post last month (“How The Democrats Los Silicon Valley”), I mentioned that top Silicon Valley venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz had endorsed Trump.
Ben Horowitz, in particular, seemed like an unusual Trump supporter, coming from a liberal Jewish background. Now it looks like Trump has another, thanks to his X space with Elon Musk last night: Zynga founder Mark Pincus. During the first Trump administration, Pincus opposed Trump’s “Muslim ban”, but after the leftist celebrations following October 7th last year, he seemed to have some second thoughts about that.
Despite corporate media’s unabashed u-turn to support Kamala Harris, her campaign has been busted creating made-up headlines next to the names of real news outlets to trick people into thinking they’ve stumbled upon the real thing, Axios reports.
Upon hearing the news, The Guardian lost their shit, telling Axios: “While we understand why an organization might wish to align itself with the Guardian’s trusted brand, we need to ensure it is being used appropriately and with our permission. We’ll be reaching out to Google for more information about this practice.”
The ads include links to real articles from the outlets, however the headlines and supporting text were altered.
“Democratic California State Lawmaker Switches To Republican Party…State Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil, who represents the state’s fourth Senate district, said she joined the Senate Republican Caucus and party after deep reflection and to help ‘in their fight to fix California.'”
While Joe Biden was vice president, his son Hunter attempted to obtain State Department assistance in securing a deal for Ukrainian gas company Burisma, of which Hunter was a highly-compensated board member despite having no experience in its industry, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. The revelation of the 2016 episode underscores allegations that Hunter sought to enrich himself by trading on his father’s influence.
The Times report draws on newly-released government records pertaining to Hunter’s pushing of a Burisma deal in Italy. The Biden White House had resisted releasing the files for years, only to relent soon after Biden was pressured into abandoning his reelection bid.
One wonders how long the New York Times would have waited to report this if Biden were still seeking reelection? My guess is never.
Go figure. It’s amazing what some actual reporting — and a withdrawal from a presidential election — can shake loose, no?
Just four short years ago, we were all assured by the Protection Racket Media that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, and that allegations of influence-peddling by the Bidens were just political dirty tricks, right? Right? Wrong. The New York Times’ Ken Vogel reports that Hunter’s efforts to sell influence within the administration were well known during Joe Biden’s term as Vice President. It’s even about Burisma, the company that we were told paid Hunter a lot of money for his energy-industry expertise.
Oh, and the records of it got “withheld” by the Biden administration for “years,” too:
Hunter Biden sought assistance from the U.S. government for a potentially lucrative energy project in Italy while his father was vice president, according to newly released records and interviews.
The records, which the Biden administration had withheld for years, indicate that Hunter Biden wrote at least one letter to the U.S. ambassador to Italy in 2016 seeking assistance for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, where he was a board member.
Well, we did have records in October 2020. Hunter Biden kept records of these dealings on his laptop, which he abandoned in a repair shop. When the New York Post reported on the contents of the laptop, including a number of emails that made clear he leveraged his fathers office to sell influence at Burisma and elsewhere, the media ignored it — even though one of Hunter’s partners (Tony Bobulinski) publicly authenticated the messages when asked.
Nearly four years later, the NYT gets around to the truth. And if you’re questioning the timing, you have good company, because Vogel appears to be somewhat curious about it as well:
The department’s release of documents to The New York Times came shortly after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race, and as his son prepares to stand trial next month on charges of evading taxes on millions of dollars in income from Burisma and other foreign businesses.
Go figure again! It’s as if the cover-up extended as long as Joe Biden had electoral interests to protect. Now that Biden has pulled out of the race, there’s no need to keep covering up for Biden Inc.
“California Sheriff Blasts Harris For Using His Image In “Misleading” Campaign Ad, Says He Supports Trump.” “In light of a recent political ad put out by Kamala Harris featuring Sheriff [Mike] Boudreaux, as well as other local law enforcement, the Sheriff wants to make it abundantly clear that his image is being used without his permission, and he does NOT endorse Harris for President or any other political office.”
The same Jew-haters who drove Columbia University’s president Minouche Shafik off are now coming for Kamala Harris.
Only a short week ago, Harris was heckled by pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters, like those who has spilled out from college campuses after October 7. Protesters screamed out at her as she stood on stage repeating her stump speech. As they yelled, Harris tried to shame them. “I’m speaking,” she said, hearkening back to her VP debate against Mike Pence in 2020. “I’m speaking” in context means several things, including an attempt to grab control based on her identity factors: black, female. By identitarian logic, the vice president is oppressed, and by the logic of progressive discourse, that means that she gets to speak first, and that what she has to say carries all that much more weight. An event simply in favor of her candidacy was crashed in New York City on Wednesday night where agitators set off smoke bombs and held up signs saying “No Votes for Bombala’s Genocide.” 14 of them were arrested.
The agitators wanted some kind of response, some kind of indication of what Harris’ policy on Israel and Gaza might be if she gets voted into the White House. And they haven’t gotten it. Meanwhile, there are clearly massive anti-Israel events planned for the Democratic National Convention next week. While Kamala is trying to keep the euphoria going, attempting to dance and sing her way into the White House, her base will be out in the street demanding answers. Will she be lenient like Magill? Bend over backwards like Gay? Or call in a bigger force, like Shafik, because she doesn’t know how to handle it on her own?
The far left of Harris’ party hates Israel. They love Palestinians not for their culture or policies–which include anti-LGBTQ and anti-female regulations as in other strict, Muslim countries–but simply because they are “oppressed.” And Harris can’t handle them. Even at her speech, rarefied identity wasn’t enough to keep them in their place. The campus riots will likely start up again. As soon as the college-bound finish their orientations, they’ll be picking up their marching orders and protest signs to join their comrades on the quad.
There is already noise that Harris would like to throw Israel under the bus, to eradicate funding and arms shipments. The same woman that waved the flag of Ukraine in Congress as she promised to send him endless weapons and aid, may think the aid packages and arms sales to Israel go too far. Harris may sympathize with the protesters.
before his honeymoon [in Communist China in 1994], Walz launched a company called Educational Travel Adventures, which specialized in bringing American students to China. An article in the local Chinese media reported that he and his bride brought 50 students from America. The company continued to send students to China until 2003. It is important to note that operating a business in China requires all kinds of permits—both official and unofficial—from Chinese authorities at the local, provincial, and central levels. These permits were typically obtained either by paying bribes or by securing endorsements, whether tacit or open, from government officials.
Professional atheist Richard Dawkins posts that men and women are different and male boxers shouldn’t be competing with female boxers. Result: Facebook nuked his account.
So what do you do when your software problem brings a customers operations down hard? Well, if you’re Crowdstrike and the customer is Delta airlines, then you slam Delta for not recovering fast enough.
Python Development Foundation suspends developer for enjoying old “Jane, you ignorant slut” skit. I can only imagine the snowflake reactions to the Chevy Chase/Richard Pryor word association skit…
Flock of self-driving Waymo cars in San Francisco honk all night in their parking lot. As you might be able to guess, nearby residents are just thrilled at this development…
Speaking of electric cars, there’s concerning over letting them park in parking garages because of the possibility of them catching fire and the difficulty of extinguishing same.
Remember how Intel said the problem with their chips was microcode? Yeah. That may not be the case (or at least not the whole case), and it may actually be a process problem involving oxidation of vias (i.e., the connection between two metal layers).
I love the smell of Democratic panic in the morning. It smells like…victory.
Outside the Biden White House, the roars for Biden to step aside after revealing his cognitive decline to the nation via his disasterous debate performance grow louder.
Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-TX-37) became the first federal Democratic official to call on President Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 race following last week’s debate with former President Donald Trump.
The statement followed an interview where former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-11) told MSNBC, “I think it’s a legitimate question to say, ‘Is this an episode or is this a condition?’”
“And so when people ask that question, it’s legitimate — of both candidates.”
Doggett’s statement reads, “President Biden has continued to run substantially behind Democratic senators in key states and in most polls has trailed Donald Trump. I had hoped this debate would provide some momentum to change that. It did not. Instead of reassuring voters, the President failed to effectively defend his many accomplishments and expose Trump’s many lies.”
“Our overriding consideration must be who has the best hope of saving our democracy from an authoritarian takeover by a criminal and his gang. … I represent the heart of a congressional district once represented by Lyndon Johnson. Under very different circumstances, he made the painful decision to withdraw. President Biden should do the same.”
In 1968, LBJ declined to run again because his escalation of the Vietnam War was deeply unpopular with Democrats, not because his brain was operating on the level of a baked rutabaga. The two situations are not comparable.
In television interviews, some Democrats are already throwing a bone to Vice President Kamala Harris. “I will support her if he were to step aside,” Representative Jim Clyburn (D., S.C.), a Biden-Harris campaign co-chairman and former House Democratic whip, told MSNBC. “This party should not, in any way, do anything to work around Ms. Harris. We should do everything we can to bolster her whether she’s in second place or at the top of the ticket.”
Former representative Tim Ryan (D., Ohio) has been even more candid — calling on Biden to step aside and urging Democrats to rally around Harris in his place. “You’re asking the American people to ignore what they saw last week,” Ryan, who distanced himself from Biden on the campaign trail during his 2022 Senate run and who expressed early opposition to Biden’s reelection campaign, said in an interview with National Review on Tuesday “It’s completely irresponsible for those people to hide this from us — for him to be in in that condition.”
Ryan said his party’s failure to confront voters’ concerns about Biden’s fitness for the job risks causing “irreparable damage” to a party that is already seen as out of touch with large swaths of the American public — including black voters and working-class voters — on a range of issues such as border security, the economy, and public safety.
They’re seen as “out of touch” because the party’s hard left ideological core wanted a third term for Obama despite wildly unpopular policies that brought Republican majorities to both houses of Congress and thought they could blithely lie to the American public about a whole host of issues (importing millions of illegal aliens, radical transgenderism), not just Biden’s cognitive decline, while imposing revolution from above.
But what Doggett and other Democrats are getting at is that now that Biden has revealed that he’s as cognitively declined as Republicans have said all along, his chances of beating Donald Trump in November just went from slim to none, and boy howdy are they right about that.
Again, their position is untenable. They can't tell the truth, that their candidate is well below the threshold of someone who should be president for another 4 years, so they tell obvious lies that nobody but the dumbest partisans will buy. https://t.co/Dpn9SECqEo
What? A Democrat telling “obvious lies that nobody but the dumbest partisans will buy”? You mean it’s a day ending in “-y”?
My friend Stephen Green is reveling in schadenfreude over Silver’s latest election forecast, which is developing a trendline in exactly one direction — from bad to worse for “Sundown Joe,” showing “Biden with just a 27.6% chance of winning the Electoral College and 44.2% odds of taking the popular vote.” As a Democrat, Silver is grief-stricken and angry about the situation, going through the “woulda coulda shoulda” second-guessing about the process by which his party’s establishment, after foisting upon the electorate the Oldest President Ever, then apparently decided there was no risk in attempting to extend his White House tenure another four years. Last week’s debate disaster should have been foreseen, because what’s the point of getting paid as a “campaign strategist” if you can’t anticipate potential problems?
Now, however, the same fools who led Democrats into that disaster are busy trying to convince their voters (and, perhaps more importantly, their donors) that they can somehow recover enough to win in November.
“It’s fundamentally a terrible idea to ask the public to make the guy they saw on Thursday president until he’s 86,” Silver says in his pay-walled newsletter, stating the blindingly obvious truth.
You’ve got to understand that Silver was one of those 20-something lefties who jumped into the political fray during the years when the Iraq War made George W. Bush very unpopular on college campuses. (One reason most conservatives my age roll our eyes at rhetorical symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome — the Hitler comparisons, etc. — is that it’s basically the same thing we heard about Dubya during the Bush Derangment Syndrome epidemic two decades ago.) Silver’s first big “win” as a forecaster, the foundation of his reputation as a polling expert, was in 2006, which in hindsight was the 21st-century’s high-water mark for Democrats. Silver predicted a big win for Democrats and he was right, and his winning streak continued two years later when Obama got elected. However, his accuracy since then has not been so stellar. In October 2010, Silver offered a “best guess” that Republicans would gain 48 House seats in the midterms; the GOP’s actual net gain in 2010 was 63 seats, the biggest net gain for House Republicans since 1938.
Generally speaking, when Democrats have a good year, Silver’s projections are more accurate than they are when Republicans have a good year. Silver has never overestimated Republican performance. So if Nate Silver’s numbers are telling him that Biden’s got barely a one-in-four chance of winning? That’s bad for Joe, because the reality of his situation is probably a lot worse than that.
In the weeks and months before President Biden’s politically devastating performance on the debate stage in Atlanta, several current and former officials and others who encountered him behind closed doors noticed that he increasingly appeared confused or listless, or would lose the thread of conversations.
Like many people his age, Mr. Biden, 81, has long experienced instances in which he mangled a sentence, forgot a name or mixed up a few facts, even though he could be sharp and engaged most of the time. But in interviews, people in the room with him more recently said that the lapses seemed to be growing more frequent, more pronounced and more worrisome.
The uncomfortable occurrences were not predictable, but seemed more likely when he was in a large crowd or tired after a particularly bruising schedule. In the 23 days leading up to the debate against former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Biden jetted across the Atlantic Ocean twice for meetings with foreign leaders and then flew from Italy to California for a splashy fund-raiser, maintaining a grueling pace that exhausted even much younger aides.
Mr. Biden was drained enough from the back-to-back trips to Europe that his team cut his planned debate preparation by two days so he could rest at his house in Rehoboth Beach, Del., before joining advisers at Camp David for rehearsals. The preparations, which took place over six days, never started before 11 a.m. and Mr. Biden was given time for an afternoon nap each day, according to a person familiar with the process.
Won’t someone please think of the terrible strain on Joe from having to start work at the crack of 11 AM?
Let’s hope he got milk and graham crackers after his nap to reward him for being such a good boy.
Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said on Tuesday that “the president was working well before” the 11 a.m. start time each day, after exercising. Still, at a fund-raiser on Tuesday evening, Mr. Biden blamed fatigue for his debate performance. “I wasn’t very smart,” he said. “I decided to travel around the world a couple times, I don’t know how many time zones.” He added: “I didn’t listen to my staff, and I came back and I fell asleep on the stage.”
Are you trying to say that your staff advised you not to travel around the world to meet with international leaders, and not to celebrate the 70th anniversary of D-Day? So not to perform the regular duties expected of anyone who’s job is President of the United States of America?
Joe, I’ve got to tell you, I have a pretty big problem with that as well.
The recent moments of disorientation generated concern among advisers and allies alike. He seemed confused at points during a D-Day anniversary ceremony in France on June 6. The next day, he misstated the purpose of a new tranche of military aid to Ukraine when meeting with its president.
On June 10, he appeared to freeze up at an early celebration of the Juneteenth holiday. On June 18, his soft-spoken tone and brief struggle to summon the name of his homeland security secretary at an immigration event unnerved some of his allies at the event, who traded alarmed looks and later described themselves as “shaken up,” as one put it.
Democrat gaslighting us about “how sharp Biden is” snipped.
But by many accounts, as evidenced by video footage, observation and interviews, Mr. Biden is not the same today as he was even when he took office 3½ years ago. The White House regularly releases corrected transcripts of his remarks, in which he frequently mixes up places, people or dates. The administration did so in the days after the debate, when Mr. Biden mixed up the countries of France and Italy when talking about war veterans at an East Hampton fund-raiser.
Last week’s debate prompted some around him to express concern that the decline had accelerated lately. Several advisers and current and former administration officials who see Mr. Biden regularly but not every day or week said they were stunned by his debate performance because it was the worst they had ever seen him.
“You don’t have to be sitting in an Oval Office meeting with Joe Biden to recognize there’s been a slowdown in the past two years. There’s a visible difference,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian. “I’ve been amazed on one hand,” said Mr. Brinkley, who has not seen the president in person in a year. “The president can zip around the country like he does. But the White House may only be showing the Biden they want us to see.”
The Times piece is peppered with moments when Biden was lucid for some task or short speech, as though occasional periods of lucidity somehow make up for obvious cognitive decline. (Hat tip: Jim Geraghty at National Review.)
Disgraced convicted felon Hunter Biden has reportedly been joining his embattled father and top aides in official meetings at the White House since the Biden family returned from Camp David, Monday evening.
The Biden family gathered at Camp David over the weekend, where Joe Biden sat for a previously scheduled photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz for the upcoming Democrat National Convention.
While staying at the presidential retreat in Maryland, according to reports, the family took the opportunity to urge him to stay in the race and keep fighting despite his humiliating debate performance.
Since then, the scandal-plagued younger Biden has “popped into” official White House meetings and phone calls with advisors, four people familiar with the matter told NBC.
Hunter has also reportedly been spotted talking to senior White House staff, prompting some to ask how the convicted felon could have a security clearance to be included in such high-level discussions at the White House.
According to the sources, Joe Biden’s aides were “struck” by Hunter’s new advisory role.
“What the hell is happening?” senior White House staff is quoted to have said.
Given that my calendar doesn’t show a Take Your Crackhead Son To Work Week, I’m guessing this is to prevent anyone from cornering Slow Joe one-on-one to try to convince him to drop out of the race. The Biden Crime Syndicate shows no signs of being willing to step off the gravy train, and seems to fear (possibly correctly) that a whole lot of criminal indictments might be coming down on them if they did. After all, now that the MSM has stopped pretending that Hunter’s laptop wasn’t real, they have yet to come to grips with the vast pay-for-play foreign graft schemes the documents on that laptop revealed.
Will endangered Democrats be able to convince Biden to drop out “for the good of the party?”
Following Joe Biden’s dismal, mentally impaired performance in last week’s debate, there’s a huge roar of panicked Democrats suggesting (or demanding) his replacement as the Democratic presidential nominee. For now, Biden and his family/enablers seem to be digging in their heels.
Editorial boards and editors from the New York Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The New Yorker have joined well-known cable commentators and columnists in pressing the president to step aside and pave a path to the top of the ticket for another candidate.
The Washington Post’s editorial board stopped short of pushing the president to drop out of the race, instead pressing him to cancel weekend plans “in favor of some soul-searching.”
What they’re saying: The Times’ board — in an op-ed entitled “To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race” — said Biden appeared as “the shadow of a great public servant” at Thursday’s debate, contending there are “Democratic leaders better equipped to present clear, compelling and energetic alternatives to a second Trump presidency.”
Pieces from the AJC’s board and a New Yorker editor followed, similarly arguing that the best candidate to defeat an unrestrained former President Trump is not the current president.
The New Yorker named Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore as a slate of potential Biden backups who “could energize Democrats and independents, inspire more younger voters and beat Trump.”
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s question of “whether this man we’ve known and loved for a very long time is up to the task of running for president of the United States” presents a particularly damaging dagger to the commander-in-chief, a loyal viewer of “Morning Joe” who often seeks the opinions of the Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, on key issues.
New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman echoed Scarborough’s tone in a Friday op-ed, writing that watching the man he considers a friend struggle on the debate stage made him weep.
Maybe someone who “weeps” at a politician’s decline is too chummy to be a political commentator.
Also this:
Kinda funny to watch the "Trump is a threat to Democracy" crowd openly strategize how to thwart the will of every Democrat who voted in the primaries by engineering a coup at the convention and placing a candidate on the ticket without a single person casting a vote.
By the end of the debate, I was hearing a level of anxiety and alarm from those Democrats and several other party leaders and operatives that I’ve never seen in 20 years of covering presidential politics. The discussion turned squarely to the need for the Democratic Party to replace Biden as the 2024 nominee, with four months to go to the election, and how to make that happen.
We are monitoring the calls from across the country for President Biden to step aside, either now or before the election, and have concluded that the process for substitution and withdrawal is very complicated. We will remain vigilant that appropriate election integrity procedures are followed,” said Mike Howell, Executive Director of The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project.
The Heritage Oversight Project has identified three swing states — Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin — where they believe removing Biden from the Democratic ticket would prevent anyone else from replacing him.
Wisconsin does not allow withdrawal from the ballot for any reason besides death, while in Nevada, no changes can be made to the ballot after 5 p.m. on the fourth Friday in June of an election year unless ‘a nominee dies or is adjudicated insane or mentally incompetent.’ In Georgia, if Biden were to withdraw less than 60 days before the election, his name would remain on the ballot but no votes would be counted.
Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin are all states Biden “won” in 2020 (some thanks to 3 AM ballot dumps). A theoretical Biden replacement could, just barely, lose all of them and still win by the skin of his teeth with 271 electoral votes if they held every other state Biden was awarded in 2020. Georgia and Nevada both have Republican governors, and Republicans control both the senate and house in Wisconsin, so last minute Democrat pushes to change the rules before November are off the table. Recent polls show Trump winning all three, as well as the other four swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Arizona.
Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week made it impossible to deny his senility, yet the Western elite is gaslighting they were supposedly oblivious to this until now. Time Magazine published a piece titled “Inside Biden’s Debate Disaster and the Scramble to Quell Democratic Panic”, which was complemented by CNN’s about how “Foreign diplomats react with horror to Biden’s dismal debate performance”.
Both make it seem like Biden’s senility is a surprise for everyone who knew him.
The reality is that they knew about this all along but covered it up by lying that any claims to this effect were “Russian propaganda” and/or a “conspiracy theory”, all because they actually approved of the Democrats installing a literal placeholder in the White House who the liberal-globalist elite could control. It was a refreshing change of pace from Trump, who was much too independent for their liking despite his occasional capitulations to their demands, and it also reassured America’s allies who disliked him too.
They both went along with the lie that Biden is in tip-top mental condition for reasons of political convenience, but now it’s impossible to keep up the charade any longer, hence why they’re all feigning surprise and shock. The elite shouldn’t be allowed to get away with their latest gaslighting and should be exposed for one of the greatest cover-ups in American history. The country is being ruled by a shadowy network of transnational and domestic elites that are united by their radical liberal-globalist ideology.
Biden was chosen as the Democrats’ candidate in 2020 precisely because he was already senile and therefore completely controllable. That party, which functions as the public face of the abovementioned elite network, wanted someone who’d do whatever they demanded on the home and foreign policy fronts. In particular, they sought to turn America into a liberal-globalist hellhole while ramping up NATO’s containment of Russia in Ukraine, but the second policy backfired after the special operation began.
Nevertheless, they’ll never have another chance to install someone like Biden since 2020 was an exceptional election year due to it being a referendum on Trump – who a significant share of the public was preconditioned to falsely believe is the new Hitler – and mail-in voting due to COVID-19. These conditions can never be replicated in the same way again no matter how hard the elite try, which is why they decided to keep Biden as their candidate instead of replace him early on.
In 2020, Biden’s mind was clearly already on the downward slope to senility, but he obviously had much longer periods of lucidity and energy than he shows now. In 2020 it was late afternoon, but in 2024, full night has fallen.
At a Camp David gathering on Sunday, President Biden’s extended family urged him to ignore the growing number of voices asking him to quit the race — and many of his loved ones blamed his disastrous debate on his advisors. According to Politico, the two who most forcefully encouraged the 81-year-old Biden to continue were his wife Jill and his son Hunter — the two people whose opinion he reportedly values most.
And really, who makes better decisions than Hunter Biden?
The reports will strengthen a growing sense that Jill Biden is putting her own interests above that of her humiliated and failing husband. As one Democratic advisor told the New York Post over the weekend, “Jill Biden likes being First Lady…she doesn’t want to give that up.”
Meanwhile, Hunter, who doesn’t exactly have strong reputation for sound judgment, is said to long for Americans to see a version of his father that — as paraphrased by the Times — is “scrappy and in command of the facts.” Much as he once was in denial about his drug problem, Hunter now seems incapable of admitting that that version of his father is gone forever:
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) June 30, 2024
Biden family members are said to have blamed the debate debacle on three advisors: Anita Dunn, her husband Bob Bauer — who played the role of Trump in practice sessions — and Biden’s former chief of staff Ron Klain, who was in charge of the debate training. Aides to Biden denied these reports from multiple outlets.
Yes, blame the help rather than yourselves for dragging Sundown Joe out on the trail once more so you can keep those sweet power and perks flowing.
With Biden having spent a full week at Camp David gearing up for the debate, his family members and others are claiming the team worked the 81-year-old too hard, and tried to pack him full of too many statistics. They even fault advisors for a debate-night makeup job that transformed his summer-tanned face to one that was pale and unhealthy-looking.
All those “new jobs” created in the Biden Recession have gone to illegal aliens, two Trump court cases appear to be in the process of derailment, more Hunter Biden shenanigans come to light, a whole lot of anniversaries this week, and a chance to own the Ark of the Covenant! It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The first Wall Street analyst daring to point out that the employment emperor is naked, is Standard Chartered’s global head of macro, Steve Englander who in a note titled simply enough “Immigration leading to labor-market surge” [writes] that according to his estimates “undocumented immigrants account for half of job growth in FY24 so far” (the actual number is far higher but we understand his initial conservatism), and adds that “asylum seekers and humanitarian parolees explain the surge in undocumented immigrants” before concluding that the continued rise in EAD approvals likely will extend strong employment growth in 2024. In other words, “strong employment growth” for American citizens, always was and remains a fabulation, and the only job growth in the US is for illegals, who will work for below minimum wage, which also explains why inflation hasn’t spiked in the past year as millions of illegals were hired.
How is this not the biggest political talking point right now: since October 2019, native-born US workers have lost 1.4 million jobs; over the same period foreign-born workers have gained 3 million jobs. pic.twitter.com/Z5HVWmQ24C
Does a mistrial loom in the Trump kangaroo court case? Seems like a juror celebrating a guilty verdict before the trial was over on Facebook is yet another reason to throw out the conviction…
Speaking kangaroo Trump prosecutions, the Georgia Court of Appeals has ordered that case halted until the Fani Willis conflict of interest issue is resolved.
In other court news, in Hunter Biden’s defense just blew up.
Hunter’s defense, carefully crafted by attorney Abbe Lowell during his opening statement on Tuesday, was blown up by the testimony of an ex-girlfriend and ex-wife who described the extent of Hunter’s crack-cocaine usage around the time he purchased a firearm in October 2018 — and by the salesman who sold Hunter the gun he allegedly lied in order to purchase.
Hunter is facing two federal charges related to his allegedly lying about his drug addiction on a gun-purchase background-check form and he faces a third charge for allegedly possessing the firearm while addicted to crack cocaine. Hunter pleaded not guilty to the charges last year and faces up to 25 years in prison.
Most of the day was taken up by testimony from Hunter Biden’s ex-girlfriend Zoe Kestan, a woman who dated Biden from roughly December 2017 to November 2018, despite being half his age at the time.
Prosector Leo Wise conducted a lengthy direct examination of Kestan accompanied by pictures from her cellphone to corroborate her recollection of events.
Wise and Kestan seemed to get into a rhythm throughout the direct examination, as Kestan recalled large events and small details from her time with Hunter Biden. Kestan remembered exact dates and named the various hotels they stayed at during their time together.
Each time Kestan described an experience with Hunter Biden, Wise asked her if Hunter Biden smoked crack at their hotel or Airbnb, and Kestan always replied affirmatively.
“Every 20 minutes or so,” Kestan said of Hunter Biden’s crack habit during one of the hotel stays. She noted that he smoked crack less frequently in public, and she never noticed a change in his demeanor when he smoked.
Wise shared photos from Kestan’s cellphone showing drug paraphernalia scatted around the bathrooms and tables of their lodgings. One of the images appeared to show Biden in a hotel bathtub holding a crack pipe in the wee hours of the morning. When Wise showed the images, Kestan easily pointed out the drug paraphernalia and explained to the courtroom how the various materials were used to cook and consume crack.
Biden allowed Kestan to withdraw cash from his account when he needed to spend it on drugs, she recounted. Kestan stated the names of drug dealers and described the drug transactions she saw at the hotels and other locations.
Kestan’s testimony and the images allowed Wise to establish that Hunter was smoking crack in September 2018, following his late August rehab stint in Malibu, Calif. She said Biden smoked crack every 20 minutes at a Malibu house he rented, and she did not remember Biden discussing his rehab stint during her time at the house in September 2018.
Wise closed the direct examination by introducing a lengthy text message Biden sent her in December 2018 lamenting how he would always be a drug addict and his attempts to get sober failed.
And this is “the smartest guy” Joe Biden knows…
Also from Hunter’s weapons case, he was caught on tape bragging about how he could score crack in Timbuktu. Which is a neat trick, since it’s an Islamic majority city in Mali, Africa, and is currently under siege by Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin, a jihadist organization which has incorporated elements formally loyal to both al Qaeda and the Islamic State. To be fair to the crackhead, he apparently said this before the siege was imposed last year…
Also, I would like to apologize to readers for not knowing about the siege and doing at least a LinkSwarm post to it. So much news, so little time..
On Friday, Mayor John Whitmire and outgoing Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced seven people have been indicted for 14 public corruption felonies ranging from abuse of official capacity to tampering with evidence. The charges are related to a scheme surrounding the City of Houston’s water repair contracts.
Patrece Lee, the lead defendant, and a former city employee, had access to $80 million of city funds for emergency waterline repair.
In the Summer and Fall of 2022, Lee was in a position to recommend vendors for contracts with the City of Houston public works department to repair the water lines. Lee allegedly made agreements with companies to have them hire her as a “consultant” to receive a kickback in exchange for expedited payments and bigger contracts. She also targeted less experienced companies and offered her services to help them “get paid faster, or to get bigger and better contracts in the future” as well.
Lee allegedly received roughly $320,000 in payments from that scheme and then steered contracts to a company owned by her brother, allowing them to be paid more than $400,000 of which she immediately transferred $380,000 to her own company. The total amount she stole from the city was $700,000.
“The cooperation that we’ve received from this administration stands in stark contrast to the last seven years,” said Ogg.
The issue was uncovered during Mayor Sylvester Turner’s administration. However, he planned to have it handled as an internal civil or administrative matter rather than refer it to the district attorney for criminal prosecution.
If Kim Ogg would actually go after government corruption (and real criminals) while she’s a lame duck DA, that would be a nice silver lining to the clouds of Houston/Harris County’s soft on crime Democratic leadership.
The Houston conman who pretended to be a rabbi. “The man accused of spending $15,000 on a dead woman’s credit card has a long history of fraud, according to police, court records and his family. Police say Dustin Mitchell, who goes by Dustin Cohen, posed as a Rabbi, lawyer and possibly a cop to defraud people. They also say they think he spray-painted anti-semitic vandalism on his own truck.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
…and the 20th anniversary of Killdozer. The event, not the great Theodore Sturgeon short story or the medicore TV movie made from it.
Speaking of D-Day, Biden just plagiarized Reagan’s speech.
Joe Biden essentially plagiarized Ronald Reagan’s famous 1984 speech at Pointe du Hoc today in Normandy. Watch these clips side by side. Wow: pic.twitter.com/jeGgTS2Nnm
More worrying signs of inflation, more evidence of Biden family corruption, more creepy child sex offenders, F-35s are stacking up, and an infamous movie may finally have a premiere. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
This is Memorial Day weekend, and in Texas there’s a runoff election on May 28, so be sure to vote if you have a runoff in your area. (There are no Republican runoffs in Williamson County.)
House Democrats’ reelection campaigns have accepted $6.5 million from three major political families, which have helped bankroll several student groups participating in the protests. The family members cut most of those checks over the last two years, although some of the donations to longstanding House members came over the last decade.
The names are well-known among Democratic funding circles: Soros, Rockefeller, and Pritzker. Yet before the anti-Jewish protests swept college campuses over the last few months, their financial ties to the student groups were not widely known. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a member of the same wealthy Pritzker family, is not among the donors.
Several investigative media reports over the last month have uncovered the extensive financial ties between these families and student groups involved in organizing anti-Israel protests and activism across the country predating the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel and in its aftermath and during Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
The donors to student groups include George Soros, a billionaire philanthropist and Democratic campaign contributor who helms the Open Society Foundation and his family members; the Pritzkers, the owners of Hyatt Hotels Corporation; and members of the famed Rockefeller family, including relatives of the wealthy American Banker and philanthropist David Rockefeller. The donations have either gone directly to student groups involved in campus demonstrations or to umbrella foundations and organizations, which have, in turn, channeled the funds to the protestors.
The House Democratic Congressional Committee and the House Majority PAC, which was founded by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and is directly affiliated with the House Democratic leadership, collected most of those funds, nearly $5.5 million by those two Democratic campaign entities alone, FEC records show.
Meanwhile, 30 House Democrats, including Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and other members of the leadership, received a combined total of $856,858 from the Soros, Pritzker, and Rockefeller families, while a dozen Democratic candidates in competitive races received a total of $139,000. RCP did not examine Senate recipients.
The House members in competitive races who received funds from at least one of the three families include Reps. Mary Peltola of Alaska, Mike Levin of California, Yadira Caraveo of Colorado, Johana Hayes of Connecticut, Eric Sorensen of Illinois, Frank Mrvan of Indiana, Sharice Davids, Jared Golden, Hillary Scholten, Angie Craig of Minnesota, Don Davis, Chris Pappas of New Hampshire, Gabe Vasquez, of New Mexico, Susie Lee of Nevada, Steven Horsford of Nevada, Paty Ryan of New York, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, Andrea Salinas of Oregon, Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, and Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania.
Craig’s campaigns have received the most of any other House member from the three families: $96,490 since 2018. Lee’s campaign received the second most: $75,000 since 2017.
The Democratic candidates who accepted donations from at least one of the three families include Kirsten Engel in Arizona; Adam Gray, Rudy Salas, George Whitesides, and Will Rollins in California; Lanon Baccam in Iowa; Tony Vargas in Nebraska; Lauren Gillen, Mondaire Jones, and Josh Riley in New York; Ashley Ehasz in Pennsylvania; and Michelle Vallejo in Texas.
American households gained net worth under Trump. Under Biden, adjusted for inflation, it’s gone negative.
Inflation isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. “In fact, the progressive political class does have a plan to deal with the national debt. Their plan is to perpetuate inflation and thereby to engineer a slow-motion stealth default on the debt that will enable them to continue to enjoy without disruption the political benefits that flow to them from their irresponsible debt-funded vote buying.”
A trove of new whistleblower documents provided to House GOP investigators reveal, among other things, that the CIA prevented federal investigators from pursuing Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris as a witness in their investigation of Hunter Biden.
Morris, a Hollywood entertainment lawyer who has ‘long supported’ Hunter (and why?) has loaned the First Son more than $6.5 million, according to a January letter to the House oversight committee.
We’ve known about the CIA connection since March, when the Chairmen of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, Jim Jordan (R-OH) and James Comer (R-KY) said that a whistleblower has brought them information that ‘seems to corroborate our concerns’ that the CIA directly interfered with DOJ and IRS investigations of Hunter Biden.
According to a whistleblower, the CIA “intervened in the investigation of Hunter biden to prevent the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) from interviewing a witness,” the letter, addressed to CIA Director William Burns, reads.
Specifically, the Committees were concerned at how “the DOJ deviated from its standard processes to afford preferential treatment to Hunter Biden,” which they learned “after two brave whistleblowers testified to Congress” that the Justice Department had done just that.
According to Hunter Biden’s business associate, Devon Archer, he and Hunter Biden were equal owners of Rosemont Seneca Bohai, and that entity was used by both individuals. According to evidence provided by the IRS whistleblowers, Hunter Biden was the beneficial owner of the entity’s associated bank account, which was used to receive Hunter’s salary from Burisma and to receive foreign wires, such as funds allegedly transferred from a Kazakhstani individual through an entity that were then used to purchase a Porsche for Hunter Biden. Congressional investigators questioned Hunter Biden during his February 28th deposition regarding his connection to Rosemont Seneca Bohai, as well as bank accounts associated with the entity.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu dishes the truth on fellow governors. Andrew Cuomo? “Complete jackass. No one like him.” Gavin Newsom? “Just a prick.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“Bill Maher Scolds Pearl-Clutching Lefties Over Harrison Butker Tradwife Speech.” For feminists, evidently being a traditional wife and mother isn’t an allowable “choice.”
Hmmmm: “Lockheed Running Out Of Parking Space For F-35s Pentagon Refuses To Accept.” “Last summer, the DOD put a complete freeze on accepting the stealth fighters until Lockheed fixed huge hardware and software problems associated with ‘Technology Refresh-3′ (TR-3), a $1.8 billion package intended to expand the planes’ capabilities.”
Media Matters for America, the group that thinks American journalists just aren’t leftwing enough, just had a massive layoff, thanks in part to a defamation lawsuit from Elon Musk. Thanks, Elon! (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Red Lobster filed for bankruptcy and is closing 87 locations, none in Austin. Evidently an “Endless Shrimp” promotion was a big contributing factor, which suggests executive learned nothing from the losses they incurred in a similar endless crab promotion in 2003…
Could the infamous, uncompleted Jerry Lewis movie The Day the Clown Cried finally be screened this year? Maybe. Lewis gave the footage to the Library of Congress in 2014, specifying it couldn’t be seen for ten years, which puts it next month. But evidently there are a lot of editing required before that debacle could be seen in anything close to final form.
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.
Happy Ides of March! You might want to avoid knife-wielding Romans today. Trump trial news, lots of Russo-Ukrainian War news, transexual madness starts to recede, and more Disney missteps. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Biden’s proposed budget is going to lower the deficit by $3 trillion. By which he means it will grow by $16 trillion.
Following yesterday’s release of Biden’s $7.3 trillion budget, the Biden administration bragged about lowering the deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade – an average of 0.8% of GDP over that period.
This would consist of roughly $2.6 trillion over 10 years in additional spending programs, offset by around $4.8 trillion in tax increases over the same period. Most of the tax and spending proposals have been included in prior budget proposals from the White House, according to Goldman’s Alec Phillips, however there are several new items.
The budget would increase the corporate alternative minimum tax on book income from 15% to 21%, raising $137 billion over the next decade. It also limits a corporation’s ability to deduct employee pay exceeding $1mm/year, raising $272 billion over 10 years. The largest proposed tax increases include; raising the corporate minimum tax from 21% to 28%, as well as a series of tax increases on high-income earners, including new Medicare taxes, and a new 25% minimum tax on incomes over $100 million, raising $500 billion over the next decade.
Of course, it has zero chance of passing under the current Congress – but that’s not the point.
As one DC strategist wrote in a morning email noted by CNBC’s Brian Sullivan, the budget deficit will still grow by another $16 trillion over the next decade – and that’s with aforementioned tax hikes.
Without them, the deficit grows to $19 trillion.
In short, talk of ‘$3 trillion saved’ is total bullshit in the grand scheme of things, given how much the national debt will grow in the best case scenario.
The judge overseeing the Georgia election-fraud case struck down six counts in the indictment on Wednesday finding that the language in the counts didn’t provide “sufficient detail” for former president Donald Trump and more than a dozen other co-defendants “to prepare their defenses intelligently.”
The counts that Fulton County Superior Court judge Scott McAfee struck down all involved allegations that some of the defendants in the case solicited various Georgia elected officials to violate their oaths of office and to unlawfully appoint pro-Trump presidential electors.
The six counts struck down by McAfee on Wednesday involved Trump, his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Ray Smith and Bob Cheeley. The defendants were accused in the various counts of soliciting elected members of the Georgia house and senate and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to violate their oaths “to unlawfully appoint presidential electors.” Trump and Meadows also requested that Raffensperger “unlawfully decertify” the 2020 presidential election, according to two of the counts that McAfee struck down on Wednesday.
Fani Willis ruling: She can stay on the case despite her numerous ethical lapses and bias, but her boytoy Nathan Wade has to go, so he’s stepping down.
“Judge Sets Trial Date for Hunter Biden’s Federal Gun Case.” “U.S. district judge Maryellen Noreika ruled the trial will start on June 3 at a status conference with Hunter Biden’s attorneys and special counsel David Weiss’s team of prosecutors.”
And another one. “Kaluga Oil Facility Hit By Drones.” I know a lot of previous Ukraine drone strikes on oil facilities hit storage tanks. It can be hard to tell with the quality of videos, but in both of these videos, it appears that these recent strikes are hitting either the cracking or fractional distillation towers, which are much higher value targets and more difficult to replace.
The Biden admin knows that US military personnel will not be safe in Gaza, but millions of dollars will be spent to build a pier to send aid that the Gazans don’t even want and that someone in the admin hopes will become a “commercial facility.”
That’s what they think “American leadership” looks like.
Apart from wasting taxpayer money, this is building infrastructure that, unless Israel finishes off Hamas, will fall into the hands of terrorists.
Also, it will take 60 days to build (at least), by which time Israel should have finished pounding Hamas into a thin paste. It’s stupid piled on top of stupid.
I haven’t paid much attention to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s independent presidential run because I doubt it’s going to be on enough state ballots to even play a spoiler role. But the idea that he’s thinking of picking NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers as his running mate seems extra stupid. Yes, he’s won a Super Bowl and is a four-time MVP, is 40 years old (and thus constitutionally eligible to serve, but what the hell does an NFL quarterback know about running the country? Also, since Rodgers is under contract to the Jets, won’t having to play NFL football preclude him from actively running as VP pick?
Crazy white boy Shuan King is now a Muslim.
Breaking: BLM hoaxer Shaun King and his wife have converted to Islam. King identifies as black and previously identified as a Christian pastor. He regularly uses his large social media platform to threaten people.
“Captain Marvel 3, Ant Man 4, Eternals 2All Cancelled.” Second time to break this out this week:
Related: Just about all of the $71 billion Disney spent to acquire Fox was essentially wasted. They got into a bidding war, and then “they don’t use the catalog that Fox has that they were given.”
In the middle of trial, New York prosecutors abruptly dropped their case Wednesday against three collectibles experts who had been accused of scheming to hang onto and peddle the pages, which Eagles co-founder Don Henley maintained were stolen, private artifacts of the band’s creative process.
In explaining the stunning turnabout, prosecutors agreed that defense lawyers had essentially been blindsided by 6,000 pages of communications involving Henley and his attorneys and associates. Prosecutors and the defense got the material only in the past few days, after Henley and his lawyers apparently made a late-in-the-game decision to waive their attorney-client privilege shielding legal discussions.
In waving attorney-client privilege, it looks like Henley made himself a prisoner of his own device…
Congratulations on surviving the first 1/6th of 2024! The Big Guy is exactly who we knew he was all along, Houston police screw up, some big crime stories, Wayne LaPierre is found guilty, and the world’s saddest Oompa Loompa. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
“Remember when Joe Biden told the American people that his son didn’t make money in China?” asked Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) in a video posted to X. ““Well, not only did he lie about his son Hunter making money in China, but it also turns out that $40,000 in laundered China money landed in Joe Biden’s bank account in the form of a personal check.”
Today, a U.S. District Court issued its final judgment in Texas v. Garland, which was a challenge to the U.S. House’s proxy voting rule under the Quorum Clause of the Constitution. In its final judgment, the Court concluded that U.S. House members must be physically present for their vote to comply with the Constitution’s Quorum Clause. Attorneys from the Texas Public Policy Foundation argued the merits at trial in January of this year.
The lawsuit was originally filed with the State of Texas in response to Congress’ unlawful passage of the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill in December 2022. The U.S. Constitution requires a quorum, or a majority, of House members to be physically present for the U.S. House of Representatives to conduct business. As less than half of the members were present when the legislation was passed, with the rest voting by proxy, this legislation never should have passed, and the president should not have signed it.
“This meticulous, 120-page opinion was written after a full trial on the merits,” said TPPF senior attorney Matt Miller. “The Court correctly concluded that the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 violated the Quorum Clause of the U.S. Constitution because a majority of House members was not physically present when the $1.7 trillion spending bill was passed. Proxy voting is unconstitutional.”
This basically says that every bit of that $1.7 trillion spending was unconstitutional, along with any laws, etc. passed in that omnibus. Just how do you back out all that money that’s been spent, assuming this is upheld?
Record meth bust in Eagle Pass. “The U.S. Customs and Border Protections (CBP) have seized six and a half tons of methamphetamine, over 13,000 pounds, at the Eagle Pass Port of Entry, making it the largest ever seizure in a single enforcement action.”
Mitch McConnell announced on Wednesday that he will step down as the Senate Republican leader in November, ending his tenure as the longest-serving Senate leader in history.
“This will be my last term as Republican Leader of the Senate,” the 82-year-old veteran of the chamber said to his colleagues on the Senate floor. “I’m not going anywhere… It’s time for the next generation of leadership.”
He’ll leave the senate when his term ends in 2027. You can condemn him as the ultimate swamp creature, or praise him for his effectiveness at things like getting Trump’s Supreme Court picks confirmed. It’s two sides of the same coin. I’m not sure he was as effective as Trent Lott or Howard Baker.
Houston Police Department Chief Troy Finner called it a “dark day” at a press conference for the Houston Police Department, announcing that 4,107 adult sexual assault cases were wrongly closed without investigation.
A case management code “suspended for lack of personnel” was used, which led to closing the cases without actually investigating them.
Finner said he was first made aware the code even existed in 2021 and instructed HPD’s special victims division to stop using the code; however, he found out on February 7, 2024 that it continued. HPD first began using the code in 2016.
He said he immediately ordered a review of all cases suspended using this code dating back to 2016, which will take at least 30 days to complete. While the number of cases they have today is 4,017, he says it is “fluid and subject to change.”
60 Minutes gets to enjoy some of that vibrant Muslim diversity in Sweden to the sides of their faces.
60 Minutes goes to Sweden to make a heart warming special about diversity, but see a different situation, then this happens. pic.twitter.com/oUd2ZuJ0RV
“After five days of deliberations, a jury in New York on Friday held the National Rifle Association liable for financial mismanagement and found that Wayne LaPierre, the group’s former CEO, corruptly ran the nation’s most prominent gun rights group. The jury determined that LaPierre’s violation of his duties cost the NRA $5,400,000, though he already repaid roughly $1.5 million to the organization.” Here’s the thing: While they prosecution was unquestionably politically motivated, LaPierre did run a crooked ship. In the long run, forcing Wayne and his corrupt cronies from office has done the NRA a huge favor.
Argentine President Javier Milei just ended his country’s budget deficit in nine weeks. If Trump and the Republicans manage to control both houses of congress next year, there’s no reason they can’t balance the budget…assuming they have the will.
“Austin Fire Department Chaplain Dismissed for Comments on Transgender Athletes Sues for Free Speech Violation. A chaplain for the Austin Fire Department was dismissed from his position after expressing beliefs on his personal blog about protecting women’s sports.”
After a volunteer chaplain of the Austin Fire Department (AFD) was fired for posting on his personal blog that men and women are biologically different and should not compete against each other in sports, a lawsuit was filed in an effort to protect his rights to free speech and religious freedom.
The Alliance Defending Freedom said in a press release that it filed a motion Tuesday on behalf of Dr. Andrew Fox, who served in a voluntary capacity as chaplain for AFD before he was dismissed in 2021.
Unlike APD, AFD public and union leadership has been infected by social justice. Dr. Fox appears to have a very strong case on viewpoint discrimination grounds.
White TV host tries to race-bait Jerry Seinfeld for hosting “mostly” white male comedians on his show. It doesn’t go well for him.
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bipartisan bill into law authorizing the release of grand jury transcripts from an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. The new legislation, signed by the Florida governor on Thursday, will allow a public release of the jury’s transcripts from the 2006 probe into Epstein’s abuse of underage girls. The new measure goes into effect July 1.”
Weird Austin crime story: “Prominent local businessman arrested in Austin, accused of arson.”
A prominent Austin businessman and founder of Continental Automotive Group, or CAG, was arrested Thursday on charges of Felony Arson and a State Jail Felony offense of Burglary.
Dorsey Bryan Hardeman, 75, is accused of starting a fire at a downtown Austin building on Sunday, according to an arrest affidavit.
According to Travis County court records, Trey Collins with the Minton, Bassett, Flores & Carsey firm has been retained as the attorney representing Hardeman. Sam Bassett told KXAN the office has just begun its work and “it is premature to comment. However, we will provide Mr. Hardeman an appropriate and vigorous defense.”
The affidavit said the Austin Fire Department responded to a building fire at the former Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop on 400 Nueces St. on Feb. 25.
Once the fire was contained, fire investigators determined the incident to be incendiary and found metal shavings on the ground below the door suggesting the door lock had been drilled out, records state.
The affidavit states fire investigators watched video surveillance from the building, which showed an older man entering the building with a red container consistent with a plastic gas tank.
Multiple cameras inside the building show a man pouring liquid from the red container and dropping multiple matches on the ground, the affidavit said.
Records show the man arrived at the location in a white 4-door Mercedez SUV.
Investigators interviewed the owner of Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop who told AFD Hardeman was the owner of the property next door and had previously asked about purchasing the property at 400 Nueces St.
This is not what people refer to as “the perfect crime.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Remember Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me? It turns out McDonalds didn’t destroy his liver, a decade of alcoholism did.
