Because I had to get out my book catalog last week, I’ve been as busy as Kathleen Kennedy on Ruin Star Wars Day, so this is another two-weeks crammed into one LinkSwarm. It’s just been a packed two weeks, with so many major stories breaking up not going to tease them up here, so let’s jump right in.
A new report has revealed that 21 George Soros-linked district attorneys across the United States have been replaced by “tough-on-crime” prosecutors. The report also noted that four have left office, either through recall efforts or other means.
Among those listed by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund were former Portland District Attorney Mike Schmidt, who lost a May election to Democrat challenger Nathan Vasquez, Western Judicial Circuit District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez, who lost her reelection bid to Kalki Yalamanchili, and Kim Foxx, the former Cook County State’s Attorney who in 2023 announced that she would not seek reelection.
For those who were removed from office, there is Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, who in November was indicted on federal bribery charges, and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, who was recalled last month after serving just 18 months in office, per The National News Desk.
Replacements also noted by the report were Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, who lost to challenger Nathan Hochman in last month’s election, and former Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who lost the 2022 Democratic primary election to Ivan Bates. Since her election loss, Mosby has been found guilty of one count of mortgage fraud.
All of them need to go.
Speaking of Soros tools: Subway Samaritan Daniel penny found not guilty on all charges. Just like Kyle Rittenhouse, he never should have been charged in the first place. Soros tool Alvin Bragg needs to be impeached and removed from office.
Christopher Wray steps down as FBI head. This shouldn’t keep the Trump Administration from prosecuting for his manifest interference in the political process.
More Democratic Party fundraising fraud. “ActBlue, the massive online fund-raising platform for liberal causes, has informed Congress it did not automatically block donations made with foreign-bought gift cards until recently.” Almost like the entire party is a giant money laundering scam…
Busted. “Georgia Court Removes Fani Willis from Trump Case over Relationship with Special Prosecutor.”
An appellate court removed Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis (D) from the racketeering case against President-elect Donald Trump over her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
Georgia’s court of appeals ruled Thursday that Willis will be removed from the case because of the appearance of misconduct surrounding her relationship with Wade, but did not throw out the case all together.
“While we recognize that an appearance of impropriety is generally not enough to support disqualification, this is the rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings,” the three judge panel ruled.
Left unstated is that her lawfare attack on Trump was both illegal and unconstitutional.
He also handed Iran access to $10 billion, because promoting terrorism, plotting to destroy Israel, and trying to build nuclear weapons are activities that Democrats seem eager to reward.
Winning. “ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos have reached a settlement in a defamation suit brought by President-elect Donald Trump, which requires the network to apologize, contribute $15 million to a ‘Presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for Plaintiff,’ and pay Trump’s legal team $1 million.”
The battle lines are now drawn between West Coast liberals, Bernie Sanders-socialists and moderate technocrats in the Midwest, who insist the party has completely lost touch with the average American voter.
But first, there is one thing that all sides seemingly agree on: The current political establishment must be chased out of national politics for good. A reckoning is coming.
‘The people that are responsible for this s**tshow are the Obama people. They’re just grifters,’ a well-connected Democratic donor exclusively told Daily Mail. He singled out Jen O’Malley Dillon, who went from Biden 2024 campaign chair to serve in the same role for Harris’s camp, and David Plouffe, an ex-Obama 2008 campaign manager turned top Kamala adviser.
“Trump sues Des Moines Register, pollster for ‘brazen election interference’ over faulty polling in presidential race.” I think it’s very unlikely that Trump will win this lawsuit, thanks to First Amendment protections and the “absence of malice standard.” Plus pollster Ann Selzer can always just claim “I just sucked at my job.” She retired after the election.
Israel pounded Syrian army bases on Tuesday in strikes it says aim to keep weapons from falling into hostile hands, but denied its forces had advanced into Syria, toward Damascus, beyond a buffer zone at the border.
Regional security sources and officers within the now-fallen Syrian army who spoke to Reuters described Tuesday morning’s airstrikes as the heaviest yet, hitting military installations and airbases across Syria, destroying dozens of helicopters and jets, as well as Republican Guard assets in and around Damascus.
The rough tally of 200 raids overnight had left nothing of the Syrian army’s assets, said the sources.
The Israeli Air Force has carried out over 300 airstrikes in Syria since the collapse of the regime, destroying advanced weapons and other capabilities.
Strikes reportedly carried out by Israel in Damascus’s Barzeh area completely destroyed a defense ministry research center, AFP correspondents reported on Tuesday. Western countries including the United States struck the facility in 2018, saying it was related to Syria’s “chemical weapons infrastructure.”
Plus they sunk the entire Syrian navy.
Speaking of pounding the snot out of things:
According to a US official, the US used B-52 bombers, F-15 fighter jets and A-10 aircraft to strike ISIS leaders, operatives and camps in central Syria. pic.twitter.com/QreZe4ATau
“Palantir CEO Alex Karp Eviscerates Democrats: Voters ‘Do Not Want To Hear Your Woke Pagan Ideology.'”
Alex Karp, the co-founder and CEO of Palantir, said late last week that Democrats lost the 2024 election because they did not understand the fundamental human desire to feel safe.
Karp made the remarks during a panel discussion at the Reagan National Defense Forum while talking about what Americans expect out of the U.S. government.
“Americans are the most loving, God-fearing, fair, least discriminatory people on the planet,” he said. “They want to know that if you’re waking up and thinking about harming American citizens, or if American citizens are taken hostage and kept in dungeons, or if you’re a foreign power sending fentanyl to poison our people, something really bad is going to happen to you and your friends and your cousins, and your bank account and your mistress, and whoever was involved.”
He continued, “When Americans are spending a trillion dollars on ‘defense,’ what I want and what I think my peers want is: why are these people keeping our citizens as hostages, torturing our people, attacking our allies, maligning us in what was once called the United Nations — basically a discriminatory institution against anything good? We need to stand up and those people need to be scared.”
He said that it was critical for the U.S. to dominate because “we have the best products in the world, and we can not have parity.”
“Our adversaries do not have our moral compunction,” he said. “If it is even, they will take advantage of our niceness, our kindness, our desire to be at home in Nebraska and New Hampshire or wherever we live, in our peaceful environments.”
“They need to wake up scared, and go to bed scared, and if you give that to the American people, the American people will go back and say — and honestly, I probably shouldn’t say this, this is why I thought the Democrats were going to lose the election, and why they did, because people want to live in peace,” he continued. “They want to go home. They do not want to hear your woke pagan ideology. They want to know they’re safe. And safe means the other person is scared. That’s how you make someone safe.”
Democrats are now, finally, pissed at Obama. “There are people there are people who are now multi-millionaires as a result of the Harris campaign, and we know exactly who they are. And I just want to say that half a billion dollars in advertising went to just four well-heeled Democratic firms. This whole thing is deeply incestuous.”
“Ozy Media Founder Carlos Watson Sentenced To Hefty Prison Term For Defrauding Investors. [He] was sentenced to 116 months, or nearly ten years, in prison for conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in an unusual case that briefly captivated the media world.”
More of that voting fraud Democrats swear doesn’t exist. “2020 Carrollton Mayoral Candidate Admits to Mail Ballot Fraud. Zul Mohamed pleaded guilty Monday to 109 voter fraud felonies.”
“After Donald Trump flipped his county for the first time in a century, longtime Democratic Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina has announced he is switching parties to the Republicans saying that “the [Democratic] party left me, and the people of South Texas behind.”
Three U.S. Army soldiers have been arrested in Texas on criminal charges relating to smuggling illegal aliens.
The three soldiers were based at Fort Cavazos, which is near Killeen in Central Texas.
Fort Cavazos is The Fort Formerly Known As Fort Hood. I might have been a little more worked up over the name change if Hood hadn’t been such a shitty general.
U.S. Border Patrol agents made an initial traffic stop of a suspicious vehicle in the city of Presidio, located in West Texas on the Rio Grande. As an agent approached the vehicle’s passenger side, the driver sped away—hitting a second Border Patrol vehicle and injuring the agent inside.
The vehicle was eventually stopped by local law enforcement officers who detained four individuals in the car. Three were illegal aliens, and one was identified as U.S. Army soldier Emilio Mendoza Lopez.
The driver of the vehicle was reported as being another soldier named Angel Palma, who fled on foot from the vehicle but was located in Odessa a day later.
Presidio is nearly 500 miles away from where the soldiers were stationed.
“Mendoza Lopez and Palma allegedly traveled from Fort Cavazos to Presidio for the purpose of picking up and transporting undocumented noncitizens,” announced the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas. “A third individual, Enrique Jauregui, is alleged to be the recruiter and facilitator of the human smuggling conspiracy.”
Three Texas teachers made news last week over charges of child pornography—also known as child sexual abuse material, as the images and videos depict sex crimes being committed against minors.
The educators worked in Dallas, Leander, and Wall Independent School Districts. Two of the three taught band.
On December 13, Dallas Police arrested Sean Turner, 34, and charged him with possession of pornography featuring a child younger than 10 years old—a first-degree felony.
Snip.
Retired principal Curtis John Locklear was arrested December 12 and charged with felony possession of child porn.
Locklear was arrested by the Montgomery County Precinct 3 Constable’s Office working with the Houston-area Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force.
Snip.
Also on December 12, a federal judge sentenced Joshua Carroll to 30 years in prison for possessing and producing child porn.
Carroll was an assistant band director in Wall ISD from January 2022 until his crimes were discovered earlier this year.
Texas Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw got dinged by the Internet for insider trading. So then Crenshaw attacked the Internet. It didn’t go well for him.
Google on Monday introduced a new chip called Willow, which solved in five minutes a computing problem that would take a classical computer more time than the history of the universe.
Tech companies are chasing quantum computing in hopes of developing systems that perform at speeds far faster than traditional silicon-based computers.
The building blocks of quantum computers, called “qubits”, while being fast, are error-prone, making it hard to ensure quantum computers are reliable and commercially viable.
The more qubits used in quantum computing, the more errors typically occur. But Google said on Monday it found a way to string together qubits in the Willow chip so that error rates decline as the number of qubits rise, adding that it can also correct errors in real time.
My understanding of how quantum computers work is limited to popular explanations, but D-Wave is evidently still in business, so maybe they work?
The trailer for James Gunn’s Superman dropped. I’ve never seen a Superman film in theaters, and this will not be getting me in. But you’ve got to give Gunn credit for thinking way outside the box and including Krypto the Superdog and Hawkman, two characters that absolutely no one in the greater viewing public was clamoring for.
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.
Greetings, and welcome to the return of the Friday LinkSwarm on Thursday! My Mac is working, my house is clean, and I have a newly painted master bathroom with a new floor and a new toilet.
Some links are new, some from a week or two ago.
Minneapolis: “Black Lives Matter activists block city council member’s car until she signs statement that charges against rioters will be dropped.”
“Peter Daszak – whose ‘EcoHealth Alliance’ funneled U.S. taxpayer cash to the Wuhan Institute of Virology – defended SARS gain-of-function experiments that potentially rendered the virus ‘capable of directly infecting humans’ in a Nature article unearthed from November 2015.”
Know who else was funding Peter Daszak’s research? Google.
The unearthed financial ties between EcoHealth Alliance and Google follow months of big tech censorship of stories and individuals in support of the COVID-19 “lab leak” theory.
The Google-backed EcoHealth Alliance played a critical role in the cover-up of COVID-19’s origins through its president, Peter Daszak.
Daszak served on the wildly compromised World Health Organization’s (WHO) COVID-19 investigation team. He championed the efforts to “debunk” the lab origin theory of the virus, despite mounting support for the claim…
The more we learn about Peter Daszak, one of the main villains of the COVID epidemic, the worse it gets.
Daszak is president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nongovernmental organization mostly funded by the US government. EcoHealth passed some of that money on to the lab in Wuhan, China.
It was Daszak who organized the letter in The Lancet from February 2020 dismissing as “misinformation” claims that the virus may have originated from the Wuhan Virology Lab. The letter created the illusion of consensus, which internet companies proceeded to enforce through censorship, and the media reinforced by constantly interviewing Daszak himself.
There might be journalistic value in hearing from the Chernobyl plant director about all those clouds floating over Ukraine. But if he suggests the rash of mysterious sores and cancers were due to a faulty shipment of microwaves recently arrived in Pripyat, you’d probably think he was engaged in a bit of “motivated reasoning.”
Apparently not the World Health Organization, which invited Daszak to join their microwave hunt in Wuhan.
In the last two days, Daszak has been removed from The Lancet’s own UN-backed commission investigating COVID’s origins, though whether he removed himself or was fired remains unclear.
Haitian president Jovenel Moïse was assassinated on Tuesday night in an attack on his home, the nation’s prime minister announced.
First lady Martine Moïse was hospitalized for gunshot wounds she received in the attack. Unidentified gunmen broke into the president’s residence on the outskirts of the capital Port-au-Prince during the night and opened fire on the couple.
“A group of unidentified individuals, some of them speaking Spanish, attacked the private residence of the president of the republic and thus fatally wounded the head of state,” Prime Minister Claude Joseph said in a statement. “The country’s security situation is under the control of the Haitian police and the armed forces of Haiti. . . . Democracy and the republic will win.”
Moïse has ruled by fiat for the past two years after Haiti failed to hold elections and the parliament dissolved. Meanwhile, a new prime minister, Dr. Ariel Henry, was scheduled to be sworn in on Wednesday.
Opposition figures said Moïse should have stepped down on February 7 of this year to complete a five-year term, and after Moïse refused to leave office thousands of Haitians protested in the streets. The government responded by arresting 23 people, including a senior judge and police official, whom Moïse accused of conspiring to assassinate him.
He might have been right! But it’s not like Moise was some sort of Jeffersonian paragon:
Haiti has experienced growing instability during the administration of President Jovenel Moïse, withunrest, high rates of inflation, and resurgent gang violence. The government’s failure to hold elections in October 2019 resulted in the terms of most of the Haitian legislature expiringon January 13, 2020, without officials elected to succeed them. Moïse is now ruling by decree. The judiciary is conducting ongoing investigations into Moïse’s possible involvement in various corrupt activities, which the president denies. Haitian Senate and Superior Court of Auditors investigations allege embezzlement and fraud by current and former Haitian officials managing $2 billion in loans from Venezuela’s PetroCaribe discounted oil program.
Speaking of getting whacked: “John McAfee Found Dead In Prison Cell After US Extradition Approved.” Ahem:
Getting subtle messages from U.S. officials saying, in effect: "We're coming for you McAfee! We're going to kill yourself". I got a tattoo today just in case. If I suicide myself, I didn't. I was whackd. Check my right arm.$WHACKD available only on https://t.co/HdSEYi9krq:) pic.twitter.com/rJ0Vi2Hpjj
It took 18 months of steady abuse by rioters and their overlords at city hall for Portland cops to say “no mas” and tap out. As one retired Portland police detective said, “If anyone did to a horse or a dog what has been done to PPB cops for 18 months, that person would have amassed hundreds of counts of felony animal abuse, but it’s perfectly OK to do it to cops, wholesale, and with an army of anarchist pals.”
The police officers in the Portland riot squad, officially called the “rapid response team (RRT),” still work for the agency, but will no longer volunteer themselves for the duty that resulted in “nearly all” members being injured with “broken bones, torn ligaments, and cartilage, traumatic brain injuries, hearing damage, damaged eyesight, lacerations and burns,” in the words of the resignation letter sent to the chief by the squad’s leader.
Expect more of this.
Snip.
The chaos started at the top by assuming rioters were victims and cops were criminals.
In their letter, RRT leader Lieutenant Jacob Clark said rules on the books for dealing with protests and riots didn’t change, but interpretation of those rules changed often and were in conflict with interpretations by council members, the city attorney, and others. Worse, the changes in the interpretations were applied retroactively and officers, staying within the limits of the law, were suddenly written up under a new interpretation of the rules.
Snip.
You can trace the walkout by Portland cops directly to efforts that began with George Soros.
Singer John Legend and BLM co-founder Shaun King followed Soros’s lead and poured money into the campaigns of district attorney candidates who believe cops are the problem, not the solution to keeping order. In fact, keeping order isn’t really a thing for these activists.
In both cities, Leftists poured money behind DA candidates who promised to free criminals and do what they could to stick it to cops and police departments. Portland got Mike Schmidt and LA got carpet bagger George Gascon. These DA’s, aided by unhinged city council members – Jo Ann Hardesty in Portland, Kshama Sawant in Seattle, and their allies in city bureaus – have created less safe cities.
Seattle’s city attorney and King County prosecutor’s lack of prosecutions against actual criminals – because woke ideology – has turned the Emerald City, like Portland and San Francisco before it, into a homeless encampment with no rules, free-flowing drugs, and free rent.
Portland Police union head Daryl Turner is interviewed following the resignation of Portland’s entire riot-response trained police team. pic.twitter.com/dD53nkAGlJ
Nine months after the declaration of a national emergency due to the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. births fell by 8% in a month.
The December drop marked an acceleration in declines in the second part of the year. For the full year, the number of babies born in the country fell 4% to about 3.6 million, the largest decline since 1973.
Michael “Creepy Porn Lawyer” Avenatti sentenced to two and a half years in prison over Nike extortion case. Let’s take a stroll through memory lane over the endless MSM fawning over Avenatti:
May we always remember and cherish the time Ana Navarro compared Michael Avenatti to the Holy Spirit pic.twitter.com/y63JoX4leq
s I previously reported, earlier this year, the University of Texas at Austin (UT) went off the deep end of all things “woke” and politically correct.
Despite warnings from alumni, faculty, and organizations like the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the National Association of Scholars, UT quietly adopted a “Strategic Plan for Faculty Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity” that is genuinely chilling. Among other questionable practices, this plan institutionalizes the Critical Race Theory version of “equity” (equality of results, as opposed to equal opportunity, nondiscrimination, and meritocracy) as the paramount driver of decisions on hiring, promotion, tenure, leadership positions, and even teaching awards and endowed chairs at UT. It also creates a bureaucracy of diversity commissars in each college to enforce the new orthodoxy and mandates re-education of virtually all faculty in the new catechism.
UT insiders tell me this plan was the brainchild and pet project of UT Vice Provost Edmund Gordon, a pronounced CRT advocate. UT’s adoption of this extraordinarily ill-considered plan was the last straw for me (and, based on responses I have received to my article, apparently many other UT alumni as well). UT President Jay Hartzell’s response to this criticism has been to ignore it, which seems to be his preferred modus operandi. President Hartzell’s calculus appears to be that, with the Texas legislature now safely adjourned from its biennial session. UT can continue on its merry way, unmolested by the unenlightened peasantry.
He may be in for a rude awakening.
Russia unveils world’s largest submarine. I’m sure it will be well-engineered and quite capable (Soviet subs were), but I’m betting those “Intercontinental Nuclear-Powered Nuclear-Armed Autonomous Torpedoes” are almost pure vaporware.
“Hedge Fund That Bet Against GameStop Shuts Down As Backers Pull Money.” “White Square Capital, run by a former Paulson trader, has announced that it will return capital to shareholders. Some of the FT’s sources said the decision was likely due to heavy losses stemming from the firm’s GME short.”
A heart I transplanted recently on the Organ Care System. Amazing technology to benefit our patients on the waiting list. Recipient is doing great! pic.twitter.com/8Zr2MxI1ZX
Here’s Cully Stimson on The Lars Larson Show on how George Soros-backed district attorneys around the country are refusing to prosecute certain people for certain crimes, including antifa rioters.
Night after night, Portland’s Democratic mayor Ted Wheeler allows antifa/#BlackLivesMatter rioters to run wild in his city, carrying out organized criminal campaigns of violence. Last night, a man wearing a “Patriot Prayer” hat was murdered there.
“I am not sad that a f—ing fascist died tonight,” says a woman at the antifa gathering in downtown Portland. The crowd laughs and cheers. The ID of the deceased is not confirmed but he is believed to be a Trump & blue lives supporter. #PortlandRiotspic.twitter.com/XV6471FSuF
President Donald Trump is not a fan of the way Wheeler has handled the crisis:
President Trump ramped up his attacks against Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler (D) on Sunday after a person was killed in the Oregon city following skirmishes between supporters of the president and Black Lives Matter demonstrators.
Trump did not address the incident, however he posted multiple tweets claiming that tensions in the city demanded federal intervention. In response to a tweet documenting clashes between Trump supporters and counterprotesters, the president claimed that it was a result of incompetence from the mayor.
“The big backlash going on in Portland cannot be unexpected after 95 days of watching and incompetent Mayor admit that he has no idea what he is doing,” Trump said. “The people of Portland won’t put up with no safety any longer. The Mayor is a FOOL. Bring in the National Guard!”
He added in a separate tweet that Wheeler was “incompetent, much like Sleepy Joe Biden,” referencing the Democratic presidential nominee.
“Our great National Guard could solve these problems in less than 1 hour,” he said. “Local authorities must ask before it is too late. People of Portland, and other Democrat run cities, are disgusted with Schumer, Pelosi, and [their] local ‘leaders.’ They want Law & Order!”
Weirdly, Wheeler is running for reelection at the same time he allows riots to continue night after night, against runoff opponent Sarah Iannarone, who is evidently even more pro-rioter than he is.
So the question remains: How does Portland’s Democratic mayor Ted Wheeler benefit from rioters continuing to assault police officers and commit other felonies in downtown Portland?