Posts Tagged ‘Rhode Island’
Friday, March 14th, 2025
Government leftists at USAID call to break the law to cover their tracks, DOGE uncovers still more outrageous examples of government waste, Democratic bagman john Podesta showered billions on newly created NGOs, billions in LA homeless funds are unaccounted for, Syrian jihadis slaughter civilians, more pedo teachers get caught, lobbyists rake in big bucks, and the heart-stopping thrills of a man…baking.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
““Shred And Burn All Documents”: USAID Staff Ordered To Destroy Evidence On Tuesday.” How is this not committing multiple felonies?
A senior USAID official on Tuesday ordered the agency’s remaining staff to report to their now-former headquarters in Washington DC for an “all day” group effort to destroy documents, many of which contain sensitive information, Politico reports.
The materials marked for destruction include “classified safes and personnel documents” at the Ronald Reagan Building, according to an email sent by USAID’s acting executive director, Erica Carr.
“Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break,” read the email instructing staff to label the burn bags with “SECRET” and “USAID/B/IO” (which stands for “bureau or independent office”) in dark sharpie.
Again, how is this not breaking the The Federal Records Act and other laws against destroying evidence?
“EPA $375B Climate Slush Fund Handled by John Podesta Only Gave to New Charities.”
Legal Insurrection readers may recall that late last year, Brent Efron, an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) special advisor implementing Biden’s climate agenda, made many controversial statements during an undercover video about the agency’s actions in anticipation of a potential Trump administration.
Efron reportedly told Project Veritas that the EPA was rapidly distributing billions of dollars in grants to nonprofits as an “insurance policy” against Trump winning the election. He described the situation as “throwing gold bars off the Titanic,” referring to the urgency with which the agency allocates funds.
Now the Trump Administration has followed those gold bars. An exclusive report by the New York Post indicates the trail of those bars led back to Deep State Obama/Biden minion, John Podesta.
The story began in September 2022, when Biden named Podesta to helm the $375 billion climate fund, which resulted from the Inflation Reduction Act, a 2022 law that was basically “Green New Deal” poison hidden beneath a wrapper of sweet economic promises.
Here is how The New York Times announced the 2022 fund creation:
As a senior adviser to Mr. Biden on clean energy innovation, Mr. Podesta will shape how the government disburses billions of dollars in tax credits and incentives to industries that are developing wind and solar energy, as well as to consumers who want to install solar panels, heat and cool their homes with electric heat pumps or buy electric vehicles.
..In an interview, Mr. Podesta described his new job as “throwing the weight of federal government policy behind a cycle of investment and innovation that we haven’t seen before in the United States, and that is almost unique in the world.”
There was absolutely no questioning by The New York Times as to where these monies would go, or how the funds would be used to help either our climate or energy industry.
On the other hand, the New York Post has a map of the gold bar trail. Apparently, billions went to “Non-Governmental Organizations” that were founded after the fund was created.
The Biden administration funneled at least $20 billion dollars into environmental groups, most of which had only recently been founded, The Post has discovered.
In one case, former Vice President Kamala Harris handed over a check for nearly $7 billion to Bethesda, Maryland, based group Climate United Fund, which does not appear in the IRS’s charities database, and has no federal filings.
The non-profit fund had only been incorporated in Delaware on November 30, 2023, according to public records, five months before Harris handed over the cash in April 2024.
The Climate United Fund then announced “the historic investment” in a press release, noting the group’s work “delivers benefits like cleaner air…and increased energy security.”’
However, because the company is so new, there is no publicly published accounting of how it plans to spend the $7 billion.
Climate Fund, which received nearly $7 billion in Biden Climate Gold, was just one of eight similarly set-up entities. Others are:
- Coalition for Green Capital: Received $5 billion
- Power Forward Communities: Received $2 billion
- Opportunity Finance Network: Received $2.29 billion
- Inclusiv: Received $1.87 billion
- Justice Climate Fund: Received $940 million
- Appalachian Community Capital: Received $500 million
- Native CDFI Network: Received $400 million
Every one of these should be sued and audited.
Schumer caves, Senate passes Republican spending bill.
“Federal Judge Denies Request To Block DOGE From Accessing Treasury Data.” Good.
“Exposed: Secret Pact Between 14 Blue States, Left-Wing Groups, and NYC Law Firms.”
Well, well, well. It’s hardly a surprise to discover that the wave of lawsuits against Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is no coincidence. The Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation has obtained a copy of a secret agreement outlining a coordinated legal offensive—an alliance between 14 blue states, left-wing activist groups, and prominent NYC law firms—all targeting DOGE and Musk himself.
What is surprising, however, is that they actually formalized their nefarious intentions.
Signed less than a month after DOGE began operations, this agreement is yet another example of the Democrats’ “whatever it takes” brand of political warfare.
The document begins:
This Common Interest Agreement (“Agreement) is made and entered into by and between the States of New Mexico, Arizona, Michigan, Califomia [sic], Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington and State Democracy Defenders Fund (the “Parties”). The Parties have agreed that they have a common interest in developing legal strategies to challenge the creation and actions of the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE) and the actions of Elon Musk as a special government employee and a common interest in existing or future investigative, regulatory, administrative, and judicial actions or inactions, including but not limited to any administrative or judicial proceedings related to or arising from those legal strategies (“Matters of Common Interest”).
“The Democrats are on the wrong end of an 80-20 issue, fighting tooth and nail to block a federal government audit that has already uncovered more than $105 billion in fraud, waste, and abuse. A recent Harvard/Harris poll shows that 76% of voters support DOGE’s efforts, yet Democrats—whose job is to represent the interests of their constituents—have gone to extraordinary lengths to obstruct it, even putting their opposition in writing.”
“The top 20 wildest revelations about Arabella Advisors and how they’ve redirected American tax dollars—or leveraged tax-exempt structures—for actions largely hidden from the American public.”
1. Billions in “Dark Money” Outpacing Political Parties
Arabella’s network raised $2.4 billion in the 2020 election cycle, dwarfing the combined fundraising of the Democratic and Republican National Committees. This tax-exempt cash, hidden from public scrutiny, fueled anti-Trump campaigns and progressive agendas, all while average Americans had no clue their tax system enabled it. It’s a shadow operation that makes traditional political spending look like pocket change.
2. Fake Grassroots “Pop-Ups” Everywhere
The Sixteen Thirty Fund, an Arabella spoke, spins up temporary “pop-up” groups like Floridians for a Fair Shake or Opportunity Wisconsin, which vanish after their mission—say, attacking a senator or pushing a ballot measure—is done. These tax-exempt fronts, funded by anonymous donors, masquerade as local movements while redirecting millions to sway elections, leaving taxpayers blind to the manipulation. It’s a conveyor belt of synthetic activism, exploiting 501(c) loopholes.
3. Funding Supreme Court Protests
Demand Justice, birthed by the Sixteen Thirty Fund, spent millions opposing Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation, complete with costumed activists and aggressive ad blitzes. This tax-exempt war chest didn’t just influence public opinion—it tried to bully the judiciary, all subsidized by a tax code Americans fund. Most folks never connected the dots to Arabella’s puppet strings behind the chaos.
4. Zuck Bucks’ Election Meddling
Arabella’s New Venture Fund funneled $25 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which then got $350 million from Mark Zuckerberg to “administer” 2020 elections—read: juice Democratic turnout in swing states. Tax-exempt dollars turned local election offices into partisan tools, and the public was none the wiser about this backdoor power grab. It’s a masterclass in using charity status to rig the game.
5. Foreign Billionaires Pulling Levers
Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss has pumped at least $208 million into the Sixteen Thirty Fund since 2016, exploiting tax laws that let foreigners bankroll U.S. political causes through “dark pools.” This foreign cash—untouchable by direct campaign finance rules—shapes American policy, yet taxpayers footing the system’s bill don’t even know his name. It’s a loophole so big you could drive a Swiss bank vault through it.
Read the whole thing.
“Los Angeles Lost Track Of Billions In Homelessness Funding, Audit Finds.” Of course it did. It disappeared into lots of leftwing pockets.
he report painted a grim picture of Los Angeles’ homeless program managed by Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), which was established in 1993.
“Repetitive information gaps, coupled with a lack of accurate and complete data and documentation, posed significant obstacles to this assessment,” the report states.
“Insufficient financial accountability led to an inability to trace substantial funds allocated to the City Programs. Fragmented data systems across LAHSA, the City, and the County and inconsistent reporting formats made it challenging to verify spending and the number of beds or units reported by the City and LAHSA, track participant outcomes, and align financial data with performance metrics.”
The report also cites a paucity of uniform data standards and real-time oversight, which limited the ability of the auditor to fully assess the true impact of homeless programs and raised concerns of resource misallocation.
A&M found that key stakeholders failed to monitor homelessness programs, and that LAHSA was unable to identify relevant service provider contracts and expenses. It also found gaps in documentation.
Of course there are gaps in documentation. That’s to hide the graft disappearing into leftwing pockets…
“Obama fixed healthcare so well that Americans borrowed $74 BILLION last year to receive medical care.”
Putin has a whole host of unreasonable demands for a ceasefire.
- Crimea, Sevastopol, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk — these are regions of Russia. They are written into the constitution. This is a given fact,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. That amounts to one-fifth of Ukraine’s legitimate, internationally recognized pre-war territory. Putin demands that Ukraine permanently renounce any claim to these territories.
- Ukraine must disarm itself of any NATO weapons. Of course, the top suppliers of the Ukrainian military are the United States with $69.7 billion worth of weapons systems and ammunition since the start of the war, Germany with $13.7 billion worth, the United Kingdom at $10.8 billion worth, Denmark at $8.1 billion worth, Sweden at $5.1 billion worth, Poland at $3.9 billion worth, France at $3.8 billion worth, and Canada at $2.8 billion worth. (All figures from the Kiel Institute’s Ukraine support tracker, converted from Euros to dollars, and as of December 31, 2024.) All those countries are NATO members, and thus, under the Russian demands, Ukraine would have to give up all weapons systems received from those countries. This amounts to a unilateral disarming of the Ukrainian military, in exchange for a promise from a former KGB lieutenant colonel that he will not start the war again.
- Putin also demanded that Ukraine cap its military size. Previously, Putin had demanded Ukraine limit the size of its army to 50,000 troops. As of January, the Ukrainian army is 880,000 troops, meaning that Russia wants the Ukrainian army to be reduced to less than 6 percent of its current size.
- According to CNN, “Putin also suggested that Ukraine halt mobilization and any training of its troops, and that other nations stop supplying weapons to Kyiv during the ceasefire.” Halt any training of troops.
- Putin insisted no foreign peacekeepers can enter Ukrainian territory.
- Ukraine must abandon the idea of NATO membership. While the Trump administration had already made this concession before negotiations began, note that Putin is establishing a system where he gets a veto over which countries NATO can accept.
- The U.S. must return six diplomatic compounds that Russia contends were seized illegally by the United States between 2016 and 2018.
- All Western economic sanctions upon Russia are illegal and must be lifted.
Hell no.
Ukraine hits Moscow with over 70 drones.
They also hit a Leningrad oil refinery, which is a long damn way from Ukraine.
City of Asheville, NC insists that it still gets to discriminate by race. I don’t think that’s going to work out well for them…
“Trump’s Department of Education launches “End DEI” portal to report DEI discrimination in schools.”
Dave Rubin and Peter Thiel discuss why mainstream academia may be more about securing funding than pursuing breakthroughs and how hyper-specialization and peer review contribute to a stagnant scientific enterprise that resists fundamental challenges.
Bob [Robert B.] Laughlin, who’s a physics professor at Stanford, he got a Nobel Prize in Physics 1998. And he suffered from the extreme delusion that once he got a Nobel Prize in Physics, he’d be free to look at anything he wanted to. And the area of science that he went after was: he was convinced that most scientists, even at a place like Stanford, weren’t really doing very much work, weren’t doing very much science, were stealing money from taxpayers…This was a more this was a more taboo question, more taboo topic, than just going narrowly after climate science, or, you know, or any of these things. And obviously, he got promptly defunded and his grad students couldn’t get PhDs anymore. [My] sort of hermeneutic of suspicion is that if there’s a topic you can’t discuss, if there ideas you aren’t allowed to articulate, my shortcut is they’re just true.
Remember all the way back in 1986, when the New York Times blithely asserted as fact that evangelicals are “more easily led than other kinds of voters?” Well, just last we they asserted that “a majority of gun owners are white, conservative, male and from rural areas.” The first three are probably true, and the fourth definitely not, and no one who was even passingly familiar with gun culture would make that mistake…
“Hundreds Of Civilians Massacred In Syria By Jihadist Government.” Try to contain your shock.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz pinned the massacre on the country’s new leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorist group, which was an offshoot of Al-Qaeda and was close to ISIS.
“Al-Julani took off his [robe], put on a suit, and presented a moderate facade,” Katz wrote in a post on X that included a video of scores of people who had been massacred. “Now, he has removed the mask, revealing his true face: a jihadist terrorist from the Al-Qaeda school, committing atrocities against the Alawite civilian population.”
Murdering members of other religions is never far from the average jihadi mind.
Israel made the right call in bombing the crap out of Syria’s military.
Just a day after the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had seized Damascus, and Bashar Assad had fled to Moscow, Assad’s army crumbled into dust, with soldiers ripping off their uniforms so as to avoid being killed by vengeful, and now triumphant, rebels. Those soldiers left largely unattended huge quantities of weaponry. The IDF seized the occasion to improve its defensive posture against Syria. There was a brief window of just a few days, between the fall of Assad and the regime in Damascus stabilizing and taking control of those abandoned weapons, during which the IDF did two things. First, it moved Israeli soldiers into Syria, where they established two new military outposts, one on the Syrian side of Mt. Hermon, and one extending further into Syria from the pre-existing buffer zone separating Israeli and Syrian troops on the Golan. Now the IDF controls the commanding heights that extend into Syria; the Israelis have a clear unimpeded view of Damascus — now literally in their sights — far below.
The second undertaking, which began just as soon as Assad had left for Russia, was the IDF’s systematic destruction of the Syrian army’s weaponry. The Israelis knew exactly where the weapons were located; they had long been preparing for a possible war against Assad, and had their target bank ready.
The IDF announced on December 10 that its air force and navy had conducted over 480 strikes in Syria in the span of 48 hours, 350 of which targeted airfields, anti-aircraft batteries, missiles, drones, fighter jets, tanks, and weapon production sites, destroying between 70% and 80% of Syria’s strategic weapons. It also sank Syria’s navy. And there was nothing that Ahmed al-Sharaa and the men of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham could do about it. Now Israel has not only made itself much safer, having removed Syria as a viable military threat to the Jewish state, but also has “demilitarized” the Jihadists in Damascus.
We have just seen that after al-Sharaa’s repeated promise that Syria’s minorities had nothing to worry about, decently, the jihadist “security services” — as they call themselves — entered Latakia to capture or kill Alawite members of Assad’s army. They were apparently ambushed by Alawite veterans of Assad’s army, and suffered a loss of 125 men. At that point, they decided to take revenge on the civilian population, killing more than 1,000 Alawite civilians — some reports claim up to 4,000 civilians have now been killed, and they also have been killing Christians — mostly Greek Orthodox but including some Melkites — because, of course, that’s what jihadists like to do. More than a thousand civilians, possibly as many as 4,000 according to some Alawite sources, have been killed in the space of two days.
“DHS Ends TSA Collective Bargaining After Bombshell Finding Of ‘More Full-Time Union Workers’ Than Airport Screeners.” It’s graft and featherbedding all the way down…
“Taxpayer-funded Lobbying Org Pays Massive Salaries. Many employees of the Texas Association of School Boards are earning more than the governor of Texas.”
The Texas Association of School Boards is a lobbying organization that is funded almost exclusively by Texas taxpayer dollars through school district dues.
According to TASB’s most recent 990 form, at least 16 of its employees make more than the governor of Texas, who earns just over $153,000 each year.
TASB paid a combined total of $927,644 to just two of its employees during fiscal year 2023.
Executive Director Dan Troxell was paid $412,101 in direct compensation by TASB. Another $64,154 is listed as “other compensation from the organization and related organizations.”
Similarly, TASB paid First Public Managing Director William Mastrodicasa $351,224 in direct reportable income. He was also paid an additional $100,165.
Nice work, if you can get it…
Mess with the bull, get the horns. “Trump admin cancels $400 million in grants to Columbia University.” How’s that pro-Hamas antisemitism working out for you?
“Belton Middle School Teacher Jailed for Sexually Assaulting a Student. Logan Demeny has been on leave from Belton ISD since allegations arose last month.”
“Elementary School Teacher Charged for Having Child Sexual Assault Videos. Kody Caleb Smith, who taught PE at Bayshore Elementary in La Porte ISD, admitted he downloaded and viewed around 200 videos of young children being sexually assaulted.”
Holy crap this is a crazy, disturbing crime store, of a man who was imprisoned in his home for 20 years.
“US House Members Push for Ban on Student Visas for Chinese Nationals.” “U.S. Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV) is spearheading the push to secure higher education institutions against espionage and intellectual theft.” I’m sure universities will panic over having to give up all that sweet commie dough…
“X Takes Down Network Of Chinese Accounts Amplifying NYT Attacks On Dissident Arts Group. The accounts, which exhibited inauthentic activity, had been used to boost articles published by The New York Times that targeted a religious group persecuted in China. One of the articles, a Chinese-language version of an attack piece on Shen Yun Performing Arts, was boosted so much it became the most shared New York Times article on X in more than a year, according to data from BuzzSumo, a social media analytics tool.” The question is, why was the NYT so eager to carry the CCP’s water attacking Falun Gong?
“InfoWars Reporter ‘Brutally Murdered’ Outside Austin Residence.” “InfoWars reporter Jamie White has died in what host Alex Jones says was a ‘brutal murder’ which occurred around midnight outside of his Austin apartment.” This is the ninth murder in Austin this year.
Speaking of deaths in Austin, there was a 17 vehicle crash caused by a drunk driver that left five people dead.
“Texas Awards SpaceX Over $17 Million Grant for Semiconductor R&D.” My opposition to the CHIPS Act has been noted before, but this may be already allocated money that the state is contractually obligated to award. Why would SpaceX need semiconductor research? My guess would be for advances in space radiation hardened (“rad hard”) chips. This was traditionally property of Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) rather than silicon-based chips. GaAs chips are generally orders of magnitude more radiation resistant than consumer grade chips, but GaAs is extremely brittle and difficult to work with, so much so that 6″ (150mm) wafers are the largest size for GaAs, and there still a number of older 4″ (100m) fab lines running GaAs out there. GaAs is such a pain that a lot of different substrates have been explored over the years, but I’m not sure any match GaAs’ extreme rad hard properties.
The latest “smishing” scam involves sending text messages asking for payment for unpaid road tolls.
Feel good news of the day: “Man sets himself on fire at South Carolina Tesla charging stations while trying to torch them with Molotov cocktails.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“Teacher Wins in Court After Being Fired for Refusing to Use Preferred Pronouns.”
“Starbucks manager says he was fired for being heterosexual.”
During a tornado warning, a Florida news station broadcasting the warning is hit by a tornado.
Critical Drinker didn’t care for Micky 17. “We’ll just make it dumb as fuck and hammer home the messaging with as much subtlety as a dump truck full of retarded sledgehammers.”
A look at the stylistic innovation of The Raid: Redemption.
Video of a guy who lives in a house in the wilderness of Vermont, and all he does is bake bread.
“Comes with your own dark portal to switch places with your evil universe twin.”
“Liberals Defeat Nazis By Painting Swastikas Everywhere And Torching Immigrant Businesses.”
“Tucker Interviews Saruman To Talk About Rohan’s Warmongering.”
“Teslas Updated With Self-Defense Mode Where They Transform Into Anthropomorphic Battle Robots.”
“Doctor Says He’ll Be Able To Make Better Diagnosis Once He Reviews Scan Of Your Insurance Benefits.”
“ISIS Claims Responsibility For Meghan Markle Netflix Show.” Well, they do love their bombs…
Dog super excited to get his new wheelchair, and man, pollen seems to have come early this year:
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
I’m between jobs again. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.
Tags:anti-semitism, Appalachian Community Capital, Arabella Advisors, Arizona, Asheville, Austin, Babylon Bee, Belton ISD, bread, Brent Efron, Budget, California, China, Chuck Schumer, Climate United Funds, Coalition for Green Capital, Columbia University, Connecticut, Crime, Critical Drinker, Dan Troxell, Dave Rubin, Demand Justice, Democrats, Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Department of Treasury, DHS, dogs, drones, DUI, education, Elon Musk, EPA, Erica Carr, Falun Gong, Florida, Foreign Policy, fraud, Gallium Arsenide (GaAs), gay, Guns, Hansjörg Wyss, Hawaii, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), homeless, Inclusiv, Infowars, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Israel, Israel Katz, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jihad, Jim Geraghty, John Podesta, Justice Climate Fund, Kody Caleb Smith, La Porte ISD, Latakia, Legal Insurrection, LinkSwarm, lobbyists, Logan Demeny, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LHSA), Mark Zuckerberg, Maryland, Massachusetts, Media Watch, Michigan, Military, Minnesota, Moscow, movies, murder, Native CDFI Network, Nevada, New Mexico, New Venture Fund, New York Times, North Carolina, ObamaCare, Opportunity Finance Network, Oregon, pedophilia, Peter Thiel, Power Forward Communities, pronouns, Rhode Island, Riley Moore, Robert B. Laughlin, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Ryan George, Semiconductors, Sixteen Thirty Fund, Social Justice Warriors, SpaceX, Stanford, Starbucks, State Democracy Defenders Fund, Suchomimus, Syria, Tesla Motors, Texas, Texas Association of School Boards, Texas Scorecard, tornado, TSA, Tucker Carlson, Ukraine, unions, USAID, Vermont, Vladimir Putin, Washington, waste, weather, Welfare State, William Mastrodicasa
Posted in Austin, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, ObamaCare, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, June 25th, 2024
You know things are serious when America’s biggest breastaurant chain starts closing locations.
At least six Hooters restaurants in Texas suddenly joined the growing list of restaurant closures over the weekend, and more may follow.
A handful of Texas Hooters locations have been listed as “permanently closed” on Google, and national sports bar chain officials have confirmed the closure. U-Haul moving trucks were spotted being loaded outside of Lubbock’s Hooters, which was among the Texas locations to permanently close.
Hooters employees also shared the closure is the most recent of around 40 locations that have shuttered across the U.S. In addition to the Texas locations, Florida also saw the closure of a Hooters over the weekend.
“Like many restaurants under pressure from current market conditions, Hooters has made the difficult decision to close a select number of underperforming stores,” the company stated in an email. “Ensuring the well-being of our staff is our priority in these rare instances. With new Hooters restaurants opening domestically and internationally, new Hooters frozen products launching at grocery stores, and the Hooters footprint expanding into new markets with both company and franchise locations, this brand of 41 years remains highly resilient and relevant.”
The following Texas locations appear to be permanently closed:
Bryan: 960 N Earl Rudder Fwy
Lubbock: 4950 S Loop 289
McAllen: 410 E Expressway 83
San Angelo: 4384 Sherwood Way
Seabrook: 1818 NASA Road 1
Wichita Falls: 3701 Call Field Rd
According to the New York Post, “Roughly 40 of the 300 restaurants worldwide were shut, including in Florida, Kentucky, Rhode Island, Texas and Virginia, according to Nation’s Restaurant News. The number of Hooters locations has declined by 12% since 2018.”
You know a recession is serious when men stop paying for beer, cheeseburgers and fried appetizers delivered by busty, scantily-clad waitresses.
(Hat tip: Dwight.)
Tags:Biden Recession, Economics, Florida, Hooters, Kentucky, restaurants, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia
Posted in Economics, Texas | 8 Comments »
Friday, December 18th, 2020
Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! On a personal note, I was just laid off from my Senior Technical Writer job, so if you have any leads in the department (for either Austin or remote work), drop me a line in the comments.
Russian hackers penetrated Austin city government:
State-sponsored hackers believed to be from Russia have breached the city network of Austin, Texas, The Intercept has learned. The breach, which appears to date from at least mid-October, adds to the stunning array of intrusions attributed to Russia over the past few months.
The list of reported victims includes the departments of Commerce, Homeland Security, State, and the Treasury; the Pentagon; cybersecurity firm FireEye; IT software company SolarWinds; and assorted airports and local government networks across the United States, among others. The breach in Austin is another apparent victory for Russia’s hackers. By compromising the network of America’s 11th-most populous city, they could theoretically access sensitive information on policing, city governance, and elections, and, with additional effort, burrow inside water, energy, and airport networks. The hacking outfit believed to be behind the Austin breach, Berserk Bear, also appears to have used Austin’s network as infrastructure to stage additional attacks.
While the attacks on SolarWinds, FireEye, and U.S. government agencies have been linked to a second Russian group — APT29, also known as Cozy Bear — the Austin breach represents another battlefront in a high-stakes cyber standoff between the United States and Russia. Both Berserk Bear and Cozy Bear are known for quietly lurking in networks, often for months, while they spy on their targets. Berserk Bear — which is also known as Energetic Bear, Dragonfly, TEMP.Isotope, Crouching Yeti, and BROMINE, among other names — is believed to be responsible for a series of breaches of critical U.S. infrastructure over the past year.
(Hat tip: Dwight.)
“Illegal-immigrant caravans back on the way — and Joe Biden ‘invited’ them.” (Hat tip: TPPF.)
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez calls for Nancy Pelosi’s ouster as Speaker of the House.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) called for new leadership to replace House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), in an interview with The Intercept aired on Wednesday.
The remarks represent Ocasio-Cortez’s most direct challenge to current Democratic congressional leadership, and come a month after Michigan representative Elissa Slotkin vowed not to support Pelosi for another term as House Speaker. Pelosi is the only candidate for the position, but with Democrats projected to win at most 226 House seats, Pelosi can only lose eight Democratic votes to remain Speaker.
I wonder: If enough of the hard left defects to keep Pelosi from one more term as speaker, might there be enough Democrats to vote for a moderate Republican as Speaker rather than being ruled by The Squad?
Another Obama-era crony green energy boondoggle goes bust:
Move over, Solyndra. Another green boondoggle from the Obama era has failed, and taxpayers are out as much as $510 million. Late last week Judge Karen Owens approved a Chapter 11 plan of reorganization by Tonopah Solar Energy. Tonopah operated the Crescent Dunes solar plant in Nevada that received $737 million in guaranteed loans from the Obama Administration.
The plan includes a settlement with the Department of Energy that leaves taxpayers liable for as much as $234.68 million in outstanding debt, but the total public cost is even higher. Crescent Dunes also received an investment-tax credit, and the 2009 stimulus legislation allowed it to receive a cash payment in lieu of credit. In 2017 the plant received more than $275.6 million from Treasury under the Section 1603 program, which it used to service its outstanding liabilities. So taxpayers already gave Crescent Dunes cash to pay off its taxpayer-backed loans.
Snip.
DOE expected Crescent Dunes to produce up to 482,000 megawatt hours every year, but the plant hasn’t produced that much energy in its lifetime. In 2019 Crescent Dunes’s hot salt tanks suffered what partial owner SolarReserve described as “a catastrophic failure” that has left the plant inoperable.
Since molten salt is one of the key elements in many next generation nuclear plant designs, I searched online for pictures of what a catastrophic hot salt tank failure looks like, but I couldn’t find any.
Portland keeps letting Antifa run wild:
Last week, Portland law enforcers raided a house that had for months been illegally occupied by trespassers affiliated with Black Lives Matter and Antifa. At the barricaded property, officers made arrests and found a stockpile of firearms.
Under normal circumstances, the armed trespassers would be prosecuted, and that would be the end of the story. But in riot-plagued Portland, Oregon, things are very far from normal.
The city’s “progressive” district attorney immediately dropped the charges against the occupiers, and their comrades soon sent in reinforcements to build a sprawling autonomous zone in the middle of a densely populated residential area.
The militants called the place the Red House Autonomous Zone — named after the red-painted house occupied at the heart of the zone. In doing so, they took inspiration from the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle, Washington. During the summer, leftist extremists chased police out of a six-block area of the Emerald City and drew their own “borders,” complete with checkpoints manned by armed “security.” The three-week experiment in lawlessness ended in mass vandalism, attempted rape, multiple shootings and two homicides.
Portland’s RHAZ is following in the same footsteps.
The house at the center of the autonomous zone was occupied by members of the Kinney family and their allies. The Kinneys, who haven’t paid their mortgage since 2017, were evicted after a tortuous legal process. The fact that they own a second house nearby didn’t prevent the mixed-race Kinneys and their allies from claiming victimization by — you guessed it — “racism.”
Soon after last week’s raid on the occupied house, some 100 Antifa comrades mobilized through social media to retake the space. “There is an active call for numbers, defensive gear and supplies and change of clothes,” tweeted Antifa group Youth Liberation Front.
Within a few hours, the entire street was blocked off with stolen fencing, wood and junk taken from nearby homes. Some brought in power tools to reinforce the barriers. The militants laid out piles of rocks, metal spikes and glass bottles at strategic points to act as supply points for projectile weapons. They lined the road with impromptu “booby traps” — upward-facing nail strips, caltrops and more.
Portland police officers tried to shut down the RHAZ early on, but they were attacked and chased away. Their police cruisers were smashed up; they didn’t return.
“Those present at the barricades should leave it behind, put down your weapons and allow the neighborhood to return to peace and order,” Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell asked the militants, who ignored his polite request.
Portland residents should file federal civil rights lawsuits against Portland officials for equal protection violations. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Plus Portland antifa are still the same scumbags:
A serial sex offender and Black Lives Matter activist recently released from prison served a titular leadership role at the Antifa autonomous zone in north Portland.
Micah Isaiah Rhodes, 27, was convicted of three counts of second-degree sexual abuse of minors in 2018. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison after violating probation by being near children during an Antifa occupation of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Former [Andrew] Cuomo Aide Lindsey Boylan Alleges Governor Sexually Harassed Her For Years.” Hey, what do you want to bet that #BelieveAllWomen magically doesn’t apply to powerful Democrat yet again? For Reasons.
Rhode Island’s Democratic governor Gina Raimondo: “Don’t go out and wear a mask.” Four days later: Goes to a wine bar, doesn’t wear a mask. Laws are for the peasants, not the Democratic Party ruling class. (Hat tip: Andrew Malcolm.)
Dem. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard commits heresy against radical transgenderism, sponsers bill that would ban men from women’s sports.
Get woke, go broke. “Dismal NFL Ratings Force Networks To Renegotiate With Advertisers.”
Things look bad for movie theaters.
“Leader Of German Audit Watchdog Caught Trading In Wirecard Shares Before Collapse.”
If the MSM didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all:
Camille Paglia unloads on academic leftism:
Over at Borepatch, there’s a swell story about Air Force Brigadier General James Maitland Stewart.
Eating chili peppers can extend your life. I’m going to live forever…
Cyberpunk 2077 sucked so bad on PS4 that Sony pulled it from the store and is offering refunds.
Zodiac killer cipher broken. Also consider this a reminder that Zodiac is one f David Fincher’s best films.
Speaking of great films: Ann Reinking, RIP. She was awesome in All That Jazz, one of the all-time great American movies.
Welcome BadBlue (by the same folks behind Director Blue) to the blogroll.
A first edition of The Federalist Papers sold at auction for $226,800.
The Flu would like a word:
Funny dog video:
“Chinese Spy Assigned To Date Eric Swalwell Begs To Be Sent To Labor Camp Instead.”
Like BattleSwarm? Consider hitting the tip jar:
Tags:#BlackLivesMatter, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Andrew Cuomo, Andy Ngo, antifa, Austin, Border Controls, Camille Paglia, Crescent Dunes, Crime, data security, dogs, education, Elissa Slotkin, Eric Swalwell, FireEye, Germany, Gina Raimondo, green subsidies, hacking, Jimmy Stewart, Joe Biden, Lindsey Boylan, LinkSwarm, Media Watch, Micah Isaiah Rhodes, movies, Nancy Pelosi, New York, NFL, Obituary, Portland, Regulation, Rhode Island, Russia, sex offender, Social Justice Warriors, SolarWinds, Tulsi Gabbard, Wirecard
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors | 3 Comments »
Friday, August 10th, 2018
This week has been saner but still busy:
Israel and Hamas have essentially been going at it all week.
“Illegal Immigrant Released by ‘Sanctuary City’ of Philadelphia Convicted of Child Rape.”
Why Dianne Feinstein was an easy mark for Chinese spys:
In June 1996 — after the staffer had begun working for Feinstein — the FBI detected that the Chinese government was attempting to seek favor with the senator, who at the time sat on the East Asian and Pacific affairs subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee, which oversees US-China relations. Investigators warned her in a classified briefing that Beijing might try to influence her through illegal campaign contributions laundered through front corporations and other cutouts.
The warning proved prescient.
One Chinese bagman, Nanping-born John Huang, showed up at Feinstein’s San Francisco home for a fundraising dinner with a Beijing official tied to the People’s Bank of China and the Communist Party Committee. As a foreign national, the official wasn’t legally qualified to make the $50,000-a-plate donation to dine at the banquet.
After a Justice Department task force investigated widespread illegal fundraising during the 1996 Clinton re-election campaign, Feinstein returned more than $12,000 in contributions from donors associated with Huang, who was later convicted of campaign-finance fraud along with other Beijing bagmen. The DNC and the Clinton campaign had to return millions in ill-gotten cash.
Still, Beijing got its favored trade status extended — thanks in part to Feinstein. In speeches on the Senate floor and newspaper op-eds, she shamelessly spun China’s human-rights violations, as when in 1997 she compared Beijing’s 1989 massacre of hundreds of young demonstrators to the 1970 Kent State shootings, calling for the presidents of China and America to appoint a human-rights commission “charting the evolution of human rights in both countries over the last 20 to 30 years,” that “would point out the successes and failures — both Tiananmen Square and Kent State — and make recommendations for goals for the future.”
Feinstein also led efforts to bring China into the World Trade Organization in 1999, which gave Beijing permanent normal trade relations status and removed the annual congressional review of its human-rights and weapons-proliferation records.
Feinstein, still among the Senate’s most influential China doves, travels to China each year. Joining her on those trips is her mega-millionaire investor husband, Richard C. Blum, who has seemingly benefited greatly from the relationship.
Starting in 1996, as China was aggressively currying favor with his wife, Blum was able to take large stakes in Chinese state-run steel and food companies, and has brokered over $100 million in deals in China since then — with the help of partners who sit on the boards of Chinese military front companies like COSCO and CITIC.
China investments have helped make Feinstein, who lives in a $17 million mansion in San Francisco and keeps a $5 million vacation home in Hawaii, one of the richest members in Congress.
“Of all Donald Trump’s many sins against the Great Church of the Transnational Leftist Establishment, his greatest may be his stubborn refusal to subordinate the needs of the normal citizens of the United States to the dogmas of our alleged betters.”
Good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun in Florida.
Elites vs. the Deplorables:
Academic dogma postulates that white people cannot be the victims of racism, and such banal white demonization has now seeped into the larger liberal commentariat. With that bias comes the notion that one can smear the white working classes with impunity. Caputo, however, was not brave or stupid enough to visit a Trump rally and to suggest to the crowd around him to get to a Clear Smile clinic.
If you are a non-white purveyor of such prejudice, venom like Jeong’s is contextualized through the lens of compensatory historical grievances. Someone’s grandfather mistreated your grandmother, so you can invert and then replay the roles with impunity. Or less charitably, life’s disappointments are always due to past cosmic injustice, not one’s own perceived tragic shortcomings or bad luck or just cruel fate.
If you are an elite white liberal, you are a twofer: virtue signaling your identity politics bona fides, while psychologically squaring the circle of your own privilege. Those who ridicule less fortunate white others for their supposed racial privilege—themselves often the products of old boy networks, elite upbringings, inherited perks, prep schools and parental leveraging—end up as the privileged smearing the non-privileged for their privilege.
Jeong is a Harvard Law graduate. Strzok has a master’s degree from Georgetown. The ridicule of the white working class by NeverTrump conservative pundits is read on the pages of the nation’s premier newspapers or voiced in hallowed symposia.
Is such ignorance of an entire class because of, or in spite of such, elite training?
Snip.
“In answer to the now hackneyed question, who or what created Trump? All these purveyors of class and racial prejudice need only look in the mirror.”
“It has become apparent that the Democratic Party and its media supporters seem to have a problem with representative democracy and how it works. They lost an election they thought they’d handily win, and their reaction to it has been to have a long, screeching public tantrum.” (HT AoSHQ)
That “Democratic Socialist wave” crested and broke-up before it ever hit the shore: Just about all Bernie bros go down in Democratic primary defeats. “Rather than demonstrate that his movement has a broad reach across the electorate, Sanders has instead demonstrated that’s a fringe movement even within the Democratic Party.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Why the left are afraid of Jordan Petersen.
It is because the left, while it currently seems ascendant in our houses of culture and art, has in fact entered its decadent late phase, and it is deeply vulnerable. The left is afraid not of Peterson, but of the ideas he promotes, which are completely inconsistent with identity politics of any kind. When the poetry editors of The Nation virtuously publish an amateurish but super-woke poem, only to discover that the poem stumbled across several trip wires of political correctness; when these editors (one of them a full professor in the Harvard English department) then jointly write a letter oozing bathos and career anxiety and begging forgiveness from their critics; when the poet himself publishes a statement of his own—a missive falling somewhere between an apology, a Hail Mary pass, and a suicide note; and when all of this is accepted in the houses of the holy as one of the regrettable but minor incidents that take place along the path toward greater justice, something is dying.
When the top man at The New York Times publishes a sober statement about a meeting he had with the president in which he describes instructing Trump about the problem of his “deeply troubling anti-press rhetoric,” and then three days later the paper announces that it has hired a writer who has tweeted about her hatred of white people, of Republicans, of cops, of the president, of the need to stop certain female writers and journalists from “existing,” and when this new hire will not be a beat reporter, but will sit on the paper’s editorial board—having a hand in shaping the opinions the paper presents to the world—then it is no mystery that a parallel culture of ideas has emerged to replace a corrupted system. When even Barack Obama, the poet laureate of identity politics, is moved to issue a message to the faithful, hinting that that they could be tipping their hand on all of this—saying during a speech he delivered in South Africa that a culture is at a dead end when it decides someone has no “standing to speak” if he is a white man—and when even this mayday is ignored, the doomsday clock ticks ever closer to the end.
In the midst of this death rattle has come a group of thinkers, Peterson foremost among them, offering an alternative means of understanding the world to a very large group of people who have been starved for one. His audience is huge and ever more diverse, but a significant number of his fans are white men. The automatic assumption of the left is that this is therefore a red-pilled army, but the opposite is true. The alt-right venerates identity politics just as fervently as the left, as the title of a recent essay reproduced on the alt-right website Counter-Currents reveals: “Jordan Peterson’s Rejection of Identity Politics Allows White Ethnocide.”
If you think that a backlash to the kind of philosophy that resulted in The Nation’s poetry implosion; the Times’ hire; and Obama’s distress call isn’t at least partly responsible for the election of Donald Trump, you’re dreaming. And if you think the only kind of people who would reject such madness are Republicans, you are similarly deluded. All across the country, there are people as repelled by the current White House as they are by the countless and increasingly baroque expressions of identity politics that dominate so much of the culture. These are people who aren’t looking for an ideology; they are looking for ideas. And many of them are getting much better at discerning the good from the bad. The Democratic Party reviles them at its peril; the Republican Party takes them for granted in folly.
Though it must be said that only a small fraction of the amorphously named “alt-right” embraces identity politics. (Hat tip: Will Shetterly on Twitter.)
Syrian chemical weapons scientist blows up real good.
Social Justice Warriors want biological women to never win another women’s sporting ever again.
Why Europe is drafting away from America.
The global influence of Europe continues to wane, at least as defined by demographic robustness, technological innovation, the quality of higher education, and the ability to defend its interests. Its aristocratic elite classes are currently under constant challenge from populist reformers. And 73 years of peace have been hard on Europe, in the sense that the postmodern European cultural ideal is to avoid childbearing, most religion, and national defense.
Snip.
Europe continues to believe that the “Palestinian issue” is key to “peace” in the Middle East — a euphemism for distancing itself from Israel. In truth, the Middle East is undergoing the greatest revolution since the end of colonialism. The worries about Arab security are not the tardiness of Palestinian statehood but the existential threats emanating from theocratic Shiite Iran and the neo-Ottomanism of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey. In that sense, a conventionally strong and nuclear Israel is for now allied with an Arab world at odds with both Tehran and Ankara, and is likely in any major war to be on the side of an Egypt or Saudi Arabia. Yet for Europe, the Palestinians are the rusty key to peace, even as the latter are increasingly under suspicion by Arab nations as pro-Hezbollah and pro-Iranian.
Europe for now is on the wrong side of the energy revolution, perhaps best epitomized by the near-suicidal green policies of Germany. As it dismantles coal and nuclear plants, Angela Merkel’s government finds its subsidized wind and solar projects utterly incapable of meeting Germany’s competitive industrial needs. The result will likely be a continual and massive importation of natural gas, increasingly from NATO’s supposed archenemy, Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The dream of hydraulic fracturing of shale gas throughout Europe is now largely dead and buried by opposition from radical environmental groups. The result is not a self-sufficient Europe enjoying renewable energy but a continent increasingly dependent for its mounting conventional energy needs on costly imports, with resulting energy costs that are making it uncompetitive with North American industries. Again, the contrast with the United States is telling: The latter went from foreordained, “peak oil” fossil-fuel dependence to becoming the largest oil, gas, and coal producer in the world.
One symptom of European demographic decline, multiculturalism, and military impotence is massive illegal immigration from the Middle East and North Africa. The ensuing crisis of large unassimilated populations is said to be analogous to the influxes of illegal immigrants into the United States from Central America and Mexico. But there are key differences. As an immigrant nation without a hereditary aristocracy, the melting pot of the United States even in postmodern times has far better integrated, assimilated, and intermarried newcomers. Illegal immigrants to the United States are largely Catholic; challenges to assimilation are national, ethnic, and linguistic but not additionally religious as in Europe. Congressional and presidential policy reflects a majority opinion in the United States that now supports secure borders and measured, legal, meritocratic immigration. In Europe, official immigration policy is still at odds with voters.
(Hat tip: Gregory Benford’s Facebook page.)
Is an upset brewing in Rhode Island?
Woman who was the daughter and granddaughter of women who used men simply as sperm donors wonders why men are suspicious of her. Also, from the comments: “What the writer only lets on, deep into the article, is that she was raised in a lesbian commune.”
Not even Democrats are wild about an abortion mill parking lot comedy tour. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Austin’s CodeNext planning process dies a very justifiable death.
Austin American Statesman kills weekly Spanish-language newspaper, offers all Statesman staffers voluntary severance package. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
DIY Pancreas. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
“Ocasio-Cortez Severely Burned After Accidentally Touching Book On Basic Economics.”
Ten honest plumbing tips. (Hat tip: Daddy Warpig.)
A tweet:
Tags:Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, alt-right, Austin, Border Controls, China, Crime, Democrats, Dianne Feinstein, Elections, EU, Europe, feminists, Florida, Foreign Policy, gay, Guns, Hamas, Israel, John Huang, Jordan B. Peterson, Kurt Schlichter, Media Watch, Military, rape, Republicans, Rhode Island, sanctuary cities, Social Justice Warriors, Syria, Texas, Victor Davis Hanson
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Military, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | No Comments »
Friday, October 6th, 2017
Welcome to October! Enjoy your complimentary LinkSwarm:
Imran Awan’s lawyer said the House Democrats he worked for asked him to falsify spending reports:
House Democrats ordered the systematic falsification of records showing how they spend their taxpayer-provided office budgets, according to lawyers for two former House information technology (IT) aides.
It’s a remarkable accusation that pits sitting lawmakers against the former aides, Imran Awan, his brothers Abid and Jamal, and his wife Hina Alvi. Imran was arrested in July while trying to board a flight to Pakistan, and then indicted on four counts of bank fraud involving moving money to that country. Imran and Hina, who was also indicted, face a court date Friday.
One of Imran’s lawyers, Aaron Page, acknowledged the invoicing discrepancy Aug. 21, telling The Daily Caller News Foundation, “This is just how things have been done for forever. This is what experienced members of Congress expect: to expedite things, they adjust the pricing.”
If members or senior staff instructed IT aides to misrepresent how budgets were spent, that could potentially explain why officials have not charged the Awans with crimes related to procurement, even a full year after House authorities gathered documentation showing invoices that claimed expensive technological items cost $499 instead of their true price: potentially an open-and-shut violation.
Garden-variety Democratic graft is probably the least worrisome lawbreaking the Awan ring could have been up to…
How the NFL protests are going to get Donald Trump reelected:
now believe that the left will re-elect Trump. The ruction over NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem illustrates the point.
The left has talked itself into believing that Trump’s alleged appeals to white racism were what put him over the top.
More astute psephologists have pointed out that the actual difference was made by people in industrial states who previously had voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, but switched to Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Hard to attribute those decisions to white racism.
Nevertheless, the left now interprets all of Trump’s actions through the prism of perceived appeals to white racism. If Trump were to tweet, “It’s a lovely day in Washington,” the left would denounce it as a dog whistle to white supremacists.
Which brings us to the NFL ruction. Players began kneeling during the national anthem reportedly to protest what they regard as racial injustice in the United States. Trump denounced them in Trumpian fashion.
According to the left, since the players were protesting racial injustice, Trump was endorsing racial injustice by criticizing them. There goes that dog whistle!
o most Americans, that’s nuts.
I’m not much of a flag waver. And I’ve never really understood why sporting events begin with the playing of the national anthem. Doesn’t seem a particularly apposite occasion for a display of patriotic fidelity.
But it is part of American tradition. And traditions matter.
You don’t have to be a racist to find galling the spectacle of pampered athletics, making millions of dollars playing a game, hosted in taxpayer-subsidized stadiums, benefiting from an antitrust exemption, ostentatiously exempting themselves from the traditional display of fidelity to our country.
The argument by some that the protest isn’t really about the flag and national anthem rings hollow. If you do it during the national anthem, it is about the flag and the national anthem.
Snip.
Generally speaking, white Middle Americans aren’t racists. They don’t long for a return to Jim Crow. They’re just sick of having identity and grievance politics thrown in their faces all the time.
If the left continues to tell Middle Americans they are racists, Trump will be re-elected.
“The media and the NFL did not know what hit them. I do. They hit themselves. Hard.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Pew confirms: Democrats are the extremists.
“Senior law enforcement officials from the United States, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras announced here today criminal charges against more than 3,800 MS-13 and 18th Street gang members in the United States and Central America in a coordinated law enforcement action known as Operation Regional Shield.”
ICE nabs 498 criminal illegal aliens in “sanctuary cities.”
Under President Donald Trump, illegal alien deportations have roughly tripled. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
How Donald Trump’s election caused the mainstream media to drop their masks of objectivity:
The forces that brought Trump to power are alien to the experience of the men and women who populate newsrooms, his supporters unlike their colleagues, friends, and neighbors, his agenda anathema to the catechism of social liberalism, his career and business empire complex and murky and sensational. Little surprise that journalists reacted to his election with a combination of panic, fear, disgust, fascination, exhilaration, and the self-affirming belief that they remain the last line of defense against an emerging American autocracy. Who has time for dispassionate analysis, for methodical research and reporting, when the president’s very being is an assault on one’s conception of self, when nothing less than the future of the country is at stake? Especially when the depletion of veteran editors, the relative youth and inexperience of political and congressional reporters, and the proliferation of social media, with its hot takes and quips, its groupthink and instant gratification, makes the transition from inquiry to indignation all too easy.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Reason is really high on President Trump’s nomination of Justice Don Willett to the 5th Circuit court. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“The media is missing the Republican takeover in New England.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Difficulties in nursing home evacuations: having to punch people.
Michael Totten wonders why Turkey is still in NATO.
Catalonia might declare independence from Spain.
North Korean ship carrying 30,000 rocket launchers seized in Egypt. Biggest surprise? They had been purchased by the Egyptian military in defiance of UN sanctions…
Houston still has not resumed jury trials since Harvey wiped out two criminal justice buildings.
“Democrat mega-donor [Harvey] Weinstein accused of sexual harassment.” [Cue Instapundit] Why are Democrat-dominated industries like Hollywood such cesspits of sexism?
What do women who worked in the editorial department of Playboy think about their time there? That it was the best job they ever had.
Latest #BlackLivesMatter chant: “Liberalism Is White Supremacy .” Also: “The revolution will not uphold the Constitution.” Way to get ordinary Americans on your side! (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
How the Chicago Sun-Times bought a bar to to document local political corruption. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Houstonian’s rich neighbors aren’t wild about the the working Sherman tank in front of his house. I say good for him. I also wonder why Fox declined to call it a Sherman rather than the more generic “World War II” tank.
Wisconsin gets court pushback in its illegal war against bakers.
Netcraft confirms it: Slashdot turns 20. CowboyNeal is now old enough to be Florida Man…
Tags:#BlackLivesMatter, Border Controls, Catalonia, Connecticut, Crime, Democrats, Don Willet, Donald Trump, Eqypt, Foreign Policy, fraud, Houston, Hurricane Harvey, Illegal Aliens, Imran Awan, Maine, Massachusetts, Media Watch, Michael Totten, MS-13, New Hampshire, NFL, North Korea, Republicans, Rhode Island, Slashdot, Social Justice Warriors, Spain, tanks, Texas, Turkey, Vermont, Wisconsin
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, April 26th, 2016
Today primary voters go to the polls in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. A few Presidential race updates:
Tonight’s primaries “look very favorable for Trump,” but they are generally closed primaries. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Technically all Pennsylvania’s Republican delegates are uncommitted, but (Lionel Hutz voice) there’s uncommitted (shakes head) and uncommitted (nods vigorously). Here’s a guide to which delegates are supporting who. (Hat tip: Moe Lane.)
Thomas Sowell: “For conservatives especially, there is finally a real choice for a change — and a sharp contrast with Donald Trump. Senator Ted Cruz has a track record that leaves no doubt as to his adherence to conservative principles. And he is as thoroughly versed in the issues facing this country as anyone who has run for President since Ronald Reagan.” (Hat tip: Conservatives 4 Ted Cruz.)
“Moderates will need to abandon John Kasich and unite behind Cruz in order to defeat Trump.”
“The excessive and fawning coverage given to Kasich has deformed the GOP race…Kasich serves as a useful proxy for the media, which leans consistently to the left — a way for them to criticize the GOP without having to do so directly.”
Shall Not Be Questioned weighs in Pennsylvania candidates from a Second Amendment perspective.
Basketball coach Bobby Knight to campaign for Trump in Indiana. Yes, all the chair throwing jokes have already been made. The Knight/Trump comparisons are apt to a point, but Trump would never have lasted six years at West Point… (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Tags:2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, Connecticut, Delaware, Donald Trump, Guns, John Kasich, Maryland, Media Watch, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Ted Cruz, Thomas Sowell
Posted in Elections, Guns, Media Watch, Republicans | No Comments »
Friday, April 22nd, 2016
As today is a made-up celebration called “Earth Day,” be sure to have beef for dinner…
Reminder: “Officials at VA’s Phoenix hospital manipulated wait-time data to make it appear they were connecting doctors and veterans seeking appointments much faster than they actually were. This was done so VA managers at the Arizona facility could keep getting generous performance bonuses. They got their bonuses but dozens of waiting veterans died.” So how did the VA address the problem? They hired someone accused of doing the exact same thing at another hospital.
Huge ObamaCare premium hikes are coming down the pike in 2017. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
“The largest health insurer in the U.S. has started pulling out of select Obamacare exchanges.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Eight more ObamaCare co-ops are about to bite the dust.
Meanwhile, ObamaCare is helping enourage opioid addiction.
Thanks to Obama’s supergenius management, the Taliban are now winning in Afghanistan.
“The National Labor Relations Board suspended a top-ranking Philadelphia official after receiving complaints that he helped raise money from unions for his pro-union charity.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Following a congressional subpoena over Benghazi, Hillary’s state department staff hid requested files in another department. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Is Rhode Island closing 66% of polling places for next week’s presidential primaries? Something smells.
How Ted Cruz could beat Hillary Clinton. “Clinton is entering the general election with glaring vulnerabilities of her own. Her image is toxic to Republicans and independents, and her popularity among Democrats is now at an all-time low as a presidential candidate, according to Gallup’s polling. It won’t take a top-tier Republican candidate to win.” Also: “Cruz consistently runs far more competitively against Clinton than Trump does.”
“It’s not just Wall Street banks. Most companies and groups that paid Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to speak between 2013 and 2015 have lobbied federal agencies in recent years, and more than one-third are government contractors, an Associated Press review has found. Their interests are sprawling and would follow Clinton to the White House should she win election this fall.”
Donald Trump jumps on the social justice warrior tranny bathroom bandwagon.
Evidently accused pedophile Terry Bean is the one whose organizations are pushing tranny bathroom bills down America’s throats. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Trump convention manager Paul Manafort engages in the time-honored traditional rhetorical device know as “lying your ass off.”
Thomas Sowell on campaign lies and dodgy statistics.
“Although our panel’s original estimates had Trump finishing with 1,175 pledged delegates, my revised deterministic projections have him at 1,155, and the probabilistic version has him at 1,159.”
Ted Cruz has done heavy organizing in California.
Man indicted for selling school supplies to Detroit schools he didn’t actually deliver…with the connivance of several principles receiving kickbacks. Now, remind me: Which party has controlled Detroit for half a century?
Venezuela instituting four hours of blackouts a day, in addition to the previously mentioned three day weekends. That socialist paradise just keeps
Brazil impeaches their President.
Won’t someone please think of poor, penniless Boeing?
When low-fat dogma trumped science: hamburger study data showed exact opposite of study’s conclusions.
Navy chief starving Marine air corps.
“What Women Really Want Is The Patriarchy.”
“‘White Privilege’ Is a Racial Slur.”
“Walden is less a cornerstone work of environmental literature than the original cabin porn: a fantasy about rustic life divorced from the reality of living in the woods, and, especially, a fantasy about escaping the entanglements and responsibilities of living among other people.”
Mexico’s Popocatepetl volcano erupts. Popocatepetl is less than 50 miles from Mexico City…
Goldman Sachs pays $5 billion fine to “settle claims that it misled mortgage bond investors during the financial crisis.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Pratt & Whitney pushing a B-52 engine upgrade.
The woman who can’t remember her own past. (Hat tip: Bill Crider.)
Lileks: “Who wouldn’t want to lounge around in a set from a 1970s failed Gene Roddenberry pilot?” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Son, that’s no way to treat steaks. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Tags:2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, Afghanistan, Atkins, B-52, Benghazi, Boeing, Brazil, California, Crime, Democrats, Detroit, Donald Trump, Goldman Sachs, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton Scandals, James Lileks, Libya, Mexico, Mexico City, Military, National Labor Relations Board, Obama Scandals, ObamaCare, Oklahoma, Popocatepetl, Rhode Island, Social Justice Warriors, Taliban, Ted Cruz, Terry Bean, Texas, Tranny Bathrooms, unions, Venezuela, Veterans Administration
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Military, ObamaCare, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions | No Comments »
Friday, October 10th, 2014
Another Friday, another LinkSwarm. I think i may have to stop watch Houston Texans games for the sake of my health…
The American MSM may be reluctant to tell the truth about Obama’s many manifest failures, but UK’s Telegraph isn’t.
Most Americans see Obama as a failure.
I’m shocked, shocked to discover that the IRS is auditing the producer of an anti-ObamaCare movie.
One in five Americans will have medical bills in collections this year. Thanks, ObamaCare!
How do you know your foreign policy sucks? When even Jimmy Carter is dissing it. And he’s right!
Even Piers Morgan calls Obama’s governance as marked by “lethargy and complacency.”
Why Harry Reid is attacking Koch: Big money Democratic donors will spend more in North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa than all RNC spending across the country combined.
Democrats 2014 = Republicans 2006.
Democrats pull out all the stops to save Kay Hagen’s North Carolina senate seat. If she wins, I’m sure her family will appreciate the opportunity for more graft in the coming years…
Michael Barone says that trends, with so many Democratic incumbents still polling below 45%, indicate the Harry Reid-controlled Senate is still toast. “Rewind back five years: The Obama Democrats expected their major policies to be popular. They expected that most voters would be grateful for the stimulus package, for Obamacare, for raising the tax rate on high earners. They aren’t.”
Obama slams billionaires while attending while attending fundraiser at the home of billionaire Rich Richman. Yes, that’s his real name. If I put that in a novel, editors would reject the symbolism as too heavy-handed…
Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate Alison Grimes won’t even admit to voting for Obama.
While the New York Times has gotten around to talking abut American children dying from Enterovirus D68, they’re still refusing to talk about how Obama’s illegal alien influx might have helped bring it here. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Michael Totten reports from SE Asia: “Sweden is more socialist than Vietnam.” Except for the stupid propaganda loudspeakers…
Philadelphia’s deeply indebted public school system actually cancels it’s contract with the teacher’s union. “The move, in which the Philadelphia School Reform Commission invokes emergency powers, comes after the teachers’ union spent more than a year resisting concessions that the commission was seeking even though rising personnel costs have crippled the budget.” How crippling? “The schools’ budget projects spending $44,100 a year in benefits for every $68,700 in wages earned by the average teacher.”
NYC School therapist helps handicapped student launch successful Kickstarter. Reward? 30 day suspension.
John Kerry spent Wednesday consulting with allies on ISIS and Ebola. Ha, just kidding! He toured a wind turbine.
Islamic State supporters threaten to behead U.S. soldiers in Iraq. And by “soldiers” I mean “elementary school children” and by “Iraq” I mean “Rhode Island.”
Remember when Bill Clinton ginned up an “epidemic” over a dozen random church burnings? Boko Haram has torched 185.
Brett Easton Ellis on Generation Wuss.
Iranian professor jailed for associating with “known Zionists.” Like Noam Chomsky. To Islamists, not even an actual hatred of Israel is enough to remove the taint of your Jewishness…
“That’s 21st-century U.S. politics in miniature: a half-assed listicle penned by a half-bright celebrity and published by a gang of abortion profiteers.”
Top aide to Al Sharpton and boyfriend of top De Blasio adviser in trouble with the law? Inconceivable!
An inside view of feminist groupthink and #GamerGate from a former social justice warrior.
Random meme pic I made:
Random Twitter exchange with Michael Quinn Sullivan:
BattleSwarm extends best wishes for a speedy recovery to Borepatch, who wiped out on his motorcycle to the tune of “7 broken ribs, a broken collar bone, and a bruised lung.” Ouch…
Tags:#GamerGate, Al Sharpton, Alison Grimes, Bill De Blasio, Brett Easton Ellis, Communism, Enterovirus, feminism, Illegal Aliens, Iran, Israel, Jews, Jihad, Jimmy Carter, John Kerry, Kay Hagan, Kentucky, LinkSwarm, Media Watch, Michael Barone, Michael Quinn Sullivan, Michael Totten, North Carolina, Obama, Philadelphia, Piers Morgan, Rhode Island, Rich Richman, unions, Vietnam
Posted in Border Control, Communism, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Obama Scandals, ObamaCare, Uncategorized | No Comments »
(@AMAZlNGNATURE) March 14, 2025
(@PopularPuppies)