Happy July 4th!

July 4th, 2024

Happy Independence Day!

To celebrate, here are same random fireworks videos. First up, Mr. Beast fires off some $600,000 worth of fireworks:

Next: Testing strange fireworks:

Be aware that it’s a long video, and the guy really gets into it, so skip around if you have to.

A compilation of various big shells going off:

And another one. I think the first one is from the Mr. Beast series. The last few are spectacular.

And if you’re firing off fireworks today:

Knives Out For Biden Roundup

July 3rd, 2024

I love the smell of Democratic panic in the morning. It smells like…victory.

Outside the Biden White House, the roars for Biden to step aside after revealing his cognitive decline to the nation via his disasterous debate performance grow louder.

  • First up: Austin liberal congressional fossil Lloyd Doggett called on Biden to drop out of the race.

    Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-TX-37) became the first federal Democratic official to call on President Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 race following last week’s debate with former President Donald Trump.

    The statement followed an interview where former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-11) told MSNBC, “I think it’s a legitimate question to say, ‘Is this an episode or is this a condition?’”

    “And so when people ask that question, it’s legitimate — of both candidates.”

    Doggett’s statement reads, “President Biden has continued to run substantially behind Democratic senators in key states and in most polls has trailed Donald Trump. I had hoped this debate would provide some momentum to change that. It did not. Instead of reassuring voters, the President failed to effectively defend his many accomplishments and expose Trump’s many lies.”

    “Our overriding consideration must be who has the best hope of saving our democracy from an authoritarian takeover by a criminal and his gang. … I represent the heart of a congressional district once represented by Lyndon Johnson. Under very different circumstances, he made the painful decision to withdraw. President Biden should do the same.”

    In 1968, LBJ declined to run again because his escalation of the Vietnam War was deeply unpopular with Democrats, not because his brain was operating on the level of a baked rutabaga. The two situations are not comparable.

  • Doggett is not the only congressional Democrat calling for Biden to step aside.

    In television interviews, some Democrats are already throwing a bone to Vice President Kamala Harris. “I will support her if he were to step aside,” Representative Jim Clyburn (D., S.C.), a Biden-Harris campaign co-chairman and former House Democratic whip, told MSNBC. “This party should not, in any way, do anything to work around Ms. Harris. We should do everything we can to bolster her whether she’s in second place or at the top of the ticket.”

    Former representative Tim Ryan (D., Ohio) has been even more candid — calling on Biden to step aside and urging Democrats to rally around Harris in his place. “You’re asking the American people to ignore what they saw last week,” Ryan, who distanced himself from Biden on the campaign trail during his 2022 Senate run and who expressed early opposition to Biden’s reelection campaign, said in an interview with National Review on Tuesday “It’s completely irresponsible for those people to hide this from us — for him to be in in that condition.”

    Ryan said his party’s failure to confront voters’ concerns about Biden’s fitness for the job risks causing “irreparable damage” to a party that is already seen as out of touch with large swaths of the American public — including black voters and working-class voters — on a range of issues such as border security, the economy, and public safety.

    They’re seen as “out of touch” because the party’s hard left ideological core wanted a third term for Obama despite wildly unpopular policies that brought Republican majorities to both houses of Congress and thought they could blithely lie to the American public about a whole host of issues (importing millions of illegal aliens, radical transgenderism), not just Biden’s cognitive decline, while imposing revolution from above.

  • But what Doggett and other Democrats are getting at is that now that Biden has revealed that he’s as cognitively declined as Republicans have said all along, his chances of beating Donald Trump in November just went from slim to none, and boy howdy are they right about that.

    What? A Democrat telling “obvious lies that nobody but the dumbest partisans will buy”? You mean it’s a day ending in “-y”?

    My friend Stephen Green is reveling in schadenfreude over Silver’s latest election forecast, which is developing a trendline in exactly one direction — from bad to worse for “Sundown Joe,” showing “Biden with just a 27.6% chance of winning the Electoral College and 44.2% odds of taking the popular vote.” As a Democrat, Silver is grief-stricken and angry about the situation, going through the “woulda coulda shoulda” second-guessing about the process by which his party’s establishment, after foisting upon the electorate the Oldest President Ever, then apparently decided there was no risk in attempting to extend his White House tenure another four years. Last week’s debate disaster should have been foreseen, because what’s the point of getting paid as a “campaign strategist” if you can’t anticipate potential problems?

    Now, however, the same fools who led Democrats into that disaster are busy trying to convince their voters (and, perhaps more importantly, their donors) that they can somehow recover enough to win in November.

    “It’s fundamentally a terrible idea to ask the public to make the guy they saw on Thursday president until he’s 86,” Silver says in his pay-walled newsletter, stating the blindingly obvious truth.

    You’ve got to understand that Silver was one of those 20-something lefties who jumped into the political fray during the years when the Iraq War made George W. Bush very unpopular on college campuses. (One reason most conservatives my age roll our eyes at rhetorical symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome — the Hitler comparisons, etc. — is that it’s basically the same thing we heard about Dubya during the Bush Derangment Syndrome epidemic two decades ago.) Silver’s first big “win” as a forecaster, the foundation of his reputation as a polling expert, was in 2006, which in hindsight was the 21st-century’s high-water mark for Democrats. Silver predicted a big win for Democrats and he was right, and his winning streak continued two years later when Obama got elected. However, his accuracy since then has not been so stellar. In October 2010, Silver offered a “best guess” that Republicans would gain 48 House seats in the midterms; the GOP’s actual net gain in 2010 was 63 seats, the biggest net gain for House Republicans since 1938.

    Generally speaking, when Democrats have a good year, Silver’s projections are more accurate than they are when Republicans have a good year. Silver has never overestimated Republican performance. So if Nate Silver’s numbers are telling him that Biden’s got barely a one-in-four chance of winning? That’s bad for Joe, because the reality of his situation is probably a lot worse than that.

  • It’s not just elected Democrats and pollsters going after Biden, it’s also the MSM Praetorian Guard who actively hid Biden’s decline for four years finally telling us the truth.

    In the weeks and months before President Biden’s politically devastating performance on the debate stage in Atlanta, several current and former officials and others who encountered him behind closed doors noticed that he increasingly appeared confused or listless, or would lose the thread of conversations.

    Like many people his age, Mr. Biden, 81, has long experienced instances in which he mangled a sentence, forgot a name or mixed up a few facts, even though he could be sharp and engaged most of the time. But in interviews, people in the room with him more recently said that the lapses seemed to be growing more frequent, more pronounced and more worrisome.

    The uncomfortable occurrences were not predictable, but seemed more likely when he was in a large crowd or tired after a particularly bruising schedule. In the 23 days leading up to the debate against former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Biden jetted across the Atlantic Ocean twice for meetings with foreign leaders and then flew from Italy to California for a splashy fund-raiser, maintaining a grueling pace that exhausted even much younger aides.

    Mr. Biden was drained enough from the back-to-back trips to Europe that his team cut his planned debate preparation by two days so he could rest at his house in Rehoboth Beach, Del., before joining advisers at Camp David for rehearsals. The preparations, which took place over six days, never started before 11 a.m. and Mr. Biden was given time for an afternoon nap each day, according to a person familiar with the process.

    Won’t someone please think of the terrible strain on Joe from having to start work at the crack of 11 AM?

    Let’s hope he got milk and graham crackers after his nap to reward him for being such a good boy.

    Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said on Tuesday that “the president was working well before” the 11 a.m. start time each day, after exercising. Still, at a fund-raiser on Tuesday evening, Mr. Biden blamed fatigue for his debate performance. “I wasn’t very smart,” he said. “I decided to travel around the world a couple times, I don’t know how many time zones.” He added: “I didn’t listen to my staff, and I came back and I fell asleep on the stage.”

    Are you trying to say that your staff advised you not to travel around the world to meet with international leaders, and not to celebrate the 70th anniversary of D-Day? So not to perform the regular duties expected of anyone who’s job is President of the United States of America?

    Joe, I’ve got to tell you, I have a pretty big problem with that as well.

    The recent moments of disorientation generated concern among advisers and allies alike. He seemed confused at points during a D-Day anniversary ceremony in France on June 6. The next day, he misstated the purpose of a new tranche of military aid to Ukraine when meeting with its president.

    On June 10, he appeared to freeze up at an early celebration of the Juneteenth holiday. On June 18, his soft-spoken tone and brief struggle to summon the name of his homeland security secretary at an immigration event unnerved some of his allies at the event, who traded alarmed looks and later described themselves as “shaken up,” as one put it.

    Democrat gaslighting us about “how sharp Biden is” snipped.

    But by many accounts, as evidenced by video footage, observation and interviews, Mr. Biden is not the same today as he was even when he took office 3½ years ago. The White House regularly releases corrected transcripts of his remarks, in which he frequently mixes up places, people or dates. The administration did so in the days after the debate, when Mr. Biden mixed up the countries of France and Italy when talking about war veterans at an East Hampton fund-raiser.

    Last week’s debate prompted some around him to express concern that the decline had accelerated lately. Several advisers and current and former administration officials who see Mr. Biden regularly but not every day or week said they were stunned by his debate performance because it was the worst they had ever seen him.

    “You don’t have to be sitting in an Oval Office meeting with Joe Biden to recognize there’s been a slowdown in the past two years. There’s a visible difference,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian. “I’ve been amazed on one hand,” said Mr. Brinkley, who has not seen the president in person in a year. “The president can zip around the country like he does. But the White House may only be showing the Biden they want us to see.”

    The Times piece is peppered with moments when Biden was lucid for some task or short speech, as though occasional periods of lucidity somehow make up for obvious cognitive decline. (Hat tip: Jim Geraghty at National Review.)

  • The Biden family has responded to increased calls for Biden to drop out by sending Hunter Biden into his father’s meetings.

    Disgraced convicted felon Hunter Biden has reportedly been joining his embattled father and top aides in official meetings at the White House since the Biden family returned from Camp David, Monday evening.

    The Biden family gathered at Camp David over the weekend, where Joe Biden sat for a previously scheduled photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz for the upcoming Democrat National Convention.

    While staying at the presidential retreat in Maryland, according to reports, the family took the opportunity to urge him to stay in the race and keep fighting despite his humiliating debate performance.

    Since then, the scandal-plagued younger Biden has “popped into” official White House meetings and phone calls with advisors, four people familiar with the matter told NBC.

    Hunter has also reportedly been spotted talking to senior White House staff, prompting some to ask how the convicted felon could have a security clearance to be included in such high-level discussions at the White House.

    According to the sources, Joe Biden’s aides were “struck” by Hunter’s new advisory role.

    “What the hell is happening?” senior White House staff is quoted to have said.

    Given that my calendar doesn’t show a Take Your Crackhead Son To Work Week, I’m guessing this is to prevent anyone from cornering Slow Joe one-on-one to try to convince him to drop out of the race. The Biden Crime Syndicate shows no signs of being willing to step off the gravy train, and seems to fear (possibly correctly) that a whole lot of criminal indictments might be coming down on them if they did. After all, now that the MSM has stopped pretending that Hunter’s laptop wasn’t real, they have yet to come to grips with the vast pay-for-play foreign graft schemes the documents on that laptop revealed.

  • Will endangered Democrats be able to convince Biden to drop out “for the good of the party?”

    Stay tuned…

    A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Fascist France

    July 2nd, 2024

    So Emmanuel Macron took a look at EU election results and went “OK, I’ll throw snap elections in France to scare you away from voting for Le Pen.” French voters: “Challenge accepted.”

    France’s right-wing National Rally is expected to emerge as the single largest party in the first round of the parliamentary election. National Rally led by its new leader, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, will secure nearly 34 percent of the vote, followed by the newly formed alliance of leftist and Marxist parties, the New Popular Front, which secured 28.5 percent, polls released after Sunday vote show.

    “According to an estimate by French polling institute Ipsos Talan, the far-right National Rally party is estimated to win between 230 and 280 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly,” the TV channel France24 reported.

    This is few seats short of the 289-mark needed to form the government in the 577-seat National Assembly parliament. National Assembly’s possible post-election coalition partner, the conservative Republicans, is set to get between 41-61 seats with 10 percent of the vote share, early polls indicate.

    The French news agency AFP, however, reported National Rally gaining majority in the first round of the vote. “The polling agencies projected this would give the RN a majority of seats in the 577-seat National Assembly after the second round and a possible absolute majority,” the news agency reported.

    Leftists and Islamists reacted to the news by doing what they do best: rioting.

    The streets of Paris became a war zone overnight Sunday as tens of thousands of left-wing rioters took to the streets in fiery opposition to the historic election victory by the country’s right-wing National Rally (NR).

    Rioters smashed storefront windows, vandalized monuments and set massive bonfires in public squares after the election results revealed the party, headed by nationalist Marine Le Pen, took 33% of the vote in the decisive first round of France’s legislative elections.

    Naturally, the French left are fighting “Fascism” by unleashing violence upon their political enemies.

    A big reason for National Rally’s popularity is their opposition to unlimited, unassimilated Muslim immigration.

    An increasing number of Europeans have at last understood that the large-scale presence of Muslims in their countries now threatens to undermine the civilization of Judeo-Christian Europe, and has already resulted in a situation that is far more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous for Europe’s non-Muslims, than would be the case without that large-scale Muslim presence. And the rise of right-wing populism reflects the widespread alarm over the power waged by European political and media elites, who largely oppose restrictions on Muslim immigration. The EU is run by people who are not loyal to the ideal of the nation-state. They are international bureaucrats, able through the supra-national European Union, to impose minimum immigration quotas on its member states. This has led to much unhappiness in those states, some of which — like Hungary— are simply refusing to comply.

    For all the endless cries of “Far right, far right!” in the mainstream media, National Rally’s positions on not only immigration, but ecoskepticism and Euroskepticism seems to be shared by the majority of French, and indeed by European voters as a whole. It is only their globalist leaders who disagree.

    For another thing, Marine Le Pen publically abandoned her father’s notorious antisemitism a decade ago. That may be why French Jews are voting for National Rally.

    Some readers may be wondering what a National Rally victory will mean for NATO, as well as Ukraine’s continued resistance to Russia’s illegal war of territorial aggression. Well the dark pinks at the World Socialist Web Site have their commie knickers in a knot because Marine Le Pen supports both. “France’s neo-fascist National Rally (Rassemblement National-RN) is aligning itself with NATO’s war escalation against nuclear-armed Russia. It is abandoning its ambiguous tactical criticisms of Macron’s military policies and its campaign promise to withdraw France from NATO.”

    All good news in my book.

    The National Front under Le Pen père had a lot of worrying antisemitic and anti-American baggage. Under Le Pen fille and Bardella, it seems to have jetisoned most of that baggage, and resembles other Euroskeptic parties across the EU.

    Roundup Of Dem Panic Over Slow Joe

    July 1st, 2024

    Following Joe Biden’s dismal, mentally impaired performance in last week’s debate, there’s a huge roar of panicked Democrats suggesting (or demanding) his replacement as the Democratic presidential nominee. For now, Biden and his family/enablers seem to be digging in their heels.

  • Who is demanding Biden step aside? The same MSM who refused to investigate his cognitive decline.

    Editorial boards and editors from the New York Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The New Yorker have joined well-known cable commentators and columnists in pressing the president to step aside and pave a path to the top of the ticket for another candidate.

    The Washington Post’s editorial board stopped short of pushing the president to drop out of the race, instead pressing him to cancel weekend plans “in favor of some soul-searching.”

    What they’re saying: The Times’ board — in an op-ed entitled “To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race” — said Biden appeared as “the shadow of a great public servant” at Thursday’s debate, contending there are “Democratic leaders better equipped to present clear, compelling and energetic alternatives to a second Trump presidency.”

    Pieces from the AJC’s board and a New Yorker editor followed, similarly arguing that the best candidate to defeat an unrestrained former President Trump is not the current president.

    The New Yorker named Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore as a slate of potential Biden backups who “could energize Democrats and independents, inspire more younger voters and beat Trump.”

    MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s question of “whether this man we’ve known and loved for a very long time is up to the task of running for president of the United States” presents a particularly damaging dagger to the commander-in-chief, a loyal viewer of “Morning Joe” who often seeks the opinions of the Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, on key issues.

    New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman echoed Scarborough’s tone in a Friday op-ed, writing that watching the man he considers a friend struggle on the debate stage made him weep.

    Maybe someone who “weeps” at a politician’s decline is too chummy to be a political commentator.

  • Also this:

  • Not the Bee has a nice roundup of Democrat panic. Including this NYT snapshot:

    Plus this:

    By the end of the debate, I was hearing a level of anxiety and alarm from those Democrats and several other party leaders and operatives that I’ve never seen in 20 years of covering presidential politics. The discussion turned squarely to the need for the Democratic Party to replace Biden as the 2024 nominee, with four months to go to the election, and how to make that happen.

    And this Cenk Uygur rant:

    “This thing is over!”
    “It’s a guaranteed loss!”
    “He can’t even talk!”
    “This thing’s a bloodbath! He’s gonna get annihilated!”

  • However, at this late date, it may not even be possible to replace Biden.

    We are monitoring the calls from across the country for President Biden to step aside, either now or before the election, and have concluded that the process for substitution and withdrawal is very complicated. We will remain vigilant that appropriate election integrity procedures are followed,” said Mike Howell, Executive Director of The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project.

    The Heritage Oversight Project has identified three swing states — Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin — where they believe removing Biden from the Democratic ticket would prevent anyone else from replacing him.

    Wisconsin does not allow withdrawal from the ballot for any reason besides death, while in Nevada, no changes can be made to the ballot after 5 p.m. on the fourth Friday in June of an election year unless ‘a nominee dies or is adjudicated insane or mentally incompetent.’ In Georgia, if Biden were to withdraw less than 60 days before the election, his name would remain on the ballot but no votes would be counted.

    Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin are all states Biden “won” in 2020 (some thanks to 3 AM ballot dumps). A theoretical Biden replacement could, just barely, lose all of them and still win by the skin of his teeth with 271 electoral votes if they held every other state Biden was awarded in 2020. Georgia and Nevada both have Republican governors, and Republicans control both the senate and house in Wisconsin, so last minute Democrat pushes to change the rules before November are off the table. Recent polls show Trump winning all three, as well as the other four swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Arizona.

  • It’s a bit ironic that the same people who want to push Slow Joe out are the same ones who lied about his decline and covered it up the last four years.

    Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week made it impossible to deny his senility, yet the Western elite is gaslighting they were supposedly oblivious to this until now. Time Magazine published a piece titled “Inside Biden’s Debate Disaster and the Scramble to Quell Democratic Panic”, which was complemented by CNN’s about how “Foreign diplomats react with horror to Biden’s dismal debate performance”.

    Both make it seem like Biden’s senility is a surprise for everyone who knew him.

    The reality is that they knew about this all along but covered it up by lying that any claims to this effect were “Russian propaganda” and/or a “conspiracy theory”, all because they actually approved of the Democrats installing a literal placeholder in the White House who the liberal-globalist elite could control. It was a refreshing change of pace from Trump, who was much too independent for their liking despite his occasional capitulations to their demands, and it also reassured America’s allies who disliked him too.

    They both went along with the lie that Biden is in tip-top mental condition for reasons of political convenience, but now it’s impossible to keep up the charade any longer, hence why they’re all feigning surprise and shock. The elite shouldn’t be allowed to get away with their latest gaslighting and should be exposed for one of the greatest cover-ups in American history. The country is being ruled by a shadowy network of transnational and domestic elites that are united by their radical liberal-globalist ideology.

    Biden was chosen as the Democrats’ candidate in 2020 precisely because he was already senile and therefore completely controllable. That party, which functions as the public face of the abovementioned elite network, wanted someone who’d do whatever they demanded on the home and foreign policy fronts. In particular, they sought to turn America into a liberal-globalist hellhole while ramping up NATO’s containment of Russia in Ukraine, but the second policy backfired after the special operation began.

    Nevertheless, they’ll never have another chance to install someone like Biden since 2020 was an exceptional election year due to it being a referendum on Trump – who a significant share of the public was preconditioned to falsely believe is the new Hitler – and mail-in voting due to COVID-19. These conditions can never be replicated in the same way again no matter how hard the elite try, which is why they decided to keep Biden as their candidate instead of replace him early on.

    In 2020, Biden’s mind was clearly already on the downward slope to senility, but he obviously had much longer periods of lucidity and energy than he shows now. In 2020 it was late afternoon, but in 2024, full night has fallen.

  • Biden’s family is encouraging him to continue on.

    At a Camp David gathering on Sunday, President Biden’s extended family urged him to ignore the growing number of voices asking him to quit the race — and many of his loved ones blamed his disastrous debate on his advisors. According to Politico, the two who most forcefully encouraged the 81-year-old Biden to continue were his wife Jill and his son Hunter — the two people whose opinion he reportedly values most.

    And really, who makes better decisions than Hunter Biden?

    The reports will strengthen a growing sense that Jill Biden is putting her own interests above that of her humiliated and failing husband. As one Democratic advisor told the New York Post over the weekend, “Jill Biden likes being First Lady…she doesn’t want to give that up.”

    Meanwhile, Hunter, who doesn’t exactly have strong reputation for sound judgment, is said to long for Americans to see a version of his father that — as paraphrased by the Times — is “scrappy and in command of the facts.” Much as he once was in denial about his drug problem, Hunter now seems incapable of admitting that that version of his father is gone forever:

    Biden family members are said to have blamed the debate debacle on three advisors: Anita Dunn, her husband Bob Bauer — who played the role of Trump in practice sessions — and Biden’s former chief of staff Ron Klain, who was in charge of the debate training. Aides to Biden denied these reports from multiple outlets.

    Yes, blame the help rather than yourselves for dragging Sundown Joe out on the trail once more so you can keep those sweet power and perks flowing.

    With Biden having spent a full week at Camp David gearing up for the debate, his family members and others are claiming the team worked the 81-year-old too hard, and tried to pack him full of too many statistics. They even fault advisors for a debate-night makeup job that transformed his summer-tanned face to one that was pale and unhealthy-looking.

  • Supposedly all Biden’s operatives are working overtime to calm the donor class and convince them they didn’t see what they saw.
  • “Dems Stick With Biden As It Would Be A Real Pain To Reprint These Ballots They Already Filled Out.”
  • So far Barack Obama, thought by some to be the only Democrat with enough clout to force Biden out, is backing him staying in the race.

    At least publicly…

    Texas Democratic Party Chair Says Election Fraud Is Real

    June 30th, 2024

    Like Joe Biden’s mental decline, Democrats have sworn up and down that election fraud doesn’t exist, no matter how many documented cases came to light. But a funny things happened on that boating excursion up the River Denial: The Chairman of the Texas Democratic Party just swore in a lawsuit that voting fraud is taking place in South Texas.

    The chairman of the Texas Democrat Party, Gilberto Hinojosa, says election fraud is taking place in South Texas.

    This claim is based on a lawsuit filed in Hidalgo County contesting the election for Justice of the Peace Precinct 3, Place 1. The certified vote showed Sonia Trevino winning the Democrat primary runoff last month with 4,233 votes, while Ramon Segovia finished second with 4,202 votes.

    Segovia is currently challenging the election results, with Hinojosa representing him as his lawyer. The lawsuit makes numerous allegations of voter fraud, including:

    – Numerous votes were allegedly cast illegally by individuals registered at an address that was not their residence or was not a residence at all.

    – Many voters who cast ballots during early voting and on election day were allegedly assisted in reading or completing the ballot, despite not being eligible for such assistance under the Texas Elections Code.

    – Numerous mail-in ballots that were counted should not have been counted due to voters being ineligible to vote by mail, incorrect or mismatching signatures, and mail-in ballots prepared “without direction from the voter.”

    The contest argues that “because the number of illegal votes cast exceeds the difference in the total votes cast for the Contestant and those cast for the Contestee, the Court cannot ascertain the true outcome of the election and must declare the election void and order a new election.”

    They claim Sonia Trevino “conspired to monitor, influence, and pressure voters to vote for her by unlawfully exploiting the voter assistance laws in the State of Texas.”

    So the position of the Texas Democratic Party has gone from “There’s no election fraud anywhere ever” to “There’s no election fraud except for this one race where our party chairman says that a bunch of the election fraud tricks that Republicans have accused us of just happened to happen in this one particular race.”

    It sounds like Republicans should take Hinojosa’s filing to Attorney General Ken Paxton and demand the Texas Rangers investigate voting fraud all across South Texas to ensure the fraud Hinojosa alleges doesn’t occur in Hildago County or anywhere else this November. Voting rules should be scrutinized and purged, politiqueras should be interrogated and asked just how they “assist” people in filling out ballots and upon who’s instructions, email and bank account records should be subpoenaed, and Texas Rangers stationed inside early and election day voting centers to verify that Voter ID laws are being followed and to lookout for (and thus deter) in person fraud.

    The Chairman of the Texas Democratic Party just said that voting fraud is real, and we should take him at his word.

    Just like that Galveston Voting Rights Act lawsuit, the end result of Democrats filing a lawsuit to save their preferred candidate in a single election may be to enure a lot fewer Democrats are elected going forward.

    Guess How Many UT Protesters Were Charged

    June 29th, 2024

    Remember all those “protestors” (mostly outside agitators) arrested on a variety of charges (including criminal trespass) at a pro-Hamas/anti-Israeli rally on UT campus? Want to guess how many of the 79 arrestees were charged with crimes? Remember, UT is in Travis County.

    That’s right: Zero.

    A group of primarily outside agitators will not face charges following their recent arrests at UT-Austin. Those arrested claimed to oppose alleged Israeli “genocide.”

    According to The Daily Texan, Travis County Attorney Delia Garza announced that the 79 arrestees will not face criminal prosecution. The individuals involved had been charged with criminal trespassing.

    The arrests in question had originally occurred on April 29.

    As Texas Scorecard reported at the time, demonstrators were observed cursing out police officers, calling them Nazis, spitting on them, and throwing water bottles. Despite the difficult circumstances, officers were universally calm and professional. While Texas Scorecard did observe two instances of officers using pepper spray, it was obviously done in self-defense.

    The arrests occurred after so-called “protestors” had tried to set up a Columbia University-style tent encampment on the University’s Main Mall. This violates House Bill 1925, a 2021 measure intended to curtail homeless camping.

    The University subsequently released a statement disagreeing with Garza’s actions and said it was “deeply disappointed.”

    I bet.

    Under Soros-backed DA Jose Garza, Travis County has shown that it believes some animals are more equally than others, constantly refusing to charge leftists for crimes committed, but only too happy to charge those daring to exercise their right to self-defense.

    Someone in Travis County should file an equal protection lawsuit.

    LinkSwarm For June 28, 2024

    June 28th, 2024

    Half a year gone already. This week: The debate confirmed that pretty much everything Republican said about Biden being old and out of it was true, people can’t afford housing anymore, the Supreme Court reigns in the administrative state, a whole bunch of layoffs come down the pike, two sorta, kinda coups, fake meat doesn’t pay, and we say farewell to a Texas original. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • I didn’t watch the debate, because I had Things To Do, but evidently Biden looked every bit as old and out of it as we all expected.

    President Joe Biden looked old and disoriented during Thursday’s CNN debate with Donald Trump. He spoke in a quiet and hoarse voice, made some incoherent answers, and often stumbled over his own words.

    It was a lackluster performance that played directly into Republican depictions of the 81-year-old president – the oldest president in American history — as too old and frail to serve another four years in office. Trump said as much during the debate.

    “He’s not equipped to be president,” Trump said. “You know it and I know it.”

    The debate was a highly personal affair between two men who made little effort during their nearly two hours on stage to contain their disdain for one another.

    Biden called Donald Trump a “loser,” and a “whiner” with the “morals of an alley cat.” Trump accused Biden of turning the United States into a “third-world nation” and of being the “worst president in history by far, and everybody knows it.”

    Trump turned in a spirited performance, hammering Biden on inflation and the immigration crisis under his watch. But Biden’s struggles seemed to be the major takeaway for CNN’s post-debate panel, which reported that senior Democrats are in an “aggressive panic” over their party leader’s apparent frailty.

    Speaking about improvements he’s claiming at the border, Biden at one point seemed lost, saying: “I’m going to continue to move until we get the total ban on, the total initiative relative what we’re going to do with more border patrol and more asylum officers.”

    “I don’t really know what he said at the end of that sentence,” Trump replied. “I don’t think he knows what he said either.”

    At another point, Biden got visibly lost when talking about his plan to raise taxes on the wealthy to wipe out the debt, saying he wanted to make sure “that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with, with, with the Covid, excuse me, with dealing with everything we had to do with, look, we finally beat Medicare.”

    “Well, he’s right,” Trump said, “he did beat Medicare. He beat it to death.”

  • Some lowlights:

  • Democratic reaction to Biden’s performance included words like “freakout” and “panic.”

    He stammered. He stumbled. And, with fewer than five months to November, he played straight into Democrats’ worst fears — that he’s fumbling away this election to Donald Trump.

    The alarm bells for Democrats started ringing the second Biden started speaking in a haltingly hoarse voice. Minutes into the debate, he struggled to mount an effective defense of the economy on his watch and flubbed the description of key health initiatives he’s made central to his reelection bid, saying “we finally beat Medicare” and incorrectly stating how much his administration lowered the price of insulin. He talked himself into a corner on Afghanistan, bringing up his administration’s botched withdrawal unprompted. He repeatedly mixed up “billion” and “million,” and found himself stuck for long stretches of the 90-minute debate playing defense.

    And when he wasn’t speaking, he stood frozen behind his podium, mouth agape, his eyes wide and unblinking for long stretches of time.

    “Biden is toast — calling it now,” said Jay Surdukowski, an attorney and Democratic activist from New Hampshire who co-chaired former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s 2016 presidential campaign in the state.

    In text messages with POLITICO, Democrats expressed confusion and concern as they watched the first minutes of the event. One former Biden White House and campaign aide, granted anonymity to discuss the matter, called it “terrible,” adding that they have had to ask themselves over and over: “What did he just say? This is crazy.”

    “Not good,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) wrote.

  • Still, Biden’s people swear he’s not dropping out. So there’s a 50/50 chance he drops out.
  • A short roundup of all the Democrats who lied about how “sharp” Biden was.
  • It’s an insoluble mystery: “Home prices are at an all-time high; meanwhile, pre-owned home sales are at a 30-year low.”

    Sales of previously owned homes are sitting at a 30-year low and didn’t move much in May as prices hit a new record and mortgage rates remain high.

    So-called existing home sales in May were essentially flat, down 0.7% from April to a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 4.11 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors, or NAR. Sales fell 2.8% from May of last year …

    The median price of an existing home sold in May was $419,300, a record-high price in the Realtors’ recording and up 5.8% year over year. The gain was the strongest since October 2022. Prices gained in all regions.

    The Realtors noted in a release that the mortgage payment for a typical home today is more than double what it was five years ago.

    It’s almost as though the Biden Recession, constrained supply (a great deal from blue locale regulation that prevent housing from being built), and high interest rates mean that no one wants to buy or sell.

  • You know who else is screwed? Apartment renters.

    According to a new report, the average renter can’t afford a typical U.S. apartment.

    According to Redfin, the typical U.S. renter household earns about $54,712 per year, which is 17.3% less than the $66,120 needed to afford the median-priced apartment at $1,653 per month. This means that 61% of renters can’t afford their housing without significant financial stress.

    Snip.

    Inflation, which has surged during Biden’s presidency, certainly exacerbates this issue. Rising costs for essentials like food, gas, and utilities leave renters with even less disposable income to cover their housing costs. Despite promises to address affordability and economic inequality, the Biden administration has doubled down with claims that inflation is going down and that wage growth has outpaced it — which isn’t true. Biden has made it more difficult for Americans to achieve financial stability.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • More Biden Recession layoffs, including cuts from:
    • Nike
    • Google
    • Discord (170)
    • CitiGroup (20,000)
    • Twitch, owned by Amazon (500)
    • BlackRock (600)
    • Rent the Runway
    • Unity (1,800, 25% of the company)
    • eBay (1,000)
    • Microsoft (1,900, plus more from Xbox)
    • Salesforce (700)
    • Flexport (1,400, 15% of the company)
    • iRobot (350)
    • UPS (12,000)
    • PayPal (2,500, 9% of the company)
    • Okta (400, 7% of the company)
    • Snap (19% of the company)
    • Estée Lauder (3,100)
    • DocuSign (6% of the company)
    • Zoom (150)
    • Paramount (800)
    • Morgan Stanley
    • Cisco (4,000, 5% of the company)
    • Expedia Group (1,500, 8% of the company)
    • Sony (900)
    • Bumble (350, 30% of the company)
    • Electronic Arts (670 workers, 5% of the company)
    • IBM
    • Stellantis (400)
    • Amazon
    • Apple (600)
    • Tesla (10% of the company)
    • Take Two Interactive (5% of the company)
    • Peloton (400, 15% of the company)
    • Indeed (1,000)
    • Walmart
    • Under Armor
    • Pixar (part of Disney) (175 people, 14% of the company, who must have been thrilled to get a pink slip and then see unwoke Inside Out 2 go on to be Disney’s biggest movie of the year)
    • Lucid Motors (400)
    • Walgreens

    Some of these have been previously announced.

  • Big Supreme Court news: They struck down the Chevron decision.

    The Supreme Court on Friday issued a ruling overturning the 1984 Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council case, striking down a previous decision that granted federal agencies immensely broad power to draw up regulations without congressional approval.

    The Court ruled in both Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless v. Department of Commerce — two nearly identical cases — that regulatory agencies will no longer be able to fill in the blanks of vague legislation in 6-2 and 6-3 decisions, respectively. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself from the first case because she sat on the federal appeals court that had previously heard the case.

    In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that it is not the place of agencies to clarify ambiguous legislation.

    “Perhaps most fundamentally, Chevron’s presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities,” he wrote. “Courts do. The Framers, as noted, anticipated that courts would often confront statutory ambiguities and expected that courts would resolve them by exercising independent legal judgment.”

    Writing a concurrence, Justice Neil Gorsuch argued that the concept of Chevron deference “undermines” many of the principles on which the United States was founded.

    “It precludes courts from exercising the judicial power vested in them by Article III to say what the law is,” he wrote. “It forces judges to abandon the best reading of the law in favor of views of those presently holding the reins of the Executive Branch. It requires judges to change, and change again, their interpretations of the law as and when the government demands.”

    This is a huge blow to the unchecked administrative state and a key decision in helping reign in untrammeled executive regulatory power.

  • This looks like it will put a crimp in Biden’s amnesty plans: “SCOTUS rules 6-3 that there’s no constitutional guarantee for non-citizen spouses to be admitted to the US.”
  • Supreme Court also rules that it is constitutional to ban drug-addicted transients from camping on city streets.
  • Has Russia’s Black Sea fleet abandoned Sevastopol?
  • Russia’s newest S-500 air defense system has been deployed to Crimea to defend against ATACMS strike. Result? It was destroyed by an ATACMS strike. “This is a big embarrassment for Russia, that its newest and best missile system has had its clock clean by 30-year-old missiles.”
  • Russian Ammo Storage Site with 3,000 Artillery Shells Hit by Drones in Voronezh, Russia.”
  • War crimes arrest warrants issued for top Russian officials. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Russia’s former defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the chief of general staff, Valery Gerasimov.” It would make one hell of a Dog The Bounty Hunter episode…
  • Evidently it is possible to be too radically antisemitic to be an elected Democratic official, as Squad member Jamaal Bowman of New York “lost his third-term primary bid to Westchester County executive George Latimer.”
  • Andrew Cuomo (D-isgrace) admits that the bogus Trump hush money kangaroo trial should never have been held. “If his name was not Donald Trump and if he wasn’t running for president. I’m the former AG in New York. I’m telling you, that case would have never been brought. And that’s what is offensive to people. And it should be!” Broken clock, twice a day.
  • Judge Judy says prosecutors twisted themselves into a pretzel to indict Trump.
  • Turns out that Biden loan forgiveness scheme is just as unconstitutional as we thought it was.

    Federal judges in Missouri and Kansas issued separate rulings on June 24 blocking key sections of the Biden administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) program, which is designed to lower student loan payments and forgive debts.

    A new version of the program that would reduce payments and shorten maximum repayment periods was set to take effect in July.

    U.S. District Judge Michael Crabtree for the District of Kansas ruled that the Republican states were likely to succeed in their claim that the department lacked explicit congressional authority to enact this portion of the program.

    “Defendants have offered colorable, plausible interpretations of the Higher Education Act that could authorize the SAVE Plan, but those interpretations fall short of clear congressional authorization,” Judge Crabtree, who was appointed under President Barack Obama, wrote on Monday.

    However, he declined to block the program entirely, expressing concerns about the practicality of reversing parts of the plan that had already been implemented. He also said that Republicans’ delay in filing their lawsuits undermined their arguments that there was an immediate need to halt the entire program.

    In a separate decision on the same day, U.S. District Judge Judge John Ross for the Eastern District of Missouri, also a President Obama appointee, blocked the department from forgiving “any further loan[s]” under SAVE until he decides the full case. His order said that such actions would likely strip state loan operators of revenue.

    Judge Ross also suggested that the SAVE program might have exceeded the authority of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and that Missouri would likely be harmed by the program.

    Just imagine if a Republican judge got a chance to rule on it…

  • Kenya Protesters Storm Parliament, Police Fire Live Rounds, After Lawmakers Unleash Eco-Austerity.” Seems like $2.7 billion in taxes to serve nebulous “green” goals is unpopular in a country where the per capita GDP is $2,099. Thanks, IMF…
  • And an attempted coup in Bolivia evidently failed. President Luis Arce is a bit of a socialist scumbag, so it remains to be seen if he intends to follow in Venezuela’s footsteps to economic ruin.
  • Over a thousand dead in this year’s Hajj. Islam has a lunar calendar, and this year’s Hajj fell during a period of extreme heat.

    Not only are the massive crowds a problem, but this year the Saudi city is under an excessive heat warning, with highs at times having reached between 110 and 115°F during the day, and 100°F even at night. This has resulted in what could be a record amount of heat injuries and deaths by the pilgrimage season’s end. On Monday the Saudi weather service recorded a temperature of 125 degrees Fahrenheit at Mecca’s Grand Mosque.

    Many of the dead were “unauthorized pilgrims” who hadn’t paid their Hajj fee. “This group was more vulnerable to the heat because, without official permits, they could not access air-conditioned spaces provided by Saudi authorities for the 1.8 million authorized pilgrims to cool down after hours of walking and praying outside.”

  • More accused perverts in classrooms. “Former Denton ISD Coach Arrested for Online Solicitation of a Minor. A mother from another school district says she tried to warn Denton ISD of an inappropriate encounter her daughter had with district employee Justin Wallace Carter.”
  • Guy buys four books filled with Chinese military secrets for $1. Good to know we’re not the only nation that suffers from lax security…
  • Missed this for yesterday’s roundup: “Michigan judge charged after gun was found in her purse at Detroit Metro Airport. Wayne County Judge Cylenthia LaToye Miller was cited earlier this month on a charge of possessing a dangerous weapon after she allegedly tried to pass through airport security with a handgun in her purse.” She is, of course, a Democrat.
  • “A Uvalde County grand jury has indicted former school district police Chief Pete Arredondo and another former district officer on charges of child endangerment, the first criminal charges brought against law enforcement for the botched response to the deadliest school shooting in Texas history, the San Antonio Express-News reported. Arredondo and Adrian Gonzales face felony charges of abandoning or endangering a child.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Insert your own Aggie joke here: “Texas A&M to Co-Manage Nation’s Nuclear Arsenal Facility in Amarillo.”
  • “NFL Ordered to Pay $4.7B After Losing ‘Sunday Ticket’ Trial.” Even for the NFL, that’s a lot of cheddar…
  • McDonald’s learns what the rest of us already knew: There’s no money in fake meat. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Everyone is leaving the big car YouTube channels because corporations bought, added layers of management, ignored what made them successful, and made them unprofitable.
  • A fun edition of What’s My Line featuring America’s most decorated war hero.
  • Kinky Friedman, RIP. He was a Texas original, an entertaining musician, a successful author, and the last interesting Democrat in Texas. Dwight already posted “The Ballad of Charlie Whitman,” so I direct you over there. I have an inscribed (not to me) first of A Case of Lone Star, and I should probably read that next.
  • “Trump Preps For Debate Against Biden By Going to Nursing Home And Arguing With Dementia Patients.”
  • “Trump Indicted For Murdering Elderly Man On CNN.”
  • Hamas Loses House Seat To Democrats.”
  • “White House Asks Migrants To Hold Off On Raping And Murdering Any More Americans Until After Election.”
  • Canada Officially Loses Recognized Country Status After Failing To Win Stanley Cup Again.”
  • I’m always up for skateboarding dogs.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Still between jobs, so hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    Judicial Officers Behaving Badly

    June 27th, 2024

    Here’s a mini-roundup of misbehavior among court officers.

  • The electioneering ethics commission complaint against Lina Hidalgo ends with a whimper rather than a bang, as she was merely fined $500 and had to pick up the garbage*.

    The Texas Ethics Commission (TEC) has sanctioned Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo over comments she made at a press conference on county property last year in which she lambasted District Attorney Kim Ogg and endorsed Ogg’s Democratic primary opponent.

    “Credible evidence shows the respondent used public resources of Harris County for the press conference, held in a county facility at her direction. Therefore, there is credible evidence of violations of Section 255.003(a) of the Election Code,” reads the TEC order.

    Hidalgo must pay a fine of $500.

    Filed by attorney Mark McCaig, the complaint to TEC stems from a press conference Hidalgo held on November 10, the day after news broke that the Texas Rangers would be executing new search warrants in relation to an $11 million COVID-19 vaccine outreach contract the county awarded to a highly connected Democratic strategist in 2021.

    “The order from the Texas Ethics Commission describes, in detail, how Lina Hidalgo’s misuse of government resources for political purposes violated Texas law,” McCaig told The Texan.

    Hidalgo’s comments were made at the Harris County Administration Building “where [Hidalgo] appeared at a podium with the county seal in the background,” according to the TEC. The press conference was also live-streamed on the Office of the County Judge’s official social media accounts.

    During the event, Hidalgo accused Ogg of leaking the new warrants to the media, although they had been posted to the district clerk’s website and were available to the public.

    “This is just the same dirty politics she’s been playing out for years,” said Hidalgo, adding that Ogg stood in the way of reforms to the criminal justice system.

    “She’s up for re-election March 5, and I happen to know her opponent Sean Teare,” said Hidalgo. “He is a well-respected, very experienced, strong opponent.”

    “I literally spent the day yesterday before this stuff was leaked working on the endorsement of him Monday.”

    Under Texas Election Code, using an elected office to engage in political advertising is a Class A misdemeanor, and under the Penal Code misuse of government property, services, or personnel constitutes an Abuse of Official Capacity, which could be classified as a misdemeanor or state jail felony depending on the value of the thing misused

    Teare defeated Ogg in the March 2024 Democratic Primary and will face Republican Dan Simmons in November.

    Teare is a full-bore, Soros-backed social justice leftist. Let’s hope Trump does well enough to help Republican Dan Simons defeat him in November.

  • Fort Worth Removes Municipal Judge Facing Federal Indictment for PPP Loan Fraud.

    The Fort Worth City Council unanimously voted to approve a resolution removing a substitute municipal judge who is under a federal indictment for fraud.

    Thelma Anderson, who has worked as a part-time substitute judge in Fort Worth since December 13, 2022, was indicted in March on one count of wire fraud and two counts of engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from unlawful activity, according to the Department of Justice press release.

    If convicted, Anderson faces up to 40 years in federal prison.

    The Fort Worth City Charter, which provides that municipal judges may be removed for “dereliction of duty, incompetency, incapacity to serve, misconduct or conduct discrediting the position,” allowed the city to terminate Anderson’s appointment, a Fort Worth city spokesperson told The Texan.

    Anderson also worked as an assistant district attorney in Dallas County from 2016 to 2022, Fox4News reported.

    According to the indictment, Anderson sought a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan on February 4, 2021. In the loan application, she allegedly misrepresented the company’s payroll and gross sales for her clothing boutique, Thelma Lou LLC.

    Anderson represented that Thelma Lou had a monthly payroll of over $8,000 and monthly revenue of over $140,000. However, officials say, in reality Thelma Lou had a meager income and no payroll expenses.

    She used the $20,000 PPP loan for personal expenses, such as food, rent, and entertainment.

    In October 2021, Anderson then applied for PPP loan forgiveness, claiming she used $17,500 for payroll expenses. The full loan was forgiven.

    “It was very, very easy to get money,” Richard Roper, a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas who is not affiliated with this case, told Fox4. “And the only thing you had to do was essentially fill out a loan application, provide a minimal amount of documents, and the money came to you.”

  • Leftist Georgia Judge Arrested And Dismissed From Bench After Assaulting Police.

    One of Georgia’s highest paid (and most infamous) Democrat judges, Christina Peterson, has recently been arrested for assault on a police officer outside a nightclub in Atlanta. Peterson has subsequently been dismissed from the bench, but not just for allegedly striking an officer during the arrest of another woman. She was also investigated and disciplined for dozens of professional violations. Seeing her personal conduct when interacting with police, one wonders how it was possible for such a woman to be in the position to become a judge.

    The Atlanta Police Department said Peterson repeatedly brushed the officer’s arms away and pushed him twice before he detained her outside the Red Martini Restaurant and Lounge on Peachtree Road. She refused to give officers her name for hours after the arrest.

    She now claims that the officer didn’t identify himself and that he was engaged in a “coverup” of his “improper acts.” The officer’s body cam footage appears to indicate otherwise.

    An investigation was already underway into 28 accusations of misconduct against Peterson when the incident occurred.

    This week, the Georgia Supreme Court issued a decision removing her from office early, with her original term due to end later this year.

    The Supreme Court said the most troubling allegation against Peterson had to do with her treatment of a woman who appeared before her while trying to correct an error on her marriage certificate. Peterson held the woman in criminal contempt and imposed the maximum jail term of 20 days and a fine “without explanation or justification,” the panel found.

    Peterson is also alleged to have allowed people to enter the county courthouse after hours without ensuring proper security screening and then made unjustified requests for deputies to work overtime at taxpayer expense when her after-hours access was limited as a result, the high court opinion says. She also pressed a panic button in her chambers when the deputy assigned to escort her to court did not arrive on time. Those actions “did not demonstrate the decorum and temperament required of a judge,” the opinion says.

    Yeah, not a lot of judicial “temperament” on display there. And letting people enter the courthouse after hours without security screening strikes me as a huge security issue.

  • Remember Taral Patel, the Democratic Ft. Bend commissioner’s court candidate arrested for faking hate crimes against himself? Not the Bee has some additional background on him.

    Meet Taral Patel, a man who previously worked in the Criminal Division of Biden’s Justice Department, and was even appointed to serve in the Office of White House Liaison, as well as the White House Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Committee.

    Also:

    Patel’s bond conditions include having no contact with the Needville man whose identity was stolen. He also had to surrender his passport, can’t possess a firearm or any weapon, or use any electronic device that allows internet access unless he has specific approval from the probation department. Patel is also banned from using any software programs designed to hide, alter, or delete logs of computer use.

    Got to say that I don’t fancy his election chances in November…


  • *If you get this reference, you are officially old.

    Ukraine Hits Russian Space Tracking Center

    June 26th, 2024

    Ukraine has apparently hit a Russian space radar and tracking system in occupied Crimea.

    Ukraine has allegedly struck the NIP-16 space communications and tracking facility in Crimea. According to reports, the attack was conducted on Saturday (June 22), using U.S.-made MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) ballistic missiles.

    This attack was one of two carried out by Ukraine over the weekend into the Crimean Peninsula. These come just over a month since the United States gave Ukraine the go-ahead to strike into Russian territory using U.S.-made weapons.

    The first attack over the weekend targeted the space communications facility with approximately 20 radar dishes. Some of these were combined in large fixtures with eight dishes.

    Low-resolution satellite images obtained by the War Zone (TWZ) appears to confirm that the NIP-16 facility was indeed attacked, as claimed. However, due to the image quality, it is difficult to determine the exact extent of the damage.

    We’ll get to that in a minute. Snip.

    After Russia seized it following the 2014 takeover of Crimea, the facility was handed over to its Aerospace Forces, which then began modernizing it, as reported by the Ukrainian Defense Express (UDE) news outlet.

    “As of 2017, reports stated the center had received ten new systems, and the upgrading was still proceeding,” UDE explained. “The initial plan was to spend 1.8 billion rubles on the reconstruction of one radio telescope alone: at the exchange rate of that time, cost about $28 million,” it added.

    The Kyiv Post reported that Russia is now using it for ballistic missile early warning, looking towards the Middle East, Africa, and Southwest Asia. Others have postulated that it may be used for GLObalnaya NAvigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema in Russian (GLONASS), Russia’s equivalent of the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS).

    We’ve got a pretty good idea what was hit because the after satellite photos are already available:

    Starting at the top right where the signs of burning are, there’s a pair of laser rangefinders. Moving down around them and in the central area of damage a six meter radom and a five meter radom. And in a bottom bit of damage some items I don’t understand: parabolics on a gimbal, one of them is called, who I’m sure appeared at Glastonbury last year [it’s a radar dish that came move around, like the ones in the Very Large Array]. An M 6 meter case grain [I suspect he means a 6 meter gain antenna], and a 15 meter retractable radar.

    Plus “Three new structures which were built since October 2020 the bottom one built in March or April 2021 during Russia’s military buildup.”

    OK, let’s talk about GLONASS. According to Wikipedia (the source of all vaguely accurate knowledge), GLONASS has an accuracy range of 4.46–7.38m, which is fine for nuclear weapons, or to track positions of planes and ships, or to hit most buildings, but falls woefully short of tactical battlefield accuracy. During the Desert Storm, U.S. generals would brag that military band GPS would let a cruise missile target an individual M&M in a bowl. Even if we’re limiting Ukrainian access to military band GPS, Civilian GPS + differential GPS (basically using fixed ground tower signals to provide higher accuracy) is probably at least an order of magnitude more accurate than GLONASS.

    Differential GPS was something the Russians were going to try to bring online as part of a constellation upgrade, but the Ukraine war (and the sorry state of Roscosmos) might have sidelined that goal. On the other hand, the only scheduled Russian space launches for the rest of this year are all for upgraded GLONASS K1 sats, so maybe that’s the one thing they’re still doing.

    Peter Zeihan thinks this move has the Russians way screwed.

  • “You use a deep space system to basically keep track of all your satellites in orbit and communicate among them and to the ground. And since satellites typically are [orbiting], you need several of these stations around the world in order to provide good coverage.”
  • “The Russians have never had that, because the Russians have never had a series of allies that they can trust on a global basis. So they have four of these networks within the Russian Federation and that’s it and apparently one of them was completely destroyed within the last 36 hours.”
  • “It pretty much is the end of the Russian civilian space program. It was already floundering and wasn’t economically viable, especially with the advent of SpaceX because the Russians used to use their old ICBMs as launch vehicles. Basically you use one of them and then it’s gone and then you use another one you keep doing that until they’re all gone and, well, they’re all gone now unless they actually want to go into their active reserve they were using the ones that were decommissioned after the end of the Cold War, so they’re no longer cost effective at all.” I’m not sure that this is true, as all recent Roscosmos space flights have used the Soyuz-2 rocket, whose development split off from ICBM development a long damn time ago.
  • “Second, military satellites. Most military satellites, like most civilian satellites, are whipping around the planet, and now the Russians have lost one quarter of what was left of their capacity to track and communicate with them. That’s going to provide a real problem for the Russians in terms of satellite communications. Not to mention anyone who was looking at getting the Russians to launch and maintain a military satellite for them now has to find someone who is not Russia to maintain it.”
  • “And if your goal was to get away from the United States, there just aren’t a lot of options here, because the Chinese don’t have a good network for this either. So basically you’re down to Europe with the Airbus Consortium or the United States.”
  • “Third and perhaps most significant moving forward is, with the loss of this the Russians are losing the ability to not just keep tabs on their satellites but but to get good telemetry for things like repairs. And if the Russians lose the capacity to do that, then their GLONASS, system which is their equivalent of GPS, starts to fall offline.”
  • “Now there are already parts of the world that don’t have very good coverage all that often, but if you remove meaningful launch capability and monitoring capability and maintenance capability from the Russian system (losing one more radar system would probably do that) then you’re talking about the Russians losing the capacity to use precision guided munitions using geographic tags, that would be an end to things like, say, glide bombs, which are the newest military innovation that the Russians have used, basically dropping one to two to three ton bombs from within Russian territory and then having them glide and hit targets. If you lose their ability for satellite communication that goes away.”
  • I think Zeihan slightly overstates the problem for Russia, or more specifically immanentizes the crisis more than is warranted, especially in relation to the Russo-Ukrainian War. First, GLONASS precision wasn’t exacting to begin with, so its ability to hit tactical battlefield targets was questionable. Second, it takes time for sat global positioning errors to add up, even if you couldn’t use one of the three other stations for measurement and precision correction. Third, Russia hasn’t demonstrated much in the way of precision munitions in this war, the overwhelming majority of their weapons seem “dumb” anyway, and changing that has been made harder by sanctions. Finally, Russia could pull a sneaky end-around and relying on GPS as well as GLONASS for any precision weapons (as many civilian devices, including iPhones, have the capability to use) and the US has evidently retired “Selective Availability” for GPS.

    My suspicion is that the GLONASS damage will be secondary to the destruction of whatever military radar capabilities Russia added to NIP-16, and which were evidently taken out by the strike as more battlespace preparation for the arrival of Ukrainian F-16s in theater later this year.

    Biden Recession Hits Hooters

    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.)