Posts Tagged ‘Chicago’

Are Chicago Citizens Tired Of Ranking Lower On Democratic Party Priorities Than Illegal Aliens?

Thursday, October 19th, 2023

Have Chicago residents finally had enough of rankling lower on the totem pole than the illegal aliens that seem a top priority of the Democratic Party?

“You want to take the little scraps of resources that we have and put us at the bottom of the bar? That’s not fair!”

  • “Illinois warns to prepare for up to 25 buses of migrants a day as state pleads for help from the federal government. And now the good people of the city of Chicago have had enough.”
  • “Now the good people of the city of Chicago have had enough and said this needs to stop, and these woke policies of open borders and ‘we want to be a sanctuary city’ needs to end.”
  • Illinois is one 11 states that have declared themselves a “sanctuary state,” i.e. they passed laws prohibiting some forms of cooperation with ICE and won’t hold the fact that they’re illegal aliens against them when doling out government welfare state goodies.
  • Under Lori Lightfoot, the city would actually interfere with ICE conducting raids.
  • Other Democrats, like Senator Dick Durbin, were all on-board with the pro-illegal alien agenda.
  • “Now, because of Chicago’s love of immigrants and welcoming nature, Texas was like ‘Well, hey, if the immigrants are coming here and you guys want the immigrants and we don’t want them, let’s just send them to you. You guys can obviously take care of the millions and millions of immigrants coming across the border.’ So they started bussing immigrants to Chicago.”
  • Naturally Lightfoot called Abbott’s bussing strategy “racist” and “Xenophobic.”
  • “Guess what’s going on in Chicago now? Well, it’s turned into a quote unquote migrant crisis, and now the governor is asking the federal government to step in and ‘Stop! We have too many! We have too many! It was okay when it was going on in Texas, but it’s going on in Illinois and we need money, resources, and the border to be closed!'”
  • “The governor directly asked President Biden to intervene in the border busing program that has brought thousands of migrants to Chicago. He went on to call the situation ‘untenable’ and again asked for expedited work authorizations. He said the state is struggling to find more housing for the migrants as tensions rise throughout the city.”
  • “In Chicago, you have poor black and brown people who are American citizens, and they needed help and weren’t getting the help from the city. But now the city all of a sudden can spend tens of millions of dollars on illegal immigrants coming to the city to shelter them, house them, feed them and clothe them. So the city residents are like ‘What the hell, bro? What about us? We’ve already been here! This is ridiculous!'”
  • “The Southside has been underresourced, underfunded for years for decades. We have schools that need to be reopened, we have buildings that are abandoned that need to be business operated.” Yet I’m willing to be that during those years and decades of underfunding, you and your friends kept pulling that “D” lever no matter what. And Democrats know you’re not going to stop voting for them, so why should they work to solve your problems when they know they’ll get your vote anyway?
  • “The true kicker here is because people who live in Chicago who are poor who don’t have those resources are wondering ‘Well, hell, when I’m homeless here in Chicago, they weren’t building new tent cities for me, they weren’t putting me in hotels.’ It was kind of like well, be damned good luck to you, but now you get somebody coming from Venezuela, now we’re opening up the pocketbook for them?”
  • “The people of Chicago seem to be finally waking up. But we’ll only see when there’s the next election because, are they going to vote for this mayor? Are they going to vote for this city council? Because those are the people who are screwing them.”
  • Of course those are the people who are screwing them. And of course they’re going to vote for them again. Their entire focus seems to be “Other people are getting goodies from the government, and I want those goodies!” Not: “How can I make safer communities for private enterprise to invest in and provide jobs?”

    Those people will never stop voting for Democrats. And Democrats know it. So they have no incentive to dispense crumbs from their graft machine when there are new victimhood identity politics groups to pander to.

    Defund The Police + Decriminalize Shoplifting = “Food Deserts”

    Tuesday, September 26th, 2023

    Chicago was one of the first cities to embrace decriminalizing shoplifting and defunding the police, and now they’re reaping the consequences of their actions, good and hard.

  • “Crime has become so crazy in Chicago that the city now has to take over supermarkets.”
  • Organized gangs of looters now strip shelves while store employees watch helplessly. The video shows a crew of 14 stripping a Louis Vuitton store bare.
  • One clothing shop: “There have been knives, there has been girls spitting on us, there has been men throwing drinks at us, taking my female sales associates and throwing them into tables. She’s recorded 28 incidents in just the past 60 days.”
  • One shoplifting ring stole over $7 million worth of goods, much of it over-the-counter medicine stolen from the likes of Target, Walgreens
    and CVS and then shipped off to California and New York to be sold.

  • No wonder major retailers are fleeing Chicago.
  • Four Wal-Marts closed because the thefts made them no longer profitable, losing tens of millions of dollars.
  • Whole Foods closed six stores.
  • Needless to say, Chicago’s Democratic mayor Brandon Johnson was a big fan of defunding the police back in 2020.
  • “Thus the very people allegedly helped by the progressive policies get hurt the worst: The poor black and brown communities in Chicago are now food deserts. There’s nowhere to buy groceries.”
  • “Private retailers couldn’t afford to keep stores open and let people just steal their merchandise for free. So the mayor plans to open, quote, city-run supermarkets. This is to fill the void left by the Walmarts and the Whole Foods who obviously were losing millions of dollars trying to stay open.”
  • I imagine putting the Democratic Party in charge of a supermarket will probably work just as well as letting the mob run your restaurant.

    “We’re talking about state and federal tax dollars being used to essentially run state-run supermarkets. That’s socialism 101. That’s what happened in Venezuela. That would happen in the Soviet Union: The state ran the supermarkets.”

    Democrats make a food desert and call it social justice.

    Bad Guy Beatdown Roundup

    Wednesday, September 20th, 2023

    Time for a roundup of criminals who had critical failures in their Victim Selection Process rolls.

  • Out in El Monte, California, a would be thief armed with bear spray and a hammer got a righteous beatdown trying to rob a family jewelry store.

  • In Texas news, a convicted murderer who preyed on the elderly got his ticket to Hell punched by his cellmate, who also happened to be a convicted murderer.

    Convicted North Texas killer Billy Chemirmir, who was suspected in over 20 murders, was killed in a state prison Tuesday morning, officials confirmed to WFAA.

    Chemirmir, 50, was serving life in prison without parole after he was twice found guilty of capital murder by Dallas County juries. He was accused of killing 20 other women in Dallas and Collin counties and still faced charges in those cases.

    The Dallas County District Attorney’s office confirmed they were notified by Texas prison officials that Chemirmir was killed Tuesday morning. State prison officials confirmed that Chemirmir was found dead in his cell early Tuesday and his cellmate, who was serving on a murder charge out of Harris County, was “identified as the assailant.”

    What caused Mr. Chemirmir’s cellmate to extinguish him?

    Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot told WFAA that Chemirmir was killed after apparently making inappropriate comments sexual in nature towards his cellmate’s children. According to Creuzot, the cellmate allegedly beat Chemirmir, dragged him out of his cell and killed him while other inmates watched. No one intervened and Chemirmir may have been stabbed with a pen, Creuzot said.

    It does indeed sound like the “He needed killin'” defense applies here, though the prison guards have some splain’ to do. (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Pro-tip: If you go around breaking down doors and beating people in a Chicago high rise, don’t be surprised if you get shot.

    A resident who fatally shot Abnerd Joseph during a disturbance in their Loop high-rise building was released without being charged following the shooting, according to Chicago police.

    Family of the assistant school principal said Friday they are “left with questions and looking for closure.”

    “We can’t make sense of it,” said his sister Jeanna Joseph, who last spoke to her brother Wednesday, the day before the shooting. “We don’t really know what’s going on. … We have questions and we don’t have answers to those questions.”

    The shooting happened about 7:30 p.m. Thursday on the 48th floor of the building at 60 E. Monroe St. as Abnerd Joseph was “wildly” knocking on residents’ doors, attempting to enter apartments and “yelling incoherently,” according to a police report.

    When the doorman and four tenants went to check, he allegedly struck the doorman several times. A tenant then tried to calm him down and was also hit and fell down, the report said.

    Sounds like he was as high as an SR-71.

    Another tenant warned Joseph that he was armed and told him to stop hitting people. The police report said Joseph “turned and charged” at the tenant, who opened fire, hitting him several times.

    Joseph, 32, was shot in the chest, abdomen, flank, an armpit and a ring finger, according to the report. He was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 8:11 p.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. An autopsy Friday determined he died of multiple gunshot wounds and his death was ruled a homicide, the office said.

    (Hat tip: 357 Magnum.)

  • Remember kids:

    LinkSwarm for April 22, 2023

    Friday, April 21st, 2023

    I finally finished and sent off my taxes this week. It’s a load off my mind! Now I can get back to my low calorie life substitute!

    This week: The Biden Administration tries to cram transexism down America’s throat, more Blue City crime dysfunction, and the Babylon Bee is on fire!

  • “How Americans have taken a pay cut every month since Biden took office.”

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has laid out the devastating results of runaway government spending on the middle class and why it’s so important to claw back lost ground for the average American, who has “received a pay cut for 24 consecutive months … as inflation has persisted.”

    He also noted the average American family has lost the equivalent of more than $7,000 in annual income.

    There is a direct link between spending, borrowing and printing trillions of dollars, and these disastrous results for Americans.

    President Biden has spent trillions of dollars the nation didn’t have.

    These unchecked costs drove the deficit to record highs and pushed the debt over $31 trillion.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
    

  • Ex-Planned Parenthood exec commits suicide after botched child porn raid in Connecticut.

    A former Connecticut Planned Parenthood honcho took his own life days after police failed to arrest him on child pornography charges — botching the raid by knocking down the door of the suspect’s New Haven neighbor.

    Tim Yergeau, 36, the former director of strategic communications at the Southern New England branch of Planned Parenthood, died by suicide on Tuesday amid a child pornography investigation in Connecticut last week.

  • The Biden Administration desperately wants to cram transexism down America’s throats.

    The Biden administration on Thursday unveiled a proposal that would prohibit schools from instituting policies that “categorically ban transgender students from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity.” The policy would allow schools to implement certain limitations in the interest of fairness or safety, however.

    The proposed rule, which would impact any school or college that receives federal funding, would expand Title IX protections to include gender identity. Under the proposal, a “one-size-fits-all” ban on transgender athletes playing on teams that match their stated gender identity would be a violation of Title IX. The rule, which is likely to face challenges, will face a lengthy approval process.

    This is, in fact, the exact opposite of the text of Title IX, which provides special protection for biological women, not men pretending to be women.
    

  • “Pennsylvania Teachers, Activists Concocted Bogus LGBTQ Bullying Epidemic for Political Gain, Investigation Finds.”
  • Meanwhile, Twitter has moved in the opposite direction, saying it will no longer ban users for “misgendering” or “dead-naming,” i.e. daring to say that a biological man is a man.
  • Meanwhile, Democrats in Minnesota are planning to shove social justice down children’s throats.

    Under the radar, a package of bills is ramming through sweeping changes that will reorient our public schools around a new paradigm — subordinating academic basics to an obsessive, politicized preoccupation with race and social justice activism.

    “Critical Social Justice” ideology (CSJ) — the vehicle for manipulating our young people into adopting this worldview — is laced strategically through a variety of bills, including “ethnic studies” (HF 1502), “Teachers of Color” (HF 320) and now the House and Senate omnibus education bills (HF 2497/SF 2684).

    Taken together, this legislation will inject reductive, racialized thinking into every classroom in Minnesota’s approximately 500 school districts and charter schools; change the fundamental mechanics of education in our state; and give the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) and the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB) broad new powers that amount to an end-run around our state’s hallowed tradition of local control.

  • More blue city dysfunction. “Portland REI to Close Due to Record Number of Break-Ins, Thefts.”
  • California’s crazy program to subsidize poor home owners with mortgage down-payments runs out of money in 12 days.
  • Related: “Joe Biden Wants Homebuyers With Good Credit to Subsidize High Risk Mortgages.”
  • TikTok’s Democrat Lobbyists Visited Biden White House At Least 40 Times In Past Year.” Beijing Joe likes his dough.
  • Here’s a story I missed earlier: “Kazakhstan Impounds Property of Roscosmos Subsidiary.” That’s the Russian company that’s the main operator of Baikonur spaceport. Haven’t seen any resolution to this, mainly because Russia is so broke thanks to mismanagement, sanctions, and an illegal war of territorial aggression.
  • Ruh-roh!

  • ATF Director Steve Dettelbach says he’s not a firearms expert. Sounds like he should have another job.
  • No wonder they hid it. “Louisville Shooter’s Manifesto Details His Intent To Push Gun Control.”
    

  • Anheuser-Busch Thinks We’re Idiots.” (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
  • BuzzFeed shuts down. Dwight whipped this up:

  • Jay Leno drives the 1,025 horsepower 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170. I have an irrational desire to own something with a Hellcat engine, which I need like I need a hole in my head. Plus I like the look of the Shelby GT-500 Mustang better, and I’m not buying one of those either.
  • Size comparison video of different science fiction starships.
  • “Disney World Forced To Close After DeSantis Builds Elementary School Within 1,000 Feet.”

    “Disney has proudly employed sex predators for years, and this act of aggression by DeSantis will force thousands of our proud pedo-American workers to leave the park to stay outside the 1,000-foot radius required by law,” said Disney CEO Bob Iger. “This is tyranny!”

  • “Hasbro Introduces New ‘Transition Me Elmo’ Doll.”
  • “Budweiser Replaces Clydesdales With Cows Dressed As Horses.”
  • “Chicago Mayor Warns That If Local Walmart Locations Close People Will Have Fewer Places To Shoplift.”
  • “Newlyweds In San Francisco Looking For Nice One Bedroom, Zero Bath Starter Tent.”
  • 

    LinkSwarm for April 14, 2023

    Friday, April 14th, 2023

    If you’re stressing over your taxes, you might be slightly relieved to know that they’re not due until April 18. Thus week: More Blue City violence and decline, lots of Social Justice Warrior backlash, Facebook shows snowflakes the door, and Budweiser commits brand suicide.
    

  • “Ex-ABC Senior Producer Who Rolling Stone Covered For Indicted On Child Porn Charges. Former ABC senior producer James Gordon Meek has been indicted on three counts of child pornography nearly one year after the FBI raided his Arlington, Virginia home.”
    

  • “A Silicon Valley Vs. Homeless Industrial-Complex Power-Struggle Emerges In San Francisco.”

    Something about the apparently random street murder of Silicon Valley tech executive Bob Lee seems to have overturned a crawly rock in San Francisco’s political scene, suggesting a brewing power struggle on the horizon.

    On the one hand, we have a very vocally angry Silicon Valley tech community speaking out about the out-of-control crime situation in the city, with the valued and talented Lee’s untimely death from some night creature who crawled out from some sewer or encampment and stabbed him to death, quite possibly in a drug-addled haze. That’s expected if you live in a place full of bums and criminals, but Lee didn’t live in a place full of bums and criminals. He had actually fled the city for Florida based on its engulfing crime and come back only for a brief business trip.

    On the other hand, we have a soggy, entrenched political establishment seeking to assure that there’s really no crime problem at all. This is evident enough in the “crime is down” coverage seen in the political establishment’s house organ, the San Francisco Chronicle, and in the surreal statements of the city hall power establishment, which is rooted in special interests, particularly the most powerful one, the homeless industrial complex. I wrote about that here. San Francisco currently spends about as much on homeless “services” as it does on police, and by some studies such as the one cited below, actually more.

    Not surprisingly, as per Thomas Sowell’s observation, you can have all the poverty you want to pay for, and San Francisco pays a lot.

    The Hoover Institution’s Lee Ohanian has noted:

    Spending $1.1 billion on homelessness is just the latest installment in San Francisco’s constant failure to sensibly and humanely deal with an issue that it chronically misdiagnoses and mismanages about as much as is humanly possible. Since fiscal year 2016–17, San Francisco has spent over $2.8 billion on homelessness, and the city’s politicians remain seemingly baffled, year after year, as the number of homeless in the city skyrocket, as opioid overdoses kill more than COVID-19, and as the city has become nearly the most dangerous in the country. https://www.hoover.org/research/why-san-francisco-nearly-most-crime-rid….

    Since 2016, the number of homeless in San Francisco has increased from 12,249 to 19,086, which comes out to about $57,000 in spending per homeless person per year. With a total population of about 860,000, roughly 2.2 percent of San Francisco residents are homeless, which is over 12 times the national average. There is little doubt that as San Francisco spends more, homelessness and its impact on the city worsens.

    Do the homeless get that $57,000 being spent on them? Of course not. The princelings of the NGO establishments got that money — for themselves. That’s what’s made them politically powerful, enough to call the shots at city hall.

    Democrats and Social Justice Warriors view homelessness as a huge profit center, and seek to increase the ranks of the homeless at every opportunity.

  • Speaking of Bob Lee’s murder, the former San Francisco fire commissioner was attacked with crowbar the day after Lee was stabbed to death.
  • Also, an arrest was made in the Lee case and it was a fellow tech guy who knew him. “A tech executive named Nima Momeni was arrested by San Francisco police Thursday morning in the April 4 killing of Cash App founder Bob Lee…Lee and Momeni were portrayed by police as being familiar with one another. In the wee hours of April 4, they were purportedly driving together through downtown San Francisco in a car registered to the suspect.” So not a random gibbering drug-addicted transient.
  • Speaking of San Francisco street crime, a Whole Food closes one year after opening due to violence and theft.
  • Speaking of store closings in blue cities, Walmart is closing half their Chicago stores.
  • Is it it riot and murder season in Baltimore already? Ha! Trick question! It’s always riot and murder season in Baltimore.

  • “Embattled Soros-Backed St. Louis Prosecutor Sanctioned By Judge Amid New Complaints.”

    A St. Louis judge sanctioned St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s office last week for allegedly withholding evidence in a double-murder case, while allowing the suspect out on bond, amid rising criticism about left-wing prosecutors allowing crime to flourish in major U.S. cities.

    Alex Heflin, 23, was held without bond since January after he was initially charged with two counts of second-degree murder and armed criminal action, local media reported. But those charges were recently reduced to involuntary and voluntary manslaughter before he was released, while his April 17 trial has been postponed until June 12.

    Judge Theresa Counts Burke ruled in favor of Heflin’s lawyers after they filed a motion accusing a prosecutor under Gardner of violating discovery rules. They alleged that her office did not turn over evidence, including a 911 call recording and DNA evidence.

    “The court finds that there have been repeated delays by the state in obtaining discovery and providing it to the defense,” Burke wrote, according to local reports.

    “There has been a lack of diligence on the part of the state in following up and providing discovery to the defendant in a timely fashion. As a result of the state’s actions and lack of diligence, the court grants defendant’s second motion for sanctions.”

    Under Burke’s order, Heflin will have to remain on GPS monitoring. She also ordered the circuit attorney’s office to hand over their list of witnesses within 24 hours, provide DNA test results within 24 hours, or ask a crime lab for the DNA results.

  • Remember when Reagan was criticized for taking the deficit above $100 billion? Now it’s over a trillion. Every six months. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • 2024 update: Tim Scott getting in.
  • Mike Pompeo getting out.
  • Fort Worth ISD to make DEI die.
  • Molotov balloons are a ball filled with sulfuric acid, but white strips are a type of paper treated with potassium chlorate and a sugar mix. When the balloon breaks, the acid reacts with the potassium chlorate and sugar, which causes ignition.”
  • Another girlboss indicted: “Penn grad Charlie Javice, founder of Frank, charged with fraud over $175M JPMorgan deal.” Seems the heart of the indictment is fake users.

    Prosecutors and the SEC allege that Javice orchestrated a scheme to deceive JPMorgan into believing that Frank had access to valuable data on 4.25 million students who used the company’s service when in reality the number was less than 300,000.

    Prosecutors said when JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) sought to verify the number of Frank users and the amount of data collected about them, Javice fabricated a data set. She is alleged to have an unnamed co-conspirator who first asked Frank’s director of engineering to create an artificially generated data set. Prosecutors said the director of engineering declined the request after expressing concerns about its legality.

    Javice, according to prosecutors, then approached an outside data scientist and hired him to create the synthetic data set — which was then provided to an agreed-upon third-party vendor in an effort to confirm to JPMorgan that the data set had over 4.25 million rows.

    Based on that alleged fraudulent data, prosecutors said JPMorgan agreed to buy Frank for $175 million. As part of the deal, the nation’s largest bank hired Javice and other Frank employees. Prosecutors said Javice received over $21 million for selling her equity stake in Frank and, per the terms of the deal, was to be paid another $20 million as a retention bonus.

    Prosecutors said as the fabricated data set was being created, Javice and her co-conspirator sought to purchase real data for over 4.25 million college students to cover up their misrepresentations.

    Treading the fine line between “fake it until you make it” and “interstate wire fraud.”

  • Bud light tranny pander wrecks brand. “I’ve never seen such little sales [as] in this past few days.”
  • In fact, they’ve lost six billion dollars in market cap.
  • “People With Taste Buds Continue Decades-Long Boycott Of Bud Light.”
  • The history of Barrett firearms. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Facebook to lay off 10,000 employees, including some of the people bragging that they had no work to do.
  • We’re having a party, a bankruptcy party. (Maybe.)
  • Tragic non-steak roasting befalls 18,000 cows.
  • Possible sequel to Cocaine Bear hits unexpected obstacle. Or vice-versa.
  • “BLM Leaders Call For Renewed Protests This Summer After Finding A Fantastic Beach House For Sale On Zillow.”
  • “Pentagon Leaker Kicking Himself For Not Just Leaving Classified Documents Strewn Around His Garage.”
  • “Disaster On Mandalorian Set As Lizzo Eats Baby Yoda.”
  • LinkSwarm for February 17, 2023

    Friday, February 17th, 2023

    Bit of a mini-LinkSwarm this time around, as this was a week that I almost caught up on stuff delayed by the ice storm.
    
    

  • Bidenomics: “Core CPI Rises 32nd Straight Month, Headline Inflation Hotter Than Expected.”
  • “Biden’s job growth is mostly immigrants working for low wages.” Also this: “The Department of Homeland Security has been issuing an unknown number of two-year work permits to illegal immigrants, which will keep them in the workforce suppressing wages and fanning the flames of discontent amongst Americans unable to find jobs until the next presidential election.” What the hell?
  • Auto repos hit new records.
  • California’s income tax revenues decline by 50%. Tax it, and they will leave. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Disinformation Inc: State Department bankrolls group secretly blacklisting conservative media.”

    The Department of State has funded a deep-pocketed “disinformation” tracking group that is secretly blacklisting and trying to defund conservative media, likely costing the news organizations vital advertising dollars, the Washington Examiner can confirm.

    The Global Disinformation Index, a British organization with two affiliated U.S. nonprofit groups, is feeding blacklists to ad companies with the intent of defunding and shutting down websites peddling alleged “disinformation,” the Washington Examiner reported . This same “disinformation” group has received $330,000 from two State Department-backed entities linked to the highest levels of government, raising concerns from First Amendment lawyers and members of Congress.

    “Any outfit like that engaged in censorship shouldn’t have any contact with the government because they’re tainted by association with a group that is doing something fundamentally against American values,” Jeffrey Clark, ex-acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, told the Washington Examiner. “The government or any private entity shouldn’t be involved with this entity that’s engaged in conduct that is either legally questionable or at least morally questionable.”

    GDI compiles a “dynamic exclusion list” that it feeds to corporate entities, such as the Microsoft -owned advertising company Xandr, emails show. Xandr and other companies are, in turn, declining to place ads on websites that GDI flags as peddling disinformation.

    The Washington Examiner revealed on Thursday that it is on this exclusion list. The list includes at least 2,000 websites and has “had a significant impact on the advertising revenue that has gone to those sites,” said GDI’s CEO Clare Melford on a March 2022 podcast.

    GDI has identified that the 10 “riskiest” news outlets for disinformation are the American Spectator, Newsmax, the Federalist, the American Conservative, One America News, the Blaze, the Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, Reason, and the New York Post.

  • Huge earthquake rocks Syria and Turkey. That was less than a week ago and already it’s pretty much out of the news…
  • Another huge story that the news media has done it’s best to ignore: a toxic derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The blew it up to prevent a BLEVE and ended up releasing Phosgene gas. That’s carrying your World War I reenactment too far.
  • 90-year California Democratic Senator old Dianne Feinstein to retire after 2024. But…
  • A few hour later she was evidently unaware she had retired. Increasingly, “crazy” or “senile” seem to be the two most common flavors of the Democratic Party…
  • Texas Governor Greg Abbott announces legislative priorities for the current session.
    1. Cutting Property Taxes
    2. End COVID Restrictions
    3. Education Freedom (School Choice)
    4. School Safety
    5. Ending Revolving-door Bail
    6. Doing More to Secure the Border
    7. Addressing the Fentanyl Crisis

    We’ll see if he follows through.

  • Followup: Transient encampment moved away from Headpsace Salon so they can go destroy someone else’s quality of life instead. (Previously.) (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Dumbass reaches for off-duty cop’s gun, with the expected results. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Inside China’s livestreamer girl factories.
  • Updated contact information for the Austin City Council.
  • Not a Babylon Bee headline: “Catalytic converter stolen from Oscar Mayer Wienermobile in Las Vegas.”
  • I chuckled.
  • Biden Taken To Coroner For Annual Physical.
  • LinkSwarm for November 7, 2022

    Monday, November 7th, 2022

    Greetings, and welcome to a special Election Eve Monday LinkSwarm! My Internet is back up, and tomorrow night I will be liveblogging the election returns starting around 7 PM.
    

  • A red tsunami?

    For the past week or so, my back-of-the-envelope math envisioned a GOP House majority somewhere between 229 and 241, and I’m sticking to that. Give the Republicans the 212 seats in Cook Political Report, with two-thirds of the 35 races in the toss-up category, and you end up with 235 Republicans and 200 Democrats, so put those down as my final prediction numbers.

    Snip.

    With Bolduc, Laxalt, and Johnson winning, I come out to a 51–48 GOP advantage by the end of the week, with Walker and Warnock headed to a runoff. It wouldn’t shock me if Oz or Masters or both won, giving Republicans a 53- or 54-seat majority.

  • “Dem Strategist Admits Her Party ‘Did Not Listen to Voters’ and Will Lose Midterms.”

    On Sunday, Hilary Rosen, a longtime Democratic strategist, predicted on CNN’s “State of the Union” that her party will have a bad night on Tuesday because they did not listen to voters.

    “I’m a loyal Democrat, but I am not happy. I just think we did not listen to voters in this election, and I think we are going to have a bad night,” she said.

    She faulted the Democratic Party for ignoring voters’ concerns about the economy, and implored them to “stop talking about democracy being at stake.”

    “When voters tell you over and over and over again that they care mostly about the economy, listen to them,” she said. “Stop talking about democracy being at stake. Democracy is at stake because people are fighting so much about what elections mean. Voters have told us what they wanted to hear. I don’t think Democrats have delivered this cycle.”

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
    

  • Republican senators release more details of Hunter Biden’s suspicious finances.

    Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson gave the federal prosecutor probing Hunter Biden a little nudge Wednesday — sending him more than 200 pages of bank records showing millions in transactions between the first son’s companies and Communist Chinese-tied entities.

    Snip.

    The senators’ analysis of banking records, first reported by Fox News, finds that between August 2017 and October 2018, $6 million was transferred to a company allegedly set up by Hunter Biden called Hudson West III, $5 million came from Northern International Capital, a [Chinese energy compan] CEFC affiliate, and $1 million was transferred from CEFC itself.

    From the pool of cash, $4.8 million was transferred from Hudson West III to other Biden companies, such as Owasco P.C. and Owasco LLC, and to a company associated with President Biden’s brother James, the Lion Hall Group.

    The bank records also show that Hunter Biden and his aunt and uncle, Sara and James Biden, went on a “spending spree,” in the senators words, after Hudson West III received the millions in payments from CEFC, through a line of credit that was opened.

    “We are also providing bank records showing that credit cards were collateralized by a $99,000 preauthorized withdrawal from Hudson West III,” Grassley and Johnson write, noting that the money was spent for airfare, at Apple stores, hotels, and restaurants, as they detailed back in 2020.

    Grassley and Johnson also mention two $3 million wire transfers sent to Robinson Walker LLC, another Hunter Biden-associated company; and by State Energy HK Limited, another CEFC affiliate, saying the purpose of those transfers “is unclear.” The Post reported on those mysterious transactions back in 2020.

    The senators also make reference to JiaQi Bao, Hunter Biden’s Chinese secretary, who reportedly pushed for “Uncle Joe” Biden to run for president and has been linked to the Chinese government. The bank transactions included in Grassley and Johnson’s letter show that Hunter Biden made payments to Bao totaling $29,795.84 after Hudson West III received the $6 million from the Chinese firms.

    Some names and entities will be familiar to BattleSwarm readers, but other bits are new.

  • Big ballot-havesting operation busted in Orlando, Florida.”

    Ballot harvesting, according to the California Democrats who’d like to take it national, is an innocent practice where union members and activists, some of them illegally present in the country, do voters the favor, see, of helping voters fill out their ballots and then collecting those ballots for them so that they need never go to the polls. They call it “a new service.” It’s part of their “make every vote count” agenda, and who could be against that?

    But out in Florida, where there’s still some semblance of objectivity, investigators found another story.

    According to the Washington Times:

    JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Florida’s newly created Office of Election Crimes and Security is requesting a criminal investigation into charges of ballot harvesting in Orlando, a Democratic stronghold in the critical swing state.

    Cynthia Harris, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for District 6 commissioner in Orange County, which includes Orlando, provided a sworn complaint to the election crimes office, alleging left-leaning organizations have been perpetrating a scheme to encourage residents in black neighborhoods to apply for mail-in ballots and to fill out those ballots, which she said have been collected by paid canvassers, and sometimes altered, all in violation of state law.

    In an interview with The Washington Times, Ms. Harris said she has video evidence of paid ballot harvesters operating in Orlando neighborhoods in both 2014 and 2017, and that the scheme has been going on for decades, continuing through the 2020 election and the 2022 primary.

    If voting fraud is this massive in Florida, how widespread and massive is it in states controlled by Democrats? (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)

  • “Pennsylvania Supreme Court Orders Undated, Wrongly Dated Ballots To Not Be Counted…siding with national and state Republican groups in a lawsuit filed just over two weeks ago.”
  • “GOP Reps Go Public After Uncovering What Biden Gave to Soros-Backed Group.”

    Two members of Congress from Texas and one former Trump administration official who now serves in the Texas House of Representatives are asking for answers from the Biden administration after discovering that an open borders group funded by George Soros received millions of dollars in federal grant money last year.

    Alianza Americas, a nonprofit that says it is “committed to a human rights agenda for all people, with an emphasis on the inclusion and support of Latin American immigrant communities, and people on the move in Latin America,” received $7.5 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in February 2021, according to the Washington Examiner, and then another $1 million from the Health Resources and Services administration in July.

    Both organizations fall under President Joe Biden’s Health and Human Services organization, and both grants were to fund COVID relief and vaccination efforts.

    The group has also received nearly $1.4 million from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation from 2016 through 2020.

    Federal law prohibits government grant money from being spent on lobbying, but Alianza Americas may have violated that prohibition in its activities as a “political advocacy group,” according to a letter from former HHS Chief of Staff Brian Harrison.

  • Chicago teacher’s unions want to pass an Illinois state constitutional amendment that would basically let them run the state.

    If approved by Illinois voters in November, Amendment 1 will give government teachers’ unions an unfettered constitutional right to demand not just anything in their interests, but in what they see as the interests of every Illinoisan. The amendment is not limited to employee matters at the workplace.

    Don’t take my word for that. Look at the first sentence of the argument in favor of it as written in the official summary as published by the Illinois Secretary of State: “This amendment will protect workers’ and others’ safety.” [Emphasis added.]

    hat particular sentence is just about safety, but it shows the broad interpretation of the amendment beyond the workplace that government unions will assert. The language of the amendment itself supports that broad interpretation, and will extend to anybody’s “economic welfare,” which is pretty much everything.

    What will government unions, especially radical teachers’ unions, demand with that new constitutional right?

    The Chicago Teachers Union has long been quite open about its purpose. It sees itself as the vanguard of a national movement, led by unions like itself, that is textbook Marxism.

    That purpose is well documented. It goes beyond the radical curriculum they teach in schools and encompasses an entire rearrangement of how America works.

    Among the first things we wrote about on this site, ten years ago, was the role of the CTU and other teachers’ unions at a Marxism conference held that year:

    The event was teeming with teachers who spoke about the new found bond” between Socialism and teachers’ unions according to reports, and Chicago teachers were on the stage. Chicago Teachers Union [then] VP Jesse Sharkey spoke at one breakout session. Becca Barnes, a Chicago Teachers Union teacher and organizer with Chicago Socialists, proclaimed at the beginning of the conference that “the struggle here in the United States has entered a new phase. Nowhere have we pointed the way forward more clearly than here in Chicago with the teachers union strike….”

    Since then, militant radicalism has become still more firmly embedded in the CTU. That history is well documented – quite proudly by radicals themselves. The International Socialist Review, for example, lays out a good history of the CTU, saying the CTU “transcended a simple labor dispute and was transformed into a social movement, with the teachers fusing their struggle with that of the community they serve…joining in the Occupy Chicago movement that pointed out the root of societal problems—social and economic inequality.”

  • Shockingly, those who suffer the most from spiking urban crime hate defunding the police.

    A poll that shows ridiculously low support from black voters for defunding the police should be the final nail in the coffin for Democrats’ anti-law and order campaign of the last seven years.

    TheGrio.com commissioned a poll, along with the Kaiser Family Foundation, which found that 82% of black respondents want police funding either to be kept about the same (48%) or increased (34%). Only 17% wanted it decreased.

    It’s just like Kari Lake said in a recent confrontation with a reporter. If you go into most black neighborhoods and talk about defunding the police, they’ll look at you “like you’re the craziest person on the planet.” But it’s one thing for a white, conservative Republican to say it — it’s far more important to hear black respondents in a poll confirm it overwhelmingly.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Things that make you go “hmmmm“: “San Francisco DA Won’t Release Police Bodycam Video, 911 Calls From Paul Pelosi Attack.”
  • Great line in the middle of this Ben Shapiro election roundup video: “Andrew Cuomo came to kill all the old people and grab ass, and he ran out of old people.”
  • Twitter Is Still Censoring Conservatives.”
  • Remember all those stories of how bad it sucked for workers in Foxconn’s iPhone factory? It’s worse now.

    Hundreds and perhaps thousands of workers fled a Chinese manufacturing complex that accounts for 85% of iPhone assembly capacity. The mass migration, which began this weekend, called into question that country’s COVID-control measures and, more broadly, its reliability as a part of global supply chains.

    “Something snapped over the weekend,” Bloomberg News reports. Employees suddenly fled the Zhengzhou plant of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd., better known as Foxconn. Videos show, in what is now called the “Foxconn Great Escape” or the “iPhone Long March,” workers scrambling over high chain fences at the plant, known as “iPhone City.”

    To avoid detection, workers traveled through cropland by day. At night, they took to the roads. “Some people were walking amid wheat fields with their luggage, blankets, and quilts,” said a poster on WeChat, the popular Chinese social media platform. “I couldn’t help but feel sad.”

    Residents of neighboring areas rallied, for instance leaving water and provisions in the open on roadsides. Social media postings reported signs such as “For Foxconn workers returning home.”

    Truckers also pitched in. Risking criminal prosecution, they took workers in pick-up, dump, and flatbed trucks. One video shows a woman standing on the back of a big tank truck speeding down a highway in the rain.

    Workers fled Foxconn’s “closed loop” system, which isolated the plant from the rest of society. Inside the loop, the company went to great lengths to stop COVID. As a disease-control measure, it had ended canteen service on October 19, forcing workers to eat boxed food in dormitory-style sleeping quarters. Food was reportedly scarce, and conditions in the dorms rapidly deteriorated. On Sunday, Foxconn announced it would resume cafeteria dining.

  • Democrats want a “covid amnesty” so moms won’t destroy them at the ballot box.

    The political establishment—left and right—want desperately to move on, to pretend the last 30 months didn’t happen. With very few exceptions (Ron DeSantis, Kirsti Noem, Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, Ron Johnson, and a few others, later), they betrayed their core values. Many Republicans and so-called Libertarians quickly capitulated the primacy and importance of individual liberties. Whereas supposedly equality-loving democrats embraced policies that in no uncertain terms screwed women, children and the poor. The 2020 democrat campaign slogan might as well have been “protect the rich, infect the poor.” Or “only the rich need to learn.” They’d all very much like that you forget about that. They’d like to go back to the fights they know how to fight, the golden oldies that turn the bases out, and turn us against each other. But COVID policies turned the whole thing on its side, jumbling us all up and resulting in all sorts of hitherto unheard of alliances. And when your business is maintaining the status quo, that is very dangerous.

    Which is why Emily Oster is pleading for an amnesty.

    First, let’s be clear to whom Emily Oster is speaking. She’s speaking to the furious well-educated suburban women who are swinging towards Republicans in this cycle, even in the bluest of states. Because it was the bluest of states that were hit hardest by these policies. It was in blue states that the schools were closed longest, that the economic devastation was worst, that crime spiked the most, where masks were required longest. The damage done by these policies is at its beginning, not its end. Dr. Oster, would like women to believe that it was all just a mistake, a mis-understanding, and remember that it is the Republicans who are looking to limit the freedoms that really count. That while democrats had no problem sacrificing the well-being of our living children for three years in support political power, it is Republicans that pose the real threat.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Blue city blues: “Nearly 20% Of Seattle Shootings Happened Near Homeless Encampments.”
  • Man who used to get all his information on conservatives from the mainstream media realizes he’d been lied to.

  • Questions that shouldn’t even have to be asked: “Should Schools Notify Parents if Their Child Claims to Be Transgender?”

    Wendell Perez received a call from the elementary school that would alarm any parent. School officials told him that his 12-year-old daughter had attempted suicide in the school’s bathroom. He was told it was because she wanted to be a boy, with a male name and pronouns.

    Wendell couldn’t believe it. At home, his daughter hadn’t shown any signs of gender dysphoria or discomfort in being a girl. The Perez family is Catholic, and they raised their children with a biblical and scientific understanding of biological sex.

    But when Wendell and his wife Maria arrived at the school, they found out that school officials had been having confidential meetings with their daughter and discussing her discomfort with her gender. Wendell and Maria found out that teachers and staff at school had begun treating their daughter as a boy at school without their consent or knowledge. Wendell was told by staff that they didn’t share information about his daughter’s “transition” with him or his wife because of “confidentiality issues.”

    Whatever happened to in loco parentis? Or does that just not apply when there are radical transexual activists to mollify?

  • When it comes to school boards shoving radical transexism down students throats, it doesn’t just happen in big cities.

    When the school called his 14-year-old son to the principal’s office for refusing to say a female student was a boy, Matthew Duncan decided he’d had enough.

    When the school called his 14-year-old son to the principal’s office for refusing to say a female student was a boy, Matthew Duncan decided he’d had enough.

    “There was never a push towards dominance and control like it is now,” said Duncan. “You can’t voice your opinion.”

    In response, many families in Grants Pass have withdrawn their children from public school, enrolling them in private school or starting to homeschool, Grants Pass teachers, school administrators and parents told The Epoch Times.

  • Meanwhile, in a civilized state: “Florida Bans Puberty Blockers and Transgender Surgery for Minors.”
  • “Campaign Aide Threatens to ‘Punch You’ for Not Voting for Beto O’Rourke.”
  • Also, an O’Rourke rally too close to a voting location violated Texas law.
  • Still more Beto: “New poll shows Abbott gaining six points in eight weeks, 53/40.”
  • “More California companies moving headquarters out-of-state than ever before.” Texas once again tops the list of destination states, followed by Tennessee, Nevada, Florida and Arizona.
  • Life imitates Grosse Point Blank: “Man shot dead in NYC while bicycling to shoot someone else.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • “Democrat Nominee In Arkansas Arrested For Felony Terroristic Threatening. Law enforcement officials in the state of Arkansas arrested Diamond Arnold-Johnson, the Democrat nominee for Arkansas auditor, on Friday for first-degree terroristic threats.” Bonus:

    Arnold-Johnson’s husband was on trial in August for allegedly posting terroristic threats on Facebook, police said. During the trial, Arnold-Johnson, 32, admitted that she, not her husband, posted the threatening messages on Facebook that led to the criminal charges, KATV reported.

    A warrant was served for Arnold-Johnson’s arrest on October 13, but she refused to comply and a SWAT team was dispatched to resolve the matter.

    However, police made the decision to cancel using the SWAT team to force compliance from Arnold-Johnson in an apparent attempt to not risk an explosive situation happening right before an election.

  • The counterpoint to quiet quitting: Quiet firing.
  • I’m not much for baseball, but did want to note that the Astros won the World Series, and threw only the second No-Hitter in World Series history.”
  • Guy Who Decided To Ban The Babylon Bee Wondering If He Might Be In Hot Water.”
  • “Citizens Being Able To Vote The Ruling Party Out Of Power Is The End Of Democracy.”

    I cannot believe democracy is about to die in America, again.

    After years of living under a dictatorship, America rose from the ashes. Democrats took control of the Presidency, the House, the Senate, the university system, Big Tech, the entertainment industry, and major corporations – and thereby defeated fascism by seizing every major lever of power in the nation. With one-party rule established, and all of our critics silenced, democracy was once again free to flourish.

    Now, our dear democracy is under attack – by America holding a so-called “election” and allowing idiots to vote. Let us be clear about what the stakes are: if a single person I disagree with is elected in a free and fair election, democracy will be DEAD. If citizens have the power to simply vote the ruling party out of power – when I really like the current ruling party – all is lost.

  • “Galactic Empire Requests Amnesty For Anyone Who May Have Gotten Carried Away And Blown Up A Planet.”
  • Surf’s up:

  • LinkSwarm for October 28, 2022

    Friday, October 28th, 2022

    Blue cities bleed, more Democrats violating election laws, another Democratic congressional staffer exposed for carrying water for Red China, Elon Musk takes over and immediately starts cleaning house at Twitter, and more transexual lunacy. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

    
    

  • Confirmation of what we already know: Homicide rates surging in major cities run by Soros-backed DAs.

    As polling continues to show crime is a top issue for voters, the number of homicides has skyrocketed nationwide.

    In fact, homicide rates rose by an average of nearly 10% in 50 of the most populated U.S. cities between the third quarter of last year and the third quarter of this year — and are still rising — according to a new study.

    WalletHub compared 50 of America’s largest cities based on per capita homicides for the third quarter (July through September) of each year since 2020, using locally published crime data to compile its findings.

    According to WalletHub, these were the ten cities with the highest homicide cases per 100,000 residents from July through September:

    1. St. Louis, Mo. (19.69)
    2. Kansas City, Mo. (14.86)
    3. Detroit, Mich. (13.24)
    4. Baltimore, Md. (12.45)
    5. New Orleans, La. (10.99)
    6. Milwaukee, Wisc. (10.46)
    7. Memphis, Tenn. (9.99)
    8. Philadelphia, Pa. (9.36)
    9. Norfolk, Va. (7.78)
    10. Chicago, Ill. (7.71)

    The top prosecutors in most of these cities are backed by progressive megadonor George Soros, a billionaire who’s spent the last several years injecting tens of millions of dollars into local district attorney races nationwide, backing candidates who support policies such as abolishing bail, defunding the police, and decriminalizing or deprioritizing certain offenses.

    In St. Louis, for example, Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner is one of the first prosecutors bankrolled by Soros’ financial network of organizations and affiliates, heavily funded by these sources in 2016 and again in 2020.

    Amid high homicide figures, Gardner has declined more cases and issued fewer arrest warrants than her predecessor, charging fewer felonies and prosecuting thousands of fewer cases as a result. She has also deferred prison sentences for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies as part of her reform initiatives.

    Gardner has said this is part of her “platform to reduce the number of cases unnecessarily charged in order to focus on the more difficult cases for trial.”

    Last year, Gardner came under fire after three murder cases under her purview were dismissed in one week due to prosecutors in her office not showing up for hearings or being unprepared.

    Her campaign website boasts that she’s “made jail and prison a last resort, reserved for those who pose a true public safety risk,” while limiting “the arrest and detention of people accused of misdemeanors and low-level felonies.”

    Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner is another Soros-funded prosecutor.

    Soros spent almost $1.7 million through the Philadelphia Justice and Public Safety PAC to help Krasner in 2017, pouring more than five times as much money into the race as Krasner himself. Four years later, Krasner received a combined $1.259 million from Soros-funded groups for his reelection.

    During his tenure, Krasner has cut the future years of incarceration by half and slashed the length of parole in probation supervision by nearly two-thirds compared to the previous DA. He has also made a priority of not prosecuting people who are illegally in possession of guns unless they hurt or kill people.

    The top prosecutors in New Orleans, Milwaukee, Norfolk, and Chicago have also been backed by Soros-linked money. Many of the others are self-described progressive prosecutors.

    According to some experts, progressive prosecutors pursuing soft-on-crime policies have contributed to the spike in homicides and other violent crime.

    “Prosecutors in most major cities have failed the people they serve by refusing to prosecute criminals, including those charged with violent crimes,” Tristin Kilgallon, associate professor of pre-law and history at the University of Findlay, told WalletHub. “Countless violent crimes have been committed by those who have been released back into the streets due to recent ‘bail reform’ initiatives or by prosecutors who declined to pursue charges.”

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Speaking of violent crime and Democrats, Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul was violently assaulted in his home.
    

  • “Texas Secretary of State Finds ‘Serious Breaches’ in Harris County 2020 Election Audit. Auditors found multiple chain of custody issues and violations of state and federal law requiring maintenance of records in the state’s largest county.”

    Issues found by auditors relate primarily to the county’s extralegal “drive-thru” voting initiated by then-interim County Clerk Chris Hollins.

    Auditors found that for at least 14 polling locations the county does not show chain of custody for the Mobile Ballot Boxes (MBB) and that there were multiple MBBs created for some voting locations. Auditors say the MBBs from the polling locations “were not the MBBs ultimately tabulated.” They also note that they have been able to locate some missing MBBs, but have not been given an explanation as to why the originals were not tabulated. Each MBB can hold 9,999 ballots.

    Another issue found by auditors is that poll book and provisional voting data provided by the county do not match the number of cast vote records on some of the devices.

    Ennis also noted that after upgrading voting systems the county does not appear to have retained “any equipment or computers that provide relevant reports or alternatively, can read the MBBs” from 2020 or recover the cast vote records stored in them as required by both state and federal election codes.

    Why, it’s almost like the Democrats running Harris County wanted to commit election fraud…

  • Speaking of election fraud, Facebook has been fined $25 million for breaking Washington State election law.

    According to court documents, King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North found Meta to be in violation of Washington’s political disclosure law 822 separate times between 2019 and 2021 and issued the maximum possible fine for each instance, which totaled up to $30,000 per violation.

    Meta was also ordered to “come into full compliance” with the state’s election transparency laws within the next 30 days as well as pay the attorney’s fees for the case, which Ferguson has requested be tripled for a total of $10.5 million. The final total will be decided by North at a later date.

    According to The Seattle Times, the state’s election transparency laws, which have been in place since 1972, require ad sellers to “disclose the names and addresses of political buys, the targets of such ads and, the total number of viewers of each ad.” The judge found that Meta had intentionally violated the standards.

    Washington Democrat Attorney General Bob Ferguson said “that he had “one word for Facebook’s conduct in this case – arrogance.”

    He told the Times, “It intentionally disregarded Washington’s election transparency laws,” Ferguson said. “But that wasn’t enough. Facebook argued in court that those laws should be declared unconstitutional. That’s breathtaking.”

  • The Oz-Fetterman debate was a disaster for Fetterman.

    When Pennsylvania Democrats insist that a candidate who suffered a life-threatening stroke in May is recovering well and “has no work restrictions and can work full duty in public office,” that candidate must look and sound fine to prove they’re telling the truth. Last night, in the lone debate in the Pennsylvania Senate race, John Fetterman looked and sounded very, very far from fine. But you can judge for yourself by watching the whole debate here.

    I expected Fetterman’s debate performance to be a Rorschach test, with Democrats insisting that he was fine and hand-waving away any problems, and Republicans pointing to every verbal misstep, pause, or oddly worded answer. But by the end of the hour, there was little debate, no pun intended. John Fetterman’s ability to hear, understand, process information, and speak appears to still be severely impacted by his stroke. Perhaps the worst moment of the night came when one of the moderators asked him about a statement he made in 2018 opposing fracking, and how he could square that past stance with his current claim that he always supported fracking. After a long pause, presumably from reading the moderator’s question from the monitor, Fetterman said, “I, I, I do support fracking and . . .” and then for a moment, Fetterman’s head shook, and his mouth moved, but no words came out. Then he picked up again: “I don’t . . . I don’t. I support fracking, and I stand, and I do support fracking.” With everyone watching likely mortified and embarrassed to watch Fetterman struggle to finish the sentence, the moderator mercifully moved on to the next question.

  • Judge for yourself:

  • Biden signs on to the transexual groomer agenda for kids.
  • New Zealand adopts the Netherlands agenda for destroying their own agricultural base.
  • Speaking of green delusions: “Cancel-Out Two Decades Of Emissions Reductions.”
  • “Less Than 1 In 100 Million Chance That COVID-19 Has Natural Origin.”
  • Elon Musk takes over Twitter and immediately starts cleaning house.

    Elon Musk took over Twitter late Thursday and fired company CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, senior legal representative Vijaya Gadde, and general counsel Sean Edgett.

    Musk, the world’s richest man, acquired the social media giant through a $44 billion purchase. He reportedly had until Friday to complete the deal.

    In a video tweet that went viral, Musk appeared at Twitter’s corporate offices Wednesday carrying a sink, implying that employees would need to accept that he was now in charge.

    This is a good start, but all the people on the Safety and Trust Council need to be fired, and all accounts suspended or banned need to be restored.

  • Rishi Sunak is the new UK Prime Minister, and Nigel Farage is not impressed:

    (Hat tip: The Conservative Treehouse.)

  • Complain about how your children are being taught to a school board? Watch them try to get you fired.
  • The Russian economy will ‘die by winter’ because of Putin’s war on Ukraine, according to Russian economist Vladislav Inozemtsev.
  • Another week, another Democratic congressional aide with ties to China discovered.

    A House Democratic staffer was fired after her outreach to other congressional aides allegedly on behalf of the Chinese embassy was revealed this week, National Review has learned. After an investigation found that the staffer had acted improperly, her boss, Representative Don Beyer, swiftly removed her.

    “Congressman Beyer was totally unaware of these activities prior to being contacted by the House Sergeant At Arms,” Aaron Fritschner, his deputy chief of staff, told National Review in a statement this morning. “As soon as he learned of them, he followed every directive he was given by security officials. The staffer in question is no longer employed by the office of Congressman Beyer.”

    Fritschner added that Beyer, who has a hawkish record on China, was “deeply upset” upon learning about the activities of the now-former staffer, Barbara Hamlett.

    The LinkedIn page for Barbara Jenell Hamlett shows she worked in the U.S. House from 1978 to 2008, and that she also worked as a volunteer for Terry McAuliffe.

  • Did White House staffer Ron Klain violate the Hatch Act? (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Hmmm: “San Diego ER seeing up to 37 marijuana cases a day — mostly psychosis.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • “Ohio Supreme Court Suspends Democrat Judge.”

    Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Pinkey Carr, a Democrat, was found to exhibit such misconduct that comprise more than 100 incidents over a period of about two years.

    The misconduct “encompassed repeated acts of dishonesty; the blatant and systematic disregard of due process, the law, court orders, and local rules; the disrespectful treatment of court staff and litigants; and the abuse of capias warrants and the court’s contempt power,” stated the court’s per curium opinion. “That misconduct warrants an indefinite suspension from the practice of law.”

  • The new “Pride” flag, or a really high level of Tempest?
  • Bahaus Costume Party.
  • The Bosnian Ape Society is back with the Mikoyan and Gurevich Design Bureau tackling the Cup Noodle.
  • LinkSwarm for August 26, 2022

    Friday, August 26th, 2022

    Democrats behaving badly, Russian tanks behaving badly, and CNN thinking people don’t hate them. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Three Democratic cities are suffering the slowest recovery from Flu Manchu.

    The progressive approach to law enforcement in certain major US cities, supported by George Soros and others, has been a complete failure as residents’ quality of life has collapsed. Soaring violent crime and controversial open-air drug markets plague the downtown areas of San Francisco, Cleveland, and Portland, transforming these areas into wastelands.

    A recent study commissioned by the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California Berkeley found that San Francisco’s downtown activity was only 31% this spring (between March and May) compared to pre-Covid levels. Cleveland was at 36%, and Portland was at 41%.

    Meanwhile, after the pandemic, Salt Lake City, Utah, Bakersfield, California, and Columbus, Ohio, experienced the most massive booms in downtown activity.

  • Kurt Schlichter wants our GOP grandees to realize that it’s not 2005 anymore.

    Oh, Mike Pence, you soft, naive little man. Oh, Tim Scott, you kind and friendly gentleman. I like you both. I really do. I would love you to be my neighbors. If I ran short of sugar or charcoal, you’d square me away. Not so much bourbon, but whatever. If I asked you to help me move or give me a ride to the airport, you suckers would be all in because you are nice guys. And that’s your problem and the problem of Republicans like you. You are nice guys in a time that calls for ruthless killers who want to destroy our enemies and leave them on their backs, figuratively cockroaching on the floor.

    We want vengeance and victory. You want hugs. I guess that’s nice. Hugworld would be pleasant, but it’s the hardcore bomb throwers who get us to that stage by pummeling our enemies into submission. You find that unsavory, disconcerting, unseemly. You would prefer a world of comity, collegiality, and unicorns. And that ain’t happening until we warrior cons have broken our enemy – yeah, I used the “E” word – and exacted our payback and thereby ensured that their pain is so great that they will not dare even dream of repeating this nonsense again for a generation for fear of our righteous wrath.

    Your problem is that you live on forever in a world that no longer exists, if it ever did. You live in a world where there are norms. You live in a world of rules and guardrails, where the institutions are at least nominally neutral and where we all share some basic premises that provide common ground. But we don’t. They hate America. They hate believing Christians and Jews. They hate the idea of free speech, freedom of religion, the right to due process, and not killing babies three seconds before they poke their heads out. They think kids should be mutilated to conform to gender delusions. They want us normals disarmed, disenfranchised, and, more often than you softies will admit, deceased.

    Snip.

    It’s time to accept reality and embrace the suck. The suck is that we are in a fight. It’s not going to be over when we pass a few laws or overturn some terrible precedents; those are necessary but far from sufficient actions. No, we are in a long and brutal political struggle where the stakes are our liberty, and while you want to figuratively clutch your pearls and worry about whether this is who we are, we know who we are. And we are the guys and gals who want to figuratively don our plate armor, sharpen our broadswords, and get some, Knight Templar-style.

    Mike Pence, Tim Scott, I like you. And I would love to live in your world. But that world exists only in your imagination, and I and the rest of us in the base are stuck here on Planet Earth. You guys can’t be president because you are not wartime consiglieres. You are both Tom Hagan, reliable and soft Tom Hagan, when we are Michael and we need a Sonny to go after the Barzinis and Tartaglias of the left.

    It’s sad that your dreams of the presidency in 2024 must die, but you don’t get it, and you can’t fake it. This was a test, and you failed. If you are still imagining that there might be some set of facts awaiting public disclosure that makes it okay to send guys with guns to invade the domicile of your primo political opponent, if you still can’t bring yourself to demand that the disgraced FBI be defunded and dismantled so it can never try to frame another GOP politician, then you are not up to the job. You don’t get to be president because you don’t know what time it is.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Chicago Public Schools come out in favor of rioting and looting.
  • Evidently posting this image to Twitter will get you banned.

  • Antonovsky Bridge Hit Again.”
  • Russia puts on a tank biathlon with some of their loser friends. Hilarity ensues.
  • CNN is suffering from delusions of grandeur.

    One thing about leftist culture that never ceases to amaze is their ability to take a failure and pretend that it was actually a success. This attitude is perhaps an extension of their penchant for propaganda – They lie so much about everything that they end up falling victim to their own disinformation. They tell their enemies they are winning even when they are losing, and then they actually start to believe it themselves.

    It’s a bit like the old rule for drug dealers – Everything falls apart when you start smoking the drugs you sell.

    For CNN and outlets like them, the problem is that you can’t run from reality forever. If no one wants to watch your content then you can’t force them to do so. Leftists wish they could use force, but they can’t, so instead they try to use gaslighting and shame. This has translated into the typical tactics we see today from the media, which include race baiting and accusations of bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, fascism, etc. These tactics really took center stage from 2016 onward and they haven’t worked yet, but the political left continues to beat that dead horse in the hopes that it will one day win the Kentucky Derby.

    They NEED regular consumers to watch their content, but they look down their noses at regular consumers and see them as untouchable peasants. So, they don’t make content for the peasant, they make content for themselves and their friends. This is not a recipe for a successful media network.

    In a recent article on the CNN issue, Vox (a far-left outlet) remarked on Brian Stelter being fired and his show being shut down even though he still had three more years on a six-figure contract. David Zaslav, an executive from Discovery, has taken oversight of Warner Brothers and its properties and has been making extensive cuts to save money and streamline the bloated company. Vox’s position really illustrates the deeper problem within leftist media:

    “Stelter, who reportedly made close to $1 million a year, was an easy cut: His show, along with his daily media newsletter, was a big deal in media circles…but not a huge draw for normals.”

    By using the term “normals” one might conclude that Vox sees themselves and and other journalists as “extraordinary” when compared to the rest of us. Or, maybe they are just “abnormal” – It’s hard to say. The statement is possibly a mistaken admission of how leftist journalists truly view the world, and their view is stunted. They see their work as vital to the masses because their PEERS and Twitter buddies see it as vital to the masses. But mainstream journalists are too far detached from the world and reality to make objective judgment calls. They see themselves as the saviors of humanity, but no one else sees them that way.

    The audience numbers talk. The money talks. It doesn’t matter how important you think you are – You don’t own the audience, the audience owns you.

    CNN has been a consistent loser in terms of audience numbers and ratings; their ratings have plummeted while their profits continue to slump over the past few years. The CNN+ project was supposed to draw in millions of viewers but only generated 150,000 subscribers, and of those subscribers only 10,000 were regular watchers.

    In other words, CNN+ would have been crushed by average YouTuber numbers and their projections for at least 29 million “super fans” were absolutely incompetent. This is why the project was shut down within weeks by David Zaslav – It was an embarrassment from the start, built on inflated delusions of grandeur.

    Forget “delusions of grandeur,” CNN suffers from “delusions of not being widely loathed.”

    And what is CNN really built on? What has been the company’s foundation for years? It’s only product has been anti-conservative agit-prop. That’s it. That’s all they have. This might work financially if the extreme left was as prevalent as they pretend, but if we look at the numbers and the cash flow, they are actually a tiny portion of the population puffed up and screaming as loud as they can to appear big and formidable. CNN is failing because there is an unsustainable audience for their product.

  • “Arizona ‘Has Had Enough,’ Starts Stacking Shipping Containers In Border Wall Gaps.” Good.
  • Federal court strikes down Texas gun law…and for once its good news. “A federal judge has struck down a Texas law preventing individuals aged 18 to 20 years from carrying handguns in public, in the first major court ruling on Second Amendment rights since the Supreme Court recognized a constitutional right to carry firearms in public for self-defense.” Cudos to Judge Mark Pittman for getting it right.
  • Japan pulls a 180°, ew-embraces nuclear power.
  • Remember how the left slobbered all over Gravity Payments CEO for giving everyone a $70 salary? Well, he just resigned after a rape allegation. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Democrat boycott of Goya Foods actually increased sales.
  • Democratic State Rep. Sergio Munoz Jr. to pay $1.2 million in damages for legal malpractice. Namely not mentioning that he and the judge presiding over a divorce case he was involved with had previously been law partners.
  • “Light wood framing is the hamburger of the building industry.”
  • Nobody will win the streaming wars.”
  • “‘Rings Of Power’ Showrunners Clarify That Any Resemblance To The Works Of Tolkien Is Purely Coincidental.”