Posts Tagged ‘Colorado’

Election News Roundup For March 4, 2024

Monday, March 4th, 2024

Tomorrow is primary day for Texas and the rest of Super Tuesday states, so now would be a good time to locate your voter registration card. Here’s a roundup of election news (Texas and otherwise).

  • The Supreme Court unanimously restores Donald Trump to the Colorado ballot.

    The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday to overturn the Colorado supreme court decision removing Trump from the state primary ballot, just one day before voters in the Centennial State and 14 others go to the polls to select their Republican nominee.

    The unanimous ruling holds that only Congress has the authority to restrict ballot access based on a candidate’s alleged violation of Section three of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits individuals who have engaged in an insurrection from holding federal office.

    “This case raises the question whether the States, in addition to Congress, may also enforce Section 3. We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency,” the Supreme Court ruling asserts.

    “For the reasons given, responsibility for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates rests with Congress and not the States. The judgment of the Colorado Supreme Court therefore cannot stand.”

  • A look at Janis Holt’s primary challenge against incumbent Ernest Bailes for Texas House District 18.

    A controversial residential development, a vote to kill school choice, and the impeachment of the Texas attorney general have all drawn big endorsements for a well-funded challenge to incumbent state Rep. Ernest Bailes (R-Shepherd) in an East Texas state House district just north of Houston.

    Longtime Republican activist and trustee for the Silsbee Independent School District, Janis Holt ran unsuccessfully against Bailes in 2022. But this year the wind seems to be at her back, as she has drawn endorsements from former President Donald Trump, Gov. Greg Abbott, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

    “As a State Representative, Janis will help us Secure the Border, Champion Parental Rights, Protect the Second Amendment, and Stand Up to the Woke Mob destroying our Country,” Trump wrote on social media. “Janis Holt has my Complete and Total Endorsement!”

    Snip.

    As with a slew of other Republican primary contests around the state, the debate over school choice is a central issue in the House District (HD) 18 race. Bailes was one of 21 Republicans who voted to strip education savings accounts (ESA) from an education omnibus bill during last year’s fourth special session, drawing the ire of Abbott, who had vowed to bring some form of school choice to the state during the 88th Legislature.

    Bailes has defended his vote as an effort to “stop a school voucher scam,” and claimed that illegal immigrants would have been eligible for the state ESAs. Saying that he had fought tirelessly to “increase border security,” Bailes added that he was committed to voting for the interests of “my friends and neighbors in San Jacinto, Hardin, Liberty, and East Montgomery Counties.”

    While the vote against ESAs contributed to Abbott’s and Cruz’s decision to back Holt, Bailes has also been tied to the Colony Ridge development in Liberty County, especially for his role in crafting the Municipal Management District and Municipal Utility District for the development in 2017.

    Accused of providing a haven for illegal immigrants, Colony Ridge made headlines last year after revelations surfaced that developers Trey and John Harris targeted advertisements for the development under the name Terrenos Houston and offered lots for sale with no credit check. While the number of illegal immigrants living in the sprawling 33-acre development is unknown, Liberty County Sheriff Bobby Rader has warned that he does not have enough staff to patrol the community of nearly 50,000.

  • Speaking of Holt, her’s is one of the races a DC group has waded into.

    A political action committee named American Values First PAC registered $92,000 spent in the latest eight-day campaign finance reports. The group is registered to a Washington, D.C. PO box. Its treasurer is Dustin McIntyre, who did not offer comment when contacted by The Texan.

    The group has sent text messages and mailers into various Texas House districts, and gotten involved in a handful of statewide races. Its list of registered support and opposition is a curious one, with no discernible trend.

    Opposed

    • Jill Dutton – House District (HD) 2
    • Janis Holt – HD 18
    • State Rep. Reggie Smith (R-Sherman) – HD 62
    • State Rep. Steve Allison (R-San Antonio) – HD 121
    • Bianca Gracia – HD 128

    Supportive

    • Railroad Commissioner Christi Craddick
    • Justice John Devine — Texas Supreme Court
    • State Rep. Ernest Bailes (R-Shepherd) – HD 18
    • David Schenck – Court of Criminal Appeals, Presiding Judge
    • Gina Parker – Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 7
    • Lee Finley – Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 8
    • Eight Liberty County local races

    HD 18 encompasses Liberty County, which, connected to the various local races, is the only visible connection between them.

    Of the expenditures, most of the money went to direct mail and text messaging services from The Stoneridge Group, a Georgia-based political firm.

    The group’s $125,000 raised came from only two donations: $25,000 from the Affordable Energy Fund (AEF) PAC, also treasured by McIntyre, and $100,000 from the Revitalization Project. Both are based in Virginia.

    The AEF PAC raised and spent more than $1 million in the 2022 cycle, and almost every one of the expenditures went to Majority Strategies, a national direct mail firm based in Florida.

    Seems a little swampy, but Schenck, Parker, and Finley were also endorsed by Gun Owners of America.

  • Michael Quinn Sullivan says that no matter what happens Tuesday, Dade Phelan is out of time.

    Whatever happens on Tuesday, Dade Phelan’s speakership is over. Everyone knows it.

    In multiple conversations with Republican lawmakers, including those Phelan considers to be loyalists, every single one believes his speakership is not only a distraction but a detriment. Now, do not read this as some sudden conversion of “RINOs” to stalwart conservative champions.

    The concerns they raise about Phelan are pragmatic.

    Most importantly, they see Phelan as a symptom of the problem they describe as “Dennis Bonnen.” When the disgraced former House Speaker was forced to resign from office in 2019, he and his cronies installed Phelan as their patsy. His performance has reflected that reality. The Democrat committee chairs stayed in place, and conservative priorities were stalled.

    Old boss, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

    The problem is that the Bonnen-Phelan clan has been playing House members against the Senate and the governor as the former speaker builds up his lobby practice.

    Few of the House members were particularly bothered by Phelan’s apparent intoxication at the dais late in the session. But they don’t like the stone-sober blame he has cast on them for the death of the comprehensive border security bill… a death Phelan oversaw with parliamentary zeal.

    Why kill it at all? Because the Bonnen-Phelan partnership requires the support of Democrats. It is why Bonnen-Phelan orchestrated the 2021 reduction in election crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. When the pressure to undo that damage in 2023 became too much to bear, Bonnen-Phelan gave the Democrats the impeachment of Ken Paxton and the death of House Bill 20.

    To a man and woman, House members have noted Phelan’s internal constitution is such that should he win the primary and return in 2025 as speaker, he will be on a scorched-earth mission against the priorities of Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

    They are, bluntly, tired of it.

    Thanks to Bonnen-Phelan, a significant number of members have had to deal with expensive primaries based on those fights. Sure, most will win… but in working to gain re-election, they lose face in their communities in a way not even a victory can makeover.

    But some will not win. And some, like Glenn Rogers of Graford, have engaged in a very public (and very embarrassing) emotional and mental breakdown in confronting their primary challenges.

    That’s not the bargain a speaker—or a speaker coalition—makes with the rank-and-file members. Internally, the number one job of any Speaker of the Texas House is to protect the members, especially the members of the speaker’s party. Not a single Republican feels protected. They are exposed, like the proverbial king in the invisible cloak.

    Sullivan also says that “Dustin Burrows of Lubbock and Cody Harris of Palestine are being positioned to take up the gavel on behalf of the Bonnen-Phelan machine in 2025.”

  • “Texas Early Voting Data Shows GOP Turnout More Than Double Democratic. Republican early vote turnout is higher than 2020 but Democratic turnout is 40 percent below four years ago.”
  • So Nikki Haley finally won a primary…for Washington D.C. Way to convince people you’re not a swamp creature, Nikki!
  • Haley also says that she’s no longer bound by her pledge to support the Republican nominee. Swamp creatures gonna swamp creature. I stole this from Reddit:

  • LinkSwarm For January 5, 2024

    Friday, January 5th, 2024

    Happy New Year, everyone! The Biden Recession bites deeper, Israel dirtnaps a top terrorist, Harvard’s chief plagiarist finally steps down, and the crypto CEO who wasn’t there. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

    

  • Once again, the new job numbers are horrible.

    The monthly nonfarm payrolls (from the Establishment Survey) may have been weak at 216K but the far more accurate Household Survey showed that the number of Employed workers actually collapsed by an unprecedented 683K, the biggest drop since the US economy was shutdown by covid!

    Even scarier, while the monthly grind higher in the payrolls number (pulled from the far less accurate Establishment Survey) means that US jobs hit a record high every month with bizarre consistency and in December this was certainly the case, the total nonfarm employment number rose to an all time high 157.232 million, the abovementioned collapse in US Employment (per Household survey) meant that there were only 161.183 million employed people in the US, the lowest since June, with the now traditional divergence between these two surveys glaringly obvious.

  • Israel takes out senior Hamas leader in Beirut.

    A senior Hamas leader was killed Tuesday in a drone strike in Beirut, Lebanon, during a meeting between Palestinian factions at a Hamas office.

    Saleh al-Arouri, deputy chairman of Hamas’s political bureau and commander of the terror group’s military wing in the West Bank, and at least five others died from the explosion, which occurred near Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut, Lebanese state media reported. Several more were injured. Following the blast, Hamas blamed Israel for the “Zionist raid” amid its ongoing war with the Jewish state. Israel has not claimed responsibility for the strike.

    Many Israeli officials declined to comment. However, Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich posted a statement on X shortly after the attack: “Surely your enemies will perish, O Israel.”

    In November, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated he ordered the nation’s Mossad spy agency to eliminate Hamas leaders around the world after the militant group’s coordinated October 7 attack. Netanyahu’s office also declined to comment about the explosion.

    Al-Arouri, whom Hamas described as “one of the architects” of the terror attack on Israel, had close ties with Yahwa Sinwar, the group’s leader in Gaza. Al-Arouri is the most senior Hamas leader to have been killed since the war began in early October.

  • Supreme Court to take up Trump’s Colorado ballot case.
  • A good chunk of the Epstein files have finally been released. Some revelations: Bill Clinton “likes them young” and Donald Trump didn’t have sex with at least one girl who was asked under oath about it.
  • Harvard President Claudine Gay finally does the right thing and resigns in wake of burgeoning plagiarism scandal.
  • A three act farce: Act 1: “Ohio governor Mike DeWine (R.) on Friday vetoed a bill that would have banned both transgender procedures for minors and trans student-athlete participation in school sports in the state.” Act 2: Turns out DeWine has taken taken over $40,000 in donations from pro-child-genital-mutilation hospitals. Act 3: “Republican Ohio governor Mike DeWine issued an “emergency” executive order Friday banning child gender-transition surgeries after receiving intense backlash last week for vetoing a bill with a broader but similar mandate.” Ohio’s Republican legislature can and should override DeWine’s foolish veto.
  • “President of Illinois NAACP suspended after saying migrants are ‘savages who are ‘raping people, breaking into homes.'” Speaking the truth is now crime
  • Border Protection Officer Charged with Human Smuggling. Emanuel Celedon is also charged with bribery and drug trafficking.”
  • Robert F. Kennedy, jr. qualifies for the presidential ballot in Utah.

    Last month, American Values 2024, a super PAC supporting the third-party candidate, announced a plan to spend nearly $15 million to get Kennedy on the ballot in ten states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, New York and Texas. All are important to winning the 2024 race.

    I don’t see RFK Jr. doing even as well in Utah as Egg McMuffin did in 2016, and of the other states, only Arizona, Colorado, Michigan and Nevada might have any effect on the election, all four of which went (however fraudulently) for Biden in 2020.

  • Harris County Criminal Court Judge Arrested for Domestic Violence on New Year’s Eve. Harris County Judge Frank Aguilar is alleged to have assaulted and impeded the breathing of a female victim.” Aguilar is, of course, a Democrat.
  • “Louisiana sporting goods employees fired for chasing shoplifter who stole gun.” Get bent, Academy. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Crypto hedge fund CEO may not have actually existed. That’s some mighty fine vetting there, investors…
  • Ricky Gervais has a great idea: He and Dave Chappelle should co-host the Oscars. That would indeed be a smash ratings success, and I would watch the Oscars for the first time this century.
  • New commie gaming regulations lop $80 billion off Chinese video game company values.
  • TGIFriday’s just closed 36 locations in 12 states, including four in Texas. Thanks, Joe Biden.
  • Plus for Sephora “Body Butter”: Smoother skin. Minus: Attracts Spiders.
  • Mythbuster‘s Adam Savage keeps buying replica torturer baby masks from Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Also, he watched it once a day, every day, for six months while working at a movie theater. Which explains a lot.
  • “Texas Agrees To Two-State Solution With Austin.”

    This is the only way for us to live in peace,” said Texas Governor Greg Abbot. “The citizens of Austin have been at war with the people of Texas for many years now, and to end the bloodshed for future generations, we are willing to recognize Austin as its own separate and sovereign land.”

    The resolution brought much-needed relief to the war-torn area, where battle lines had been drawn along the border of Austin. “The weirdo hipsters of Austin can stand down now,” said Texas Senator Ted Cruz in a statement acknowledging the resolution. “The people of Austin can now stop patrolling the perimeter of the city in armored tanks and go back to driving electric vehicles, painting strange murals nobody understands, and hating everything the United States stands for.”

  • “Detroit Pistons relegated to the WNBA.”
  • Bluehost is dog slow today, so I should wrap this up.

    Hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    LinkSwarm For December 29, 2023

    Friday, December 29th, 2023

    Congratulations, you’ve made it to the end of 2023! Iranian proxies get pounded, NGO’s help destroy the border, Democrats keep trying to remove Trump from the ballot, and thieves get a taste of their own medicine. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Not only is the Obama/Biden administration undermining American sovereignty and the rule of law by allowing a massive influx of illegal aliens, but a wide variety of NGOs, some “none political,” are also involved.

    A network of NGOs, or non-governmental organizations, seems to be playing a powerful role in coordinating the large-scale invasion of illegals at the US southern border.

    The new website Muckraker revealed a treasure trove of “mass migration blueprints,” handed out by NGOs across South and Central America to illegals with details about their route to the US.

    “The collapse of the US southern border is the result of a carefully planned and deliberately executed industrial mass migration program,” Muckraker said.

    MAP #1 – Distributed by Doctors Without Borders (Médicos Sin Fronteras in Spanish).

    They seem to be taking that “Without Borders” part way too literally.

    What’s becoming increasingly evident is that a network of NGOs funded partly by the US taxpayer but by other countries and corporations are covertly facilitating the invasion of illegals at the US southern border, as well as distributing them across the US into progressive metro areas.

    According to an August report by progressive left-leaning media watchdog organization Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, President Biden’s Department of Homeland Security allocated $363 million to NGOs to assist illegal aliens once in the US.

    Texas Governor Greg Abbott released a press release one year ago detailing how “NGOs may be engaged in unlawfully orchestrating other border crossings through activities on both sides of the border, including in sectors other than El Paso.”

    Once across the border, NGOs are also helping migrants with transportation across the US, such as providing seats on commercial airlines.

    Also “Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona Inc.”

  • U.S. Launches Air Strikes in Iraq in Response to Hezbollah Attack on Military Base.” Mess with the bull…
  • Speaking of attacks on Iranian proxies, Israel hit Syria again.
  • “Americans back Biden impeachment probe by 12 point margin and six in ten believe he was involved in Hunter’s shady deals.”
  • Trump is back on the ballot in Colorado
  • …but off it in Maine.
  • 2024 budget deficit on track to be the worst since Flu Manchu. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • And speaking of Flu Manchu, here’s another fraud case. “A Georgia attorney and former City of Atlanta police officer has been convicted of fraudulently obtaining over $7 million in loans under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, 62-year-old Shelitha Robertson from Atlanta conspired to submit PPP loan applications on behalf of four businesses she owned.”
  • The Real Story: “Philadelphia trans activist charged with rape of not one, but two minors.” The Newsweek Story: “Trans Activist Kendall Stephens’ Arrest Sparks MAGA Uproar.” Evidently the left feels that only MAGA Republicans should be upset at the rape of minors…
  • San Francisco’s 911 emergency.

    The first is answering 911 calls.

    According to the Department of Emergency Management, San Francisco’s 911 call dispatchers answered just 72 percent of calls within 15 seconds in October, the latest month available. That’s the lowest share of any month in the last six years, and well short of the department’s goal to answer 95 percent of calls in 15 seconds or fewer.

    Staffing is not up to the levels required, which is causing people to burn out, due to mandatory overtime. The bureaucratic hiring practice moves at a glacial pace, and so they can’t hire people to cover retirement and people just quitting due to burn out. They did raise pay some, but there is no indication if that is enough. I guess only time will tell.

    The second problem that San Francisco has, in relation to 911 calls, is getting officers to the scene of a “Priority A” incident.

    The slowdown in responses has contributed to broader delays San Franciscans face when trying to get help during emergency situations. The city’s typical response time to “Priority A” incidents — defined as the most urgent and serious events, like assaults-in-progress — is slower than it’s been at any point in the last eight years, increasing from about 6.5 minutes in January 2016 to nearly nine minutes this November.

    Now this is the media, so there is no mention of any “defund the police” initiatives in San Francisco over the past few years.

  • “Since President Trump’s win in 2016, black support for him has more than tripled, now exceeding 20 percent in some surveys.” Including Mark Fisher, co-founder of a Black Lives Matter group in Rhode Island
  • “Two large Pizza Hut operators in California are laying off all their delivery drivers ahead of a new state law that raises the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $20 an hour, Business Insider reports.” Good work, Democrats!
  • Thieves try to rob a check-cashing place and a woman steals their getaway car.
  • Store owner in Germany called a racist for trying to prevent Muslim illegal aliens from stealing from him.

    Grocery store manager Gatzke told Bild that the thieves who steal huge bags full of items are usually migrants, with around a third of them being Tunisian.

    During one incident at the Edeka supermarket in Regensburg, a man stole €140 euros worth of goods, while the manager has also tried to stop thieves stealing groceries worth €300 euros.

    “In the bag were spirits: vodka and liqueurs again. They are Muslims — did they want to resell the alcohol?” asked Gatzke.

    “What do you need 10 sea bream and so many shrimp for? Nobody steals that because they’re hungry,” he added.

    Gatzke noted that the culprits even steal shopping bags worth up to €2.50 euros.

    However, he was denounced as a “racist” for complaining about the mass looting and subsequently criticized by Ferat Koçak, a member of the Berlin House of Representatives for The Left party.

    Siding with the criminals, Koçak suggested that the migrants were “entitled” to steal because the government wasn’t giving them enough free money in welfare payments.

  • Some interesting artillery usage data, via reader Kirk”

  • Democrat majority in Oregon bans half the Republican Senate delegation from running for reelection.”
  • Nothing says “Republican” quite like having Democrats do fundraising for you. “Dade Phelan Fundraiser Hosted by Liberals. Former House Speaker Joe Straus and former Democrat nominee for lieutenant governor Leticia Van de Putte are among those raising cash for Phelan.”
  • Ken Paxton announced a $700 million settlement with Google.

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a $700 million settlement with Google over anticompetitive practices.

    According to the settlement, Google must pay $630 million in restitution—minus costs and fees—to consumers who made purchases on the Google Play Store between August 2016 and September 2023 and were harmed by Google’s anticompetitive practices.

    Paxton secured the settlement alongside attorneys general from all 49 other states as well as the District of Columbia, and the territories of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

  • One childhood, furnished in early MST3K.

    would like to share the happiest Christmas memory of my childhood with you, an experience that shaped the young adult and the man I would become as much as any book or teacher ever would. I was accidentally given an inestimable gift – one which unwittingly dared me to grow intellectually and culturally so that I could be properly worthy of it, and which has since comforted me through endless long subsequent years of disappointment, heartache, personal growth, and triumph. And there’s no better time to write about it than during a season of joy. So if you will graciously permit me, on this Christmas Eve 2023 I’d like to take you back to the “not-too-distant future.”

    On Christmas Eve 1991, my father suggested we should watch a cassette of an obscure TV show his friend at work had taped off a then-obscure cable channel called Comedy Central a few days before. “A guy and some robots make fun of bad movies” was how he described the premise. Since my dad and I had been talking back to films from the safety of our family-room couch for years already while watching B-movie schlock like USA Up All Night, it was at least something to do. (11-year-olds do not otherwise have a long list of entertainment options.)

    Although my dad couldn’t possibly have intended it, what happened next altered the course of my life, and profoundly for the better: I was exposed to Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K for short) for the first time. And “exposed” is the right word; the experience was as instantly catalyzing a moment for me as a rapid chemical reaction. It was the Christmas episode from a few days earlier, and the show was mocking something called Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

    “I’ll never forget how comforted MST3K made me feel from that exact moment onward, comforted that there were people out there who had my sense of humor – only they were vastly more funny than me.”

    God bless us, each and every one…

  • North Carolina has a law that allows people to do practically whatever they want to the official state marsupial.” Which would be the possum. And it only applies five days a year. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • C-SPAN acquired by PornHub.
  • The Detroit Pistons tied a record for futility by losing 28 straight games. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • “Colorado Bans Trump From Running Over Concerns Usual Election Rigging System Could Fail.”
  • Hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    LinkSwarm For December 22, 2023

    Friday, December 22nd, 2023

    The Colorado Supreme Court goes full TDS, IDF blows more Hamas tunnels, more unconstitutional gun laws are struck down, and news about two different Francises. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • The big news this week is that the Colorado Supreme Court got way, way, way out over their skis by kicking Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot despite him not being convicted of any crimes.

    The Colorado supreme court on Tuesday ruled that former president Donald Trump is ineligible to appear on the state’s ballot in the 2024 presidential election.

    In a 4–3 ruling, the court held that Trump’s presence on the ballot “would be a wrongful act under the Election Code,” arguing that the former president is disqualified from holding the presidency under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

  • Even the Washington Post said the decision was wrong. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) destroyed a vast network on underground tunnels inside Gaza City this week that belonged to top Hamas terrorist officials. Yahalom Unit Combat Engineering Forces discovered Hamas’ “Elite Quarter” on Wednesday, including “a large network of strategic underground tunnels which connect hideouts, and bureaus belonging to Hamas’ senior military and political leadership,” the IDF said in a statement.”

    It blew up real good:

  • Oklahoma bans DEI requirements at public colleges and universities, requires cuts to ‘non-critical personnel.’ Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt announced the mandate Wednesday, citing a need to spend more money on preparing young Oklahomans for the workforce, and less on ‘six-figure salaries to DEI staff.'” Faster, please. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “Federal judge blocks California gun control law against firearms in public places.”

    On Wednesday, a federal judge blocked a California law that would have banned the carrying of firearms in many public places, calling the legislation “sweeping, repugnant to the Second Amendment, and openly defiant of the Supreme Court.”

    According to Fox News, US District Judge Cormac Carney granted a preliminary injunction blocking the law, adding that it removes people’s ability to defend themselves and their families.

    The law was signed into law in September by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom and was scheduled to go into effect on Jan. 1. The legislation banned people from carrying concealed firearms in places such as public parks, playgrounds, and religious institutions, regardless if they have a concealed weapon carry permit or not.

    Chuck Michel, president of the California Rifle and Pistol Association, which sued to block the law, said in a statement, “California progressive politicians refuse to accept the Supreme Court’s mandate from the Bruen case and are trying every creative ploy they can imagine to get around it. The Court saw through the State’s gambit.”

    He added that if that law had gone into effect, permit holders “wouldn’t be able to drive across town without passing through a prohibited area and breaking the law.”

  • Speaking of lawsuits: “Virginia Supreme Court Backs Teacher Fired For Not Using Student’s Preferred Pronouns.” Let the lawsuits fly. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “Dem Staffer Busted for Having Gay Sex in Senate Hearing Room.” There’s more of that decorum and restoration of norms we keep hearing about… (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
  • Harvard President Claudine Gay’s plagiarism scandal is even worse than previously thought.

    Gay has been credibly accused of more than 40 acts of plagiarism during her tenure at Harvard – which the university secretly investigated, threatened journalists over, and ultimately concluded was no big deal – clearing her of breaching Harvard’s “standards for research misconduct.”

    The Times, looking at just five examples of Gay’s plagiarism, wrote: “her papers sometimes lift passages verbatim from other scholars and at other times make minor adjustments, like changing the word “adage” to “popular saying” or “Black male children” to “young black athletes.””

    One rule for the elite, another for you…

  • “Investigators Beginning To Suspect Claudine Gay’s Novel ‘Larry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Rock’ May Have Been Plagiarized.”
  • Fat Leonard is back in custody.

    Returning convicted defense contractor Leonard “Fat Leonard” Francis to U.S. custody as part of the Venezuelan prisoner swap on Wednesday is the latest twist in a decade-long salacious saga and bribery scheme that swept up dozens of American Navy officers.

    One of the biggest bribery investigations in U.S. military history led to the conviction and sentencing of nearly two dozen Navy officials, defense contractors and others on various fraud and corruption charges. And it was punctuated by Francis’ daring escape last year, when he fled from house arrest at his San Diego home to South America.

    An enigmatic figure who was 6-foot-3 and weighed 350 pounds at one time, Francis owned and operated his family’s ship servicing business, Singapore-based Glenn Defense Marine Asia Ltd. or GDMA, which supplied food, water and fuel to vessels. The Malaysian defense contractor was a key contact for U.S. Navy ships at ports across Asia for more than two decades. During that time he wooed naval officers with Kobe beef, expensive cigars, concert tickets and wild sex parties at luxury hotels from Thailand to the Philippines.

    In exchange, the officers, including the first active-duty admiral to be convicted of a federal crime, concealed the scheme in which Francis would overcharge for supplying ships or charge for fake services at ports he controlled in Southeast Asia. The officers passed him classified information and even went so far as redirecting military vessels to ports that were lucrative for his Singapore-based ship servicing company.

    In a federal sting, Francis was lured to San Diego on false pretenses and arrested at a hotel in September 2013. He pleaded guilty in 2015, admitting that he had offered more than $500,000 in cash bribes to Navy officials, defense contractors and others. Prosecutors say he bilked the Navy out of at least $35 million. As part of his plea deal, he cooperated with the investigation leading to the Navy convictions. He faced up to 25 years in prison.

    While awaiting sentencing, Francis was hospitalized and treated for renal cancer and other medical issues. After leaving the hospital, he was allowed to stay out of jail at a rental home, on house arrest with a GPS ankle monitor and security guards.

  • Far left Austin Democrat (and now U.S. Representative) Greg Casar
    is now singing a different tune on police patrols.

    An Austin, Texas Democrat politician is demanding police step up their patrols in his neighborhood despite previously voting to defund them.

    Yes, in the latest example of ‘Do as I say not as I do,’ Representative Greg Casar now says that he wants more police for at least the next week. It’s unclear why the Congressman wanted the extra police.

    The Austin Police Retired Officers Association however did not hold back and called out the Congressman’s sudden change of tone.

    “We want everyone in Austin to feel safe, but this seems to us as the height of hypocrisy from the congressman. Maybe he should hire private security like his fellow squad members do. Sure seems like he wants the police in his neighborhood just not yours,” the ROA tweeted out.

    Snip. “In 2020, Casar couldn’t hold back how happy he was when he helped the Austin City Council reduce the Austin Police Department’s budget by over $100 million.” (Previously.)

  • Delta, American Airlines fly illegal immigrants from Biden’s Arizona processing centers into domestic US on late night flights.”
  • Elizabeth Warren wants to enact an unconstitutional wealth tax.
  • “Taco stand owner spends $4k per WEEK in private security to protect his business (it’s more than his rent).” This is in D.C. And the cost for that gets passed on to everyone buying a taco…
  • Good: A fat Christmas duck roasting in your oven. Bad: A fat duck roasting in your engine right after takeoff. “Do you need an emergency vehicle?” “We need everything you have.” This was two days ago.
  • Military history YouTuber Mark Felton goes to visit Vatican City, and accidentally ends up getting an audience with the Pope.
  • Toshiba was delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange after 74 years and is being taken private.
  • Been a little lite on dog content for the last few LinkSwarms. so he’s a Ryan George skit about dogs and Christmas:

  • Hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    LinkSwarm for December 8, 2023

    Friday, December 8th, 2023

    Biden family corruption tops this week’s LinkSwarm (with a lot of links to go through), Juicy heads back to jail, and the Houthi’s tug on Superman’s cape.

  • Despite years of claiming that Hunter’s business was completely separate from that of Joe Biden, bank records show direct monthly payments from Hunter Biden’s corporation to Joe Biden.

    A corporation owned and controlled by Hunter Biden made several direct monthly payments to President Biden beginning in 2018, according to bank records released by the House Oversight Committee on Monday.

    The subpoenaed bank records obtained by National Review reveal Owasco PC established a monthly payment of $1,380 to President Biden beginning in September 2018. The committee says the payments establish a direct benefit Biden received from his family’s foreign business dealings, despite Biden’s claims that he has never benefitted from or been involved in his son’s ventures.

    “This wasn’t a payment from Hunter Biden’s personal account but an account for his corporation that received payments from China and other shady corners of the world,” House Oversight chairman James Comer says in a new video detailing the findings. “At this moment, Hunter Biden is under an investigation by the Department of Justice for using Owasco PC for tax evasion and other serious crimes.”

    Comer says the payments “are part of a pattern revealing Joe Biden knew about, participated in, and benefited from his family’s influence peddling schemes.”

    “As the Bidens received millions from foreign nationals and companies in China, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, and Kazakhstan, Joe Biden dined with his family’s foreign associates, spoke to them by speakerphone, had coffee, attended meetings, and ultimately received payments that were funded by his family’s business dealings,” the committee added in a press release.

    It was unclear based on the bank records how many monthly payments were made, but a source familiar with the committee’s probe said investigators had discovered at least three payments.

    Last week, the committee released an email from a bank money-laundering investigator who expressed serious concerns about a transfer of funds from China that ultimately trickled down to President Biden in the form of a $40,000 check from his brother, James Biden.

    Biden received a $40,000 personal check from an account shared by his brother, James Biden, and sister-in-law, Sara Biden, in September 2017 — money that was marked as a “loan repayment.” The alleged repayment was sent after funds were filtered from Northern International Capital, a Chinese company affiliated with the Chinese energy firm CEFC, through several accounts related to Hunter Biden and eventually down to the personal account shared by James and Sara Biden.

    Northern International Capital sent $5 million to Hudson West III, a joint venture established by Hunter Biden and CEFC associate Gongwen Dong on August 8.

    On the same day, Hudson West III then sent $400,000 to Owasco, P.C., an entity owned and controlled by Hunter Biden. Six days later, Hunter Biden wired $150,000 to Lion Hall Group, a company owned by James and Sara Biden. Sara Biden withdrew $50,000 in cash from Lion Hall Group on August 28 and then deposited the funds into her and her husband’s personal checking account later that day.

    On September 3, 2017, Sara Biden wrote a check to Joe Biden for $40,000.

    An unidentified bank investigator sent an email on June 26, 2018 to colleagues raising concerns about money sent from Hudson West III to Owasco P.C. The email said the $5 million in funds sent from Northern International Capital to Hudson West III were primarily used to fund 16 wire transfers totaling more than $2.9 million to Owasco PC. The wires were labeled as management fees and reimbursements.

  • Also, Joe Biden used aliases to exchange hundreds of emails with Hunter’s business partner.

    Joe Biden used several email aliases to regularly correspond with Hunter Biden’s business partner in recent years, including while he was serving as vice president, a GOP-controlled House committee leading the Republican impeachment inquiry revealed Tuesday.

    IRS whistleblowers Joseph Ziegler and Gary Shapley provided the eleven-page log of emails ahead of a closed-door hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday. The document includes metadata associated with emails sent to and from Joe Biden’s alias email addresses from 2010 to 2019, though it does not include the content of those emails.

    In total, Joe Biden exchanged 327 emails with Hunter Biden’s business partner, Eric Schwerin, the founding partner and managing director of Hunter’s defunct Rosemont Seneca Partners investment firm. Fifty-four of those emails were sent directly to Schwerin, while the rest included other parties. Out of the 327 emails logged in the document, 291 were sent during Joe Biden’s Vice Presidency. Joe Biden’s email aliases included “robinware456,” “JRBware” and “RobertLPeters.”

    “Through months of testifying for hours and producing hundreds of pages of documentation, and just as many months of baseless attacks against them, their story has remained the same and their credibility intact. The same cannot be said for President Biden,” committee chairman Jason Smith (R., Mo.) said in a statement.

    “So far, our witnesses have produced over eleven-hundred pages of evidence, sat for 14 hours of closed-door testimony with counsel from the majority and minority on this committee, testified publicly before the Oversight Committee, and today, have provided us with new evidence.”

    Smith also emphasized that much of the email correspondence between Joe Biden and Schwerin occurred around the then-vice president’s June 2014 trip to Ukraine.

  • An IRS whistleblower says that Hunter Biden got $4.9 million from ‘sugar brother’ Kevin Morris.

    Hunter Biden received a whopping $4.9 million from Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris in a three-year period, according to an IRS agent who investigated the president’s son for alleged tax evasion.

    The revelation signifies a substantial increase in the known amount that Hunter, 53, got from his so-called “sugar brother” after the men reportedly met for the first time at a December 2019 campaign fundraiser.

    IRS agent Joseph Ziegler shared the jaw-dropping figure and additional documentation Tuesday with the House Ways and Means Committee in a follow-up appearance as House Republicans near an expected vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry into President Biden for his alleged role in his family’s foreign dealings.

    Prior reporting indicated Morris paid about $2 million in tax debts for Hunter and purchased some of his novice artworks.

    Morris’ motives for helping the first son financially and the authenticity of their friendship have been debated by Republicans.

    As part of his Tuesday testimony, Ziegler provided legislators an email showing that as early as Feb. 7, 2020 — two months after they met — Morris was contacting accountants on Hunter’s behalf and warning them to work quickly to avoid “considerable risk personally and politically.”

    Ziegler, who investigated Hunter’s taxes for five years before he was removed from the case this year, said the first son’s income from Morris — at least some of it deemed loans — resembled Hunter’s practice of trying to avoid paying taxes on other income by describing it as loans.

    (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)

  • And after the hundreds of stories of Hunter Biden’s corruption, and his key role in funneling foreign money into his father’s hands, Hunter has finally been indicted on nine criminal counts.
  • But the Department of Justice is blocking whistleblowers from testifying in the Hunter Biden probe, because of course they are.
  • Iran’s Houthi proxies in Yemen just can’t resist tugging on Superman’s cape.

    An American warship and several commercial ships faced attacks in the Red Sea on Sunday, the Pentagon said.

    “We’re aware of reports regarding attacks on the USS Carney and commercial vessels in the Red Sea and will provide information as it becomes available,” the Pentagon said.

    A U.S. official told the Associated Press the attack began around 10 a.m. in Sanaa, Yemen, and lasted five hours.

    Officials did not say where the attacks may have come from.

    Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have launched several attacks in the Red Sea in recent weeks and has launched drones and missiles toward Israel since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October.

  • You might have seen video of that house that exploded in Arlington, Virginia. The guy who owned it turned out to be a far left Chomsky-following whackadoodle.

  • Texas is suing the Biden Administration yet again, this time over imposing censorship.

    The Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG) filed a joint lawsuit, along with co-plaintiff media outlets The Daily Wire and The Federalist, against the U.S. Department of State, alleging the federal government both directly and indirectly violated the First Amendment rights of certain online news outlets by placing them on a censorship “blacklist.”

    According to the OAG, the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, alleges an office within the state department known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC) was used to “limit the reach and business viability of domestic news organizations by funding censorship technology and private censorship enterprises.”

    The stated purpose of the GEC is to lead the federal government’s effort to “counter foreign state and non-state propaganda” and disinformation efforts that pose a risk to the United States or influence the government’s policies.

    However, the plaintiffs argue the GEC was weaponized to “violate the First Amendment and suppress Americans’ constitutionally-protected speech.”

    In short, the lawsuit describes how the government created multiple censorship programs that worked to de-platform, shadowban, discredit, and demonize certain American media outlets.

    It argues that some of these mechanisms were not just surveillance tools for the government to monitor and identify potential propaganda and disinformation, but rather characterized the technology that had been developed as “tools of warfare” used to shape opinions and perceptions that had been “misappropriated and misdirected to be used at home against domestic political opponents and members of the American press with viewpoints conflicting with federal officials.”

    “Media Plaintiffs each face blacklisting, reduced advertising revenue, reduced potential growth, reputational damage, economic cancellation, reduced circulation of reporting and speech, and social media censorship — all as a direct result of Defendants’ unlawful conduct,” the lawsuit states.

    “I am proud to lead the fight to save Americans’ precious constitutional rights from Joe Biden’s tyrannical federal government,” Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a news release announcing the lawsuit.

    “The State Department’s mission to obliterate the First Amendment is completely un-American. This agency will not get away with their illegal campaign to silence citizens and publications they disagree with.”

    “Those government-funded, government-promoted censorship technologies and enterprises targeted conservative media outlets, including The Daily Wire,” Ben Shapiro said in a video statement released regarding the lawsuit. Shapiro is the editor emeritus of The Daily Wire.

    “Their goal is to paint us as unreliable and therefore to push advertisers away from advertising on programs like this one, websites like The Daily Wire, websites like The Federalist, that is an ongoing problem that is being pushed by the state department,” he said.

  • California’s budget deficit swells to record $68 billion as tax revenues fall. And Gavin Newsom is the choice Democratic Party powerbrokers want to replace Biden with in 2024. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Speaking of California, San Francisco is back to being a drug addict infested shithole after Xi Jinping’s visit.
  • Back to jail for Juicy. Nate the Lawyer offers a good overview of the twists and turns of the case. I had forgotten that he had paid his “attackers” with a personal check…
  • The F-117 Nighthawk was retired in 2008. Or was it?
  • Belarus kicked out of the Red Cross for all sorts of misconduct by its head.

    the Belarus Red Cross Society is suspended from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

    The suspension is the result of noncompliance by the Belarus Red Cross with the request for the dismissal of Mr. Dimitry Shevtsov, Secretary General of the National Society. This follows the decision of the IFRC’s Governing Board of 3 October 2023 relating to the investigation into the allegations against Belarus Red Cross Secretary General for his statements, including on nuclear weapons and on the movement of children to Belarus, and his visit to Luhansk and Donetsk.

    The suspension means that the Belarus Red Cross loses its rights as a member of the IFRC. Any new funding to the Belarus Red Cross will also be suspended.

  • More than two hundred Italian mafia members sentenced to over 2,000 years in prison. Evidently all of them weren’t killed by Denzel Washington…
  • “Governor Greg Abbott is keeping the endorsements rolling, announcing his support for Marc LaHood for Texas House. LaHood, an attorney from San Antonio, is challenging State Rep. Steve Allison (R–San Antonio), who was elected to the House in 2018 to replace retiring House Speaker Joe Straus. Since then, Allison has consistently had one of the most liberal voting records among his Republican colleagues.”
  • North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum drops his longshot bid for the Republican Presidential nomination.
  • In Germany, being an illegal alien is evidently a get out of rape charges free card. (Hat tip: 357 Magnum.)
  • Colorado would like. To feed your fingertips. To the wolverines.

    No, not those Wolverines.

  • Brisbane Lord Mayor quits 2032 Olympic Games committee, including his rejection of $137 million for a temporary stadium.
  • “Florida Government Reveals Massive Disney Corruption Scheme.”

    The Walt Disney Co. effectively controlled the local government around the site of Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, for decades in what an extensive review by the state government calls “the most egregious exhibition of corporate cronyism in modern American history.”

    After Disney bought the land that would become its massive amusement park and resort, it received permission from the Florida Legislature and governor in 1967 to create a local government, the Reedy Creek Improvement District.

    From that time until Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Feb. 27 abolishing the Reedy Creek district, Disney heavily influenced the local government to its advantage, according to a new report Monday from the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District.

    The legislation signed into law by DeSantis, a Republican, transformed the Reedy Creek district into the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, which aims to root out what critics see as Disney’s corrupt hold over the local government.

    In the report, a copy of which was provided early to The Daily Signal, the new Central Florida Tourism Oversight District claims that “Disney not just controlled the Reedy Creek Improvement District, but did so by effectively purchasing loyalty.”

    Although the Reedy Creek district was a separate entity from the Walt Disney Co., the district treated its employees as if they were Disney employees, sometimes referred to as “cast members,” and awarded them lavish perks unavailable to the general public.

    The new Florida government report used the expertise of George Mason University Professor Donald J. Kochan in governance; William Jennings at Delta Consulting Group in accounting; the consulting firm Kimley-Horn for engineering; and Public Resources Advisory Group Managing Director Wendell Gaertner for public finance.

    The report notes: “Disney effectively bribed RCID employees (and retirees, members of the [RCID] Board of Supervisors, and vendor VIPs) by showering them with company benefits and perks: millions of dollars’ worth of annual passes to theme parks worldwide, 40% discounts on cruises, free transferable single-use tickets during the holiday season, steep discount on merchandise, marked discounts on food and beverage, and access to non-public shopping reserved for Disney cast members (where merchandise was greatly discounted and items were made available that were otherwise not available for public purchase).”

  • A detailed look at the decline of The Disney Channel.
  • Alberto Fujimori leaves prison. Fujimori is both a corrupt felon and arguably Peru’s most successful and competent leader of the last 80 years…
  • Texas is in the college football playoff, along with Michigan, Washington and Alabama.
  • Jacksonville Jaguars employee embezzled $22 million over four years. That’s just over $1 million a win…
  • A look inside a car disassembly factory.
  • Roll on, roll off ships are both interesting and freaking huge.
  • “I Don’t Want My Skull Fractured By A Man,’ Says Bigoted Female Athlete.”
  • Hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    LinkSwarm for January 6, 2023

    Friday, January 6th, 2023

    Greetings, and welcome to the Friday LinkSwarm! By the time you read this, Kevin McCarthy will have lost more elections than Pat Paulsen.

  • Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “More U-Haul Trucks Left California Than Any Other State In 2022, Texas Top Destination.”

    More moving trucks left from California than any other state in 2022 for the third year in a row, while more Americans are flocking to Republican-led states like Texas and Florida, a new study published on Jan. 3 has found.

    The study was conducted by the moving truck rental company, U-Haul, and found that Texas, Florida, and the Carolinas were the preferred destinations for one-way moving trucks in 2022, with those states ranking as the top growth states on the annual U-Haul Growth Index.

    U-Haul’s Growth Index is compiled according to the net gain of one-way U-Haul trucks arriving in a state or city, versus those departing from that state or city each calendar year across the U.S. and Canada and is a strong indicator of what kind of job states and cities are attracting and maintaining residents, according to the company.

    Texas is the top destination for U-Haul trucks for the second consecutive year and the fifth time since 2016, according to the study. That is followed by Florida, which has been a top-three growth state for seven years in a row. South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, and Idaho also saw strong growth rates in 2022, the study found.

    I think I’ve posted a variation on this story just about every year I’ve published this blog…

  • Speaking of people fleeing high taxes, New York is hemorrhaging taxpayers as well.

    From July 2021 to July 2022, 300,000 more people moved out of the state than moved in. New York had the largest population loss—in both percentage and absolute terms—experienced by any state during that period.

    Sadly, this was both predictable and preventable.

    In March 2021, a study of New York found that its already staggeringly high tax burden had worsened due to an increase in the top marginal tax rate to almost 15% for those in New York City. The study projected that the flood of people leaving would only accelerate—and it did.

    Even before that study, the Empire State lost so many people that it cost New York a seat in Congress after the 2020 census. This exodus is a direct response to New York’s obscenely high taxes.

    Just how bad is it? Compared with other states, New Yorkers:

    • Pay the highest total tax burden and highest share of personal income (14%) in taxes.
    • Endure the second-worst overall business-tax climate.
    • Face the highest individual income-tax rate and income-tax collections per capita.
    • Pay the second-highest state and local corporate income tax collections per capita.
    • Have the fourth-highest property taxes and local sales-tax rate (on average).
    • Pay the highest cigarette taxes and ninth-highest gasoline taxes.
    • Pay the sixth-highest capital-stock tax rate.
    • Are tied for third-highest estate-tax rate.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Speaking of California: “California Officially Becomes a Sanctuary State for Child Mutilation.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Things that make you go “Hmmm“: “Virgin Islands AG Fired Three Days After Suing JPMorgan Over Jeffrey Epstein.”
  • Three Biden tax hikes that took place January 1. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Remember how I’ve noted that semiconductor memory manufacturers make money hand-over-fist in boom times and barely break even during busts? “Samsung Profits Plunge 69% As Global Chip Demand In ‘Full-Fledged Ice Age.'”
    

  • Turnabout is fair play: “U. Houston Prof Tells Students to Report Teachers Berating ‘White People or Christians to DEI Office.'”
  • Denver Mayor Michael Hancock takes pride in virtue signaling his city as a refuge for illegal aliens. Guess what?
  • Former Pope Benedict XVI dies at age 95.
  • Thanks to green energy policies and the Russo-Ukrainian War, it’s now too expensive to break bread in Europe. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • U.S. passes Qatar as world’s largest LNG exporter.
  • “How is it like being homeless in Portland?” “It’s a piece of cake really.”
  •  Jordan B. Peterson: “People camouflage themselves against the herd.”
  • This story should piss you off. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Drone swarm vs. carrier group simulation.
  • Ouch!
  • Some pretty amazing skiing.
  • Cereal experiments lame.
  • LinkSwarm for May 14, 2021

    Friday, May 14th, 2021

    The Biden Recession blooms, Bibby bombs, Baltimore burns, inscrutable Flu Manchu somehow infects the vaccinated, and Canada’s institutional religious hostility inflicts its revenge on the pastor that defied them. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
    

  • Carter Malaise II: Inflation Boogaloo: The core inflation rate is now at 11%. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • If inflation wasn’t enough to remind you of Biden’s reboot of That 70’s Show, how about long gas lines? An east coast gas pipeline was shut down by ransomeware attack launched by a hacking group called DarkSide.

    Rendered with the magic of dyslexia

    We’re actually very fortunate that a for-profit gang carried out this hack, rather than a terrorist group or state actor.

  • “South Carolina Follows Montana In Ending All Supplemental Unemployment Benefit Programs.” Strange how the government paying people not to work hurts jobs numbers…
  • Democratic Senator Joe Manchin (WV) says he’s not going to let the Democrats’ election-theft bill pass. Good for him. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Seeing some reports stating that Israeli ground forces entered Gaza, but seeing some Twitter commentary that, no, they haven’t entered, but that IDF artillery and tanks are pounding Hamas tunnels.
  • Why won’t those violent Israelis just let themselves be killed?

    Two weeks ago Turkish forces launched a military assault in the Duhok region of Iraqi Kurdistan. Villagers were forced to ‘flee in terror’ from raining bombs. It was only the latest bombardment of the beleaguered Kurds by Turkey, NATO member and Western ally. It did not trend online. There were no noisy protests in London or New York. The Turks weren’t talked about in woke circles as crazed, bloodthirsty killers. Tweeters didn’t dream out loud about Turks burning in hell. The Onion didn’t do any close-to-the-bone satire about how Turkish soldiers just love killing children. No, the Duhok attack passed pretty much without comment.

    But when Israel engages in military action, that’s a different story. Always. Every time. Anti-Israel fury in the West has intensified to an extraordinary degree following an escalation of violence in the Middle East in recent days. Protests were instant and inflammatory. Israeli flags were burned on the streets of London. Social media was awash with condemnation. ‘IDF Soldier Recounts Harrowing, Heroic War Story Of Killing 8-Month-Old Child’, tweeted The Onion, to tens of thousands of likes. Israel must be boycotted, isolated, cast out of the international community, leftists cried. Western politicians, including Keir Starmer, rushed to pass judgement. ‘What’s the difference?’, said a placard at a march in Washington, DC showing the Israeli flag next to the Nazi flag. The Jews are the Nazis now, you see. Ironic, isn’t it?

    This is the question anti-Israel campaigners have never been able to answer: why do they treat Israel so differently to every other nation on Earth? Why is it child-killing bloodlust when Israel takes military action but not when Turkey or India do? Why must we rush to the streets to set light to the Israel flag but never the Saudi flag, despite Saudi Arabia’s unconscionable war on Yemen? Why is it only ‘wrong’ or at worst ‘horrific’ when Britain or America drop bombs in the Middle East but Nazism when Israel fires missiles into Gaza? Why do you merely oppose the military action of some states but you hate Israel, viscerally, publicly, loudly?

    The judgement and treatment of Israel by a double standard is one of the most disturbing facets of global politics in the 21st century. That double standard has been glaringly evident over the past few days. Israel is now the only country on Earth that is expected to allow itself to be attacked. To sit back and do nothing as its citizens are pelted with rocks or rockets. How else do we explain so many people’s unwillingness to place the current events in any kind of context, including the context of an avowedly anti-Semitic Islamist movement – Hamas – firing hundreds of missiles into civilian areas in Israel? In this context, to rage solely against Israel, to curse its people and burn its flag because it has sent missiles to destroy Hamas’s firing positions in Gaza, is essentially to say: ‘Why won’t Israelis let themselves be killed?’

  • Hamas is the instrument of Iran’s proxy war against Israel:

    Last year, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei admitted for the first time that his country was supplying the Palestinian terrorist groups with weapons. “Iran realized Palestinian fighters’ only problem was lack of access to weapons,” Khamenei said in an online speech.

    “With divine guidance and assistance, we planned, and the balance of power has been transformed in Palestine, and today the Gaza Strip can stand against the aggression of the Zionist enemy and defeat it.”

    Khamenei went on to offer the reason why Iran was sending rockets, missiles and tons of explosives to the Gaza Strip: “The Zionist regime is a deadly, cancerous tumor in the region. It will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed.”

    Khamenei’s admission shows how the mullahs in Tehran have been lying to the West for many years. In 2011, Mohammad Khazaee, the Permanent Representative of Iran to the United Nations, sent a letter to the President of the United Nations Security Council in which he vehemently denied that Iran was smuggling weapons into the Gaza Strip.

    

  • Baltimore was one of the first cities to try “de-policing.” How did that work out for it? Not so hot:

    This experiment has been an abject failure. Since 2011, nearly 3,000 Baltimoreans have been murdered—one of every 200 city residents over that period. The annual homicide rate has climbed from 31 per 100,000 residents to 56—ten times the national rate. And 93 percent of the homicide victims of known race over this period were black.

    Remarkably, Baltimore is reinforcing its de-policing strategy. State’s Attorney for Baltimore Marilyn Mosby no longer intends to prosecute various “low-level” crimes. Newly elected mayor Brandon Scott promises a five-year plan to cut the police budget. Both justify their policies by asserting that the bloodbath on city streets proves that policing itself “hasn’t worked”; they sell their acceleration of de-policing as a “fresh approach” and “re-imagining” of law enforcement.

    The tried “broken windows” policing without understanding it:

    The motivation for de-policing traces to the city’s botched response to an earlier crime epidemic in the 1990s, when it averaged 45 homicides per 100,000 population, up 55 percent from the previous decade. So in 1999 Baltimoreans elected a mayor, Martin O’Malley, who promised to apply New York’s successful crime-fighting approach, where homicides had plunged by two-thirds over the decade (to one-ninth Baltimore’s rate) thanks to an expanded police force and innovative, proactive policing strategies.

    O’Malley’s first commissioner, NYPD veteran Ed Norris, initially showed promise. By 2002, Baltimore’s homicide rate was 20 percent below its 1999 level. As O’Malley pressed for more, however, relations soured, and Norris departed (and some financial shenanigans eventually earned him a stint in federal prison). His successor, Kevin Clark, another NYPD import, also became embroiled in personal and professional controversy; he was fired and succeeded by a Baltimore PD holdover. By the time O’Malley moved to the Maryland governor’s mansion in 2007, Baltimore’s homicide rate was back to its 1990s average.

    The problem was not just turmoil among BPD leadership and meddling (or worse) by O’Malley, but a fatal misunderstanding of what had worked in New York. There, the broad spectrum of criminal activity was addressed efficiently and with community engagement. Detailed data helped guide resources to crime hot spots. Chief William J. Bratton implemented the Broken Windows theory-inspired community-policing methods pioneered by social scientists George Kelling and James Q. Wilson, who understood how small manifestations of disorder could grow to larger ones. Minor offenses that made residents feel unsafe or hinted at acceptance of violence were addressed in order to improve quality of life, strengthen communities, and prevent serious crime.

    In Baltimore, however, Broken Windows was misunderstood and misapplied. It mutated into a malignant variant, “zero tolerance” policing—and BPD conduct became not just intolerant but unfocused and excessive. As David Simon, a veteran Baltimore crime reporter and creator of HBO’s The Wire, summed things up, O’Malley “tossed the Fourth Amendment out a window and began using the police department to sweep the corners and rowhouse stoops and [per Norris] ‘lock up damn near everyone.’” That sometimes even included Wire crew members on their way home from a long day of filming.

    True Broken Windows policing, in Kelling’s words, creates “a negotiated sense of order in a community” and involves collaboration between cops and residents. As one BPD vet put it, “You go to a community—before we come in, [we should ask], ‘What are the main things you all can’t stand?’ Everybody playing music at 11:30 at night, kids sitting on the corner, the prostitutes using the little park over there to work their trade. Now, ‘What don’t you care about?’ See the old guys sitting down at the corner playing cards every night? They could stay there all they want. . . . Then the police come in and do what the neighborhood wants. You just don’t go out and lock everybody up.” But, he concluded, “we went overboard.”

    Then they adjusted:

    O’Malley’s successor, Sheila Dixon (the city’s first female and third black mayor), defied her staff’s recommendations and named as commissioner Frederick Bealefeld, a BPD lifer with no college pedigree. “It was something in my gut that felt he was the best person,” Dixon explained. “I could just feel his passion.”

    Bealefeld understood community policing better than the New York imports, addressing disorder and crime efficiently. He attended community meetings tirelessly to find out what residents wanted done; got cops out of their cars and walking patrols more often; invested in better training; and supported cops’ work with kids. Partnering with a savvy federal prosecutor, Rod Rosenstein, he targeted known dealers and shooters, emphasizing quality arrests—including of cops on the take. It worked. Even as arrest totals fell (to 70,000 by 2010), so did the homicide rate, to a low of 31 per 100,000 residents by 2011.

    And then the Social Justice started:

    Dixon had embezzled gift cards meant for the poor—petty corruption is a Baltimore tradition—and in 2010 was succeeded by Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. The Oberlin-educated former public defender was more liberal than Dixon, personally lukewarm to Bealefeld, and sympathetic to those embittered by O’Malley’s “zero tolerance” policies. And she faced budget problems. De-policing, then, seemed to tick all the right boxes—and, with the homicide rate at a 23-year low (though still almost seven times the national average), there would be little outcry against it.

    First came some defunding, with a 2 percent pay cut to help address a recession-related budget pinch; cops’ contributions to their pension funds also were raised to help address shortfalls there. The new mayor’s first proposed budget actually cut the BPD’s request by 10 percent, though the difference eventually was split. Demoralized, experienced cops started retiring in numbers.

    Rawlings-Blake did not replace them, and she trimmed staffed aggressively. BPD budgets had consistently authorized about 3,900 positions through the O’Malley and Dixon years. Rawlings-Blake took that down by 5 percent in her 2012 budget and another 6 percent in 2013. Bealefeld called the cuts “unconscionable” and retired. As he’d told the head of the police union at one point, “you can only beat down your horses for so long before they give up.”

    So even before Freddie Gray died in police custody in 2015 and Baltimoreans rioted, the BPD had 460 fewer budgeted “horses” than under Mayor Dixon—with 300 fewer on patrol, conducting investigations, or targeting violent criminals. Not surprisingly, the homicide rate surged 20 percent by 2013. And after the city’s newly elected prosecutor, Mosby, criminally charged six uniformed officers in Gray’s death—though she failed to convict any—proactive policing essentially ceased. The city’s annual body count jumped and has remained tragically high since.

    Read the whole thing.

  • Baltimore’s Soros-backed City State Attorney Marilyn Mosby can’t be bothered to indict antifa rioters, but she can ask the FCC to investigate Tucker Carlson for daring to criticize her.
  • Speaking of defunding the police, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey admits that defunding the police was a huge mistake. If only the rest of the Minneapolis had realized this before all the deaths.
  • “Meet Bishop Garrison: The Pentagon’s Hatchet Man in Charge of Purging MAGA Patriots and Installing Race Theory in The Military.”
  • Russia’s robot army is mainly vaporware.
  • Just about everything they told us about transmission vectors for Mao Tze Lung was wrong:

    Bars, gyms and restaurants. Those were just a few settings health experts warned could become hotbeds for COVID-19 spread as states began reopening in the spring and summer of 2020 following the first and second waves of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.

    Yet, public data analyzed by ABC News appears to tell a different story. The data from states across the country suggests specific outbreak settings (including bars, gyms, restaurants, nail salons, barbershops and stores — for the full list, see graphic below in story) only accounted for a small percentage, if any, of new outbreaks after the pandemic’s inital wave in 2020.

    Snip.

    Based on ABC News’ analysis of public data of all coronavirus cases in four states and D.C., the outbreak settings accounted for less than 5% of all COVID-19 cases in those states.

  • “World’s Most Vaccinated Nation Sees Active COVID Cases Double In Under A Week.” Mysterious uptick in the Seychelles.
  • Another data point: “Yankees Suffer COVID Resurgence As 8 Fully-Vaccinated Players, Staff Test Positive.” A fluke? Bad batch of vaccines? Bad batch of tests?
  • Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
  • “Why Did Biden Census Bureau Add 2.5 Million More Residents to Blue-State Population Count?” The question pretty much answers itself, doesn’t it?
  • Kansas’ Republican legislature overrides Democratic governor’s veto of election integrity bill.
  • Texas congressman Chip Roy is running ran against Elise Stefanik for conference chair to replace Liz Cheney. (Oops, he lost, 134-46.)
  • Remember the Polish pastor who kicked police out of his Canadian church? Well, Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before The State: “Calgary pastor Artur Pawlowski has been arrested for holding a church service.” That will teach him for daring to think Canada has freedom of religion…
  • How we got to the Ever Given. The first container ship only carried 58 boxes. Current container ships can carry as many as 24,000…
  • “Former Democrat Speaker of House in Oregon Arrested for Sex Trafficking.”

    Dave Hunt represented Clackamas County in the Oregon House of Representatives from 2003 through 2013. Hunt was the former Democratic Leader, Majority Leader, and Speaker of the House for the State of Oregon. As a legislator, Hunt the sponsor of a bill criminalizing sex trafficking in 2007. Hunt is currently a lobbyist working to influence the very chamber he left.

    However, even more ironic in 2011, Dave Hunt use his position to support and vote for HB 2714. That bill created the crime of commercial sexual solicitation, the exact crime police used to charge Hunt when he was arrested and cited.

    Sort of sounds like a garden variety prostitution solicitation charge. But if he’s one of the legislators to redefine that as “sex trafficking,” my sympathy is extremely limited.

  • Colorado Democrats give up on their gun control push. (For now.) Good. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • I-40 bridge over Mississippi closed due to a giant crack in a key structural beam.
  • Telsa plans more expansion in Travis County.
  • NRA’s bankruptcy petition has been dismissed. Understandably, since it seemed a transparent ploy to begin with. It’s too bad Wayne LaPierre seems intent on dragging the NRA down with him…
  • Mark Sebu follows up on the Kentucky Ballistics explosion. Evidently it would haven taken 161,520 PI to shear the threads off the Sebu RN 50. Also, there were no pre-cuts on the sabot, suggesting it may indeed have been a counterfeit SLAP round that caused the explosion.
  • Not the Babylon Bee: O.J. Simpson backs Liz Cheney, accuses the Republican Party of “dishonesty.” I don’t feel I can adequately parody this real-life event, even though I should probably take a stab at it…
    

  • Sign you may be in a cult: They keep keep the mummified body of the dead leader in someone’s home, covered by Christmas lights. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Top Gear/Grand Tour presenter James May found out that trickle charging a Tesla S’ main car battery didn’t charge the ordinary car battery, the one responsible for regular electric systems…like unlocking the hood latch to reach the same battery. Result: an hour of work just to reach the dead battery.
  • Speaking of impractical automotive accoutrements, here’s a Bugatti watch with a “working” W16 engine, yours for a mere $280,000…
  • Foamy: “Stop saving the stupid people!”
  • “Disney To Remove Problematic Kiss From Classic Movie, Snow White Will Now Remain Dead.”
  • Pipeline blues:

  • “Damnit! I had two sawbucks on Beatlebaum!”

  • LinkSwarm for October 23, 2020

    Friday, October 23rd, 2020

    The third and final presidential debate is in the books, Trump breaks 50% approval, and the hard left plans another riot and arson spree if they lose. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Consensus opinion seems to be that president Trump won last night’s debate with Joe Biden.

    That appeared to be one lesson from a Zoom focus group conducted after the debate by messaging expert Frank Luntz. Speaking to 15 undecided voters — and yes, they appeared to be really undecided — Luntz asked for a one- or two-word description of the candidates’ debate demeanor. For Biden, the words were mostly bad: among them were “vague,” “very vague,” “non-specific,” “cognitively impaired,” “old,” “uncomfortable,” “elusive,” “grandfatherly,” and “defensive.”

    For Trump, they were mostly much better: among them were “controlled,” “composed,” “constrained,” “reserved,” “poised,” “con artist,” “surprisingly presidential,” “calmer,” and “restrained.”

    There will be more coverage of the debate, of Biden’s promise to end the oil industry and, indeed, more about Mr. Luntz, in Monday’s BidenWatch.

  • President Trump just hit the “Holy Grail” of breaking the 50% approval rating, hitting 52% approval in Rasmussen polling. All the usual poll caveats apply.
  • The left is currently planning on how to peacefully protest if President Donald Trump wins. Ha, just kidding! They’re going to burn everything down:

    An activist group is planning large-scale and widespread ‘disruptive activity’ starting on the night of the election, in an attempt to stop what it predicts will be an “attempted coup” by President Trump in the form of a refusal to accept the election results.

    “Shut Down D.C.” is setting the stage for mass gatherings in D.C., noting that the “resistance” must begin during the “muddied” legal and political debate over the election outcome.

  • More on the same theme:

    “We need to show that we’re ungovernable under a continued Trump administration…That can mean blocking traffic at major intersections and bridges, shutting down government office buildings (why should ICE or the FBI be able to keep doing Trump’s bidding when he’s leading with a coup?!?), or blockading the White House.”

    The document bases its action plan upon the scenarios projected by the establishment leftist “Transition Integrity Project” for election night and sketches these activists’ response to each, explicitly rejecting the possibility that Trump could legitimately win. It continues:

    We’ll keep it going until Trump concedes. We could be in the streets throughout the fall and into the winter– maybe as lots of rolling waves of action or possibly as a few major tsunamis! In other parts of the country, as vote counts conclude, our focus will turn from protecting the vote counts to themselves being ungovernable.

    As it becomes clear that Trump’s coup is failing, institutions and the elites will start to abandon him – or we will approach them as part of the problem. Either Amazon will shut down AWS for the Trump loyalists in the government or we’ll shut down their fulfillment centers. Either governors will tell their national guards to stand down or we’ll shut down their state capitals as well. Over time, Trump will grow increasingly isolated and his empire will crumble down around him.

  • Victor Davis Hanson on the Progressive Medusa:

    The new-old leftist aim is not to operate within either the existing parameters of the Constitution as written or the customs and traditions of America—a 150-year-long nine-justice Supreme Court, the Electoral College, a 50-state nation, a Senate filibuster, two senators per state, and a secure border. All are obstructions to the drive for power.

    Given its redistributionist creed, socialism cannot afford to be patent and honest. If socialism were transparent, it never would gain majority support. Joe Biden cannot talk about the Electoral College or court packing, unequivocally condemn the violence in our urban centers, discuss the Green New Deal, name his likely Supreme Court appointments, be honest about his plans for fracking, or explain his views on the borders, because he is now owned lock, stock and barrel by the hard Left whose agendas were rejected even in his own Democratic primaries.

    The Left seeks to transform America into something never envisioned by the founders, a huge all-encompassing, panopticon state, one run by anointed Platonic guardians. Our elite watchmen will use their unlimited power to force upon us an equality of result society—with themselves properly exempted.

    The hard Left’s defense is that its mission is so critical, so morally superior, that all means can be justified to achieve its noble ends. And so almost every institution that the Left has in its line of vision is now petrifying.

    Large swaths of the downtowns of America’s large cities—New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland—are becoming unhygienic, unsafe, and uninhabitable. Substantial corridors swarm with the homeless. Crime is increasing but commensurately redefined as a sort of cry of the heart, no-bail social activism. The cities are broke and yet demand more bailouts to spend more money that will ensure things get worse.

    Read the whole thing. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination unanimously approved by Senate Judiciary Committee. Democrats failed to show up. The senate confirmation vote is expected Monday. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • The Great Southern Democratic Hope:

    Back in 2018, I wrote about the phenomenon of Great Southern Democratic Hopes — candidates with not-so-great chances of success running in a Republican-learning state who receive wildly optimistic coverage from national media organizations and reporters desperate to discover a Democrat who can win statewide races in the South and someday end up on a presidential ticket.

    Prime past specimens of the Great Southern Democratic Hopes include Harold Ford Jr. in Tennessee, Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky, and Michelle Nunn and Jon Ossoff in Georgia. But 2018 brought the modern king of the Great Southern Democratic Hopes, Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke.

    You notice none of those candidates actually won, although O’Rourke deserves some credit for performing better than any other Democrat in decades. Still, next spring, Ted Cruz will be in the third year of his second term, and O’Rourke, having completed a presidential bid that also didn’t live up to the initial hype, will be teaching at Texas State University.

    This cycle: Amy McGrath.

    after McGrath won the primary, the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin declared, “Democrats serious about winning chose Amy McGrath.” The Frankfort State Journal concluded, “McGrath has the name recognition and financial backing to give McConnell, well, a run for his money.” Fueled by Democrats across the country who are itching to see McConnell defeated, McGrath’s fundraising has been off the charts — $37 million in the last quarter, more than $82 million overall.

    And yet it is mid October, and McConnell does not appear to be running for his money. The newest Mason-Dixon poll puts the Republican ahead, 51 percent to 42 percent. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight gives McConnell a 96 percent chance of winning. In a year when Democrats are finding themselves in surprisingly strong shape from Maine to Colorado and from Montana to Arizona, McGrath is an afterthought and on pace to turn out like the last Democrat who took on McConnell. In 2013, Politico wrote of Grimes, “The fresh Democratic face could give the Senate minority leader the fight of his political life.” Mitch McConnell won reelection in 2014, 56 percent to 40 percent, in what was not the fight of his political life.

  • President Trump is not having any of Leslie Stahl’s bias. I’m so old I remember when 60 Minutes was a revered journalistic institution…
  • “Meet NBC News’ Brandy Zadrozny — The Woman In Charge of Doxxing and Destroying Trump Supporters.” Bonus: “While Zadrozny is passionately committed to doxing and silencing her political foes, there’s another group she is more sympathetic toward: Pedophiles.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Even Obama Administration officials were not believing the Steele dossier’s Russian collusion bullschiff
  • How Facebook uses Chinese nationals to work on technology to censor Americans:

    China is one of the most censorious societies on Earth. So what better place for ­Facebook to recruit social media censors?

    There are at least half a dozen “Chinese nationals who are working on censorship,” a former Facebook insider told me last week. “So at some point, they [Facebook bosses] thought, ‘Hey, we’re going to get them H-1B visas so they can do this work.’”

    The insider shared an internal directory of the team that does much of this work. It’s called Hate-Speech Engineering (George Orwell, call your office), and most of its members are based at Facebook’s offices in Seattle. Many have Ph.D.s, and their work is extremely complex, involving machine learning — teaching “computers how to learn and act without being explicitly programmed,” as the techy website DeepAI.org puts it.

    When it comes to censorship on social media, that means “teaching” the Facebook code so certain content ends up at the top of your newsfeed, a feat that earns the firm’s software wizards discretionary bonuses, per the ex-insider. It also means making sure other content “shows up dead-last.”

    Like, say, a New York Post report on the Biden dynasty’s dealings with Chinese companies.

    To illustrate the mechanics, the insider took me as his typical Facebook user: “They take what Sohrab sees, and then they throw the newsfeed list into a machine-learning algorithm and neural networks that determine the ranking of the items.”

    Facebook engineers test hundreds of different iterations of the rankings to shape an optimal outcome — and root out what bosses call “borderline content.”

    It all makes for perhaps the most chillingly sophisticated censorship mechanism in human history. “What they don’t do is ban a specific pro-Trump hashtag,” says the ex-insider. Instead, “content that is a little too conservative, they will down-rank. You can’t tell it’s censored.”

    (Hat tip: ZeroHedge.)

  • Texas joins DOJ antitrust lawsuit against Google. Oh, and the DOJ filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google. I probably should have led with that. I blame this Topsy Turvey year.
  • Intel to sell it’s NAND business to South Korea’s Hynix. It’s a weird deal:

    In a joint press release issued early this morning, SK Hynix and Intel have announced that Intel will be selling the entirety of its NAND memory business to SK Hynix. The deal, which values Intel’s NAND holdings at $9 billion, will see the company transfer over the NAND business in two parts, with SK Hynix eventually acquiring all IP, facilities, and personnel related to Intel’s NAND efforts. Notably, however, Intel is not selling their overarching Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group; instead the company will be holding on to their Optane memory technology as they continue to develop and sell that technology.

    Per the terms of the unusual agreement, SK Hynix will be acquiring Intel’s NAND memory business in two parts, with the deal not expected to completely close until March of 2025. Under the first phase, which will take place in 2021 once all relevant regulatory bodies have approved the seal, SK Hynix will pay Intel the first $7 billion for their SSD business and Intel’s sole NAND fab in Dalian, China. This will see Intel’s consumer and enterprise SSD businesses transferred to SK Hynix, along with the relevant IP and employees for the SSD business, but not any NAND IP or employees. Similarly, while SK Hynix will get the Dalian fab, the first phase does not come with the employees that operate it.

    Following the first phase, Intel will continue to develop and manufacture NAND out of the Dalian fab for roughly the next four years. This period is set to last until the rest of the deal fully closes in March of 2025. At that point, SK Hynix will pay Intel $2 billion for the rest of their NAND business. This will finally transfer all of Intel’s NAND IP and related employees over to SK Hynix, along with the Dalian fab employees.

    NAND = Flash memory, and it’s a very profitable business to be in most times, but not part of Intel’s core microprocessor business. In Intel’s case, NAND is what you run once your fab is too old to crank out Microprocessors, and Fab 68 in Dalian was built in 2010 as a 65 nanometer fab. With Intel’s cutting edge currently at 7nm, you can see how it would be easy for them to part with, especially since the flash division was losing money despite record revenue in 2019. What Hynix gets out of the deal is harder to fathom. They’re buying a revenue stream in a sector that should be profitable, add another fab to their stable, and maintain parity with DRAM rivals Samsung and Micron. But that’s an awful lot to pay for a small revenue stream bump, a ten year old fab and no NAND IP until 2024.

  • Twitter backs down after Hunter Biden brouhaha.
  • Rapper 50 Cent endorses President Trump, says Biden’s tax hikes are too high.
  • Colorado Democratic Party committee member calls for killing political opponents on camera.
  • “U.S. Sanctions Have Caused ‘Serious’ Damage to Iran, Tehran Says.” Good. Maybe they could stop being jihadist scumbags who oppress your people with a brutal theocracy? Just a thought…
  • Armenia-Azerbaijan truce breaks down within hours.
  • Poland signs $18 billion nuclear power deal with the U.S.
  • Chairman of the Georgetown County (South Carolina) Board of Voter Registration and Elections resignes after stealing Trump signs. Note: Repeatedly stealing the signs of political opponents isn’t a “lapse of judgement.”
  • Detailed, even-handed analysis of the charges leveled at Ken Paxton.

    The Nate Paul scandal has, at its heart, allegations that federal and state law enforcement officials abused the rights of an American citizen. The facts from all sides seem to indicate an unwillingness by the OAG staff to investigate Paul’s complaint; their unwillingness to do so must be explored.

    If the 2019 raid was properly conducted, why has that not been confirmed? Why delay an investigation into the raid? If the raids were legitimate, why, after more than 13 months, has Nate Paul not been charged with a crime?

    On the other hand, Nate Paul might—indeed—be a notorious villain. But in the current environment, shouldn’t state investigators be willing to double-check that the actions of law enforcement officials are conducted properly? Even accused criminals have constitutional rights.

    Just as important, what if Mr. Paul is not a villain and merely a businessman targeted for less than honorable reasons? Is it merely a coincidence that U.S. Attorney Bash resigned from office three days after Mateer tendered his own resignation?

    Likewise, it is possible—as the seven OAG employees allege—that Paxton was acting “under duress” in pushing for this investigation into the complaint made by his friend Mr. Paul. Whether or not Nate Paul’s allegations have merit, Texans need to be certain their elected officials are not acting improperly or unethically in the course of their jobs. Was Mr. Paxton simply pursuing justice for a Texan, or was he acting under undue influence?

  • Bill Burr’s Saturday Night Live monologue.
  • Bret Weinstein kicked off Facebook, presumably for daring to voice anti-Social Justice Warrior thoughts.

  • Max Boot manages to dig past the next level of the Hollow Earth in talking about just how swell China has handled the Wuhan coronavirus. Time to dig this out again:

    

  • Half Of Europe’s Small Businesses Face Bankruptcy.” I bet a number of Eurocrats overseeing their Wuhan coronavirus lockdowns see that as a feature rather than a bug.
  • Dwight has an interesting link up on the Quebec Biker War.
  • Phil Collins ex-wife took over his mansion with her new boyfriend and armed guards. He should su-su-sue them all.
  • Johnny Rotten on the antifa Borg. “This collectivism wrapped up in the ideology and dogma of communism is the exact opposite [of punk rock].”
  • Today’s Hollywood star dragged by the left for not bowing to their wokeness: Chris Pratt

    Since Starlord is an integral lead in two blockbuster franchises, I would say the chances of this costing him work are pretty much nil…

  • Australia bans all hentai. This doesn’t seem like a winning strategy in the Internet era…
  • Burning Zambonis give you so much more.
  • Happy Halloween!

  • This Week in Democrat Voting Fraud for September 29, 2020

    Tuesday, September 29th, 2020

    A whole bunch of voting fraud stories, of various sizes, have popped up this week, two in Texas alone:

  • First up: “Biden’s Texas Political Director Implicated in Massive Mail-In Ballot Harvesting Scheme in Harris County”:

    A Biden Campaign operative in Texas is attempting to rig the 2020 election with the help of others in a massive ballot harvesting scheme, according to two private investigators who testified under oath that they have “video evidence, documentation and witnesses” to prove it. With the help of mass mail-in ballots, the illegal ballot harvesting operation could harvest 700,000 ballots, one Harris County Democrat operative allegedly bragged.

    The investigators—a former FBI agent and former police officer—claim that Biden’s Texas Political Director Dallas Jones and his cohorts have been “hoarding mail-in and absentee ballots” and ordering operatives to them fill out for people in Harris County illegally, “including dead people, homeless people, and nursing home residents in the 2020 presidential election,” Patrick Howley of the National File reported.

    While law enforcement agencies are reportedly investigating these potential crimes, nothing will be done about it until “well after the November 3, 2020 election” the former FBI agent said.

    Dallas Jones was appointed the Biden campaign’s Texas Political Director in late August.

  • More Harris County fraud:

    Texas’ largest county has been approving voter registrations even when people say they’re not citizens, according to a lawsuit announced Monday that found some of those people managed to cast ballots, too.

    The Public Interest Legal Foundation says it uncovered dozens of examples of people who registered in Harris County over the last two decades, either admitted they weren’t citizens or left the box blank, yet were registered anyway. They were removed from the rolls after they later stated, again, that they weren’t, in fact, citizens.

  • Also from Texas: More of that voting fraud that doesn’t exist:

    Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday announced the arrest of a Democratic county commissioner and three associates in Gregg County in East Texas on charges of election fraud in a 2018 election.

    In an announcement with potential significance for the November elections when voting by mail is expected to increase significantly because of the threat of COVID-19, Paxton said Gregg County Commissioner Shannon Brown, Marlena Jackson, Charlie Burns and DeWayne Ward orchestrated a vote-harvesting scheme to help win Brown win the Democratic primary two years ago.

  • The big voting fraud case from outside Texas is from Ilhan Omar’s Minneapolis, where a Somali-American connected to Ilhan Omar was caught on video bragging about his car full of illegally harvest ballots:

    A “ballot broker” boasts about keeping hundreds of absentee ballots in his car trunk. He brags about them being filled in by people other than the voters. Often, money changes hands. Witnesses tie the rampant fraud to the campaign chairman of a prominent member of the radical “squad” in the U.S. House. Loose election laws allow people to come from out of state, vote, and then leave again.

    Plus stories of forcing the elderly to hand over their ballots and carrying around a bag of money to pay for ballots.

    They even caught an on-camera exchange of money for ballots, which is a clear violation of federal law:

  • Speaking of voting fraud, Democratic judges have decided to implement ex-post facto voting law changes to allow mail-in ballots to be received seven days after the election and still be counted, including those missing postmarks and non-matching signatures, in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
  • Meanwhile, Colorado is mailing ballot registration reminders to the dead, or people that haven’t even been in the state for more than half a century.
  • LinkSwarm for September 17, 2020

    Friday, September 18th, 2020

    Democrats are behaving badly (as usual), peace is breaking out in the Middle East (not as usual), how Soros and company are funding violent unrest, some Wuhan coronavirus shenanigans, and some unexpected stealth fighter news. Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Borepatch on how Democrat Party elites have screwed every single faction of their coalition:
    • The Elite has stiffed Bernie (twice), alienating his supporters.
    • The Elite has sent their (white) radical street muscle into Black neighborhoods, burning and looting black businesses.
    • The Elite hasn’t really done anything at all for the hispanic community. Their support for communists has hurt them in Florida where Donald Trump is outpolling Joe Biden among hispanics (!).
    • The Elite has pushed outsourcing (most recently the Trans Pacific Partnership treaty which Trump killed). Private sector unions have noticed.
    • The Elite has pushed the virus lockdown which has thrown millions of restaurant employees out of work. Many of these folks belong to SEIU. Now that emergency unemployment benefits have run out – and restaurants are going out of business because of the continuing lockdown – you have to wonder if these people will start to wonder why they support the Democrats.
    • Public Sector employees have done well, but the areas that locked down hardest are the areas where the government budgets are most in trouble. New York City is going to lay off 40,000 employees. The Elite has hoped that Biden will win and bail out the states and cities. Good luck with that.
    • Lastly, suburban women are hit with a Democratic Party double whammy: schools remain closed in many (especially Blue) areas. Women see their family lifestyles massively disrupted, and potentially are forced to consider giving up their own job to home school their kids. At the same time they see radical rioters entering suburban towns. Rioters are filmed telling people to get out of their homes which will be taken as “reparations”.
  • From The Department of Duh: “Up To 95 Percent Of 2020 U.S. Riots Are Linked To Black Lives Matter.” Further: “The data also show that nearly 6 percent — or more than 1 in 20 — of U.S. protests between May 26 and Sept. 5 involved rioting, looting, and similar violence, including 47 fatalities.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • House Democrats are not as keen as Nancy Pelosi is on committing political suicide by refusing to pass a Wuhan coronavirus relief package.
  • President Donald Trump: Cut it out with the Social Justice training. CDC: LOL. Trump: Don’t make me come over there.
  • The dark money network behind plans for mass unrest after President Trump’s reelection:

    The point person for the Fight Back Table, a coalition of liberal organizations planning for a “post-Election Day political apocalypse scenario,” leads a progressive coalition that is part of a massive liberal dark money network.

    Deirdre Schifeling, who leads the Fight Back Table’s efforts to prepare for “mass public unrest” following the Nov. 3 election, founded and is campaign director for Democracy for All 2021 Action, a project of Arabella Advisors’ Sixteen Thirty Fund. The Sixteen Thirty Fund is a dark money network that provides wealthy donors anonymity as they push large sums into the left’s organizational efforts.

    The connections suggest that post-election mobilization isn’t just the project of a liberal fringe, but that powerful Democratic Party interest groups are also involved.

    Created in 2019, Democracy for All 2021 Action includes more than 20 labor union, think tank, racial justice, and environmental groups that push for automatic and same-day voter registration, prohibiting voter ID laws, and removing “barriers” to naturalization, among other initiatives. While the Sixteen Thirty Fund does not report Democracy for All 2021 Action in its D.C. business records, the group acknowledges that it is a project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund at the bottom of its website. The Sixteen Thirty Fund has been used as an avenue for donors to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to state-based and national groups in recent years. In 2018 alone, $141 million was passed through the fund to liberal endeavors.

    A complete list of groups that make up the Fight Back Table is not publicly available, but Schifeling’s group appears to be an integral part of its efforts. Beyond being the point person for the Fight Back Table’s election war games, Schifeling has ties to two of the Fight Back Table’s founding groups, Demos and Color of Change, which are part of Democracy for All 2021 Action. Schifeling’s group is also a part of Protect the Results, a separate coalition that is collaborating with the Fight Back Table on mass mobilization to “protect the results of the 2020 elections” in more than 1,000 locations across the United States.

    The post-Election Day prep follows other doomsday planning scenarios by liberal activists. The Transition Integrity Project released a 22-page document that mentioned “violence” 15 times, “chaos” 9 times, “unrest” 3 times, and “crisis” 12 times. The Fight Back Table, likewise, is preparing for extreme outcomes, including violence and mass mobilization efforts following the elections.

    Snip.

    Schifeling’s group is just one of dozens that fall under funds affiliated with Arabella Advisors. The funds have facilitated more than $1 billion in anonymous funding since President Donald Trump took office.

    Funds affiliated with Arabella Advisors act as a “fiscal sponsor” to liberal nonprofits by providing tax and legal status to the groups. This setup means that the nonprofits do not have to file individual tax forms to the IRS, which include information such as board members and overall financials.

    Some of the most prominent groups on the left fall under these funds, including Demand Justice, which fights Trump’s judicial nominations, and numerous prominent state-based groups. Funds at Arabella are also used to push grants to outside groups not contained within their network, including David Brock’s American Bridge, John Podesta’s Center for American Progress, the Center for Popular Democracy, and America Votes.

  • “Three Soros Campaigns to Further Advance the Left’s Radical Agenda“:

    Three new George Soros campaigns to further advance the left’s radical agenda have been uncovered in separate news reports published this week. Keep in mind that the U.S. government subsidizes the Hungarian billionaire’s deeply politicized Open Society Foundations (OSF) that work to destabilize legitimate governments, erase national borders, target conservative politicians, finance civil unrest, subvert institutions of higher education and orchestrate refugee crises for political gain. Details of the financial and staffing nexus between OSF and the U.S. government are available in a Judicial Watch investigative report.

    With the help of American taxpayer dollars, Soros bolsters a radical leftwing agenda that in the United States has included: promoting an open border with Mexico and fighting immigration enforcement efforts; fomenting racial disharmony by funding anti-capitalist racialist organizations; financing the Black Lives Matter movement and other organizations involved in the riots in Ferguson, Missouri; weakening the integrity of our electoral systems; promoting taxpayer funded abortion-on-demand; advocating a government-run health care system; opposing U.S. counterterrorism efforts; promoting dubious transnational climate change agreements that threaten American sovereignty and working to advance gun control and erode Second Amendment protections.

    The list extends even further, with Soros tentacles—money—reaching previously unknown domestic and foreign causes that promote a broad leftwing agenda at various levels. It turns out Soros donated $408,000 to a Political Action Committee (PAC) that supported Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, whose office just dropped felony charges against the actor who fabricated a hate crime earlier this year. The actor, Jussie Smollett, claimed he was attacked in Chicago on his way home from a sandwich shop at 2 a.m. He said two masked men shouted racial and homophobic slurs, beat him, poured bleach on him and tied a rope around his neck. Smollett blamed the crime on white Trump supporters. When the hoax was uncovered, prosecutors charged him with 16 felonies but Foxx dropped all the charges this week. Illinois campaign records provided in the news report show that Soros personally contributed $333,000 to Foxx’s super PAC before the March 15, 2016 primary was over and an additional $75,000 after she became Cook County’s top prosecutor. “Soros has been intervening in local races for prosecutor, state’s attorney, and district attorney — often backing left-wing Democrats against other Democrats in doing so,” according to the article.

    Another report published this week reveals that a Soros foundation gave $1 million to a nonprofit that favors choosing the president by popular vote. The group, National Popular Vote Inc., gets millions from leftist groups to push its purported agenda of ensuring that “every vote in every state” matters. Another group, Tides Foundation, that raises money for leftwing causes, also contributed to the popular vote nonprofit. Soros’ OSF’s have given millions of dollars to the Tides Foundation, according to records provided in the story. Based in San Francisco, the group envisions a world of shared prosperity and social justice founded on equality, human rights, healthy communities and a sustainable environment. The nonprofit strives to accelerate the pace of social change by, among other things, working with “marginalized communities.”

    The last article documents what Judicial Watch has reported for years—Soros’ huge influence in the U.S. government, specifically the State Department. The agency pressured Ukraine officials to drop an investigation of a Soros group during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Barack Obama’s U.S. ambassador actually gave Ukraine’s prosecutor general a list of people who should not be prosecuted. “The U.S.-Soros collaboration was visible in Kiev,” the article states. “Several senior Department of Justice (DOJ) officials and FBI agents appeared in pictures as participants or attendees at Soros-sponsored events and conferences.” The piece further reveals that internal memos from Soros’ foundations describe a concerted strategy of creating friendships inside key U.S. government agencies such as the departments of Justice and State.

  • “Legality Questions Plague Leftist Fundraising Giant ActBlue as New Analysis Reveals Over 48% of Its Millions of Donors Are Allegedly Unemployed.”
  • Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber: “Woe is to us! We’re a racist institution! We repent of our white privilege!” Department of Education: “Well, if you’re a racist institution, I guess we’re going to have to investigate you for violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and possibly pull your federal funding.”
  • Nashville’s Democratic Mayor John Cooper caught trying to hide low Wuhan coronavirus infection rates from bars and restaurants. No wonder Americans don’t trust the political class anymore.
  • “Bureaucrats ‘deny the evidence, Hydroxychloroquine reduces death by 73 per cent.'”
  • If you want to know why the vast majority of initially Trump-skeptical conservatives have embraced the president, one reason is that he’s actually willing to name the enemy and take the fight to them:

  • Minneapolis city council members who voted to defund the police are now complaining that there’s not enough police presence to keep citizens safe.

  • You may not have noticed, since the media tried desperately to bury the story, but the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords, formally recognizing Israel. If Obama had done this, it would be the leading MSM story for weeks, with our ruling class insisting he deserved another Nobel Prize.
  • Speaking of the Obama Administration’s incompetence:

  • Other Arab nations are in talks to follow suit. “Those in advanced talks with the US over Israeli relations are though to include Oman, Sudan and Morocco.” And possibly Saudi Arabia.
  • Speaking of which:

    A recent sermon from one of Saudi Arabia’s leading clerics called for Muslims to avoid, quote “passionate emotions and fiery enthusiasm” towards Jews.

    It’s a marked change in tone from Imam Abdulrahman al-Sudais, compared to previous emotional statements he’s made about the plight of the Palestinian people.

    In the past the cleric had prayed for Palestinians to have victory over what he called “invader and aggressor” Jews — a nod to Israel.

    However, Sudais’ new remarks referenced a relationship between them and the Prophet Mohammad.

    “He treated the Jews of Khaybar equally and treated his Jewish neighbor well.”

    All by itself, the softening of the hard-line stance against Israel among leading Wahhbist clerics in “The Land of the Two Holy Cities” is huge, arguably a bigger shift in Muslim thought than all the Arab-Israeli peace treaties combined.

  • Democrats love Palestinians so much that they’re imitating their failed policies:

    The late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir summed up the real obstacle to peace in the Middle East decades ago when she said: “Peace will come when the Arabs start to love their children more than they hate us. We can forgive them for killing our children. We cannot forgive them from forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with them when they love their children more than they hate us.”

    Prime Minister Meir’s sentiments 50 years ago were the result of numerous occasions where Arab leaders rejected very favorable territorial agreements and other peace settlements and opted for war instead. The very clear message was, and has always been, that the Arabs would rather die fighting the Jews than thrive while living alongside them. Just think about the seething hatred an entire group needs to have to sustain such a disastrous outlook. It truly boggles the mind.

    Are today’s Democrats much different? Their single-minded hatred of President Trump and his supporters knows no bounds. They oppose every policy he puts forth, contradict his every statement, and try to undermine his very humanity just like Islamic radicals regularly attempt to dehumanize Jews in Israel and all over the world,

    They don’t even like to refer to him as “President Trump,” as they immaturely prance around on TV and social media calling him “45” as if referring to him solely as the 45th president is some kind of serious insult. Palestinians and other Israel-haters pull a similar move when they refuse to call the land “Israel.” They instead opt for nasty Orwellian terms like “Zionist entity.”

    And now they are running a presidential campaign with the sole message of “get Trump.” There’s not one person really planning to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden; they’re all just Trump-haters. None of those voters can truly articulate the slightest argument for Biden without talking mostly or all about Trump. It’s the most hateful campaign against an incumbent since the pro-slavery Democrats tried to unseat Abe Lincoln in 1864, and that’s saying something.

    All of this hate has been in place of what could have been four years of deal making with Trump, who came into office with no real orthodoxies to maintain and without a long political career filled with masters to oblige.

    Like the wasted 72 years of Palestinian stubbornness in the face of so much Israeli success since 1948, Democrats have chosen a scorched earth policy rather than acknowledge their defeat in the last election or take advantage of any policies they could have pursued with this president on infrastructure, health coverage, and ending U.S. involvement in unending wars.

    Plus hoaxes and blood libels.

  • Department of Justice orders Al Jazeera Plus to register as a foreign agent of Qatar. Good.
  • The Kenosha riots did $50 million in damage.
  • Seattle Mayor May Face Federal Charges Over ‘Autonomous Zone’ Fiasco.” As well she should.
  • #BlackLivesMatter protestors take over a Trader Joe’s in Seattle to protest “lack of access to grocery stores.”
  • Aurora, Colorado police stand-down twice rather than trying to halt a violent felon on a rampage.
  • Two campaign team members for Lacy Johnson, the Republican running against Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, shot, one fatally.
  • Comedian Chris Rock says that Democrats were too focused on the impeachment farce to properly handle the Wuhan coronavirus.
  • An F-35 fighter now costs less to build than an F-15 EX. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • But wait! A secret sixth generation Air Force stealth fighter already completed a test flight after only a single year of development?
  • Dispatch from the newspaper of record:

  • In the “old news is so exciting” category, I had missed that Tony Gonzalez has finally won the Texas 23rd Congressional District Republican runoff over Raul Reyes, and will face Democratic nominee Tina Ortiz for the seat Republican Will Hurd is retiring from.
  • Are Asian illegal aliens on illegal pot farms causing problems on New Mexico Navajo reservations?
  • More Google autocomplete shenanigans. It will autocomplete “Donate Biden” but not “Donate Trump.” (Hat tip: Karl Rehn.)
  • Lessons in Social Justice Warrior tolerance:

  • Rosie and Ellen shows featured toxic work environments where staffers were required to work 80-90 weeks.
  • Alan Dershowitz sues CNN For $300,000,000 in defamation lawsuit. “The Harvard Law professor emeritus is demanding $300,000,000 in compensatory and punitive damages from CNN for misrepresenting his legal arguments in the Trump impeachment trial.”
  • Life on Venus?
  • “New Netflix Movie Actually Murders Puppies To Teach That Murdering Puppies Is Bad.”
  • “Following California’s Plagues Of Darkness And Fire, Pacific Ocean Turns To Blood.” “I figured it was just a murdered hobo, but there was way too much blood. You’d have to have killed at least a thousand hobos, and that hasn’t happened out here since the ’90s.”
  • I chuckled: