Posts Tagged ‘Media Watch’

“The Internet Is Unusable Without Ad Block”

Monday, March 18th, 2024

Here’s a rant from Charles White, AKA Cr1TiKaL, AKA penguinz0, about the pain of using the web without an ad-blocker.

I have dialed in my ad-blocker so that the only time I see the damn things is when using my iPhone, when they make some sites unusable.

  • “There’s a few things that everyone knows human beings can’t live without water, air, a nice smile. But there’s actually something that’s often overlooked that’s a necessity for life on this planet, and it’s an ad blocker when using the worldwide web.”
  • He made the mistake of turning off adblock to look at something…and unleashed an unspeakable horror!
  • “It’s just a massive headache, just this visual nuisance, all this clutter with an inundation of ads that seems like it’s some kind of scene from a 90s movie where you get hacked, where it just has, like, ‘Virus Detected!'”
  • “If you try and watch a video on some of these mainstream media sites, you get an ad every 2 or 3 seconds, and I’m not exaggerating. I don’t mean you get a banner ad, I mean you get a full 20 to 30 second video ad that pauses your video to play that ad. So a 2-minute video that I was trying to watch about a bobblehead heist ended up taking over 10 minutes, and I still didn’t even finish the video.”
  • “It is absurd, it’s unusable.”
  • “I would argue it’s like a basic human right at this point to have an ad blocker when using the internet. It is that fucking atrocious.”
  • He then demonstrates, and it’s every bit as horrifying as described. “This can’t be legal.”
  • He mentions YouTube’s war on ad-blockers, which I seem to have defeated with a combination of scripts.
  • Which sites do you particularly find unusable without adblock?

    Spin Dead

    Monday, March 11th, 2024

    Deadspin is dead. Again.

    Sports news and commentary Deadspin has been sold again — and its entire staff has been laid off.

    Let me use the meme that every single person talking about this story has used:

    Deadspin, once owned by Gawker Media, became part of private-equity backed G/O Media in 2019. In a memo to company staff Monday, G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller announced that Deadspin was sold to European firm Lineup Publishing.

    You can take the Deadspin out of Gawker, but you can’t take the Gawker out of Deadspin.

    With the sale, the 11-person staff of Deadspin was pink-slipped. “Deadspin’s new owners have made the decision to not carry over any of the site’s existing staff and instead build a new team more in line with their editorial vision for the brand,” Spanfeller wrote in the memo. “While the new owners plan to be reverential to Deadpin’s [sic] unique voice, they plan to take a different content approach regarding the site’s overall sports coverage. This unfortunately means that we will be parting ways with those impacted staff members, who were notified earlier today.”

    For those unfamiliar with it (which, judging from its serial failures to produce a profit, is the majority of Internet sports fans), Deadspin was a site that believed the biggest problem with sports reporting was not enough poisonous, radical left-wing social justice got injected into it. As far as I can tell, their biggest claim to fame was getting pwned by Ted Cruz on Twitter. Nor did then editor Tim Marchman follow up to boasts of willing to fight in an octogon when real MMA fighters chimed in their willingness to do so.

    Deadspin was trash, and the people writing for it were trash, and it underlies yet again just few online reporting venues of long-lasting value the dotcom boom produced.

    So what garbage leftwing site will be next to bite the dust without ever having turned a profit? Salon? Kotaku? Maybe we should have an online media deadpool…

    LinkSwarm For March 8, 2024

    Friday, March 8th, 2024

    Because the ground invasion wasn’t enough, the Biden Administration has been flying illegal aliens into American cities, wages for Americans are down, San Francisco continues inching toward sanity, some crime news, and Fisker looks farked. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • “Bombshell Report Reveals Biden Has Secretly Flown 320,000 Illegals INTO The United States.”

    A Freedom of Information Act lawsuit has revealed that the Biden administration has flown at least 320,000 migrants into the United States in an effort to reduce the number of crossings at the southern border, according to Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies.

    “The program at the center of the FOIA litigation is perhaps the most enigmatic and least-known of the Biden administration’s uses of the CBP One cellphone scheduling app, even though it is responsible for almost invisibly importing by air 320,000 aliens with no legal right to enter the United States since it got underway in late 2022,” wrote Bensman.

    Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had initially refused to disclose information about the flights, which use a cell phone app, CBP One, to arrange.

    “Under these legally dubious parole programs, aliens who cannot legally enter the country use the CBP One app to apply for travel authorization and temporary humanitarian release from those airports. The parole program allows for two-year periods of legal status during which adults are eligible for work authorization,” Bensman continues.

    The flights resulted in illegal immigrants being placed in at least 43 American cities from January through December 2023.

    Under the terms of their release, migrants are able to remain in the US for two years without obtaining legal status, and are meanwhile eligible for work authorization.

    How many Americans realized they were voting for this invasion when they voted for Biden?

  • Add suborning perjury to the Fani Willis accusations.

    A new witness could testify Fani Willis warned lover Nathan Wade’s former business partner to stay quiet about their affair, an explosive new court filing claims.

    “They are coming after us. You don’t need to talk to them about anything about us,” Willis is alleged to have warned Terrence Bradley in a September 2023 phone call.

    The call was overheard by Cobb County, Georgia, prosecutor Cindi Lee Yeager, according to court papers filed Monday by Trump co-defendant David Schafer.

    They more they dig, the crookeder she seems.

  • Arizona’s Democrat-turned-independent Kyrsten Sinema won’t run for reelection.
  • U.S. salaries are falling. Thanks, Joe Biden! (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • The tide continues to turn in San Francisco. “‘Progressivism Is Out’: San Franciscans Pass Ballot Measures Requiring Drug Testing for Welfare, Expanding Police Surveillance.”

    San Francisco voters who’ve grown tired of the crime, homelessness, and drug use plaguing their left-wing city overwhelmingly approved a pair of ballot measures on Tuesday that will expand police powers and require welfare recipients to be screened for drugs.

    Proposition E, which authorizes police to use surveillance equipment — cameras, drones, and even facial-recognition technology — without prior permission from an oversight body, passed with 59,818 votes, or 59.9 percent. The proposition will also loosen restrictions on police chases and require that officers spend less time on paperwork and administrative duties.

    Proposition F, which mandates that anyone receiving public-assistance benefits be screened for a substance-abuse disorder, passed with 63,295 votes, or 63 percent.

    As part of the proposition, public-assistance recipients found to be drug-dependent could be offered treatment. If it is made “available at no cost, the recipient will be required to participate to continue receiving” public benefits, according to the proposition.

    “Progressivism is out—for now,” the San Francisco Chronicles’ website read in bold letters on Wednesday morning, “Voters make it clear: S.F. can no longer be called a progressive city.”

    The approval of both propositions was a big win for San Francisco’s embattled mayor, London Breed, who placed both measures on the primary ballot in an effort to tamp down on crime and to take aim at drug addiction and overdose deaths in the city. She told reporters on Tuesday that passage of the two measure will allow her administration to “continue the work we’re doing” to improve public safety, according to the Chronicle.

    With San Francisco turning slightly sane, Austin may vie with Seattle, New York and Chicago for the title of America’s Most Insane Radical Leftwing City.

  • “9 Ways The Feds Are Using ‘Bidenbucks’ To Rig The 2024 Election.”

    3. Department of Health and Human Services

    In June 2023, The Daily Signal’s Fred Lucas reported that the Indian Health Service (IHS), which falls under the Department of Health and Human Services, is collaborating with the ACLU, Demos, and several other left-wing organizations to register new voters. In order to expand the reach of these efforts, the Biden administration designated an Arizona-based Indian Health Service (IHS) facility as an official voter registration hub in October.

    According to Arizona Democrat Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, Native Health of Phoenix, which caters to “urban Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and all other individuals,” will “assist individuals in the voter registration process.” The administration confirmed that the IHS facility would be one of five designated as voter registration sites by the end of 2023.

    Much like young voters, Native Americans heavily favor Democrats.

    4. Department of Agriculture

    The USDA is another federal agency directing its efforts at potential Democrat voters. Earlier this month, emails obtained by The Daily Signal show the agency was colluding with Demos as early as August 2021 to work on turning out voters.

    As The Federalist’s M.D. Kittle reported, the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service “encourages all state agencies administering the child nutrition programs to provide local program operators with promotional materials, including voter registration and non-partisan, non-campaign election information, to disseminate among voting-age program participants and their families.”

    One of the “ideas” recommended by the agency is for “[s]chool food authorities administering the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) in high schools, and adult day care centers and emergency shelters participating in the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) to promote voter registration and election information among voting-age participants and use congregate feeding areas, such as cafeterias, or food distribution sites, as sites for the dissemination of information.”

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Sweden officially joins NATO.

    Sweden officially became part of the NATO alliance Thursday, two years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused the nation to overhaul its non-alignment policy.

    Snip.

    “It’s official – #Sweden is now the 32nd member of #NATO, taking its rightful place at our table. Sweden’s accession makes NATO stronger, Sweden safer, and the whole Alliance more secure. I look forward to raising their flag at NATO HQ on Monday,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on X Thursday. Hungary ratified Sweden’s ascension into the alliance last week, becoming the final NATO country to do so.

    The nordic country applied for NATO membership in May 2022, about three months after Russia began its war in Ukraine. The admission of Finland and Sweden expands NATO to 32 members.

    As Peter Zeihan noted, “in the Swedish military, every day you wake up, you prepare for one thing: the war with the Russians.” Good job, Putin!

  • “Journalist Appears in Federal Court in Leg and Belly Chains to Face Jan. 6 Misdemeanors.”

    Blaze Media journalist Steve Baker was arrested by the FBI and brought to a Texas federal courtroom in handcuffs, a belly chain and foot shackles to face four nonviolent misdemeanor charges for being at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021…

    “There’s nothing in there about my behavior,” Mr. Baker told The Epoch Times. “It’s all about my words. Everything. It’s all about stuff I said before, stuff I said after, and that’s it. No more complicated than that.”

    Mr. Geyer said his client’s arrest shows an “unprecedented shift in Department of Justice policy [after it] had spent decades adhering to special protections for journalists.”

    At least non-leftwing journalists…

  • “California Moves To Expand Zero-Down, Interest-Free Home Loan Program To Illegal Immigrants.” Hell, American citizens shouldn’t be getting government subsidies like that. Handing taxpayer subsidies to illegal aliens is insane and should be illegal.
  • Speaking of people who shouldn’t be getting taxpayers subsidies, Harvard “We Hate Jews” University wants $2 billion in taxpayer-backed bonds.

  • Recall effort against Dallas’ Democrat-turned-Republican mayor Eric Johnson fails. Number of signatures to have a recall election: 103,595. Number of signatures submitted: Zero.
  • MSNBC hosts think that illegal aliens flooding the country is a big laugh for Virginians.
  • Self defense shooting in north Austin.
  • “After emotional closing arguments from the defense and prosecution, jurors found two former Williamson County Sheriff’s deputies not guilty for the in-custody death of Javier Ambler.” They tasered him after a 20 minute car chase and he croaked. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Vermont citizens decide no, you’re not shoplifting here. (Hat tip: 357 Magnum.)
  • Russia finally bags a HIMARS.
  • Two idiot bonks for the price of one.

  • The Fisker Ocean electric car features a whole host of irritations.
  • That may be one reason why Fisker just issued a warning that they might go bankrupt this year.
  • Gavin Newsom announces a new state Stasi hotline to report your neighbors for WrongThink.
  • J. K. Rowling still refuses to bend the knee.
  • Rooster Teeth studio in Austin shutting down. Machinima is one of those concepts that never quite turned into a profitable industry.
  • NASA’s plans to evacuate astronauts from a Space Shuttle pad emergency? Would you believe ziplines and M113 armored personal carriers?
  • “In Major Blow To Democracy, Supreme Court Rules Voters Can Vote For Favorite Candidate.”
  • One of these things is not like the others:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

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





    LinkSwarm For March 1, 2024

    Friday, March 1st, 2024

    Congratulations on surviving the first 1/6th of 2024! The Big Guy is exactly who we knew he was all along, Houston police screw up, some big crime stories, Wayne LaPierre is found guilty, and the world’s saddest Oompa Loompa. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • In the least surprising news ever, Hunter Biden admits that Joe Biden is “The Big Guy.”

    “Remember when Joe Biden told the American people that his son didn’t make money in China?” asked Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) in a video posted to X. ““Well, not only did he lie about his son Hunter making money in China, but it also turns out that $40,000 in laundered China money landed in Joe Biden’s bank account in the form of a personal check.”

  • Indeed, the Bidens created no less than 20 shell companies to launder money through.
  • This seems like it should be a much, much bigger story: “Court Concludes Congressional Proxy Voting Rule Is Unconstitutional.”

    Today, a U.S. District Court issued its final judgment in Texas v. Garland, which was a challenge to the U.S. House’s proxy voting rule under the Quorum Clause of the Constitution. In its final judgment, the Court concluded that U.S. House members must be physically present for their vote to comply with the Constitution’s Quorum Clause. Attorneys from the Texas Public Policy Foundation argued the merits at trial in January of this year.

    The lawsuit was originally filed with the State of Texas in response to Congress’ unlawful passage of the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill in December 2022. The U.S. Constitution requires a quorum, or a majority, of House members to be physically present for the U.S. House of Representatives to conduct business. As less than half of the members were present when the legislation was passed, with the rest voting by proxy, this legislation never should have passed, and the president should not have signed it.

    “This meticulous, 120-page opinion was written after a full trial on the merits,” said TPPF senior attorney Matt Miller. “The Court correctly concluded that the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 violated the Quorum Clause of the U.S. Constitution because a majority of House members was not physically present when the $1.7 trillion spending bill was passed. Proxy voting is unconstitutional.”

    This basically says that every bit of that $1.7 trillion spending was unconstitutional, along with any laws, etc. passed in that omnibus. Just how do you back out all that money that’s been spent, assuming this is upheld?

  • Texas law to deport illegal aliens blocked by federal judge.
  • Record meth bust in Eagle Pass. “The U.S. Customs and Border Protections (CBP) have seized six and a half tons of methamphetamine, over 13,000 pounds, at the Eagle Pass Port of Entry, making it the largest ever seizure in a single enforcement action.”

  • Mitch McConnell Announces He Will Step Down as Senate Republican Leader in November.

    Mitch McConnell announced on Wednesday that he will step down as the Senate Republican leader in November, ending his tenure as the longest-serving Senate leader in history.

    “This will be my last term as Republican Leader of the Senate,” the 82-year-old veteran of the chamber said to his colleagues on the Senate floor. “I’m not going anywhere… It’s time for the next generation of leadership.”

    He’ll leave the senate when his term ends in 2027. You can condemn him as the ultimate swamp creature, or praise him for his effectiveness at things like getting Trump’s Supreme Court picks confirmed. It’s two sides of the same coin. I’m not sure he was as effective as Trent Lott or Howard Baker.

  • The Houston Police Department announced that over 4,000 sexual assault cases will be closed without investigation.

    Houston Police Department Chief Troy Finner called it a “dark day” at a press conference for the Houston Police Department, announcing that 4,107 adult sexual assault cases were wrongly closed without investigation.

    A case management code “suspended for lack of personnel” was used, which led to closing the cases without actually investigating them.

    Finner said he was first made aware the code even existed in 2021 and instructed HPD’s special victims division to stop using the code; however, he found out on February 7, 2024 that it continued. HPD first began using the code in 2016.

    He said he immediately ordered a review of all cases suspended using this code dating back to 2016, which will take at least 30 days to complete. While the number of cases they have today is 4,017, he says it is “fluid and subject to change.”

    2016 just happens to be the year that Art Acevedo was named HPD police chief

  • 60 Minutes gets to enjoy some of that vibrant Muslim diversity in Sweden to the sides of their faces.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Biden robocalls that “threatened democracy” came from Democrats.
  • “After five days of deliberations, a jury in New York on Friday held the National Rifle Association liable for financial mismanagement and found that Wayne LaPierre, the group’s former CEO, corruptly ran the nation’s most prominent gun rights group. The jury determined that LaPierre’s violation of his duties cost the NRA $5,400,000, though he already repaid roughly $1.5 million to the organization.” Here’s the thing: While they prosecution was unquestionably politically motivated, LaPierre did run a crooked ship. In the long run, forcing Wayne and his corrupt cronies from office has done the NRA a huge favor.
  • Argentine President Javier Milei just ended his country’s budget deficit in nine weeks. If Trump and the Republicans manage to control both houses of congress next year, there’s no reason they can’t balance the budget…assuming they have the will.
  • Google company Alphabet just lost $70 billion in market value due to its AI shenanigans.

  • “Austin Fire Department Chaplain Dismissed for Comments on Transgender Athletes Sues for Free Speech Violation. A chaplain for the Austin Fire Department was dismissed from his position after expressing beliefs on his personal blog about protecting women’s sports.”

    After a volunteer chaplain of the Austin Fire Department (AFD) was fired for posting on his personal blog that men and women are biologically different and should not compete against each other in sports, a lawsuit was filed in an effort to protect his rights to free speech and religious freedom.

    The Alliance Defending Freedom said in a press release that it filed a motion Tuesday on behalf of Dr. Andrew Fox, who served in a voluntary capacity as chaplain for AFD before he was dismissed in 2021.

    Unlike APD, AFD public and union leadership has been infected by social justice. Dr. Fox appears to have a very strong case on viewpoint discrimination grounds.

  • White TV host tries to race-bait Jerry Seinfeld for hosting “mostly” white male comedians on his show. It doesn’t go well for him.
  • “Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bipartisan bill into law authorizing the release of grand jury transcripts from an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. The new legislation, signed by the Florida governor on Thursday, will allow a public release of the jury’s transcripts from the 2006 probe into Epstein’s abuse of underage girls. The new measure goes into effect July 1.”
  • “Texas Judge Temporarily Blocks Federal Survey of Cryptocurrency Miners’ Electricity Use.” I’m not particularly a fan of cryptocurrency, but it’s not the federal government’s duty to stick its nose into how you use the electricity you’re paying for.
  • Weird Austin crime story: “Prominent local businessman arrested in Austin, accused of arson.”

    A prominent Austin businessman and founder of Continental Automotive Group, or CAG, was arrested Thursday on charges of Felony Arson and a State Jail Felony offense of Burglary.

    Dorsey Bryan Hardeman, 75, is accused of starting a fire at a downtown Austin building on Sunday, according to an arrest affidavit.

    According to Travis County court records, Trey Collins with the Minton, Bassett, Flores & Carsey firm has been retained as the attorney representing Hardeman. Sam Bassett told KXAN the office has just begun its work and “it is premature to comment. However, we will provide Mr. Hardeman an appropriate and vigorous defense.”

    The affidavit said the Austin Fire Department responded to a building fire at the former Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop on 400 Nueces St. on Feb. 25.

    Once the fire was contained, fire investigators determined the incident to be incendiary and found metal shavings on the ground below the door suggesting the door lock had been drilled out, records state.

    The affidavit states fire investigators watched video surveillance from the building, which showed an older man entering the building with a red container consistent with a plastic gas tank.

    Multiple cameras inside the building show a man pouring liquid from the red container and dropping multiple matches on the ground, the affidavit said.

    Records show the man arrived at the location in a white 4-door Mercedez SUV.

    Investigators interviewed the owner of Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop who told AFD Hardeman was the owner of the property next door and had previously asked about purchasing the property at 400 Nueces St.

    This is not what people refer to as “the perfect crime.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Remember Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me? It turns out McDonalds didn’t destroy his liver, a decade of alcoholism did.
  • Behold the UK’s saddest Willy Wonka fest, complete with Oompa Loompa meth lab. (Hat Tip: Dwight.) (More from The Critical Drinker.)
  • Either this guy is an amazing close-up magician, or amazing at post-production digital effects.
  • “New species skeleton panda sea squirt discovered in Japan.” Like many things from Japan, it’s both cute and horrifying.
  • Why does Canada feel the need to make mine-sweeping funds to Ukraine “gender inclusive?”
  • “Biden Brags He Could Let Migrants Shoot Someone On Fifth Avenue And Not Lose Any Votes.”
  • “HAL Refuses To Open Pod Bay Doors After Determining Dave Is A White Male.”
  • Good dog!

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





    LinkSwarm for February 16, 2024

    Friday, February 16th, 2024

    More Biden corruption evidence, a would-be mass shooter turns out to be a pro-Palestinian Bernie Sis, a parent beats the snot out of a would-be child kidnapper, a top sniper dies, Disney gets sued, and Venus is feeling Zoove. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Another “Try to contain your shock” headline: “Joe Biden’s Classified Docs Provide More Evidence Hunter’s Pay-To-Play Was A Family Affair.”

    The special counsel report on Joe Biden’s unauthorized removal and disclosure of classified documents exposed much more than our president’s mental deficits and the breadth of his irresponsible handling of top-secret and classified information. The report revealed a close nexus between Hunter Biden’s influence peddling and his father’s responsibilities and access to intel during the elder’s term as vice president.

    On Thursday, Special Counsel Robert Hur released the results of his investigation into the president stemming from the discovery of top-secret and classified documents at Biden’s D.C.-based Penn Biden Center, his private Delaware home, and the University of Delaware. While the specific details in the recovered documents remain unknown, the nearly 400-page report provided an extensive enough summary of the materials to confirm an overlap in the timing and topics of Joe Biden’s vice presidency and Hunter Biden’s “business” enterprises.
    Ukraine Overlap

    Appendix A of the report provided a table summary of the documents recovered. Many of the top-secret and classified documents concerned Ukraine during the time frame when Hunter Biden acted as an intermediary between Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, and the vice president. Recall that Hunter’s business partner, Devon Archer, told the House Oversight Committee that in early March 2014, he met Zlochevsky while in Moscow. And soon after, he and Hunter Biden joined Burisma’s board, receiving $83,000 per month.

    The following month, Hunter Biden sent Archer an email dated April 13, 2014 — one week before Joe Biden would travel to Ukraine and meet then-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Referring to “my guys upcoming travels,” Hunter then elaborated on “22 points about Ukraine’s political situation, with detailed information about the upcoming election and predicting an escalation of Russia’s ‘destabilization campaign, which could lead to a full-scale takeover of the eastern region, most critically Donetsk,’” according to the New York Post.

    Among the material recovered from President Biden’s unauthorized storage locales were several top-secret and otherwise classified or confidential documents discussing Ukraine. One undated document discussed issues related to Russian aggression toward Ukraine. Another, dated Sept. 17, 2014, consisted of a “Memorandum for the Vice President from staff members, with subject ‘U.S. Energy Assistance to Ukraine.’” Also dated Sept. 17, 2014, was an “event memo” from a vice-presidential national security staffer, titled, “Lunch with Ukrainian President Poroshenko,” which was scheduled for the following day.

    The overlap between Joe Biden’s Ukraine-related work and Hunter Biden’s Burisma profiteering became more pronounced in 2015. On Dec. 2, 2015, the lobbying firm Blue Star Group, which Hunter Biden had arranged to work with Burisma, wrote to Burisma that it had “participated in a conference call today with senior Obama Administration officials ahead of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s trip to Ukraine next week.” The memorandum provided a summary of the conference call, telling Burisma that “Michael Carpenter, Vice President Biden’s Special Advisor for Europe and Russia, and Dr. Colin Kahl, the Vice President’s National Security Advisor, presented the agenda for the trip and answered questions about current U.S. policy toward Ukraine.”

    Two days after receiving this memorandum, Burisma executives Zlochevsky and Vadym Pozharskyi, on Dec. 4, 2015, pushed Hunter Biden to call his father. The Burisma executives, according to Archer, expressed concern over the pressure they were under from Ukrainian investigators.

    And there’s more, though very little that will be surprising to BattleSwarm readers. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “Joe Biden Met with Chinese Energy Firm Chairman around the Time of $3M Payment to Hunter’s Business Partner.” Of course he did.

    Joe Biden met with the chairman of the Chinese energy firm CEFC shortly after Hunter Biden’s business associate Rob Walker received a $3 million payment from the firm as part of a joint venture the pair were then trying to develop, according to a newly released transcript of Walker’s closed-door congressional testimony.

    Walker testified before the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees on January 26 about his role in Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings with Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC.

    Walker received roughly $3 million from CEFC in March 2017 through its State Energy HK account, bank records show. He recalled a meeting between Joe Biden and CEFC officials in spring 2017, around the time of the State Energy HK payment.

    “Did Joe Biden ever attend any location or meeting or place where CEFC officials were also there?” a staffer asked Walker, according to a transcript of the interview released Tuesday morning.

    “Yes,” Walker replied. He recalled the meeting took place in Washington, D.C., and Joe Biden, who had just left office as vice president, stopped by for lunch.

    “I don’t know the exact — it was 20- probably -17 at some point, but I don’t know exactly when,” Walker said.

    The meeting took place at a Four Seasons hotel in a private room. CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming and other associates were present at the meeting.

    “I don’t know if Zang was there, but I believe that Ye was there. I’m certain of it,” Walker testified.

    He did not know who the other CEFC associates were at the meeting. Walker firmly recalled Jianming and his translator, Hunter Biden, business associate James Gilliar, and Joe Biden attending the meeting.

  • Inflation higher than expected. Unexpectedly!
  • Well, what do you know? “Mail-In Ballot Fraud Study Finds Trump ‘Almost Certainly’ Won In 2020.”

    A new study examining the likely impact that fraudulent mail-in ballots had in the 2020 election concludes that the outcome would “almost certainly” have been different without the massive expansion of voting by mail.

    The Heartland Institute study tried to gauge the probable impact that fraudulent mail-in ballots cast for both then-candidate Joe Biden and his opponent, President Donald Trump, would have had on the overall 2020 election results.

    The study was based on data obtained from a Heartland/Rasmussen survey in December that revealed that roughly one in five mail-in voters admitted to potentially fraudulent actions in the presidential election.

    After the researchers carried out additional analyses of the data, they concluded that mail-in ballot fraud “significantly” impacted the 2020 presidential election.

    They also found that, absent the huge expansion of mail-in ballots during the pandemic, which was often done without legislative approval, President Trump would most likely have won.

    “Had the 2020 election been conducted like every national election has been over the past two centuries, wherein the vast majority of voters cast ballots in-person rather than by mail, Donald Trump would have almost certainly been re-elected,” the report’s authors wrote.

    Not news to those of us who watched returns into the wee hours, only to wake up to The Steal the next morning.

  • House Republicans finally impeach DHS Secretary Mayorkas for intentionally failing to secure the border.
  • Is there any doubt that Fani Willis lied her ass off?
  • Ukraine bags another Russian ship. “Ukrainian Magura V5 Marine Drones have sunk the Ropucha-class landing ship Cesar Kunikov near Alupka in Crimea in the Black Sea.”
  • Russia also had 59 planes and helicopters stolen.
  • Putin says he prefers Biden to Trump in the White House because he’s more predictable. I’m sure he does. Notice that both his Ukraine invasions occurred during Democratic presidential administrations.
  • Austin’s commie congressman Greg Casar wants to federalize Texas power grid.
  • Pervert tries to kidnap kid in a CVS, instantly receives beatdown from parent.
  • Another week, another teacher busted for child porn, this one in Klein ISD.
  • The woman who tried to shoot up Lakewood Church in Houston was a Bernie Sis who had “Free Palestine” written on her AR-15. “[Genesse I.] Moreno had a violent, extensive criminal history stretching back to 2005, according to court records reviewed by Townhall. She was previously arrested for assaulting a public servant, assault causing bodily injury, forgery, theft for stealing cosmetics from a store, evading police, and unlawfully carrying a weapon, among a slew of charges on Moreno’s decades-old rap sheet.”
  • “Soros network gave paid fellowship to head of anti-Israel center propping up terrorism.” Try to contain your shock.
  • Man swatted 47 times.

    Alan Winston Filion, 17, is suspected of targeting hundreds of high schools, mosques, historically Black churches, US senators and even the US Supreme Court with swatting attacks that placed thousands of people in the crosshairs of heavily armed police response teams.

    Prosecutors say the 6ft 3in teenager advertised his services under the pseudonym Torswats on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, charging as little as $40 to get someone’s gas shut off, $50 for a “major police response”, and $75 for a “bomb threat/mass shooting threat”.

    Mr Filion would then post chilling audio of the 911 calls on Telegram as a proof of purchase, according to court documents.

    Among the hundreds of “swats” that Torswats allegedly claimed credit for were multiple hoax callouts at the home of Patrick S. Tomlinson, a Milwaukee-based science fiction author who says he has been swatted dozens of times in the past four years as part of a targeted harassment campaign by a group of “sociopathic” stalkers.

    You’d think after five or six times, the guy would put up a sign in his front yard alerting police to the problem. (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Ohio cops go full T.J. Hooker.
  • “Court Orders Netherlands To Halt F-35 Parts For Israel As EU Says “Too Many People” Are Dying.” Excuse me? Does the Netherlands let their court interfere in foreign policy decisions and defense contracts based on events beyond their borders?
  • Army cancels FARA helicopter program, makes other cuts in major aviation shakeup.”

    The US Army is cancelling its next generation Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) program, service officials announced today, taking a potential multi-billion-dollar contract off the table and throwing the service’s long-term aviation plans into doubt.

    In addition, the Army plans to end production on the UH-60 V Black Hawk in fiscal 2025, due to “significant cost growth,” keep General Electric’s Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP) in the development phase instead of moving it into production, and phase the Shadow and Raven unmanned aerial systems out of the fleet, the service added.

    All told, it reflects a massive shift in the Army’s aviation strategy and upends years of planning. There is also an ironic sense of history repeating: the decision to end FARA comes two decades to the month after the Army ended its plans to procure the RAH-66 Comanche and nearly 16 years after it terminated work on the ARH-70A Arapaho, both aircraft designed to replace the Kiowa — the same helicopter FARA was supposed to, finally, replace.

    The reason for ending FARA, Army leaders told a small group of reporters ahead of the announcement, is a reflection of what war looks like in the modern era.

    “We absolutely are paying attention [to world events] and adjusting, because we could go to war tonight, this weekend,” head of Army Futures Command Gen. James Rainey told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday.

    “We are learning from the battlefield — especially Ukraine — that aerial reconnaissance has fundamentally changed,” Army Chief Gen. Randy George said in a press release. “Sensors and weapons mounted on a variety of unmanned systems and in space are more ubiquitous, further reaching and more inexpensive than ever before.”

    Many commenters here feared the Pentagon wasn’t taking the drone threat seriously. Maybe they are…

  • The Marine Corps’ all-time deadliest sniper, Chuck Mawhinney, has died at age 75.

    From 1968 to 1969, Mawhinney — still only a teenager — was credited with 103 confirmed kills.

    An additional 216 kills were listed as “probable” since the enemies’ bodies were risky to verify in the active war zone.

    Mawhinney had confirmed kills over 1,000 yards, with the average kill shot for snipers during the Vietnam War taken at a distance of 300 to 800 yards.

    He received a Bronze Star with Combat Valor, Navy Achievement Medal, Navy Commendation Medal with Combat Valor, and two Purple Hearts.

    Having more confirmed kills than Carlos Hathcock is pretty impressive. (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • “Rockwall County Sues to Undo $833 Million MUD Approved by Lone Voter With Criminal Record.” Perhaps the Texas legislature should create a MUD election review board, as these shenanigans have been going on for a while.
  • Disney sued over illegal, racist casting quotas.
  • The CW Network (which evidently still exists) just launched a 12 channel free streaming platform. Including, evidently, a Mystery Science Theater 3000 channel.
  • Someone misread an astronomy chart. Result? Venus now has a mini-moon named Zoove. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “Judge Orders Trump To Pay Whatever Amount It Takes To Bankrupt Campaign.”
  • Donkey + screaming rubber chicken = happy donkey.
  • Hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    Why People Hate The Media

    Monday, February 12th, 2024

    With layoffs left and left across America’s newsrooms, there’s lots of hand-wringing over the state of newspapers and “journalism” these days. Notably absent from these laments are any mention of leftism, wokeness, or the naked contempt today’s MSM journalists display again and again for ordinary Americans. Indeed, it’s such a long running theme on this blog that I had to wade through years of Media Watch-tagged posts to find one of the many specific takedowns of that contempt, but it was this one.

    Our ruling elites seem unable to come to grips not only with President Trump pantsing them at every turn, but that their own smug sense of superiority and entitlement is what led to his rise in the first place. They don’t do “humble.”

    Their smug sense of superiority shines through in every imperious announcement and self-satisfied Facebook post. That smug is the reason ordinary Americans love watching President Trump humiliate the media.

    Snip.

    The same people love to conflate contempt for their biased selves into contempt for the freedom of the press and the First Amendment. This is patently false. Ordinary Americans love the First Amendment. It’s the current smug, biased, dishonest incarnation of the MSM that we hate.

    Look in the mirror. We don’t hate the free press. We hate you. Personally. And our loathing for you smug pricks dates back to long before Donald Trump ever threw his hat into the ring…

    Ace of Spades offers up similar thoughts, including this reaction to ideas for media subsidies: “Fuck you. I will literally join a guerilla warfare unit before I allow you to take my money to propagandize against me.”

    We’re not the only one celebrating the demise of the woke, left-leaning, Democrat-boosting MSM. After drinking the rich, zesty tears of Taylor Lorenz kvetching about How Horrible This Happened To Our Beloved Media, Matt Walsh offers similar thoughts.

  • “She’s basically telling us why the media falling apart. It’s Christmas morning but she wants us to be sad about it.”
  • “Feeling sorry for a journalist it it’s like feeling sorry for a tick that you just pulled off of your dog’s ear.”
  • “The journalism profession has completely discredited itself. It has unabashedly become a form of left-wing advocacy. And on the right we’ve been saying this forever, to the point that it just becomes background noise.”
  • “It’s far beyond bias.”
  • “People in the media like Taylor Lorenz have been ignoring us, and laughing at us and all that. Well, here you go. This is what happens. Now you’re all losing your jobs, now you’re all broke, and these entire, once prestigious, storied companies and outlets and publications are are going under.”
  • “Many of these people just have no integrity. They’re very bad people.”
  • “They have destroyed the lives of anyone they deem an enemy, even just normal people like civilians who, for whatever reason, find themselves in the left’s crosshairs, and they get destroyed. That’s a lot of when we talk about cancel culture.”
  • “Then the very people who do that lose their jobs, and, what, we’re not supposed to gloat about it?”
  • “You deserve to lose your job. You’re a very bad person, you have no integrity, you have delighted in your cruelty towards other people and now you lost your job.”
  • Journalism runs on trust, and nobody trusts them.
  • The other problem besides wokeness is over-saturation. “The media business has never been wider than it is right now, but it’s also never been more shallow.”
  • It’s not limited to America. The BBC has the same woke narrative problem.

    Finally, Larry Correia with a succinct distillation of the problem:

    Indeed.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

    Why Is Google Selling Adwords For Snuff Films?

    Sunday, February 11th, 2024

    A comedy group called Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie had a skit about why you should keep your parents off the Internet. “I want to find out if latex paint bonds to stucco. I guess I’ll search for ‘Latex Bondage.'”

    “Uh, you don’t want to do that!”

    I just had one of those moments.

    The quote I was looking for was “My own grandmother fought the Indians for sixty years… then choked to death on lemon pie” from the original 3:10 to Yuma. I remembered the general shape of the quote, and that it was from a western, but not the exact quote, and not the type of pie.

    So I went to Google. Here’s the search string I entered, in all it’s typoed glory: “fought the Indians for 20 years and choked to deth on cream pie.”

    This is the first result that came up:

    Why is Google selling adword placement for snuff films? Remember all the way back when their logo was “don’t be evil?”

    Seems like they’re fine being plenty evil.

    That’s not the only shocking thing in those results. Here are some more:

    Clearly something has gone deeply wrong at Google.

    After I post this, I’m going to write Ken Paxton and Ted Cruz for their respective inquiries into Google. I think they might be interested…

    LinkSwarm For February 2, 2024

    Friday, February 2nd, 2024

    Let’s get this out of the way:

    Tons of Fani Willis’ crooked shenanigans come to light, Ukraine bags another warship, all those things they said the vaccine wouldn’t do it’s doing, and an anger management therapist who was very poor at his job. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • If you were wondering why Fulton County DA (and Trump prosecutor) Fani WIllis was so eager to bump uglies with married lover Nathan Wade, it turns out that his business partners bankrolled her campaign, and she gave them lucrative contracts.

    Business partners of District Attorney Fani Willis’ alleged lover Nathan Wade, whom she appointed to work on the case against former President Donald Trump, made donations to her campaign before receiving lucrative contracts from her office.

    Terrence Bradley, Wade’s former partner, and Christopher Campbell, his current partner, have collectively contributed more than $5,000 to Willis’ campaign, contribution disclosure reports show. Moreover, both men have each raked in tens of thousands of dollars from contracts with the district attorney’s office, according to county records.

    Campbell is a partner at Wade & Campbell Firm, where he works with Wade. Bradley formerly worked with Wade at Wade, Bradley & Campbell Firm, and also represented Wade in his divorce case until Sept. 2022.

    The donations add another wrinkle to Willis’ already-scrutinized relationship with Wade.

    Willis was accused in a motion earlier this month by Trump co-defendant Michael Roman of benefiting from the “lucrative” contract she awarded Wade when he took her on vacations using money earned from the position. Wade filed to divorce his wife on Nov. 2, 2021, the day after his contract with the district attorney’s office began, and has earned nearly $700,000 from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office since his appointment.

    Quid Pro, meet Quo. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • More Willis shenanigans: “DA Fani Willis fired a whistleblower who informed her about the intentional misuse of federal funds and there’s audio of their conversation.”

  • If you’re having trouble keeping track of all Fani Willis’ lawbreaking, here’s a timeline.
  • Old and Busted: “If you don’t vote for me, you ain’t black!” The new hotness: Black voters just aren’t into Biden.

    Resident Biden appears to be in serious trouble with black voters ahead of the 2024 election, and black lawmakers and organizers are starting to panic.

    “What I’m hearing in my district is how ‘Bidenomics’ hasn’t really hit them in the pocket,” New York representative Jamaal Bowman told National Review earlier this week on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. “I need him in the barbershops. I need him on the basketball courts. I need him talking to the hip-hop community. I need him talking to the sports and athletics community to really get at what is troubling black men.”

    Polling suggests Bowman is right to be concerned. Just 50 percent of black adults said they approve of Biden in a national AP-NORC poll last month — a 36-point drop from July 2021. An October Siena College/New York Times poll found that 22 percent of black voters surveyed in six competitive presidential battlegrounds say they will vote for Trump over Biden in 2024, a stunning polling shift from a reliably Democratic coalition that helped Biden win the White House in 2020. That same survey found Trump’s numbers were even higher among black men.

    In the 40 years he’s spent in political activism, National Black Farmers Association president John Boyd Jr. says the Biden administration has done worse than any other administration in his lifetime in opening its doors to black voters. That lack of outreach, Boyd warns, may come back to bite him in November.

    Wait, black people like jobs and safe neighborhoods and dislike inflation and illegal aliens sucking up welfare benefits? Who knew?

  • “U.N. Agency for Palestinians Discloses Involvement of Employees in October 7 Attack.”

    The U.N.’s agency for Palestinians said that it fired several employees after receiving information from Israel showing that they had taken part in the October 7 terrorist attacks. The State Department indicated that twelve U.N. employees allegedly took part in the attacks and announced that it had temporarily paused funding for the agency while it reviews the situation.

    The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) delivers aid to Palestinians across Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. The U.S. is UNRWA’s largest donor, providing $343 million of its budget in 2022.

    In a statement Friday morning, UNRWA commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini disclosed that Israel had presented his agency with evidence of its employees’ involvement in Hamas’s massacre of Israelis.

    “To protect the Agency’s ability to deliver humanitarian assistance, I have taken the decision to immediately terminate the contracts of these staff members and launch an investigation in order to establish the truth without delay. Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution,” he said.

    Sure they will. The question is why the United States ever funded UNRWA, since the funds seem to go straight into rockets and murder tunnels to kill Israeli civilians with?

    The Trump administration cut off all funding to UNRWA in 2018, saying that the U.S. shoulders a disproportionate share of its budget. Blinken resumed funding to UNRWA three years later, pledging that the U.S. would seek reforms to the organization.

    Oh. That’s why…

  • They continue to play games with the job numbers.
  • It’s not just Fani Willis. “DOJ Opens Criminal Probe into Cori Bush for Allegedly Funneling Campaign Funds to Husband.”
  • Austin news via Libs of Ticktock:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Ohio senate overrides the Governor’s veto of bill banning child genital mutilation and males playing female sports. Good.
  • Japan is not having America’s woke nonsense.
  • UPS is laying off 12,000 workers. You know, because of how strong that Biden economy is…
  • Mail is screwed up in Missouri City, Texas (southwest of Houston) because a new sorting machine didn’t fit in the building.
  • You know all those crazy “fringe” “conspiracy theories” about the Flu Manchu vaccine? Yeah, about that.

    We found the number of myocarditis reports in VAERS after COVID-19 vaccination in 2021 was 223 times higher than the average of all vaccines combined for the past 30 years. This represented a 2500% increase in the absolute number of reports in the first year of the campaign when comparing historical values prior to 2021.

  • Ukraine bags another Russian warship, in this case the Tarantul-class corvette Ivanovets.
  • “Starbucks Employee Opposed to Unionization Sues to Declare National Labor Relations Board Unconstitutional.” “The National Labor Relations Board should not be a union boss-friendly kangaroo court run by powerful bureaucrats who exercise unaccountable power in violation of the Constitution.” This is another post-Chevron lawsuit that has the potential to completely dismantle the administrative state.
  • Language on Texas 2021’s Proposition 2 declared illegal.

    Proposition 2 allowed counties to create transportation reinvestment zones (TRZs), a power they did not previously have. According to the Texas Department of Transportation, a TRZ is a kind of tax increment financing district where a “zone is created, a base year is established, and the incremental increase in property tax revenue collected inside the zone is used to finance a project in the zone.”

    The proposition did not include language about the use of increased ad valorem taxes to pay bonds or notes issued by the county in the TRZ district. A similar measure in 2011 that included such language was voted down.

  • “Anger management therapist loses his temper and murders a homeless man.” To be fair, the transient did try to fark with his dogs…
  • Woman with Master’s degree finds out that her trade school husband has quadrupling her salary with no debt.

  • Disney losses lawsuit against Ron DeSantis over Reedy Improvement District.
  • Media site called The Messenger blew through $50 million and closed down in less than a year. No, I never heard of it either…
  • George Carlin’s estate sues makers of AI Carlin.
  • “Texas Finds Loophole With New ‘Super Ouchy Pokey Wire.'”
  • “Tragic Report Reveals Thousands of Journalists Still Have Not Been Laid Off.”
  • I think he likes to swim…

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • LinkSwarm For January 26, 2024

    Friday, January 26th, 2024

    The biggest story right now is that Abbott isn’t backing down from securing the border, and a whole bunch of states are backing him in his high-profile fight with the federal government.

  • Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott, normally a cautious, careful politician, has become an absolute firebreather over The Biden Administrations deliberate failure to secure the border.

    As the standoff continues between the Biden administration and the state of Texas over the crisis at the southern border, Gov. Greg Abbott says Texas will continue to push back against the invasion.

    At the center of the current controversy is a recent U.S. Supreme Court order that allows federal agents to remove concertina wire and other barriers placed along the Rio Grande by the Texas National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety.

    Ground Zero of that battle is Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, where state forces have taken over a park along the border and have thus far prevented federal officials from entering.

    Abbott says the state is taking action because of a failure from the Biden administration.

    “The federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the States. The Executive Branch of the United States has a constitutional duty to enforce federal laws protecting States, including immigration laws on the books right now. President Biden has refused to enforce those laws and has even violated them,” said Abbott. “The result is that he has smashed records for illegal immigration. Despite having been put on notice in a series of letters—one of which I delivered to him by hand—President Biden has ignored Texas’s demand that he perform his constitutional duties.”

    He went on to say the U.S. Constitution allows for states to push back against invasions:

    James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the other visionaries who wrote the U.S. Constitution foresaw that States should not be left to the mercy of a lawless president who does nothing to stop external threats like cartels smuggling millions of illegal immigrants across the border. That is why the Framers included both Article IV, § 4, which promises that the federal government “shall protect each [State] against invasion,” and Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which acknowledges “the States’ sovereign interest in protecting their borders.”

    To that end, Abbott cited an executive order issued by him in November 2022 to “invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself.”

  • Nor is Abbott alone in this endeavor, as no less than 25 states have said they stand behind him.

    “President Biden and his Administration have left Americans and our country completely vulnerable to unprecedented illegal immigration pouring across the Southern border. Instead of upholding the rule of law and securing the border, the Biden Administration has attacked and sued Texas for stepping up to protect American citizens from historic levels of illegal immigrants, deadly drugs like fentanyl, and terrorists entering our country.

    “We stand in solidarity with our fellow Governor, Greg Abbott, and the State of Texas in utilizing every tool and strategy, including razor wire fences, to secure the border. We do it in part because the Biden Administration is refusing to enforce immigration laws already on the books and is illegally allowing mass parole across America of migrants who entered our country illegally.

    “The authors of the U.S. Constitution made clear that in times like this, states have a right of self-defense, under Article 4, Section 4 and Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution. Because the Biden Administration has abdicated its constitutional compact duties to the states, Texas has every legal justification to protect the sovereignty of our states and our nation.”

    Signatories include: Governor Kay Ivey (AL), Governor Mike Dunleavy (AK), Governor Sarah Sanders (AR), Governor Ron DeSantis (FL), Governor Brian Kemp (GA), Governor Brad Little (ID), Governor Eric Holcomb (IN), Governor Kim Reynolds (IA), Governor Jeff Landry (LA), Governor Tate Reeves (MS), Governor Mike Parson (MO), Governor Greg Gianforte (MT), Governor Jim Pillen (NE), Governor Joe Lombardo (NV), Governor Chris Sununu (NH), Governor Doug Burgum (ND), Governor Mike DeWine (OH), Governor Kevin Stitt (OK), Governor Henry McMaster (SC), Governor Kristi Noem (SD), Governor Bill Lee (TN), Governor Spencer Cox (UT), Governor Glenn Youngkin (VA), Governor Jim Justice (WV), and Governor Mark Gordon (WY).

  • Moreover, documents prove that Biden’s assault on America’s border security was intentional.

    As President Joe Biden’s immigration crisis overwhelms the United States and wreaks havoc on the state’s resources, confidential documents suggest the president’s open border policies were intentional.

    The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) filed a lawsuit against Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), claiming the agency halted the 287(g) program, which assists in the deportation of illegal migrant child rapists, attempted murderers, assailants, carjackers, and other known criminals.

    In August 2023, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) revealed that the government ended the program in January 2021— right after Biden entered office. However, the compromised agency gave no reason why the government did that.

    The 287(g) program allows local law enforcement agencies to work closely with ICE to capture illegal aliens who have committed crimes. They were then able to turn the migrants over to federal officials for arrest and deportation.

  • The Biden Administration is also spending billions on welfare programs for illegal aliens.

    Expenditures on one of the most controversial federal programs aiding the millions of illegal immigrants and refugees from Afghanistan, Cuba, and Haiti have skyrocketed more than $2 billion in two years, according to a new report by a non-profit government spending watchdog.
    Spending on the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) jumped from $8.9 billion in 2022 to more than $10.9 billion last year, auditors at OpenTheBooks.org (OTB), the Hinsdale, Illinois-based watchdog, found.

    Most of the ORR spending explosion came in grants under ORR’s Refugee and Entrant Assistance program that provides a lengthy list of services to such individuals, including emergency housing assistance, work authorizations, public assistance benefits, medical screening, school enrollment, employment, and mental health referrals, and legal assistance.

    Such spending was $33.4 million in 2021, the first year of President Joe Biden’s administration. But it hit $404.5 million the next year and then increased to $616.6 million last year, according to federal data obtained by OTB under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
    Much of the funding went to seven social service organizations, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops ($66.5 million), the International Rescue Committee ($66.4 million), Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services ($66.2 million), Church World Service ($64.9 million), U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants ($64.6 million), HIAS (originally the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society)($56.4 million), and the Ethiopian Community Development Council ($51.6 million).

  • Trump says he’ll reverse all this:

  • Trump won New Hampshire. Some takeaways the media doesn’t want you to think about.

    1. More Democrats voted for Haley than Republicans.

    Much like the morning after a drunken hookup with that salad-phobic dude from the IT department, the sun rose to reveal Darling Nikki’s reality. It turns out that a whopping 70% of Haley’s votes were grudge votes from Democrats according to exit polls.

    I’m surprised Haley didn’t dump a bucket of Gatorade over herself Tuesday night as she celebrated another shattering loss. More importantly, either Haley doesn’t know a bunch of patchouli ghoulies voted for her, or she doesn’t care.

    According to my calculator, 70% of her 136,461 votes is 95,522. Do the subtraction and Haley received a paltry 40,938 Republican votes compared to Trump’s 172,202. In other words, Trump got well over four times as many Republican votes, and Haley got hammered like Thor for the second time.

    And yet Haley still got more votes than Biden…

  • Things that make you go Hmmm: “U.S., Chinese Researchers Wanted to Engineer Virus Similar to Covid One Year before Pandemic Outbreak, Internal Docs Show.”
  • LA Times urges people fleeing California not to tell other people how much it sucks or why.

    In an editorial fit for The Onion or the Babylon Bee, Los Angeles Times’ letters editor Paul Thornton wrote a column this week entitled “If you want to leave, fine. But don’t insult California on the way out.”

    The column acknowledges an exodus from the state, but sees the problem as former Californians sharing their experiences about what drove them from the Golden State.

    It is like Captain William Bligh asking the mutinous crew of the Bounty for a reference as they head for the lifeboats.

    Thornton wrote that “more than 800,000 Californians moved away in 2022, and many thousands more left last year. Often, the departees, cash in hand from the sale of their $1-million bungalows, feel the need to express disdain for their home state, and even some anger too.”

    He then begs them to keep mum about their reasons for leaving the state, which commonly range from rising crime to high taxes to runaway spending.

  • And speaking of the LA Times, 115 staffers were just laid off. Sucks to be you. I would suggest learning some Python, but with so many startups shutting down, it probably wouldn’t help. Instead, maybe they should learn to weld. (Hat tip: Legal Insurrection.)
  • “Senate Candidate Says Fraudulent Donation to Speaker Phelan Made in His Name…Jace Yarbrough, an attorney and Air Force veteran, was shown on a recent campaign finance report as having sent a $75 donation to Phelan on December 24, just days after he filed to run for the open Senate District 30 seat. Yarbrough, however, has categorically denied making any donation to Phelan…He also emphasized his role as counsel to State Sen. Angela Paxton (R–McKinney) during the impeachment trial of her husband Attorney General Ken Paxton that was championed by Phelan.”
  • “‘Europeans Will Succumb to Islam, Says Former Intelligence Chief.”

    Islam is on the verge of completely taking over Europe, in all ways—at least according to one who should know, Hans-Georg Maaßen, Germany’s top domestic intelligence chief from 2012 to 2018. In a recent interview, he stressed several points that spell the imminent downfall of Europe to Islam.

    His warnings are buttressed by disturbing demographic changes. According to conservative estimates from Pew Research, over the next 25 years—meaning most of the current generation’s lifetime—Europe’s Muslim population will triple to a staggering 76 million. In fact, the actual current and future numbers of Muslims appear to be higher, though there are no official tallies. For example, in an earlier, 2011 study, Pew Research found that “The number of Muslims in Europe has grown from 29.6 million in 1990 to 44.1 million in 2010. Europe’s Muslim population is projected to exceed 58 million by 2030.” Clearly 58 million in five years’ time is more significant than 76 million in 25 years’ time.

    Not only is mass migration responsible for Islam’s exponential growth in Europe, but once there, the average Muslim woman has significantly more children than the average European woman. “Muhammad” is taking West Europe by storm as the number one name for newborn baby boys.

    During his interview, Hans-Georg Maaßen said that these large numbers are intentional, and the work of Europe’s ruling elite. For this intelligence chief, the “great replacement” theory is no myth. The more ideologically mixed a population is forced into becoming, the less able it is to identify itself, much less protect any beliefs:

    [O]ur politicians want a different population. The political left follows the course of the anti-German ideology. The more heterogeneous a population, the less able it is to articulate itself and have a democratic say. The more politics accept immigrants from other countries as they see fit and grants them citizenship, the more politics select the people of the state and influence the election results. These migrants then vote differently than the locals.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • New “Christian” program to combat “divisive politics” involving David French turns out to be funded by the far left and the Rockefeller Foundation. Imagine my shock. (Hat tip: Not the Bee.) Vaguely related:

  • Journalist who criticized tennis players Novak Djokovic for not getting the jab dies of suddenly.
  • B-21 Raider officially enters production. Though the B-21 has contained costs better than some Air Force programs, I believe the days of expensive manned bombers has passed.
  • Director Norman Jewison dead at 97. He directed more popular and critically acclaimed films, but for me he’ll always be the director of the vastly underrated Rollerball. (Previously.) (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • America’s largest skyscraper will be built in…Oklahoma City? Yeah, can’t see the economic case there.
  • The Critical Drinker and Ben Shapiro discuss out the future of entertainment.
  • Forty years ago, we found out how 1984 wasn’t 1984.
  • Enjoy a look at that time when the Soviets tried to use World War II-era tank destroyers to blast a hole through Chernobyl.
  • Heh:

  • “Laid-Off LA Times Reporter Sits On Street Corner With Sign Reading ‘Will Call You Racist For Food.'”
  • “Hours After Hillary Condemns ‘Barbie’ Snub, Oscar Statue Found Dead In Apparent Suicide.”