Posts Tagged ‘Philadelphia’

LinkSwarm for October 6, 2023

Friday, October 6th, 2023

The job search continues, Buddy is healing nicely from his surgery, and we’ve finally gotten some decent cool weather. This week: More Biden border follies, social justice types getting stabbed by reality, and a double dose of doggy goodness. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • We touched on this earlier this week, but the Biden Administration has done a 180 and will allow Texas to construct a border wall.

    Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas waived 26 federal laws Wednesday, allowing border-wall construction in south Texas to resume under the Biden administration for the first time since former president Donald Trump left office.

    “There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” Mayorkas wrote in the notice.

    The new construction project will add an additional 20 miles to the border wall in Starr County, Texas, which has been reported as an area experiencing “high illegal entry.” Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector, in which the county is located, has seen over 245,000 illegal migrants enter the U.S. through that area during fiscal year 2023.

    Among the 26 laws that the DHS waived included the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and Endangered Species Act, all notable environmental laws that limited further construction of the wall. The project will be funded by a congressional appropriations package from fiscal year 2019, the notice stated.

    The announcement marks a noticeable flip from President Joe Biden’s original stance on the matter. “Building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution,” Biden said in January 2021, ending the national emergency over the border crisis when he first became president.

    While running against Trump in 2020, Biden emphatically stated, “There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration.”

    Of course the same overflowing conditions have been plaguing the border throughout the entirety of Biden’s term, but Democratic mayors we’re screaming for relief from their own “sanctuary city” policies until recently. Chalk up another win for Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s illegal alien busing policies.

  • Or maybe not? “Mayorkas Furiously Backpedals After Claiming ‘Acute & Immediate Need’ For Border Wall.”
  • The Biden border invasion, by the numbers.

    3 million people, more or less, were “encountered” by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which includes the Border Patrol, illegally entering the U.S. in fiscal year 2023 (which ended Sept. 30). On Mayorkas’ watch, we have set the record for the highest number of yearly illegal alien encounters in U.S. history. If those caught in 2023 formed a new city, it would the third biggest in America, behind only New York and Los Angeles.

    304,000 illegal aliens were encountered this August alone (the last month for which we have official government numbers). That’s the population of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

    75% of August’s inadmissible aliens were freely let in by President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security. Mayorkas has told the press and Congress many times that the border is not open. But if a door admits three of every four people who attempt to go through it, can we consider it closed? A philosophical question, perhaps. Maybe we can settle on “mostly open,” like the “mostly dead” Wesley in the movie “The Princess Bride” or the “mostly peaceful” riots of 2020.

    Read the whole thing. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Satanic Pedophile Extortion Cult Uncovered By FBI After NY Arrest.”

    A November 2021 arrest in Queens, New York led to the discovery of a satanic cult of pedophile extortionists known as 764, which has been linked to significant criminal activity around the globe. The organization, which goes byseveral aliases, was uncovered by the FBI while investigating alarming posts on social media made by 23-year-old Angel Almeida of Astoria, Queens, The Guardian reports.

    Almeida was flagged to the FBI by an anonymous tipster who was concerned over his social media accounts, which contained images of violence against children and animals. In one post, he expressed support for Charleston mass-murderer Dylann Roof. Another post showed him talking around with a shotgun while wearing a “a skull mask and crossed bandoliers of rifle ammunition across his chest with a flag in the background featuring an Order of Nine Angles symbol.”

    Almeida served 18 months in prison for third degree burglary in 2018, and was arrested for being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was detained in Brooklyn’s metropolitan detention center. In February 2023, federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment on child pornography and exploitation charges related to his involvement in the cult, as well as hundreds of thousands of digital files recovered from his residence.

    In new charges, Almeida is accused of coercing a teenage girl into having sex with an older man, and convincing another girl to cut herself on camera and send it to him.

    In one post, Almeida posts “For the 2k pedophile haters,” showing his finger over the trigger guard of a Taurus handgun.

  • FBI creates “MAGA Extremist” category to target Trump supporters.
  • I haven’t kept up with internal issues in Commie dystopian Venezuela, but evidently they’re having trouble with criminal gangs.

    Early in the morning of September 20, 11,000 members of the Venezuelan security forces deployed around the notorious prison of Tocorón in Aragua state, the home base of the country’s most powerful criminal structure, the Tren de Aragua.

    “The Bolivarian Government informs that the Cacique Guaicaipuro Liberation Operation has been underway since the early hours of the morning. Its objective is to dismantle and put an end to organized crime gangs and other criminal networks operating from the Tocorón Penitentiary, to the detriment of the tranquility of the Venezuelan people,” read an official communiqué.

    Residents living near the prison were awakened by the sounds of armored vehicles speeding towards the prison, in what is one of the largest deployments ever of the Venezuelan security forces.

    The simple fact that the operation, named after a legendary native chief of the 16th Century, needed 11,000 soldiers and officials speaks to the power of the Tren de Aragua and its leader Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias “Niño Guerrero,” in Tocorón.

    The prison, which is in the central state of Aragua and home to some 7,000 inmates, is one of the biggest in the country.

    This operation, the first against the Tren de Aragua, and the largest of its kind to date, is a clear show of force by the Venezuelan government.

    Tocorón has long been home to the Tren de Aragua and Niño Guerrero, who ran the prison like his personal fiefdom with the blessing of the prison ministry (Ministerio de Poder Popular para el Servicio Penitenciario). Niño Guerrero, imprisoned for murder, was the “pran” of Tocorón prison, essentially the criminal warden in a system set up by the first Prison Minister Iris Varela, now Vice President of the National Assembly. The pran system saw inmates take control of several prisons across the country in exchange for maintaining order, reducing homicides, and ending jail uprisings.

    This operation might signal the end of the pran system, something suggested in the official communique of the operation, which stated that the operation was to “restore and dignify the penitentiary system.”

    The question now is whether this operation will disrupt the leadership and running of the Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal structure with thousands of affiliates with a presence not only across Venezuela, but in Colombia, Peru, and Chile. The Tren de Aragua has projected power abroad, riding off the backs of the more than seven million Venezuelans who have fled the economic collapse and authoritarian regime presided over by President Nicolás Maduro.

    What has prompted Maduro to act after years of tolerating the criminal fiefdom of Tocorón? The Venezuelan president has long tolerated criminal structures operating in the country, both Venezuelan and Colombian, because he needed access to criminal rents to maintain the loyalty of key generals and political figures, as the state teetered on the brink of bankruptcy.

    However, since 2020, the Venezuelan security forces have moved against several defiant criminal groups, like the megabanda of Carlos Luis Revete, alias “El Koki,” and dissident elements of the rebel group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC), which set up drug trafficking infrastructure in the Venezuelan department of Apure. The operation against the ex-FARC saw the deployment of significant military forces, which ended up humiliated by the Colombian rebels, who captured eight soldiers and forced a military withdrawal. This might explain the apparent overkill with the Tocorón operation: Maduro clearly did not want any further defeats or humiliations.

  • “Philadelphia Journalist Who Mocked Concern Over Violent Crime In Democrat Cities Shot Dead In Home.”

    A left-wing Philadelphia journalist who mocked concern over rising crime in Democrat-run cities was shot to death in his home.

    Josh Kruger was shot seven times after someone entered his home, shot him at the base of his stairs, and then fled. Kruger ran outside seeking help from his neighbors and collapsed, where police found them after responding to call just before 1:30 a.m. on the 2300 block of Watkins Street.

    Kruger, 39, was rushed to the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he died just before 2:15 a.m.

    No arrests have been made, and there was no sign of forced entry into the home, according to Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore.

    “Either the door was open, or the offender knew how to get the door open,” he said. “We just don’t know yet.”

    Detectives believe his death may have been the result of a domestic dispute or may have been drug-related, according to three law enforcement sources with knowledge of the case. The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said police investigators recovered troubling text messages between Kruger and a former partner. Investigators also recovered methamphetamine inside Kruger’s bedroom, the sources said. -Inquirer

    Snip.

    Kruger frequently mocked conservatives on X, ironically calling Dilbert creator Scott Adams “Nostradamus” on Saturday for predicting that people would be dead “within the year” of Biden’s election.

    Kruger also mocked conservatives concerned over the city’s shootings, which he said were “dropping to levels not seen in years.”

  • Speaking of social justice supporters being shot: “Social justice activist fatally stabbed in front of girlfriend in Brooklyn. The search is on for the man who fatally stabbed Ryan Carson, who dedicated his life to fighting for social justice.” And that’s how social justice says “thank you.” (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Shellyne Rodriguez, the crazy social justice warrior Manhattan College professor who threatened a reporter with a machete is getting off with no jail time, because of course she is. (Previously.) (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar was carjacked at gunpoint in Washington D.C. on Monday night.
  • Paxton Endorses Primary Opponents of Incumbent Republicans Who Backed Impeachment. Paxton endorsed David Covey in his race against Speaker Dade Phelan and Wes Virdell in his race against Rep. Andrew Murr.”
  • Ruble hits penny parity again.
  • Starbucks is closing seven San Francisco stores. Gee, I wonder why. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ)
  • Turkish drone gets too close to U.S. troops in Syria. Turkish drone goes boom.
  • Dwight has a pretty nice post on the fallen at the Battle of Mogadishu, AKA Black Hawk Down.
  • It’s a ski jump competition, except for different types of tires. Oh, Japan, don’t ever change.
  • “Senator Feinstein Death Not Expected To Affect Re-election Campaign.”
  • Yo, dawg, we heard you like dogs, so we put your dog on your dog so your dog’s dog can dog while you dog, dawg.
  • The cutest rooster:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Here’s the tip jar, if you’re so inclined:





    This Is Your City On Democrats: Philadelphia

    Monday, June 12th, 2023

    Evidently it is the deepest desire of Democratic Party activists to turn the streets of American cities into needle-strewn wastelands of drug addicts openly shooting up and shitting on the street. Because that’s the results that the Democratic Party drug- and crime-tolerant policies create time and time again.

    Here’s a video of the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia.

  • “This is Kensington Philadelphia the center of America’s drug epidemic overrun with a drug known as tranq, a mixture of horse tranquilizer and Fentanyl that’s turning people there into real life zombies.”
  • Needles are everywhere on the streets, despite the remaining law-abiding occupants and shop owners sweeping them up in the morning.
  • “People come here from all over. They drive here and then they never leave. So everyone comes out here to get drugs. This is the hub, and you can shoot them up and cops wouldn’t do anything about it.”
  • “It’s crazy. You’ll see one block that looked clean, and then you go to the next block over: feces.”
  • “A new problem 24/7 gambling [machines]…they’re in every store.”
  • “Everyone’s using tranq.”
  • Even the drug addicts call frforom bringing the military in to clean up the place.
  • Unmentioned: Philadelphia’s DA is Larry Krasner, another George Soros-backed stooge. Vote for a Soros stooge, get 24/7 open air drug markets in your city, absolutely free!
  • LinkSwarm for December 2, 2022

    Friday, December 2nd, 2022

    Howdy! Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving! I spent six days up in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, visiting relatives and buying some 180 books, some for myself and some to deal. Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm!
    

  • We keep hearing that it’s impossible rig government unemployment statistics, but something funny is going on.

    A superficial take of today’s jobs report would note that both jobs and earnings “blew past expectations, flying in the face of Fed rate hikes”, and while that is accurate at the headline level, it couldn’t be further from the truth if one actually digs a little deeper in today’s jobs numbers.

    Recall that back in August, September, and October we showed that a stark divergence had opened between the Household and Establishment surveys that comprise the monthly jobs report, and since March the former has been stagnant while the latter has been rising every single month. In addition to that, full-time jobs were plunging while part-time jobs were surging and the number of multiple-jobholders soared.

    Fast forward to today when the inconsistencies not only continue to grow, but have become downright grotesque.

    Consider the following: the closely followed Establishment survey came in above expectations at 263K, above the 200K expected – a record 7th consecutive beat vs expectations – and down modestly from last month’s upward revised 284K…

    … numbers which confirm that at a time when virtually every major tech company is announcing mass layoffs…

    … the BLS has a single, laser-focused political agenda – not to spoil the political climate at a time when Democrats just lost control of the House as somehow both construction (+20K) and manufacturing (+14K) added jobs according to the BLS, when even ADP now reports that these two sectors combined shed more than 100,000 workers in November.

    Alas, there is only so much the Department of Labor can hide under the rug because when looking at the abovementioned gap between the Household and Establishment surveys which we have been pounding the table on since the summer, it just blew out by a whopping 401K as a result of the 263K increase in the number of nonfarm payrolls (tracked by the Household survey) offset by a perplexing plunge in the number of people actually employed which tumbled by 138K (tracked by Household survey). Furthermore, as shown in the next chart, since March the number of employed workers has declined on 4 of the past 8 months, while the much more gamed nonfarm payrolls (goalseeked by the Establishment survey) have been up every single month.

    What is even more perplexing, is that despite the continued rise in nonfarm payrolls, the Household survey continues to telegraph growing weakness, and as of Nov 30, the gap that opened in March has since grown to a whopping 2.7 million “workers” which may or may not exist anywhere besides the spreadsheet model of some BLS (or is that BLM) political activist.”

  • Senate passes bill to avoid rail strike.
  • “Zuckerberg, Soros Bankrolling Left-Wing Think Tank Conducting Racial Census of Hill Staff.”

    A non-profit bankrolled by some of the nation’s largest corporations and left-wing billionaire George Soros is conducting a racial census of House and Senate staff as part of its effort to establish a “Bipartisan Diversity and Inclusion Office,” according to internal emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

    Senate and House staff received emails from a researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies starting in July asking them to confirm their “racial and ethnic identity” as part of an alleged data collection effort. In at least two cases, senior congressional staffers who declined to provide their races were told by the researcher that the organization’s current data indicated they “may identify as white” and asked the staffers to update if the information was incorrect.

    Information collected by the group will be used in its annual report that lobbies for “structural changes on Capitol Hill that would allow for more people of color to be hired in senior positions,” a previous report from the group states. That report is made possible in part by millions of dollars in donations to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies from Apple, Google, Meta, Pfizer, the Soros-backed Open Society Foundation, among dozens of other large corporations and nonprofits.

    The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies’ survey is part of a broader trend by left-wing organizations to pressure workplaces and governments to increase affirmative action policies. Often couched in promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” those policies have received criticism for coming at the expense of competence and offering advantages based on race instead of merit.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • “Collin County Ends Automatic Deduction of Union Dues.” Good.
  • “‘Philadelphia is a war zone’: Moment thug casually strolls up to parking officer and shoots him in the head in broad daylight in Dem-led city.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Speaking of Blue Zone violence, some occurred only a few miles from my house, when lawyer Gavin Rush walked into the bar where his ex-girlfriend worked and tried to shoot her before patrons wresteled him to the ground.

    Rush was charged with a second-degree felony, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon family violence. An emergency protection order was issued against him, and he was soon back on the streets after making a $40,000 bond, KVUE reported.

    “For $4,000, you can get out, go home, watch Netflix after trying to murder your ex-girlfriend — are you kidding me?” one of the customers said.

    So in addition to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and possible attempted murder, our super-genius lawyer also violated section 46.03 of the Texas penal code by carrying a gun into a bar. And he bonded out. For all that Democrats blather about “gun violence,” they don’t seem top treat gun felonies with any seriousness when they actually occur. Thanks, Soros-backed DA Jose Garza!

    But it turns out that Rush didn’t just go go home to watch Netflix, as he was found dead on Thursday.

  • Slippery, meet slope. “Assisted suicide plans for children unveiled at Toronto’s Sick Kids hospital.” (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
  • “Wisconsin School Counselor Sues District after Firing over Objections to Child Gender Transition.” Bend the knee, peasant.
  • Newly Elected Conservative School Board Fires Superintendent, Bans Critical Race Theory.”

    In one meeting, Deon Jackson went from South Carolina’s Berkeley County school superintendent to unemployed.

    His firing came at the hand of a newly-elected school board, which appears to have declared a judgment day for woke practices in its district.

    In its first meeting after the Nov. 8 election, the board fired superintendent Jackson and school counsel Tiffany Richardson. Then it hired Anthony Dixon as superintendent and retained Brandon Gaskins as counsel. And before the day was over, the board banned teaching critical race theory and created a board to review library books for pornographic content.

    Moms for Liberty, an activist group that supports parental rights in education, endorsed six of the board’s nine members. Many Moms for Liberty candidates won school board elections this November.

    Faster, please.

  • The road portion of the Kerch Strait bridge has been repaired.
  • Reality continues to outpace The Babylon Bee: “Former White House ‘Disinformation Czar’ Nina Jankowicz Registers As Foreign Agent.”
  • Speaking of disinformation, CNN carries out more mass layoffs, including Chris Cillizza. Let’s have a moment of silences for his careerOK that’s enough.
  • Today’s hate crime hoax comes to you from pedo-friendly California Democratic State Senator Scott Weiner.
  • Legal Insurrection conducts a 2024 presidential preference poll. Not surprisingly, DeSantis comes in first and Trump second. Nikki Haley third over Ted Cruz is a mild surprise. Greg Abbott ranked dead last, tied with Liz Chaney, is a much bigger one.
  • The B-21 Raider strategic bomber was officially rolled out today.
  • San Francisco police to arm robots with bombs. The Robocop joke are already made at the source.
  • U.S. defeats Iran in EuroFlopBall.
  • I used to joke “becoming a book reviewer for riches and fame is like becoming a monk for the kinky sex and hard drugs.” I may need to amend that joke.
  • Sarah Hoyt on bad feminist worldbuilding.
  • Epic fail: Crashing your car. SuperEpicMegaFail: Into a fireworks store. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Pilot builds tiny home out of a scissor lift airline snack truck.
  • Here’s your chance to pick up a shooting script for Citizen Kane.
  • World’s oldest cat dies in Texas at age 30.
  • Colin Furze turns himself into a Weeble.
  • LinkSwarm for November 25, 2022

    Friday, November 25th, 2022

    Greetings, and welcome to a Black Friday LinkSwarm! If you want to avoid any local shopping riots, there’s still my cold weather gift/prepper guide.

  • “Republican Kevin Kiley Wins CA House Race, Increasing GOP Majority to 220.”
  • Soros-backed Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner impeached. Good.

    The Pennsylvania House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to impeach controversial Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-PA).

    Five lawmakers, including three Republicans and two Democrats with constituencies in Philadelphia, formed a committee to investigate Krasner earlier this year. Members of the lower chamber voted by a margin of 107 to 85 in favor of impeaching Krasner, enabling the Pennsylvania Senate to remove the official with a two-thirds majority.

  • Texas Democrats Blame Lackluster Midterm on 2021 Election Reform, Redistricting, and Poor Border Messaging.” Note that the word “policies” appears nowhere in the article…
  • The partisan index for Texas counties. Republican counties tended to get slightly more Republican while Democratic counties got slightly less Democratic.
  • 56% of Violent Crime Suspects Released in Dallas.”

    A study conducted by criminologist Michael Smith of the University of Texas at San Antonio shows that 56 percent of individuals charged with violent crimes or weapons law violations in Dallas are released on bail or their own recognizance. That figure includes about 75 percent of offenders charged with weapons law violations, about two-thirds of those arrested for aggravated assault, and 34 percent of those arrested for murder.

    Smith examined 464 arrests from 2021 and followed the cases through May 15 of this year. The dataset included all (109) arrests for murder, 25 percent (73) of arrests for robbery, 25 percent (154) of arrests for aggravated assault involving a family member, 10 percent (67) of arrests for aggravated assault not involving a family member, and 10 percent (61) of arrests for weapons law violations.

    Almost a quarter of those released were arrested again within the course of the study. The average length of time between release and the second arrest was 148 days.

    I don’t need to tell you that Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot is backed by George Soros, do I?

  • New Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to make welfare recipients work for a living.
  • The car market goes from sucking the moose to officially sucking the moose.
  • General Twitter amnesty starting next week. I hope I’m included…
  • Hollywood hates making anticommunist films. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Disney: Chapek fired, Iger returns.
  • Related: “Disney’s woke crusade is costing it dearly.”

    Disney shares are down 40 per cent this year, and last week’s quarterly report makes for grim reading. Disney’s expenses and operating losses are skyrocketing. Even the hugely popular Disney+, which continues to gain in subscribers, made an operating loss of $1.47 billion – more than double its loss last year. An internal memo last week announced job cuts and a hiring freeze.

    Perhaps it is no coincidence that Disney’s troubles arrive in a year when the company has been distracted by politics. Indeed, it seems to have gone into overdrive to promote woke causes, both on screen and off.

    Most infamously, in March, Disney waded into a bruising political battle with Florida governor Ron DeSantis, over his Parental Rights in Education Act. The law, now enacted, bans ‘classroom instruction’ on issues of ‘sexual orientation or gender identity’ for Florida schoolkids under the age of 10. Although the law has the overwhelming support of parents, from across the political spectrum, it sparked fury in media circles. Critics were quick to dub it the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law, arguing that it ‘marginalises LGBTQ+ people’.

    Disney was only too happy to join in the chorus of denunciation. The act ‘should never have passed’, said Disney in a statement. ‘Our goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts.’ Disney also pledged to donate $5million to organisations opposed to the law. But DeSantis hit back. He revoked a special tax status that Disney’s Florida theme parks had enjoyed since 1967.

    Disney’s growing reputation for championing woke causes is costing it more than just its tax exemptions. It is now clearly damaging its relationship with audiences. As recently as March 2021, Disney’s public-approval rating was 77 per cent. But a September poll finds approval for Disney has now fallen to only 51 per cent among all Americans. And it has fallen into negative territory among Republicans. As pollster Chris Wilson notes: ‘It is highly unusual for a family entertainment company to find itself outside the good graces of so many Americans.’

    (Hat tip: Real Clear Politics.)

  • Speaking of woke: NHL goes full tranny pander.
  • Leftwing journalists move to Mastadon, immediately start banning each other.
  • Greg Bear, RIP.
  • Some of the kit in Colin Furze’s new workshop is off the hook.
  • What Richard Hammond experienced when he was in a coma.
  • “Arizona Announces They Have Finished Counting And Calvin Coolidge Has Won Their 3 Electoral Votes.
  • LinkSwarm for October 28, 2022

    Friday, October 28th, 2022

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

    
    

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner is another Soros-funded prosecutor.

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

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

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

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

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

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Judge for yourself:

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

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

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

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

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

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

    (Hat tip: The Conservative Treehouse.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • The new “Pride” flag, or a really high level of Tempest?
  • Bahaus Costume Party.
  • The Bosnian Ape Society is back with the Mikoyan and Gurevich Design Bureau tackling the Cup Noodle.
  • LinkSwarm for September 16, 2022

    Friday, September 16th, 2022

    Facebook violates user rights, Larry Krasner held in contempt, mass graves in Izyum, and more Disney groomers indicted. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Pennsylvania House votes to hold Philadelphia Soros-backed DA Larry Krasner in contempt for defying a subpoena.

    The Pennsylvania House voted Tuesday to hold Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner in contempt for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by a legislative committee searching for grounds to impeach him.

    The chamber voted 162 to 38 — with support from 10 Philadelphia Democrats — to approve the resolution holding the city’s top prosecutor in contempt, a highly unusual move that even the measure’s sponsor told House colleagues he’d never seen before.

    State Rep. John Lawrence — a Republican who represents parts of Chester and Lancaster Counties and chairs the select committee investigating Krasner — said the DA had “willfully neglected” the subpoena and was treating it like “a worthless piece of paper.”

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • “According to DOJ whistleblowers, Facebook has been spying on Americans’ private messages and reporting them to the FBI if they express ‘anti-government or anti-authority’ statements – including questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 US election.” More: “It was done outside the legal process and without probable cause,” said one of the whistleblowers, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Facebook provides the FBI with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena. According to one Post source, ‘They [Facebook and the FBI] were looking for conservative right-wing individuals. None were Antifa types.'”
  • Mass grave found in Izyum.
  • UT professor Richard Lowery files lawsuit against Texas A&M over their illegal discrimination on the basis of race.

    Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the state of the American academy today knows that employment discrimination runs rampant on campus. Not the old-fashioned kind where women, blacks, Jews, Catholics, Asians, gays, or communists were excluded from employment opportunities, but the modern Kendian variety, in which overt discrimination against white men (and, in many disciplines, Asian men as well) is embraced as official university policy and as a necessary part of being “antiracist.”

    As Mark Perry has documented in hundreds of complaints he has filed with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, such “discrimination for the ‘right’ reasons” is as common on campuses today as empty Red Bull cans. Nor does anyone with any actual knowledge of employment law dispute that such overt and intentional sex and racial discrimination is patently illegal under federal law, and usually state law as well.

    Why is this so? If such “no white / Asian guys need apply” practices are clearly illegal, how have they been allowed to not only stand but spread to all corners of campus?

    Part of the reason is that under Grutter and Fisher II, the Supreme Court gave universities the benefit of the doubt when using racial and other demographic characteristics in admissions decisions. Rather than use race sparingly in admissions decisions, and in the narrow, surgical method the Supreme Court envisioned, universities instead have taken those decisions as a mandate to do whatever they want in not only admissions, but also employment and other areas.

    Indeed, as I have noted before, university administrators often admit to overt discriminatory reasons for their DEI employment initiatives (e.g., the need to provide “role models”), despite the fact that the Supreme Court rejected such reasons as illegal decades ago. (Such abuse of the limited leeway the Supreme Court gave universities in admissions decisions is why many observers are predicting that the Supreme Court will end it in the upcoming term, when it decides cases challenging admissions practices at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.)

    However, the main reason for the ubiquity of such practices is that only people who are, in fact, victims of such discriminatory practices have standing to sue to stop them. Leaving aside the serious economic challenges of litigating such a suit against a wealthy university, what would happen if you actually did so? E.g., “I exceed the posted qualifications for a tenure-track position at Enormous State University, but ESU’s official policy is that only BIPOC candidates are eligible for the position. As a white [or Asian] man I am ineligible for the position because of my race, and so I am suing ESU for racial discrimination in employment.”

    In the woke monoculture that pervades most campuses today, being known as someone who took legal action to challenge a DEI initiative would render you radioactive and unemployable, not only at ESU but across most of the American academy. And even if you prevail in your lawsuit, you would thereafter be known as the guy who got an “antiracist” affirmative action employment program shut down. Given what the campus cancel culture mobs have done to people like Dorian Abbot who merely question the legality or morality of such programs, what do you think they will do to someone who actually succeeds in having them declared illegal? Ask Allan Bakke.

    With universities perceiving no real risk of being sued, and with the Biden administration having about the same interest in neutrally enforcing federal discrimination law as it does in securing the southern border, university administrators know there is no serious risk to giving in to the demands of “antiracist” activists for official, overt discrimination against white and Asian men. That many state officials (including some red-state officials such as Texas Governor Greg Abbott) are too cowardly to do anything to resist the campus wokesters further compounds the problem. Like the days of Mob-controlled garbage collection in New York City, university administrators can say, “Yeah, what we’re doing is illegal. Whaddya gonna do about it?”

    But just as the law eventually destroyed the Mob’s garbage cartels in the Big Apple, the law may finally be coming for the overt employment discrimination practiced on most campuses today. The form of the destructor may be a test case filed on September 10: Lowery v. Texas A&M University System.

    As described in the complaint:

    8. The Texas A&M University System, along with nearly every university in the United States, discriminates on account of race and sex when hiring its faculty, by giving discriminatory preferences to female or non-Asian minorities at the expense of white and Asian men. This practice, popularly known as “affirmative action,” has led universities to hire and promote inferior faculty candidates over individuals with better scholarship, better credentials, and better teaching ability.

    9. These race and sex preferences are patently illegal under Title VI and Title IX, which prohibit all forms of race and sex discrimination at universities that receive federal funds. But university administrators think they can flout these federal statutes with impunity because no one ever sues them over their discriminatory faculty-hiring practices and the Department of Education looks the other way.

    10. These discriminatory, illegal, and anti-meritocratic practices have been egged on by woke ideologues who populate the so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion offices at public and private universities throughout the United States. The existence of these offices is subverting meritocracy and encouraging wholesale violations of civil-rights laws throughout our nation’s university system.

    Specifically, the complaint avers that in July 2022, Texas A&M’s “office for diversity” announced a program for hiring professors that was limited to members of “underrepresented groups,” which it defined as “African Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, Native Americans, Alaskan Natives, and Native Hawaiians.” In other words, like many DEI initiatives that pervade most university campuses today, white and Asian men need not apply for this program. Texas A&M justified the program with the goal of establishing a faculty whose racial composition attains “parity with that of the State of Texas”—despite the fact that even Grutter recognized that such racial balancing was “patently unconstitutional.”

  • Another week and more Disney employees arrested for attempting to have sex with minors. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Speaking of groomers: “Sixth-Graders Protect Their Fellow Students From a Creepy Teacher.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Not helping: Texas GOP leadership “Refuses to Publish Study Critical of Child Gender Mutilation. State Rep. Will Metcalf (R-Montgomery) blocked the publication for being ‘controversial and inflammatory.'”
  • Twitter continues its war against conservatives:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • “FBI Tracks Down Mike Lindell On Hunting Trip, Surrounds His Car And Seizes Cell Phone.”
  • Nancy Pelosi channels Jeb Bush: “That’s an applause line.”
  • The Russian S-300 still sucks.
  • Philadelphia’s soda tax backfires. “People shopping for sodas outside city limits canceled out almost 40% of the decrease in sugar-sweetened beverage purchases. Additionally, the soda pop tax actually led to about a 4% increase in purchases of other high-sugar goods in Philadelphia and in neighboring towns. But compared to the sugar decrease from sodas in Philadelphia, additional sweetened food purchases offset an additional 40%.”
  • Ohio Democratic representative and senate nominee Tim Ryan says “We Gotta Kill” MAGA “Extremists.” You may remember Ryan from such hits as “My Presidential Campaign Is Going Nowhere Fast.”
  • Russia’s gas cutoff may force BASF’s largest chemical plant in Germany to shut down entirely.
  • Who am I selling out to?”
  • Wokeness kills G4. In other news, G4 was evidently still running somewhere.
  • Armin Tamzarian, call your office. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Yo dawg, I heard you like Minecraft, so I put a Minecraft in your Minecraft so you can Minecraft while you Minecraft.
  • Huge Ft. Worth football brawl triggers ejections of players. All of them.

  • Sea urchins wearing hats.
  • “Obamas Construct New Cages At Martha’s Vineyard To Hold Arriving Migrants.”
  • “King Charles Replaces Harry & Meghan With Two Corgis In Line Of Succession.”
  • LinkSwarm for June 10, 2022

    Friday, June 10th, 2022

    Democrat tries to murder Brett Kavanaugh and Pelosi shrugs, human traffickers busted in Texas, another Democrat convicted of voting fraud (in Philadelphia, naturally), WaPo finally draws a line it won’t let SJWs cross, and an 8K computer that can be yours if you have somewhere north of a quarter million dollars. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Another month, another four decade high inflation rate. “The Consumer Price Index (CPI) went up by 8.6 percent in May, the highest year-over-year increase since December 1981.”
  • Democrat arrested for attempting to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh

    Nicholas John Roske was charged with attempting or threatening to murder or kidnap a Supreme Court justice Wednesday after traveling to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home armed with a Glock handgun, intent on killing the justice over his expected rulings in ongoing cases related to abortion and the Second Amendment.

    Roske, 26, of Simi Valley, Calif., was identified as the suspect in an affidavit unsealed Wednesday afternoon. Roske told law enforcement that he called 911 to turn himself in because he was having suicidal thoughts, also telling the operator that he intended to kill a “specific” Supreme Court justice, according to the affidavit.

    Roske was subsequently arrested, and officers found a Glock 17 pistol with two magazines, as well as a tactical knife, pepper spray, and other items.

  • Naturally, Democrats stalled a bill to provide additional security for Supreme Court Justices.
  • In another sign of the Democratic Party’s reasonable and measured approach to the abortion debate, pro-abortion terrorists firebombed a pro-life Christian pregnancy center in Buffalo.
  • Speaking of saving children, “70 Children Rescued in West Texas from Human Trafficking by State and Federal Authorities,” the youngest ten years old.
  • A former Democratic congressmen convicted and expelled for taking bribes has now been convicted of committing that voting fraud that Democrats swear up and down doesn’t exist.

    A former Democrat congressman, who was expelled from the House of Representatives in 1980 after getting caught taking bribes in what turned out to be an FBI sting, pleaded guilty to multiple election fraud charges this week after the U.S. Department of Justice charged him with bribery, falsifying voting records, stuffing ballot boxes, and more election crimes in Pennsylvania.

    According to U.S. Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams, 79-year-old Michael “Ozzie” Myers admitted to bribing Philadelphia election judge Domenick J. Demuro, who already pleaded guilty in 2020, during the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 state elections for $300 to $5,000 per election and then telling him to lie about falsely inflating votes.

    Demuro, who “was responsible for overseeing the entire election process and all voter activities of his Division in accord with federal and state election laws,” then manipulated the voting machines in his respective ward and division in a way that satisfied Myers’ desire to “illegally add votes for certain candidates of their mutual political party in primary elections,” especially those clients who paid him “consulting fees.”

    “Some of these candidates were individuals running for judicial office whose campaigns had hired Myers, and others were candidates for various federal, state, and local elective offices that Myers favored for a variety of reasons,” the DOJ noted in a press release.

    Myers pulled the same stunt with another South Philadelphia election judge Marie Beren, who also pleaded guilty in 2021 to her role in the fraud.

    “Myers acknowledged in court that on almost every Election Day, Myers transported Beren to the polling station to open the polls. During the drive to the polling station, Myers would advise Beren which candidates he was supporting so that Beren knew which candidates should be receiving fraudulent votes. Inside the polling place and while the polls were open, Beren would advise actual in-person voters to support Myers’ candidates and also cast fraudulent votes in support of Myers’ preferred candidates on behalf of voters she knew would not or did not physically appear at the polls,” the DOJ stated.

    The pair also used cell phone communication to notate in real-time how many votes they faked versus how many were real.

    “If actual voter turnout was high, Beren would add fewer fraudulent votes in support of Myers’ preferred candidates. From time to time, Myers would instruct Beren to shift her efforts from one of his preferred candidates to another. Specifically, Myers would instruct Beren ‘to throw support’ behind another candidate during Election Day if he concluded that his first choice was comfortably ahead,” the press release continued.

    Much like Demuro, Beren then falsified poll books “by recording the names, party affiliation, and order of appearances for voters who had not physically appeared at the polling station to cast his or her ballot in the election” and balanced the list with the ballots recorded by voting machines before certifying the tainted results.

  • In a story that launched a thousand “Bye, Felicia” jokes, Washington Post Social Justice Warrior “reporter” Felicia Sonmez was fired for insubordination and constantly attacking her co-workers for victimhood points.

    The workplace drama began on June 2 when Sonmez publicly took colleague Dave Weigel to task after he retweeted a joke from YouTuber Cam Harless that said “every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.”

    Sonmez posted a screenshot of the retweet, captioning it “fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!”

    Weigel deleted the retweet, and explained that he “did not mean to cause any harm.” Nevertheless, the Post handed down a one-month unpaid suspension to punish Weigel for his retweet.

    Post reporter Jose A. Del Real then waded into the controversy to criticize Somnez for continuing to tweet about Weigel and the paper even after it took action against Weigel. He accused her of public bullying and “clout chasing,” leading Sonmez to accuse Del Real of violating the paper’s social-media policy.

    With the drama hitting a boiling point, Post executive editor Sally Buzbee sent an internal memo to staff saying, “we do not tolerate colleagues attacking colleagues either face to face or online.”

    The memo seemed to spark a flood of pro-Post tweets from its reporters, who used similar language to laud the paper’s “collegial” work environment.

    Sonmez evidently took offense to her colleague’s tweets saying they were proud to work at the paper.

    “The reporters who issued synchronized tweets this week downplaying the Post’s workplace issues have a few things in common with each other,” Sonmez wrote on Twitter on Thursday morning. “They are all white . . . They are among the highest-paid employees in the newsroom, making double and even triple what some other National desk reporters are making, particularly journalists of color . . . They are among the ‘stars’ who ‘get away with murder’ on social media.”

    Will this be a cause for soul-searching among MSM outlets over the wisdom of staffing their newsrooms with social justice warriors? Of course not. Sonmez dared to make the mistake of going after higher ranking members of the Clerisy.

  • Speaking of crazy, sloppy social justice warrior attack dogs employed by the Washington Post, Taylor Lorentz was very, very upset that other people were right about Amber Heard against her wishes.

    Taylor Lorenz and the Washington Post are attempting a third adpocalypse. They’re attempting to take out rivals to the leftwing legacy media — specifically, YouTubers who sided more with Johnny Depp during the Amber Heard defamation trial. The leftwing media, of course, had uncritically championed Amber Heard, as they’d championed all #MeToo allegations, #BelievingAllWomen without asking for any evidence.

    In fact, the defamatory opinion piece Depp sued Heard for appeared in the Washington Post. They just added a stingy “Note” to their defamation.

    So Lorenz is now attempting to paint it as dangerous for people to openly question #MeToo allegations on YouTube, and to suggest there’s something wrong with non-legacy-media outlets making money off of a major media story. There’s nothing wrong with the Washington Post making money off it, of course — because they take the proper leftwing view of things.

    But people like Rekieta or YellowFlash or That Umbrella Guy, the people who thought that Amber Heard was lying? Which, of course, a jury found to be the case?

    They’re dangerous and they shouldn’t be allowed to make money off it. And damnit, YouTube has got to control who is allowed to make money from these news events!

    By the way: The entire Depp/Heard story was already heavily censored by YouTube. Videos would be demonetized — denied advertising — if they discussed it all. Because of this, YouTubers were forced to resort to the childish tactic of referring to Depp as “The Pirate Guy” and Heard as “the Aqua Lady” to avoid censorship and demonetization. They had to avoid saying the names of the people they were talking about.

    No, I’m serious.

    But that’s not enough for Taylor Lorenz and The Washington Post.

    Either they have to declare “The Aqua Lady is telling the truth and The Pirate Guy is an abuser,” or they must be deplatformed!

    And Lorenz, in making the case that only she, a nobody, barely-educated semiliterate wannabe influencer who pretends to be a tweenager online and gets away with it because she is effectively developmentally delayed, should be allowed to weigh in on the Depp-Heard trial, and that actual trial lawyers like Rikieta and LegalBytes should not be so allowed, is on a scorched earth campaign to make them toxic to advertisers.

    And of course she’s also up to her old tricks of claiming she reached out to her subjects — I mean, targets and victims — for comment.

    Spoiler alert: She did not reach out to her targets and victims for comment.

  • “How The Virginia Project Helped Engineer the 2021 GOP Wins in Virginia.”

    Gordon decided to take a strategic approach to make the Virginia GOP a party that could attract serious, intelligent, capable candidates, run them, and win. He founded The Virginia Project (TVP) with the mission to create a 21st-century party infrastructure capable of competing effectively and rolling back Democrat Party influence.

    Once Gordon realized that Republicans failed to field candidates in 25% of races with a Democrat incumbent in 2019, he made running a candidate in every race a mission point. Other objectives of TVP included taking a complete accounting of GOP performance in every election district and providing a baseline level of support for every GOP candidate in the state. The group also wanted to share tools and best practices to optimize branding, marketing, messaging, voter outreach, and mobilization throughout the state. The goal was to disrupt the Democrats’ narratives and force them to play defense.

    After the 2020 election, Gordon realized that to put Democrats on their heels, TVP would have to go on offense. There was no way to verify the vote in Virginia after nearly 60% of Virginians voted early or by mail. The window for challenging congressional elections closed in 25 days. There was no point in fielding candidates across the state without shoring up election integrity. So with the help of Ned Jones, Gordon and TVP set about securing Virginia’s elections.

    The group forced the implementation of voter roll management laws already on the books. TVP ensured the process was logged, transparent, and consistent in every Virginia county and removed a half million bad entries from the voter rolls statewide. Then TVP made sure a system was in place for 2021 that had what Gordon refers to as “Eyes on Every Ballot.”

    Challenging elections after the fact proved fruitless at the state and national levels in 2020. The key would be to challenge violations on the spot rather than post facto. TVP prepared and delivered training for election observers. The Virginia GOP went from 33% to 95% observer coverage. Gordon said, “The worse Biden gets, the more people volunteer. A good look in some of the disputed states in 2020 also motivated people to get involved.”
    The success in recruitment and training allowed the GOP to challenge every suspected violation on election night 2021. As a Twitter thread from TVP noted, “[DNC lawyer Marc] Elias’ now-legendary losing streak started with us stopping him. We fought for and won every legal stipulation needed to enforce our rights.”

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Seven NEW Hunter Biden Scandals the Nets Refuse to Report On.” A lot of these I had heard of, but this one is new:

    President Biden unveiled new sanctions Thursday targeting influential Russians and President Vladimir Putin’s yachts on the 99th day of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine — but two oligarchs linked to his son Hunter Biden again were spared.

    The slow rollout of sanctions comes despite the president threatening “swift and severe” penalties ahead of the invasion, which began Feb. 24.

    New US-targeted individuals include the steel and gold-mining oligarch Alexey Mordashov, Putin-linked money manager Sergei Roldugin, billionaire property developer God Nisanov, electronics executive Evgeny Novitsky, banker Sergey Gorkov and Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. The Treasury Department also sanctioned two yachts that Putin allegedly co-owns and the Monaco-based yacht brokerage Imperial Yachts and its Russian CEO, Evgeniy Kochman.

    It remains unclear why Hunter Biden’s alleged Russian business associates — the billionaire oligarchs Yelena Baturina and Vladimir Yevtushenko — eluded the latest round of US sanctions against members of Russia’s business elite.

    It’s a great mystery.

    Baturina, whose wealth derives largely from construction, in 2014 paid a firm associated with Hunter Biden $3.5 million, according to a 2020 report written by Republican-led Senate committees. She is the widow of former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, and documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop indicate she may have attended a 2015 dinner in DC with then-Vice President Joe Biden.

    Yevtushenkov, who owns a nearly 50% stake in Russian conglomerate Sistema — which has telecom, retail, banking, food and health interests — faces UK sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but hasn’t yet been targeted by the Biden administration. He met with Hunter Biden in 2012 at Moscow’s Ritz-Carlton hotel, but recently claimed they had no subsequent contact.

  • “Meet the Guardsman Helping Ukrainians Blow Up Russian Tanks over the Phone.”

    Before the war, [Sgt. 1st Class Chris] Freymann, a cavalry scout in the Washington state National Guard, had been the lead instructor in the U.S. military’s program that trained soldiers in Ukraine how to use the shoulder-fired tank-killing missiles. He trained about 200 Ukrainian troops during his months with the program.

    Russia launched its invasion in February, after U.S. trainers left. But the relationships Freymann made remained. His former students — now troops fighting on the front lines — again reached out for help on operating the Javelins as they encountered technical issues or forgot details.

    “When the war started, I had a lot of guys hitting me up on WhatsApp,” Freymann told Military.com. “One of our linguists, her husband was one of the few soldiers who were left. A lot of the students trained by the other [Guard units] died.”

    Freymann would relay information on operating the Javelin to the linguist. Her husband, who was in the fight, would then send Freymann photos and videos of destroyed Russian tanks. Freymann says at least four tanks were destroyed after some of his over-the-phone coaching.

  • Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Americans are abandoning high tax states (New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey) and moving to low tax states (Florida, Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, Tennessee). (Hat tip:Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • “Pizza Hut is featuring a book about ‘drag kids’ as one of the books promoted by its ‘Book It!’ reading incentive program aimed at children in pre-kindergarten through 6th grade.”
  • Louisiana Transgender Sports Ban To Become Law.” Good. If you have XY chromosomes, you shouldn’t be competing in women’s sports.
  • Speaking of obvious truths vs. radical transsexism: “Norwegian Feminist Faces Three Years In Prison For Saying Biological Men Can’t Be Lesbians.”
  • Ilya Shapiro resigns from Georgetown University rather than work with a Social Justice Warrior Sword of Damocles hanging over his head.
  • Brandon Herrera fires a rare Barrett .50 BMG designed to take out helicopters.
  • How bad is the new Lord of the Rings TV series? This bad.
  • And Disney is about to just churn out an endless conveyor belt of garbage.
  • Ouch!

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Not news: Real estate owners in New York City jacking up rates. News: Jacking up New York real estate. Namely jacking a landmark Broadway theater up 30 feet to put retail space underneath it.
  • Houston YouTube rapper who bragged about robbing ATMS arrested for robbing ATMs. What are the odds? (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Speaking of Dwight, he’s showing off his new gun purchase, a Smith and Wesson Model 38 Bodyguard Airweight in .38 Special.
  • Got over $200,000 lying around? Then you still have time to bid on an original Apple-1 computer signed by Steve Wozniak.
  • Boys und Panzer.
  • Our Stupid World: Fake Cop Home Invader Edition

    Monday, April 18th, 2022

    Another “Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes” entry, but with a twist. A man killed home invader who was pretending to be a cop.

    A man with a badge around his neck didn’t fool a Pa. resident with a gun in his pocket. The resident, who was bound by zip ties, managed to grab his gun and opened fire on two home invaders posing as cops, killing one of them, police tell 6ABC.

    It happened around 10 p.m. Sunday in Philly, where police say a 25-year-old resident was confronted outside his home by two men posing as cops. The man with a badge around his neck forced the male resident inside the home, where he was bound with zip ties.

    The fake cops were demanding money and threatening his life. But the resident was able to get his pocketed gun, and he shot the man with the badge three times, killing him, police said. The dead suspect had gunshot wounds to his head, neck and arm.

    The are some pretty big giveaways that it wasn’t real cops:

  • Real cops tends to use handcuffs rather than zip-ties. (There are occasionally exceptions, mostly during widespread civil disorder like mass arrests during riots.)
  • A real cop would have search him for a weapon.
  • A real cop wouldn’t be demanding money. Or I should say a real, non-corrupt. Offer void in New York City in the 1970s.
  • Under Soros-backed District Attorney Larry Krasner, Philadelphia now has the highest per capita homicide rate among the 10 largest cities in the U.S.

    Another Day, Another BLM Leader Indicted For Fraud

    Wednesday, March 16th, 2022

    You might remember #BlackLivesMatter from such hits as Millions of Dollars Are Missing and Patrisse Cullors Owns Four Houses. Well now get ready to laugh again at We Raked OFF Federal Grant Money To Waste On Cheap Crap.

    A prominent Black Lives Matter leader in Boston and her husband have been charged with using a $6,000 grant to take at-risk youth to a Philadelphia retreat on themselves – for a getaway to Maryland, restaurants and shopping sprees, among other things.

    Monica Cannon-Grant, 41, founder of the nonprofit Violence in Boston, and her husband Clark Grant, 38, were charged Tuesday in an 18-count federal indictment, including charges for wire fraud and making false statements to a mortgage lending business.

    In June 2019, she was given a check for $6,000 for a trip to Philly “to give these young men exposure to communities outside of the violence riddled neighborhoods that they navigate daily,” the Boston Globe reported.

    Instead, the couple used the money to take a vacation to Maryland, eat at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., Shake Shack and other eateries, and pay for car rentals, Walmart purchases and visits to a nail salon, the feds allege.

    The indictment charges them in connection with three separate schemes — defrauding donors, lying on a mortgage application and illegally collecting about $100,000 in pandemic unemployment benefits, according to the Globe.

    Clark Grant had already been charged by the feds for allegedly engaging in pandemic-assistance fraud after a raid at the couple’s Taunton home last year.

    It seems that a single scam is never enough for these people. They always seem to be working multiple scams, all of which rake off money to their own pockets in the name of Social Justice. Heaven forfend that any of them are ever required to actually work for a living.

    One marvels at their failure to do any sort of risk/reward analysis on the potential fallout from getting caught in their scams. Is it really worth years in the federal big house to visit Bubba Gump Shrimp?

    As the titular protagonist of a famous novel before it was turned into a hit movie once put it, “Being an idiot is no box of chocolates.”

    LinkSwarm for February 11, 2021

    Friday, February 11th, 2022

    That Biden Inflation is up to another 40 year high, a BLM founder heads to the big house, Democrats wake the normies, more corrupt insiders playing footsie with China, and only white liberals are upset at Joe Rogan. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
    

  • Welcome back Carter inflation is in full swing. “The consumer price index went up by 7.5 percent over the last year, the highest annual increase since February 1982.”
  • Remember the mention in last week’s LinkSwarm about how cooking oil prices drove an Austin restaurant out of business? Well it’s a global problem that’s leading to record-high food prices.
  • “Activist who founded Black Lives Matter Memphis is sentenced to six years in prison for illegally voting when she was still on probation for felonies including stalking….Pamela Moses, 44, voted illegally six times since she pleaded guilty to evidence tampering, forgery, perjury, stalking and theft under $500, seven years ago.”
  • “PINKO ALERT: Kindergarten Kids in Masks Forced Into BLM School Parade, and That’s Just the Beginning.”
    

  • The Democratic education establishment done screwed up by waking up normie parents.

    Many public schools kicked off 2022 by switching back to remote learning — or canceling classes altogether — leaving frustrated parents across the country frantically searching for more consistent schooling options.

    These past two school years of remote and hybrid learning, forced masking, and an intensified culture of unpredictability has pushed teachers, administrators, students, and parents to very edge. What began as a temporary interruption to student learning has become a vicious cycle of confusion, inconsistency and lost educational time.

    Thanks to the unreliability of distance learning, children are retaining less of what they’ve learned, reading at lower grade levels and suffering from a lack of social interaction. There is little to no support for children who rely on school to provide a safe haven from difficult home lives, and students in free or reduced meal plans have a harder time receiving them.

    As school policies continue to isolate students from friends and peers, such as forcing students to eat their lunch outside on buckets, or facing the same direction without talking, the tragic numbers of adolescent depression, anxiety, and suicide continue to rise.

    Millions of exasperated parents, many in deep-blue cities and states, are desperately pursuing educational alternatives that better suit their families’ needs and values. Parents are enrolling their children in private and charter schools in droves, while those without the financial means to do so remain stuck in a system captive to the whims of teachers’ unions and indifferent school boards.

    Many teachers are going above and beyond in the name of what is best for kids, but their ability to truly innovate and explore new ways of teaching and inspire learning is being blocked by the unnecessarily restrictive demands of union leadership.

    These unions tend to operate at state and national levels in ways that do not represent most of their members. Rather than sticking up for these vulnerable children, unions — as recently exemplified by the Chicago Teachers Union — are prioritizing strikes, walkouts and funding political campaigns, halting true progress as students remain stranded at home.

    Fed-up teachers across the country have resigned their union membership, tired of their dues dollars funding an agenda they don’t support.

  • “Doctor Says She Was Pressured to Make Omicron Sound More Dangerous.”

    Dr. Angelique Coetzee is the South African responsible for alerting health officials about the omicron variant of COVID-19 back in November. At the time of the discovery, she observed that it presented “unusual but mild” symptoms.

    This was undeniably good news. Despite being more transmissible, the omicron variant was less severe, and many believed that it meant that the pandemic was nearing its end. But Dr. Coetzee says that she was subjected to “a lot of pressure from European scientists and politicians” to revise her original diagnosis that omicron presented mostly mild symptoms so that the public would perceive omicron to be just as dangerous as the delta variant.

    She was subsequently attacked for her refusal to push the preferred narrative.

    “Because of all of COVID’s mutations, all of these scientists and politicians who aren’t from South Africa were contacting me telling me I was wrong when I spoke out, that it was a serious disease … they were telling me I had no idea what I was talking about, they kept attacking me,” she told the Daily Telegraph. “In South Africa it is a lighter disease, but in Europe it has been a serious, serious illness, which is what the politicians want me to say … there has been a lot of pressure from European scientists and politicians who have said ‘Please don’t say it is a mild illness.’”

    There’s nothing our leftwing ruling elites won’t corrupt. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Nepo, meet Tism: “GM hires [Missy Owens], Biden niece, former Obama aide to head environment, sustainability and governance policy.” It’s a very exclusive club, and none of us are in it.
  • Speaking of nepotism by our elites: “Liz Cheney’s Hunter Biden problem: Husband’s firm reps China companies, dictatorial regimes.”

    Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) called on the U.S. to stand up to the “generational threat” posed by China while unveiling a major report on Beijing’s “malign behavior” at the same time her husband’s law firm was working on behalf of companies linked to China’s military, intelligence, and security services.

    As Cheney stood at the podium, her husband Philip Perry’s law firm was cashing in on legal and lobbying work that his employer — Latham & Watkins (LW), one of the largest law firms in the world — was doing for a host of Chinese companies, some of which were involved in the kind of activity that Cheney was warning had to be stopped.

  • More fallout from the midterm variant: Suddenly dire emotional appeals about Republican governors dropping mandates become strangely clinical when it’s Democrats doing the same thing.

  • “The GOP is gaining among Texas Hispanics. Women are leading the charge.”

    Democrats were caught off guard by Donald Trump’s numbers in South Texas in 2020. The Hispanic Republican women who live there were not.

    Many of them have played a leading role in urging their neighbors in majority-Hispanic South Texas to question their traditional loyalty to the Democratic Party.

    Hispanic women now serve as party chairs in the state’s four southernmost border counties, spanning a distance from Brownsville almost to Laredo — places where Trump made some of his biggest inroads with Latino voters.

    A half-dozen of them are running for Congress across the state’s four House districts that border Mexico, including Monica De La Cruz, the GOP front-runner in one of Texas’ most competitive seats in the Rio Grande Valley.

    It’s some of the clearest evidence that Trump’s 2020 performance there may not have been an anomaly, but rather a sign of significant Republican inroads among Texas Hispanics — perhaps not enough to threaten the Democratic advantage among those voters [Keep whistling past that graveyard. -LP], but enough to send ripples of fear through a party that is experiencing erosion among Hispanics across the country.

    “For so long, people here just never had Republicans knocking on their doors and calling them the way we did in 2020. The majority of us are women that did it then and are doing it now because we feel it’s our responsibility to keep the American Dream alive,” said Mayra Flores, a leading candidate for the GOP nomination in a South Texas-based congressional seat.

    For Flores, the road to becoming a Republican was similar to the path traveled by many Hispanic women in South Texas. She grew up seeing most of her immigrant family vote Democrat and felt that it was standard for Hispanics to only vote for Democrats. Then, she says, came an inflection point where she began to question her loyalty to the party.

    A family member asked if she knew what both parties stood for, and after looking into it, Flores felt that her religious, anti-abortion and pro-border security views were more conservative than she’d ever thought and more in line with the GOP. Five years ago, she got involved in her local GOP and now a majority of her family votes Republican, too.

    She wasn’t surprised at all to see Republicans gain ground in 2020 along the Texas-Mexico border, even as Democrats and Republicans outside the region expressed shock at results in places such as Zapata County — where Trump became the first GOP presidential nominee since 1920 to carry the county.

    Neighboring Starr County saw the most dramatic shift of any county in the state when thousands more Republicans turned out to vote than in prior elections. While President Joe Biden ultimately won the county with 52 percent of the vote to Trump’s 47 percent, that paled in comparison to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 performance, when she garnered 79 percent to Trump’s 19 percent.

    Can you hear them now, Democrats? (Hat tip: Push Junction.)

  • “Nationwide Battle Escalates Over Private Millions Bankrolling Public Elections.”

    Democrats want to continue allowing private money to fund public elections. Republicans want to limit the practice, which they say gave Joe Biden an unfair and perhaps decisive advantage over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential contest.

    So far, at least 10 Republican-controlled states have passed laws to prohibit or limit the use of private money in public elections. These include the swing states of Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and Ohio. In another swing state, North Carolina, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed such legislation, as did other Democratic governors.

    During 2020, nonprofits donated more than $400 million to state and local election boards to support their work and get out the vote. Most of the funding, about $350 million, came from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, distributed primarily through the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a Chicago-based progressive-led group that includes former operatives of President Barack Obama.

    Democrats and others contend that such money is necessary to support the work of underfunded election boards facing the added challenges of the pandemic. Republicans assert that the private grants were disproportionately allocated to counties eventually won by Biden, a mismatch that hurt them in 2020 and, if continued, would damage their chances in future elections.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Texas is doing well. New York? Not so much.

  • Carjackadephia.

    District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-Philadelphia), one of the George Soros-funded stooges who took office in some of our major cities with the explicit promise to reduce prosecutions, tried to tell people that yes, crimes with firearms had increased, but other crimes were down. That, of course, was bovine feces.

    The real reason for the increase in carjackings? It’s because the perps simply aren’t very afraid of being caught, or, if they’re caught, being seriously punished, not with a ‘social justice’ District Attorney in charge of prosecutions.

    (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)

  • Another week, another hate crime hoax. “A 19-year-old black female college student at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) is now facing disorderly conduct charges over lying to police after she reported a hate crime incident in her dorm last month….black female college student Kaliyeha Clark-Mabins now faces three disorderly conduct charges for filing a false police report over the matter.”
  • “The Biden Administration is now sending crack pipes to drug addicts in the name of “racial equity.” Happy Black History Month!
  • “That’s my n*gg*r, Joe Rogan! Fuck the noise!”

  • Related:

  • Freedom!

  • For sale: 1978 Ford F-250 Lariat, 139 miles. No, that last number isn’t missing three digits.
  • “CDC Director Now Says To Just Do Whatever Texas Did 12 Months Ago.”
  • The dog makes an eloquent case.