If you’re below a certain age, or didn’t keep track of UK politics, you may not remember the Winter of Discontent. In late 1978 and early 1979, the combination of inflation, harsh winter weather, Labour government dysfunction and trade union strikes brought the UK economy to its knees and ordinary citizens to a boiling point. Rail and lorry strikes led to spot shortages, and a haulers strike left mounds of garbage littering London strikes. The end result was an upheavel that would bring Margaret Thatcher to power as prime minister, and the new Tory government would swiftly move to crush the power of the unions to disrupt public order. Labour would not regain power for nearly 18 years.
Now Joe Biden has his own winter of discontent brewing, this one engendered not by unions strikes, but by vaccine-mandate driven supply disruptions, soft on crime policies, and ruinous “green” energy policies.
First, #BareShelvesBiden still seems to be plaguing much of the country:
#BareShelfBiden this is ridiculous. Meat prices have skyrocketed if you're lucky enough to find some. Local butcher had to shut down for 2 days because he couldn't keep up w/the orders, that's where we've arrived at. Ppl are hungry, which is only 2 steps removed from desperate. pic.twitter.com/2UAkYnctT1
— đTraderJill (Pronouns: Meme Queen/Your Highness) (@LadyJustice6910) January 12, 2022
Just got back from the market.
Now tell me again democrats how there's no problem with getting supplies & all the shelves are fully stocked. đ€Šââïžđ€Ł pic.twitter.com/9Zq5hlQV2t
There appear to be shortages from Boston to Arkansas. (Again, for the record, I’m not seeing such shortages in my neck of Central Texas, where there are bare shelves for only a few items.)
Now a big winter storm has hit the Northeast, which is expected to make everything worse. That region is usually prepared for heavy snow and ice, but that was before vaccine mandates worsened the trucker shortages. Now with record numbers of people quitting their jobs, I suspect both truckers and road maintenance crews are in shorter supply than ever. Plus New England’s reliance on “green energy” and rejection of natural gas pipelines has made everything worse.
One thing that’s making shortages of all goods worse: soft on crime policies in locales with George Soros-backed DAs has encouraged widespread train robbery.
Medical equipment, designer handbags, luggage, throw pillows, airline parts, childrenâs artwork, even a new wine fridge â all those items and more have been found stolen off Union Pacific trains and discarded alongside the tracks in East LA.
Images of thousands of stolen and discarded packages alongside the Union Pacific train tracks near Union Station have people around the world asking â how does this happen? Apparently, itâs a near perfect storm of an ongoing train robbery problem, the pandemic, and the Los Angeles County District Attorneyâs policy of no-cash bail arrests.
âI have been with Union Pacific for 16 years, and I have never, ever seen this situation to this degree,â said Lupe Valdez, the companyâs senior director of public affairs.
Valdez says, on average, 90 of their containers are compromised each day. But between October 2020 and October 2021, train robberies have picked up exponentially by a whopping 356%. Union Pacific has increased its enforcement and patrols, and has put drones to work, but now they are looking into diverting trains so they donât pass through Los Angeles County at all.
âWe are making arrests, but what our officers are seeing on the ground is that people are basically being arrested, there is no bail, they come out the next day and come back to rob our trains,â Valdez said.
Union Pacificâs chief has a meeting with the LAPD next week, and last month, sent a letter to Los Angeles County District Attorney George GascĂłn, calling this a âspiraling crisisâ and imploring his office to hold criminals accountable.
âEven with all the arrests made, the no-cash bail policy and extended timeframe for suspects to appear in court is causing re-victimization to UP by these same criminals,â the letter says. âIn fact criminals boast to our officers that charges will be pled down to simple trespassing â which bears no serious consequences.â
remember that amazon packaging train robbery thing im LA from last week?
Images of thousands of stolen & discarded packages alongside train tracks in Los Angeles – a near perfect storm of a train robbery problem, the pandemic & the LA County District Attorneyâs policy of no-cash bail arrests pic.twitter.com/Nds6HtMXpd
All of this bodes ill for ordinary Americans who just want to buy groceries, heat their homes, and not have their Amazon orders mysteriously disappear due to repeat offenders put back on the streets by radical Soros-backed social justice warrior DAs.
All these problems (save the weather) are ones democrats have either created or made worse.
Authorities are negotiating with a man who has reportedly taken people hostage at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, during services on Saturday that were being streamed live, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The Colleyville Police Department posted on Twitter earlier on Saturday that it was conducting SWAT operations on the block where Congregation Beth Israel is located and said that all residents in the immediate area were being evacuated.
Evidently a jihadist mad that his jihadist sister was jailed:
Via @AaronKatersky – Aafia Siddiqui is a Pakistani neuroscientist who was convicted in Manhattan federal court in 2010 of trying to kill US soldiers and FBI agents in Afghanistan. She was sentenced to 86 years in prison. Hostage-taker in TX claiming Siddiqui is his sister. @ABC
#BREAKING: Gov. Abbott says all hostages have been rescued alive and safe. This comes just after our @DavidSFOX4 heard what sounded like a flash bang followed by multiple gunshots – at the scene near a Synagogue in Colleyville https://t.co/l4Q06WHQsihttps://t.co/d3y7FgBYEb
The terrorist, who the FBI named as 44-year-old British national Malik Faisal Akram, reportedly knocked on the door of the synagogue before Cytron-Walker welcomed him in and made him a cup of tea. Struggling to speak on air, the rabbi said that he didnât notice anything suspicious about the character until they prayed together.
The rabbi said he realized something was amiss when, during prayer, as his back was turned away from the man, he heard a click and âit was his gun.â The man then revealed himself and started ranting for hours about his family and Islam, according to a Facebook livestream broadcast from inside the house of worship.
âIf anyone tries to enter this building, Iâm telling you . . . everyone will die,â he said during the livestream. He demanded the prison release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist convicted of attempting to murder U.S. soldiers while Siddiqui was in their custody in Afghanistan in 2010.
Snip.
âDuring the last hour of the standoff, he wasnât getting what he wanted. It didnât look good, it didnât sound good. We were terrified. And when I saw an opportunity where he wasnât in a good position, I made sure that the two gentlemen who were with me, that they were ready to go. The exit wasnât too far away,â he explained. âI told them to go, I threw a chair at the gunman, and I headed for the door, and all three of us were able to get out without a shot being fired.â
Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Biden has a bad week, ï»żanother high profile Democratic politician is indicted on federal charges, and a dog goes home.
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After having his business mandate overturned by the Supreme Court, Joe Biden goes on TV to plead that they have to end the filibuster because Republican election fraud prevention laws are keeping Democrats from cheating. (I may be paraphrasing a little.) Whereupon…
Arizona Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema said the same. You know, just like the last thousand times Democratic Media Complex mouthpieces asked them. “Are you sure? Are you really sure? Are you really really really sure? But we want it!”
If they vote with Schumer, Republicans will eat Kelly and Hassan alive this year and others later on, all for a vote that Manchin and Sinema have already insisted will go nowhere anyway. If they vote against the filibuster change, progressives will eat them alive in states where their support is critical. Even if these seats were salvageable, and that may not be the case already for Kelly and Hassan, Schumerâs move is guaranteed to lose seats for no purpose whatsoever. Itâs the political equivalent of Pickettâs Charge.
Democrats handled Sinema’s refusal with tact and grace. Ha, just kidding! They called her a racist:
Have you tried calling her racist harder?
You're like an 8-year old kid playing a video game that only knows how to punch one button over and over again. pic.twitter.com/qpmcWxVnNY
Before she became vice president, Kamala Harris had a bad habit of ignoring prepared briefing materials.
She does not appear to have kicked this habit, even after making it all the way to the White House.
âStaffers who worked for Harris before she was vice president said one consistent problem was that Harris would refuse to wade into briefing materials prepared by staff members, then berate employees when she appeared unprepared,â the Washington Post reports.
One former staffer told the paper, âItâs clear that youâre not working with somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work. With Kamala, you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence. So youâre constantly sort of propping up a bully, and itâs not really clear why.â
The 2020 presidential election was unlike any in American history.
Hundreds of laws and processes were changed in the months leading up to the election, sometimes legally and sometimes not, creating chaos, confusion, and uncertainty. Tech oligarch Mark Zuckerberg, one of the worldâs wealthiest and most powerful men, spent $419 million â nearly as much as the federal government itself â to interfere in the governmentâs management of the election in key states.
Powerful tech oligarchs and corrupt propaganda press conspired to keep indisputably important news stories, such as allegations of corruption regarding the Biden family business, hidden from voters in the weeks prior to voting. Information operations were routinely manufactured about President Trump in the closing months of the campaign, including the false claim that Russians paid bounties for dead American soldiers and Trump didnât care, and that Trump had called dead American soldiers losers. Both were disputed by dozens of on-the-record sources.
Effective conservative voices were censored by the social media arms of the Democrat Party. And all this was done after the establishment spent years running an unprecedented âResistanceâ that falsely claimed Trump was a traitor who had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.
Itâs not surprising that polls show most Republicans are deeply concerned about the integrity of such an election. If anything, itâs surprising that all of them arenât screaming from the rooftops about it. But it is interesting and telling how little the media and other Democrats are willing to talk about efforts to rig the election.
With the exception of a single Time Magazine article admitting there was a âconspiracyâ by a âa well-funded cabal of powerful peopleâ who worked to âchange rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information,â to create a ârevolution in how people vote,â corporate media have largely kept silent about or downplayed how the establishment secured its victory for their man Joe Biden.
The number of people killed by pro-Trump supporters at the January 6 Capitol riot is equal to the number of pro-Trump supporters who brandished guns or knives inside the Capitol. That is the same number as the total of Americans who â after a full year of a Democrat-led DOJ conducting what is heralded as âthe most expansive federal law enforcement investigation in US historyâ â have been charged with inciting insurrection, sedition, treason or conspiracy to overthrow the government as a result of that riot one year ago. Coincidentally, it is the same number as Americans who ended up being criminally charged by the Mueller probe of conspiring with Russia over the 2016 election, and the number of wounds â grave or light â which AOC, who finally emerged at night to assure an on-edge nation that she was âokay” while waiting in an office building away from the riot at the rotunda, sustained on that solemn day.
That number is zero. But just as these rather crucial facts do not prevent the dominant wing of the U.S. corporate media and Democratic Party leaders from continuing to insist that Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory was illegitimate due to his collusion with the Kremlin, it also does not prevent January 6 from being widely described in those same circles as an Insurrection, an attempted coup, an event as traumatizing as Pearl Harbor (2,403 dead) or the 9/11 attack (2,977 dead), and as the gravest attack on American democracy since the mid-19th Century Civil War (750,000 dead). The Huffington Post’s White House reporter S.V. Date said that it was wrong to compare 1/6 to 9/11, because the former â the three-hour riot at the Capitol â was â1,000 percent worse.â
Indeed, when it comes to melodrama, histrionics, and exploitation of fear levels from the 1/6 riot, there has never been any apparent limit. And today â the one-year anniversary of that three-hour riot â there is no apparent end in sight. Too many political and media elites are far too vested in this maximalist narrative for them to relinquish it voluntarily.
Snip.
That the January 6 riot was some sort of serious attempted insurrection or “coupâ was laughable from the start, and has become even more preposterous with the passage of time and the emergence of more facts. The United States is the most armed, militarized and powerful regime in the history of humanity. The idea that a thousand or so Trump supporters, largely composed of Gen X and Boomers, who had been locked in their homes during a pandemic â three of whom were so physically infirm that they dropped dead from the stress â posed anything approaching a serious threat to âoverthrowâ the federal government of the United States of America is such a self-evidently ludicrous assertion that any healthy political culture would instantly expel someone suggesting it with a straight face.
Snip.
Far too many centers of political and economic power benefit from an exaggerated and even false narrative about January 6 to expect it ever to end.
The Democratic Party, eager to cling to their majoritarian control of the White House and both houses of Congress, knows it has no political program that is appealing and thus hopes that this concocted drama will help them win â just as they foolishly believed about Russiagate. With the threat of Al Qaeda and ISIS faded if not gone, and the attempt to scare Americans over Putin a failure, the U.S. security state, always in need of a scary enemy, has settled on the claim that right-wing âdomestic extremists” are the greatest threat to U.S national security; though they claimed this before 1/6, casting 1/6 as an insurrection allows them to classify an entire domestic political movement as an insurrectionary criminal group and thus justify greater spying powers and budgetary authorities.
CNN proudly announced that the most-watched day in the history of their network was 1/6. The dirty little secret of the liberal wing of the corporate media is that nobody benefited more from the Trump campaign, his presidency and its aftermath than they, and they are desperate to rejuvenate it and re-discover that glory. Meanwhile, coddled journalists who have never broken meaningful stories have finally found a way to claim that they stared down dangerous and risky situations â as if they spent years in the middle of an active war zone or were persecuted and prosecuted by a corrupt and authoritarian state for their intrepid reporting â and have converted Brian Stelter’s CNN show into a virtual therapists’s couch where they all get to go and talk about how they are still coping with the deep trauma of spending a few hours in the Capitol last year.
The pettiness and absurdity of this Democrat/media narrative, laughable as it often is, does not mean it is free of danger. Asserting that the U.S. suffered an attempted coup by a still-vibrant armed faction of insurrectionists is a self-evidently inflammatory claim. It has been used to allocate billions more to the Capitol Police and to radically expand their powers; justify the increased domestic use of FBI tactics including monitoring and infiltration; and agitate for the mass imprisonment of political adversaries, including elected members of Congress. Hapless defendants who are not even accused of using violence have been held in harsh solitary confinement for close to a year, then sentenced to years in prison â while self-styled criminal justice reform advocates say nothing or, even worse, cheer. If one genuinely believes that the U.S. came close to a violent overthrow of American democracy and still faces the risk of an insurrection, then it is rational to sanction radical acts by the U.S. security state that, in more peaceful and normal times, would be unthinkable.
A few years ago, the editor-in-chief of The Hollywood Reporter pitched a story to the newsroom. He had just come back from lunch with a well-known agent, who had suggested the paper take a look at the unintended consequences of Hollywoodâs efforts to diversify. Those white men who had spent decades writing scriptsâwhich had been turned into blockbuster movies and hit television showsâwere no longer getting hired.
The newsroom blew up. The reporters, especially the younger ones, mocked the idea that white men were on the outs. The editor-in-chief, normally self-assured, immediately backtracked. He looked rattled.
Snipped.
So, in September 2020, the Academy launched its Representation and Inclusion Standards Entry platform (or RAISE). For a movie to qualify for Best Picture, producers not only had to register detailed personal information about everyone involved in the making of that movie, but the movie had to meet two of the Academyâs four diversity standardsâtouching on everything from on-screen representation to creative leadership. (An Academy spokesperson said âonly select staffâ would have access to data collected on the platform.)
The Academy explained that movies failing to meet these standards would not be barred from qualifying for Best Picture until 2024. But producers are already complying: In 2020, data from 366 productions were submitted to the platform.
Meanwhile, CBS mandated that writersâ rooms be at least 40 percent black, indigenous and people of color (or BIPOC) for the 2021-2022 broadcast season and 50 percent for the 2022-2023 season. ABC Entertainment issued a detailed series of âinclusion standards.â (âI guarantee you every studio has something like that,â a longtime writer and director said.)
Snip.
The old-timers accustomed to being on the insideâand the (non-BIPOC) up-and-comers afraid theyâd never get thereâwere one-part confused, one-part angry, and 10,000-parts scared.
âEveryone has gone so underground with their true feelings about things,â said Mike White, the writer and director behind the hit HBO comedy-drama âThe White Lotus.â âIf you voice things in a certain way it can really have negative repercussions for you, and people can presume that you could be racist, or you could be seen as misogynist.â
Howard Koch, who has been involved in the production of more than 60 movies, including such classics as âChinatownâ and âMarathon Man,â and is the former president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, said: âIâm all for LGBT and Native Americans, blacks, females, whatever minorities that have not been served correctly in the making of content, whether itâs television or movies or whatever, but I think itâs gone too far. I know a lot of very talented people that canât get work because theyâre not black, Native American, female or LGBTQ.â
Another writer, who, like most of the writers we interviewed, was afraid to speak openly for fear of never working again, said: âI get so paranoid about even phone calls. Itâs so scary. My close friends and my family are just like, âDonât say anything.â It is one of those things, âWill I be able to sleep at night if I say anything?â Getting jobs in this town is so hard, and Iâm very grateful to have a great job. If thereâs any so-called ding on my record, that would just be an argument against hiring me.â
It is, said Sam Wasson, the author of âThe Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood,â not so different from the McCarthy era, when everyone in Hollywood professed to believe something that they thought everyone outside Hollywoodâthe country, their audienceâbelieved. âHollywood was never anti-Communist,â Wasson said. âIt just pretended to be. In fact, Hollywood was never anti- or pro- anything. It was show business. Thereâs no morality here.â
That amorality, coupled with a finely tuned sense of what the audience is hungry for, whatâs trending, has left Hollywood more susceptible to the vagaries of the culture war.
âNow, theyâll just say, âSorry, diversity quotas. Weâre just not allowed to hire you,ââ said a 48-year-old white, male comedy writer who was recently dropped by his agent.
Sounds like an opportunity to hire great talent on the cheap from someone outside the club. If only someone had the balls…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sues Planned Parenthood:
Planned Parenthood took advantage of Texans, violated medical standards, & lied. While theyâre no longer a TX Medicaid provider, they still collected millions for their bloody biz.
Iâm suing to get that wrongly-syphoned money back for Texans and stand for life. pic.twitter.com/jcI5rmWAHb
For your 2024 “change” presidential candidate, would you believe none other than Grandma Death herself? If she actually gets the nomination, then we’ll know we’re living in the simulation…
What you do see are the fruits of the conquest. The admixture of confident aggression, roll-the-dice settlement, and entrepreneurial genius manifests itself with the first wells you see. The Permian is rich, a treasure-house stored up across one hundred million years, and the wells are everywhere. They appear, solitary or in pairs, and as you proceed westward they multiply. There is a particular mesa with a sharp escarpment on its south face, and every time I see it I marvel at the wells perched on its nearly vertical incline. There is new exploration and investment, too. The Permian has been exploited for nearly a century, but its yield is nowhere close to exhaustion. Yesterday, and the day before, I witnessed tremendous convoys â men, trucks, equipment â sallying forth to new wells in the creation. There is a cotton field with wells on it: acreage that produces everything America needs to keep warm. In Midland itself, there is a golf course with a well on it. There are roadside shoulders with wells on them. There are wells everywhere. Midland-Odessa works: they raise families and hell alike, and power the continent.
All of this is set in the Llano Estacado, a region of Texas ordinarily hostile to life and settlement. Most of Texas outside the verdant east is hostile to life and settlement to some degree. The Llano Estacado, though, is nearly the hardest far place there is, exceeded only by the despoblado and desert of the trans-Pecos. The land is hard. The weather is hard. The enterprise is hard too. The oil-and-gas business makes some men rich, ruins more, and perennially frustrates still more. There are the handful of energy giants around the world â the ExxonMobils, the Shells, and the handful of other names you see on gas stations and giant tankers â but that isnât who you see in the Permian. It isnât who you see on the road to Midland. What you see are names and signs of firms that you donât recognize, and wouldnât unless this was your professional world. Some are well established. Others are just starting out. All of them are the names of dreams and gambles: ideas made real but not necessarily lasting, leaps without nets. There is something admirable to it.
Spend time in Midland (and, if youâre raising hell, in Odessa) and you realize youâre seeing a way of life that is increasingly rare. It is a place where nearly everyone is working. I donât mean sitting at a desk. I mean labor as it was once understood, things done with the hands, wearying the body, with the end product being something you could see, touch, feel. It is a single-industry town, yes, but that industry is in the business of real material creation. In our fathersâ time, we could say that about most of America. Now it it characterizes only a small proportion of our national life. Something is lost along with it. You see Midland, a town where the taquerias and coffee shops open at 3:30am, at 4am, at 5am to accommodate what passes for rush hour there â and you see a town that is too hard at work to ever indulge in the luxury of anxiety. Places where people hit the alarm at 6am, at 7am, spend an hour on a crawling commute, spend eight hours motionless in a cube, and then repeat: thatâs where alienation and disconnect occur. Thatâs where the civic neuroses take root and blossom. Thatâs where we spawn the psychic illnesses peculiar to people who are physically safe and have in their whole lives risked nothing.
Read the whole thing.
Heh:
Joe Biden's presidency has fallen and it can't get up.
Things that make you go “Hmmm.” Namely Austin police finding two submerged bodies in three days…
So you want to become a warlord! Here are some handy tips on ruling your patch of the post-apocalyptic wasteland! (Though sadly, there seems to be very little information on obtaining chrome face spray after the apocalypse…)
They are artifacts that have locked into them so many messages about the aspirations, hopes, needs, and restrictions of their time. They were incredibly expensive things, and they were used as opportunities to demonstrate something about yourself, to say something about yourself to the world…[The best art is] always composed within some sort of restraints. There’s always a limit to how far you can go, and it’s within those limitations that i think human ingenuity does best.
I think this is true, and I think that the restraints and limits of various art forms are what help bring out their greatness.
A former Austin city staffer has pleaded guilty to taking payments from a nonprofit that won a federal contract he promoted while working as Mayor Steve Adlerâs aide.
Frank Rodriguez, 71, who left his job as a senior policy adviser to the mayor after the American-Statesman investigated his actions in 2017, pleaded guilty this month to conspiring to misapply federal funds and to falsifying records. He faces up to five years in prison and will be sentenced March 24 in federal court.
Snip.
Latino HealthCare Forum, a nonprofit that Rodriguez co-founded and once ran, reaped $1 million in public money for programs Rodriguez helped create, the Statesman uncovered in its investigation.
Rodriguez stepped down from the nonprofit to join the mayorâs office in 2015. However, he still applied for federal Affordable Care Act grant funding on behalf of the nonprofit, calling himself the organization’s chief development officer who would work full time as the project’s director, investigators said.
FBI investigators confirmed Statesman reporting that Rodriguez used his city job to influence the success of his own application, then benefited financially from the application’s success.
It’s all about the Benjamins.
In January 2017, while Rodriguez was still a city employee, he emailed other city staffers a document entitled âCrisis.docx,â after learning about the Statesman’s investigation.
Pro-tip: Never leave an email trail for your graft and fraud, especially if you’re using or interacting with government email systems…
With lunatic socialist Austin City Councilman Greg Casar running for congress, there’s a a special election to replace him on January 25.
Police catch wanted sex offender in the act of raping a 7 year old boy, only for Associate Judge Christyne Harris Schultz to set bond at a paltry $50,000 rather than $1 million.
Homeless normativity is not a known term as it is something I made up, meaning that politicians and local authorities have allowed for a normalizing of homelessness through telling the cops to no longer enforce laws [AKA decriminalization] like illegal camping, littering, panhandling, or public defecation. This has gone on in coastal state big cities for the last several years and has allowed for the initial shock of homelessness, that âI need to do somethingâ mindset of volunteering to hand out food or donate the clothes you never wear, to an acceptance that clothing and food will not help and that the sympathetic hobo-like bums of yore are now a more zombified set and not to be approached. Itâs as if homelessness has become mainstream, no longer an outlier underground element of society. In this acceptance by local governmentâbut not necessarily youâthere is the phenomenon that if you speak ill of these folks that you are a bigot and discriminating against a group that needs your unlimited patience and big hearted compassion. There is an added narrative of urban camping and a nostalgia for bucking the trend of 9 to 5 and being off the grid, resulting in a romanticized bent to it regardless of the apocalyptic conditions.
The mystery of this apathy can be explained in an invisible threat to Americaâs democracy, the Homeless Industrial Complex. The term, co-opted from Eisenhowerâs Military Industrial Complex, may prove to be more difficult to unravel than its military version.
The HIC (Homeless Industrial Complex) has proven to perpetuate homelessness through an alliance of special interest groups, local bureaucracies, advocacy groups, even construction developers. The most formidable and largest of scale example of this is when politicians use public money to build, via private developer, some form of housing, like apartment complexes or renovating an inner-city building into SRO (single room occupancy). Local agencies collect development fees, and a non-profit is contracted to run the property for the undetermined remaining life of the property. The problem, of course, is the exorbitant costs for this process. The product ends up being well over the price of any private, competitive construction endeavor. Then the people hired to run the properties operate under an extensive system of bureaucratic costs of high salaries, outreach campaigns, catered lunch meetings, and, yes, corruption.
So when we look at direct assistance to families, here’s how some of that money was spent: take the community services block grant for $1.2 million designed to provide direct financial assistance to families.
As of February, $244,277.99 had been given to 367 people in 131 households. The KVUE Defenders asked for an update and did not get a response.
A little more than $1 million ($1,041,851) was set aside to help people experiencing homelessness and impacted by COVID-19. That money went to pay the leases for five hotels that were used as pro-lodges, which according to the City, helped provide temporary shelter to 615 people.
Another $1 million went to emergency rental assistance that money ended up helping 147 people. The City goal was to help 143 people over 12 months. That goal was surpassed within seven months.
Snip.
In a recent city council meeting, the City’s homeless officer, Dianna Grey, said the City really needs $515 million more.
âThat plan is to house 3,000 people … hundreds of them getting houses this year and 3,000 people over the course of the next three years. And that would be drastic,â said Casar.
For the math challenged, that’s $171,666 per homeless person housed. I bought my own house for slightly less in 2004. Seems like there’s an awful lot of graft going on there…
Is Facebook moving its headquarters to Austin? Maybe.
Facebookâs parent company Meta has become the latest California corporation to at least partly move to Texas as it has signed a massive lease called âthe largest ever in downtown Austin.â
âThe lease is the largest ever in Downtown Austin and larger than the entire Frost Bank Tower in terms of square feet,â KVUE reported.
The Austin Business Journal reported the lease includes all office space in the cityâs tallest tower. The skyscraper is still under development.
âMonths of speculation have come to an end as California-based Meta Platforms Inc. â the parent company of Facebook â recently leased the entire commercial half of Sixth and Guadalupe, the 66-story high-rise under construction downtown that will be Austinâs tallest building when finished. The social media company has also pledged hundreds more jobs in the Texas capital,â the report said.
The lease includes 589,000 square feet across 33 floors of the skyscraper.
âWe first came to Austin over 10 years ago with just seven employees, now over 2,000 of us are proud to call Austin home. Weâre committed to Austin and look forward to growing here together,â Katherine Shappley, head of Metaâs Austin office and vice president for commerce customer success, told the outlet.
Facebook announced in July that it would be embarking on a âmetaverseâ initiative, changing the companyâs new name to âMeta.â
That’s probably good for Austin jobseekers with technical skills, but bad for people trying to afford housing downtown. Speaking of which:
“New data shows a continued increase in rent prices for Austinites.” “New numbers from ApartmentData.com show apartment rents in the Austin area went up about 25% between December 2020 and December 2021.”
More Democrats behaving badly and Kazakhstan in flames. Enjoy the first LinkSwarm of 2022!
How Democrats running the New York City Department of Correction turned control over to the correctional officers union and they let the inmates run the jail.
For years, mayors and correction commissioners have allowed jail managers to place the least experienced officers in charge of detainee dorms and cells, posts that are critical for keeping order but viewed by many as the least desirable assignments in the system. The managers, who base staffing decisions on seniority, department custom and office politics, have also filled the jobs with guards who have fallen out of favor with administrators, reinforcing the idea that they are punishment posts to be avoided.
When those guards in the housing units have fallen ill, gotten injured or been barred from contact with incarcerated people for other reasons, other rules adopted by city leaders have made finding replacements unusually difficult.
Every mayoral administration since John Lindsayâs in the 1970s has signed union contracts granting unlimited sick leave to guards and the cityâs other uniformed workers. And records and interviews suggest that abusing it can carry few consequences: It can take more than a year for the department to bring discipline charges against an officer who is caught abusing sick leave.
On a Thursday in October, one Rikers jail had 572 guards on its work schedule â more than enough to fill the 363 open posts.
But 17 guards were serving suspensions or had stopped showing up for work.
Another 117 guards were on vacation, long-term leave or off doing temporary duties.
Then there were those marked âindefinitely sickâ â 136 guards who had been out for 30 days or more but were still on the payroll thanks to generous union benefits.
That tipped the balance, leaving just 302 guards to fill the 363 posts, and forcing double shifts across the jail.
When they have been told that such policies could lead to dangerous breakdowns, city leaders have not acted on the warnings. As recently as February 2018, the office of Mayor Bill de Blasioâs top criminal justice adviser presented the first deputy mayor, Dean Fuleihan, with a memo that stated that high rates of absenteeism among guards might be driving a rise in jail violence â and recommended steps to stabilize staffing and reduce violent incidents. The de Blasio administration took none of them, and the memo has not been made public.
And when conditions have spiraled out of control on Rikers in recent years, jail managers have favored quick fixes over deeper policy changes. Under scrutiny in 2014 amid reports of brutality by guards, the managers concentrated members of the Bloods gang in some units, the Crips in others, and still other gangs in other areas, hoping the practice would cut down on fights among rival groups. It did not work. Not only did incidents where guards used force rise, but some gangs were positioned to take over housing areas when the pandemic swept through and caused staffing problems.
The mismanagement over the years has left the people charged with running the jail system feeling powerless.
Putting criminals in charge of things does seem like the Democratic Party’s go-to move in a lot of areas…
For nearly two years, weâve wondered how this will end. In retrospect, the clue is in how it began.
The initial lockdowns had a strong class-based component. The working classes were assigned the job of delivering groceries, tending to the sick, driving the trucks filled with goods, keeping the lights on, and keeping the fuel running. The professional class, among whom were the people who pushed lockdowns in the name of disease avoidance/suppression, were assigned the job of staying home in their pajamas and staying safe.
It all happened seemingly in an instant. We all had to figure out whether our job qualified and what we should do. More striking at the time was the very notion that government bureaucrats could slice and dice the population in that way, deciding what can open and what canât, who must work and who must not, what we can and canât do, all based on our station in life.
It now seems obvious to me. This whole disaster would finally come to an end (or at least the end would begin) when it became obvious that the great strategy of class division and demarcation would fail to protect the Zoom class from infection.
That day has finally arrived, with cases soaring in many parts of the country and hitting everyone of every class, whether theyâre being âcarefulâ and adhering to the âmitigation measuresâ or not. Whatâs even more striking is how even the vaccines, which were supposed to codify the wisdom of class segregation, havenât protected against infection.
All of this seems to have taken place over the course of December 2021, with the arrival of the seemingly mild Omicron variant. Still, the other variants circulate widely, causing various degrees of severity with or without hospitalization, much less death. In other words, millions from among all classes of people are finally getting sick. At this point, we seem to be seeing a big shift in attitudes.
A lot of this comes from casual conversation. A person comes down with COVID, perhaps confirmed by the newly fashionable at-home tests. âDid you get vaccinated?â the person is invariably asked. The answer comes back: Yes, and boosted. Thatâs when the chill happens. It appears that nothing can ultimately protect people from this. In which case, itâs time we change our tune.
Snip.
The driving ambition here, though never explicitly stated, was to assign the burden of bearing the disease to the lessers among us. Thatâs a conventional model used in illiberal societies throughout history. The elites who had both granted and benefited from lockdowns took it as axiomatic that they deserved disease purity and health more than those who worked to keep society running. And that scheme seemed to work for a very long time. They stayed home and stayed safe and kept clean, while the virus circulated season after season.
Itâs hard to know what the end game here was. Did the Zoom class honestly believe that they could forever avoid exposure and infection and thus the development of natural immunity? Certainly they did for a time believe that the shots would spare them. Once that didnât happen, there was a huge problem. There were no more tools remaining to perpetuate the disease castes that had been forged back in the day.
Now that the people who tried to protect themselves are no longer able to do so, we are seeing a sudden rethinking of disease stigmatization, class disdain, and the treatment of others as sandbags to shield people based on class. Now itâs suddenly no longer a sin to be sick.
Fascinating! What went wrong here? Everything. The notion that public health should thusly divide peopleâbased on one pathogenâcontradicts every democratic principle. That idea still survives with the vaccines, regardless of the known limitations. The people who invested in these personally and socially will continue to use them to divide and conquer.
In the 2016 Republican Party presidential primary, decades of dissonance between the party’s aggrieved grassroots and its blinkered elite spilled out into the open. For years, the chasm widened between the GOP’s heartland base, the river valley-dwelling “Somewheres” from David Goodhart’s 2017 book, The Road to Somewhere, and the party’s bicoastal “Anywhere” rulers. The foot-soldier Republican “Somewheres,” disproportionately church-attending and victimized by job outsourcing and the opioid crisis, felt betrayed by the more secular, ideologically inflexible Republican “Anywheres.”
Donald Trump, lifelong conservative “outsider” and populist dissenter from bicoastal “Anywhere” orthodoxy on issues pertaining to trade, immigration and China, coasted to the GOP’s presidential nomination. He did so notwithstanding the all-hands-on-deck pushback from leading right-leaning “Anywhere” bastions, encapsulated by National Review magazine’s dedication of an entire issue to, “Against Trump.” Trump’s subsequent victory in the 2016 general election sent the conservative intellectual movement, as well as the Republican Party itself, into a deep state of introspection.
Trump’s victory was primarily propelled by a white working-class revolt, but the emergence during his presidency of a deeply censorious and anti-American Leftâepitomized by the Democrats’ outrageous conduct during the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation battle and the destructive “1619 riots” last summerâopened the door for a broader working-class, pro-America political coalition. By Election Day 2020, that multiethnic, working-class conservative coalition had begun to take more definite shape. Trump lost a nail-biter of an election, but the GOP made massive inroads in crucial black and Hispanic communities, such as Florida’s Miami-Dade County and the heavily Mexican counties dotting Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.
Now over a year removed from the 2020 presidential election, as President Joe Biden’s poll numbers plummet and frantic Democrats gird themselves for a 2022 midterm election shellacking, data continues to trickle in supporting the emergence of a “Somewhere”-centric, multiethnic, working-class Republican coalition. In Texas, where former Democratic Representative Beto O’Rourke lost to incumbent Republican Senator Ted Cruz by less than three points in 2018, a new Quinnipiac University poll finds Republican incumbent Governor Greg Abbott, up for reelection in 2022, leading challenger O’Rourke by a whopping 15 points. Abbott outright leads O’Rourke among Texas Hispanic voters, 44 to 41, and Texas Hispanics disapprove of Biden’s job performance by a massive 27-point margin.
A new Wall Street Journal national poll evinces much the same trend. On a generic Republican versus Democrat ballot, the WSJ poll shows Hispanics evenly split 37 to 37. Nationally, Hispanics disapprove of Biden’s job performance by 12 points, and they support Biden over Trump in a hypothetical 2024 presidential rematch by a razor-thin 44 to 43 margin. Nor, of course, is the GOP’s good news with Hispanic voters limited to Texas; in Florida, the state’s growing conservative-leaning Cuban and Venezuelan populations make Republican incumbents Governor Ron DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio heavy favorites for reelection next fall.
Trump has has taken up permanent rent-free residence in their heads: “MSNBC’s ‘Deadline: White House’ mentions Trump more than twice as often as Biden.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
âI find some kind of sign every single day that someone has been on my ranch,â says Schuster. âEvery time I leave my house, thereâs some kind of indication that someone has been on my ranch.â
Law enforcement has been called to the Schuster property five times in the past year to respond to incidents where illegal border crossers have knocked on their door or approached their house.
Operation Lone Star, a state effort that has seen additional Texas DPS officers sent to border counties, has been a blessing to the county, according to Schuster, and a relief to the local sheriff and his small crew of deputies. Schuster believes that the DPS patrols on the highways have been a deterrent to the illegal border crossers who use the highways and then bail out to run onto private property.
However, Schuster says the problems will persist for as long as this open border policy continues.
âI donât know all the politics of it and how all that works, but weâre gonna have to do something, because my parents worked hard to buy this land. People have said, âWell, if youâre scared on your own land, you just move.â It doesnât work that way,â said Schuster. âThis is our land. And they worked hard, and they bought it, and you canât give up on that land. Itâs your legacy. Itâs your legacy for your children. And so, itâs not like you just have a house in town, and you could just sell it and move to another community. When you have a ranch, you canât do that.â
Schuster added, âIn the last year, our life has been turned completely upside down. It is something that we just had never foreseen.â
She said that beginning last January, âthe number of illegals coming through has been unbelievable. The group sizes are big. You know, growing up on a ranch, around ranching, weâve always had illegals coming through. Never saw women before, or children. Men come through, maybe two or three; if you saw [a] group of five, that was a big group. Weâve got groups of like 45 coming through.â
The sizable groups are not the only issue with this increased traffic. âââTheyâre very disruptive. Weâve never seen that before,â said Schuster. âThe people that have come across primarily from Mexico for work, going from point A to point B looking for a job, did not intentionally tear up our water systems. The debris that theyâre leaving behind is unbelievable. Iâm picking up trash on my ranch daily, theyâre leaving gates open, livestock is getting mixed up, or maybe water gaps between me and my neighbor.â
An incident over the summer left Schuster shocked when some of the illegal border crossers intentionally broke a water line. âI lost about 10,000 gallons of water this summer,â said Schuster. âIt probably took me at least six weeks to gain that much water back.â
According to Schuster, âthey couldâve reached overâit wasnât enclosedâand gotten a drink. But they just took a rock and beat this line until they broke it. Thatâs mean. Thatâs just malicious.â
Security and safety have taken major precedence in the Schuster familyâs life. Game cameras on the doors, rarely going out in the pre-dawn hours, working out of an enclosed truck instead of an open UTV on the ranch, and never leaving the house without a pistol have all become standard practice for the whole family.
Twitter user TimDCpolitico took Floridaâs voter rolls from March 31 of 2020 and compared them to the latest figures. The results, he says, are âjaw-dropping,â and I canât think of a better way to describe them.
Out of over 14 million registered voters, last year Democrats held the edge with 37.38% of registrations compared to the GOPâs 35.28%. (The remaining four million or so â around 26% â were independents or members of minor parties.)
Democrats held a two-point advantage, but higher Republican turnout has made the state safely red in the last two presidential elections.
Snip.
66 out of Floridaâs 67 counties shifted towards the red. Three hardcore Democrat counties â Broward (!!!), Jefferson, and Madison â might in some races be considered additional battlegrounds Dems will have to defend.
A fourth, Calhoun, went from dark blue to light red.
Thatâs impressive.
What should have Democrats strapping on a pair of Extra Absorbent Depends (Endorsed by Presidentish Joe Biden!) is that they lost more than 50,000 registrations in the same time period â even as the stateâs population has grown.
Republicans have gone all in on South Texas, but theyâre not content for domination of state and congressional seats. They want local government, too.
One GOP group, Project Red Texas, spent the weeks before the December filing deadline to run in the March primary election traveling the region and recruiting candidates to run for county offices, offering to pay their filing fees. The group ended up helping get 125 candidates on the ballot across 25 counties, according to its leader, veteran party operative Wayne Hamilton. He said the group paid for âwell overâ half the filing fees.
The first step on the road to winning is actually showing up.
Investors may want to think twice about putting their money to work in China, contends DoubleLine founder Jeffrey Gundlach.
“China is uninvestible, in my opinion, at this point,” the bond king told Yahoo Finance in an interview at his California estate. “I’ve never invested in China long or short. Why is that? I don’t trust the data. I don’t trust the relationship between the United States and China anymore. I think that investments in China could be confiscated. I think there’s a risk of that.”
Snip.
The ongoing crackdown on the operations of big Chinese internet companies such as Didi by the government has rocked investors in the space. The clamping down on the country’s biggest tech names has now led to a tightening of listing requirements by the Chinese government.
To that end, Didi plans to delist from the New York Stock Exchange later this year not too long after a disastrous IPO (in large part because of Chinese authorities).
Meanwhile, the long reach of China’s government also hammered after-school tutoring companies such as TAL Education Group â shares of the name plunged about 95% in 2021.
All of this is in addition to China’s ongoing fight against the rise of cryptocurrencies.
The investing headwinds in the country show up in how the country’s key indexes performed in 2021.
For instance, the Golden Dragon Index â which tracks the performance of mid- and large-cap Chinese stocks â plunged about 49% in 2021. The Wall Street Journal points out the total value of China’s onshore stocks rose 20% in 2021, underperforming the S&P 500’s advance.
And none of that touches the insanely overleveraged real estate market there…
Another day, another high-profile Kamala Harris staffer leaving. “Vincent Evans, the veepâs deputy director of public engagement and intergovernmental affairs, has quit to take on a role on Capitol Hill.”
Austinites (and anyone who uses metered parking) beware:
đšScam Alertđš APD Financial Crimes detectives are investigating after fraudulent QR code stickers were discovered on City of Austin public parking meters. People attempting to pay for parking using those QR codes may have been directed to a fraudulent website and made a payment. pic.twitter.com/Gb8gytCYn7
PayPal just informed me that they have permanently banned my account. Without giving an explicit reason why, the supervisor was extremely rude and implied that it had everything to do with my politics.
— Ian Miles Cheong @ stillgray.substack.com (@stillgray) January 5, 2022
Seeing Collins contorted in a wheeled chair, like Grandfather Smallweed in Bleak House, while his two bandmates swayed on either side of him, painlessly upright in elegant, soft grey fashions like Farrow and Ball in human form, bordered on the grotesque. It resembled a satire on the ineradicable nature of privilege and class, rather than evidence of the dynamic tension every band needs to achieve creative synthesis. It was everything the NME said punk disdained. But I canât imagine John Lydon taking any pleasure in this at all.
To say that Lydon has mellowed would be a huge over-simplification, not only of who he is now but of who he was then, both of which were media distortions if not inventions. And, frankly, I’m not qualified to offer much insight into either. But I suspect that he is at least more willing to let us see his human side now. His wife of over 40 years, Nora Forster, has been suffering from Alzheimerâs for the last three and he has committed himself to her full-time care. In 2010, Forsterâs daughter Arianeâbetter known as Ari Up, lead singer of female post-punk outfit The Slitsâdied of breast cancer aged just 48. Lydon knows something about human frailty, mortality, and loss.
I have the sense that after many years, not on the field of combat but behind the bare timber of the cheapest proscenium arch, the paint is wearing off both these Punch dolls. Both were iconic and pugnacious in their day, but human, all too human, too. Today, it is not prog, let alone Genesis, that attracts Lydon’s ire, but what he perceives to be the betrayal of his ex-bandmates, who have sold out the Pistolsâ musical legacy to a TV showâpeople that do indeed, as he sneered in PiL, see it as nothing more than product.
Ted Cruz has had a weird week. After the braindead boner of calling January 6 riot participants “domestic terrorists,” he had to issue a huge Mea Culpa on Tucker Carlson. Oh, and he also issued this:
Due to popular demand from angry libs, in 2022 weâll be putting out a swimsuit calendar. https://t.co/Lr1aDZIv3H
Over the past year, DeSantis has emerged as one of the most articulate political spokesmen for the antiâcritical race theory movement. His new policy agenda builds on successful anti-CRT legislation in other states but goes two steps further. First, it provides parents with a âprivate right of action,â which allows them to sue offending institutions for violations, gain information through legal discovery, and, if they win in the courts, collect attorneyâs fees. Second, it tackles critical race theory in corporate âdiversity, equity, and inclusionâ training programs, which, DeSantis says, sometimes promote racial stereotyping, scapegoating, and harassment, in violation of state civil rights laws.
At heart, the battle against critical race theory is a fight against entrenched bureaucracies that have used public institutions to promote their own racialist ideology. âThis is an elite-driven phenomenon being driven by bureaucratic elites, elites in universities, and elites in corporate America, and theyâre trying to shove it down the throats of the American people,â DeSantis said. âYouâre not doing that in the state of Florida.â
Following his speech, DeSantis invited me to address the crowd. I explained that the reason critical race theory has upset so many Americans is that it speaks to two deep reservoirs of human sentiment: citizensâ desire for self-government and parentsâ desire to shape the moral and educational development of their children. Elite institutions have attempted to step between parent and child.
DeSantis has deftly positioned himself as a protector of middle-American families. One of the guest speakers, Lacaysha Howell, a biracial mother from Sarasota, said that left-wing teachers tried to persuade her daughter that the white side of their family was oppressive. Another speaker, Eulalia Jimenez, a Cuban-American mother from the Miami area, said that left-wing indoctrination in schools reminded her of her fatherâs warnings about Communism in his native Cuba. Both believed that critical race theory was poison to the American Dream.
As they begin their next session in January, Florida legislators have the opportunity to craft the gold standard for âculture warâ policy. The governorâs team has worked with a range of interested parties, including the Manhattan Institute, which has crafted model language for prohibiting racialist indoctrination and providing curriculum transparency to parents. The battle is ultimately about shaping public policy in accord with public values. âI think we have an ability [to] just draw a line in the sand and say, âThatâs not the type of society that we want here in the state of Florida,ââ said DeSantis yesterday. The stakes are highâand all eyes are on Florida to deliver.
How the Democratic Media Complex managed to destroy what was left in the public’s trust in it:
That episode single-handedly destroyed trust in public health officials, proving they'd politicize their expertise when convenient.
Corporate media celebrated a douchebag-lawyer shaming families at deserted beaches, then — overnight! — cheered densely packed street protests. pic.twitter.com/DvOzIr5JX8
As usual, elite institutions — media, government, public health authorities — love to whine about the refusal of the public to trust their pronouncements, complaining people turn to other less credentialed and worthy sources.
Earlier this month, a federal grand jury in Houston indicted four men on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, and money laundering in a scheme to rip off the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) by submitting over 80 false applications for forgivable loans and writing checks to relatives and fictional employees, among other fraudulent activities.
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) stated in a press release on December 15 that 29-year-old Hamza Abbas of Richmond, 55-year-old Khalid Abbas of Richmond, 55-year-old Abdul Fatani of Richmond, and 53-year-old Syed Ali of Sugar Land could be sentenced to up to 20 years on each count of wire fraud.
The indictments against them are the most recent in an apparent scheme that prosecutors say involved 15 defendants from Texas and Illinois, all of whom are accused of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
The DOJ stated that Khalid Abbas, Fatani, Ali, and another defendant, Houston resident Amir Aqeel, 53, have been charged with money laundering in the superseding indictment. The money laundering counts carry potential sentences of up to 10 years.
Last year, a grand jury also indicted Aqeel on a charge of aggravated identity theft. The government accuses Aqeel of using stolen identities to apply for the PPP loans.
According to the DOJ, several of the accused have already pleaded guilty for their involvement, including Siddiq Azeemuddin, 42, of Naperville, Illinois, Richard Reuth, 58, of Spring, and Raheel Malik, 41, of Sugar Land, all of whom entered their pleas in October. Houston residents Abdul Farahshah, 70, Jesus Perez, 31, and Bijan Rajabi, 68, pleaded guilty in late November.
Rifat Bajwa, 53, of Richmond, Pardeep Basra, 52, of Houston, Mayer Misak, 41, of Cypress, and Mauricio Navia, 42, of Katy were also indicted last year on charges of participating in the conspiracy and committing wire fraud.
Why, it’s almost like just about all the defendants share some characteristic in common. If only I could put my finger on it…
Speaking of criminals, did mentioned that a second CNN employee was being investigated for child sex allegations? “The allegations against Rick Saleeby, a former senior producer for Jake Tapperâs âThe Lead,â appear to be connected to reporting by Project Veritas. Saleeby resigned from CNN this month.” It’s hard to keep the media pedophiles straight without a scorecard…
The City of Austinâs director of the Office of Police Oversight (OPO), Farah Muscadin, abused her authority, a third-party arbitrator decided this week.
In a 31-page decision, Lynn Gomez, the arbitrator, ruled that Muscadin and the OPO violated Article 16 of the Austin Police Departmentâs employment contract that was negotiated in 2018. Article 16 governs the parameters of civilian oversight of the department, which progressive groups lobbied hard for during the labor standoff.
âContrary to the cityâs claim, Director Muscadin was not acting within the scope of her authorityâŠ[she] clearly was seeking to dictate some future outcome rather than simply making a recommendation as Art. 16 permits,â Gomez ruled.
â[T]he evidence and arguments raise[d] by the city indicate that the city does not consider itself or OPO bound by Article 16âs provisions.â
Has the Biden Amdenistration tipped its hand that considers Taiwan too strategically important to not defend it in the case of a Chinese attack?
Ely Ratner, assistant secretary of defence for Indo-Pacific security affairs, told a Senate hearing three weeks ago that Taiwan was âcritical to the regionâs security and critical to the defence of vital US interestsâ. In words strikingly similar to MacArthurâs, he emphasised the islandâs location âat a critical node within the first island chain, anchoring a network of US allies and partnersâ.
This may well be remembered as the moment Washington came clean on its intentions regarding Taiwan. In Beijing at least, the statement is being read as dropping all pretence that the US could acquiesce to a unification of Taiwan with China.
Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in China, believes that US strategic thinking regarding Taiwan has always followed the lines laid out by MacArthur.
Even after establishing diplomatic relations with China, the US âworked to ensure the continuation of a state of separation across the Taiwan Straitâ, Wu said. âWhen we ask the US if they do not hope to see the unification of China, they deny that. But judging from the USâs concrete actions, it is clear that they indeed do not hope to see China unify. Ely Ratner has now said this out loud.â
In Washington, too, some observers think the testimony allows little conclusion other than that the US should not allow Taiwan to become part of China under any circumstances.
Hopefully true, but betting on Joe Biden’s stalwart fortitude is putting your hopes on an extremely weak horse…
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez spotted in Miami Beach while New York City Flu Manchu cases hit alltime highs. As always, Covid Theater rules are for the little people.
I really should have bought this for Dwight for Christmas.
The Critical Drinker is not thrilled at the latest Matrix film:
Ultimately The Matrix Regenerations fails on just about every level possible. It fails to properly honor the past by leaving it well enough alone. It fails to tell a compelling new story, or add new ideas to the world it created. It fails to establish interesting new characters, or take old ones in a new direction. It fails to surpass the spectacle, energy and originality of a 20 year old film. And most of all it fails to deliver a compelling reason for its own existence. The Matrix Retaliations is a film that never should have been made in the first place.
Left-wing sponsors vs. right-wing sponsors:
This satirical video is based on an undeniable truth: the bulk of mainstream corporate and billionaire money resides in and supports liberal-left, not right-wing, media. As the Dem Party became the preferred vehicle of oligarchs, their largesse goes to those urging votes for it. https://t.co/UpuF2ZuGxr
Merry Christmas Eve, everyone! For some reason, corrupt scumbags seem to be a theme of this LinkSwarm.
This week marks the 30th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, an evil empire who’s passing made the world a better place. Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II and even George H. W. Bush all had key roles in bringing the Cold War to a successful close.
Biden’s vaccine mandates go before the Supreme Court. There’s a good chance they lose there on federalism grounds, even as the Supremes have avoided overturning state vaccine mandates. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Tom Cotton has a modest proposal: “Recall, Remove & Replace Every Last Soros Prosecutor.”
Last year, our nation experienced the largest increase in murder in American history and the largest number of drug overdose deaths ever recorded. This carnage continues today and is not distributed equally. Instead, it is concentrated in cities and localities where radical, left-wing, George Soros progressives have captured state and district attorney offices. These legal arsonists condemn our rule of law as âsystemically racistâ and have not simply abused prosecutorial discretion, they have embraced prosecutorial nullification. As a result, a contagion of crime has infected virtually every neighborhood under their charge.
Soros prosecutors refuse to enforce laws against shoplifting, drug trafficking, and entire categories of felonies and misdemeanors. In Chicago, Cook County Stateâs Attorney Kim Foxx allows theft under $1,000 to go unpunished. In Manhattan, District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. refuses to enforce laws against prostitution. In Baltimore, Stateâs Attorney Marilyn Mosby has unilaterally declared the war on drugs âoverâ and is refusing to criminally charge drug users in the middle of the worst drug crisis in American history. For a time, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon even stopped enforcing laws against disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, and making criminal threats.
All of these cities have paid a terrible price for these insane policies. Last year, the number of homicides in Chicago rose by 56%, and more than 1,000 Cook County residents have been murdered in 2021. In New York City, murder increased 47% and shootings soared 97%. In 2020, the murder rate in Baltimore was higher than El Salvadorâs or Guatemalaâs â nations from which citizens often attempt to claim asylum purely based on gang violence and murderâand this year murder in Baltimore is on track to be even higher. Murder in Los Angeles rose 36% last year and is on track to rise another 17% this year.
Soon after taking office in Boston, Suffolk County District Attorney Rachel Rollins published a list of 15 crimes that she would refuse to prosecute except under special circumstances. Among the charges on her âdo not prosecuteâ list was drug trafficking, malicious destruction of property, trespassing, driving with a revoked license, and resisting arrest. Rollins also declared that she was âgoing to battleâ against the U.S. attorney in Massachusetts and has slandered Boston police officers as âmurderersâ before accusing the department of âwhite fragility.â
Unsurprisingly, Bostonâs violent crime rate surged shortly after Rollins took over, as the number of murders in Boston skyrocketed by 38% in 2020. As Rollins implemented leniency for drug trafficking, opioid overdose deaths increased by 32% in Suffolk County. As a reward for her ineptitude and extremism, President Biden nominated her to run the U.S. Attorneyâs office in Massachusetts, the very office she had gone âto battleâ against only months before. Every Democrat in the Senate voted to confirm her.
Another Soros prosecutor, Philadelphiaâs District Attorney Larry Krasner, came to office after suing the Philadelphia Police Department 75 times as a private citizen. He began his tenure by purging dozens of veteran prosecutors in his office and then slashed his jurisdictionâs prison population by over 30%. In most cases, Krasner also refuses to seek bail for accused criminals and has maintained a highly antagonistic relationship with the police, once accusing the Fraternal Order of Police lodge president of being âwith the Proud Boys.â
The number of homicides in Philadelphia has increased every year that Krasner has been DA. Last year, the murder rate rose 40% and this year it reached an all-time high.
In San Francisco, the voters elected the son of two cop-killing terrorists as their district attorney. Chesa Boudin (pictured) has since unleashed chaos on the streets of a once-great city and inaugurated what the San Francisco mayor labelled the âreign of criminals.â San Franciscoâs homelessness crisis has spiraled out of control, smash-and-grab looters are such a menace that the city had to close its downtown during Black Friday, and shoplifters have closed down retailers throughout the city. Since Boudin took over, car theft has increased by 27%, murder by 29%, arson by 36%, and burglary soared 38%.
The liberal mayor of San Francisco, as if struck by amnesia of her own tenure and complicity in the crime wave, recently emerged to condemn her cityâs appalling rise in crime. Speaker Nancy Pelosi also condemned the disorder and âattitude of lawlessnessâ in her city. However, in one of the great examples of âsee no evil, hear no evil,â Speaker Pelosi pretended to be baffled by what could have caused the crime wave. The answer is obvious: Liberal extremists like Nancy Pelosi and Chesa Boudin caused this crisis.
Conclusion: “The Republican Party must then join with independents and common-sense Democrats to wage an unrelenting war on crime. That war must begin with a campaign to recall, remove, and replace every last Soros prosecutor. Throw the bums out.”
One rule for you, another for them. “California Dems Sip Champagne, Violate State Mask Mandate While Celebrating Successful Gerrymander.”
“According to data from Nielsen/MRI Fusion, Fox News is watched by more Democrats than CNN and by more Independents than both MSNBC and CNN.” Average network news viewers want truth, not a force-fed Narrative at odds with reality. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Two defund the police state Democratic congresscritters carjacked. “In late December, two Democratic politicians were carjacked just hours apart in Philadelphia and Chicago. Ironically, both women – Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon and Illinois State Senator Kimberly Lightford – supported slashing police budgets and other reform measures, which many Republicans have blamed as the cause of the rapid increase in crime.” It would take a heart of stone not to laugh…
In the now three and a half years since I have decamped with my family from Los Angeles to Nashvilleâsome have called us âearly adoptersââI have spent considerable time on phone, email and texts with old friends and acquaintances in New York and California who are asking me what itâs like. Am I happy? Should they move? Whatâs bestâFlorida, Tennessee, Texas or someplace else?
Although answering the question âshould they move?â for someone else is rather like answering for them should they marry or divorceâitâs too big a decision and really none of your businessâthat doesnât stop me from almost universally saying yes.
I do this because I have been in L.A. and NY lately and know them to have turned into the ghosts of their former selvesâbasically hellholes.
I havenât been to Chicago for a few years, but it seems to be, if anything, worse. And when I was in L.A., covering the late, lamented Larry Elder campaign, I didnât even want to go to San Francisco. That was a Golden Gate Bridge too far.
Itâs not just the pervasive homelessness and the escalating Clockwork Orange-like ultra-violence, the actual souls of the cities that I knew very wellâborn in NY and lived decades in LAâseem to have vanished.
Who wants to sing âNew York, New Yorkâ or âI Love L.A.â anymore? And can you imagine leaving your heart in San Francisco? What has happened is a true American tragedyâand itâs not just because of COVID, although that helped. The cancer has been growing for a long time.
It could be said you should stay to help resuscitate these cities although I would argue you do more for them by leaving, making those governing the citiesâuniversally Democrats, as everybody knowsâand even more those dopey enough to have voted for that governance, wake up.
But even in red states, the culture war continues…
Hundred of holiday flights have been cancelled due to “staffing shortages.” How’s that vaccine mandate working out for you, Biden voters?
How bad did New York Corrections screw up for the courts to free someone on 8th Amendment grounds? This bad. Holy crap!
8th Amendment claims are almost impossible to win, and the picture that this case paints is GRIM: inmates being kept in intake without a bed for days at a time, days without food or water, no access to medical treatment, forced fighting for entertainment bc there's no rec time pic.twitter.com/xJ085nFNGE
Another mandate injunction, Democrats continue their popularity freefall, China seals more dirty deals, and Turkey melts down. It’s another Friday LinkSwarm!
A federal judge in Texas has issued a preliminary injunction, stopping a new rule from the Biden administration requiring healthcare workers to receive the COVID vaccine as the case moves through the courts.
The injunction came from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Amarillo. The case was filed by Attorney General Ken Paxton on behalf of the State of Texas against Xavier Becerra, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services secretary.
The injunction was sought against a federal rule that would have required employers that receive Medicaid and Medicare fundsânamely hospitals and other healthcare providersâto require their employees to receive a COVID vaccine as a condition of employment.
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ordered that the federal government provide notice to all Medicaid and Medicare providers in Texas that the mandate âwill not be implemented or enforced.â
âHealthcare facilities covered by the [Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services] Mandate have a tremendous reliance interest in Medicare and Medicaid funds. Therefore, Defendants unconstitutionally use Congressâs spending powers to âcommandeer a Stateâs . . . administrative apparatus for federal purposesâ by conditioning Medicare and Medicaid funds on state surveyor compliance with the mandate,â wrote Kacsmaryk. âAs a result, not only would the CMS Mandate prohibit Plaintiffs from enforcing its duly enacted COVID-19 vaccination regulations, but it would likely force Plaintiffs to administer a federal mandate that has a dubious statutory basis.â
âIt is a âgun to the headâ and an unconstitutional use of Congressâs spending powers to compel Plaintiffs through âfinancial inducementâ to forgo exercising their police powers to enforce a federal statute.â
Democrat support from independent voters has fallen near the crucial 40% line, while almost half of all independent voters tell Gallup that theyâre leaning Republican.
âIf youâre a Democrat and youâre not terrified,â says The Dispatchâs Avi Woolf, âyou should be.â
Well, Iâm neither a Democrat nor terrified, but I am conservative and â at least for now â quite giddy.
Gallup recently updated its long-term party affiliation poll, which asks American voters one or two simple questions:
In politics, as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat or an independent?
(If they ID as independents) As of today, do you lean more to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party?
Currently, 31% say theyâre Republicans, up slightly from the usual mid-20s to 30%. 41% told Gallup that theyâre independent voters, in line with the average swing. Only 27% self-ID as Democrats, which is down from the more typical 29-32%.
As recently as May, Democrats were at 32% and the GOP at a dismal 25%.
But thatâs before Presidentish Joe Biden had had a chance to do much other than send out FREE! MONEY! (handouts that helped cause our present inflation) and smile for the glowing press coverage. Since then, important parts of his agenda have taken hold and the malign incompetence of his cabinet has been fully revealed.
Apparently, Americans donât think much of either.
But itâs the second question that should have Washington Democrats changing their shorts.
Indies, asked whether they lean towards the Democrats or the GOP, broke for the GOP 47% to 41%.
At this time in Barack Obamaâs first term, the breakdown was a much more Dem-friendly 25R/41I/32D. And the Indy swing was exactly reversed, 41R/47D.
Yet the Democrats still lost a whopping 63 seats in the House and seven more in the Senate in the following midterm election.
Obama enjoyed immensely more personal popularity than Biden does â I know, I donât get it, either â but couldnât stop a GOP tsunami when his agenda proved unpopular.
Biden has both an unpopular agenda and a high unfavorable rating draped around his neck like a lead life preserver. And now voters are leaving his party in droves.
The woke are coming for all that sweet, sweet Medicare money.
Buried in the Department of Health and Human Services’s fiscal planning for next year is a proposal to establish bonuses for physicians who “create and implement an anti-racism plan.”
“The plan should include a clinic-wide review of existing tools and policies, such as value statements or clinical practice guidelines, to ensure that they include and are aligned with a commitment to anti-racism and an understanding of race as a political and social construct, not a physiological one,” the HHS writes . “The plan should also identify ways in which issues and gaps identified in the review can be addressed and should include target goals and milestones for addressing prioritized issues and gaps. This may also include an assessment and drafting of an organizationâs plan to prevent and address racism and/or improve language access and accessibility to ensure services are accessible and understandable for those seeking care.”
I’m sure this will go over great with Medicare patients. “Mam, I can’t check on your osteoporosis until you check your privilege!” (Hat tip: Mickey Kaus.)
After Democrats abandoned trying to pass Biden’s giant leftwing “Build Back Better” porkfest this year, is the bill actually dead forever? South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham thinks so.
The South Carolina Republican said that the Congressional Budget Office score, which found the $1.75 trillion bill would add $3 trillion to the deficit, is what led to its demise.
‘I think Build Back Better is dead forever and let me tell you why: Because Joe Manchin has said heâs not going to vote for a bill that will add to the deficit,’ he said on Fox News’ Hannity Wednesday night.
‘Well, if you do away with the budget gimmicks, Build Back Better, according to the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] adds $3 trillion to the deficit.’
‘This is b******t. Youâre b******t,’ the West Virginia senator yelled at Arthur Delaney, a reporter for HuffPost Politics, who asked him about reports that the child tax credit has become a major sticking point in his talks with the White House.
‘Iâm done, Iâm done,’ Manchin fumed as the questions continued.
‘Guys, Iâm not negotiating with any of you all. You can ask all the questions you want. Guys, let me go,’ he told the press as he walked through the basement of the Capitol, muttering âGod almightyâ as he walked away.
What is behind recent pessimistic appraisals of democracyâs future, from Hillary Clinton, Adam Schiff, Brian Williams, and other elite intellectuals, media personalities, and politicians on the left? Some are warning about its possible erosion in 2024. Others predict democracyâs downturn as early 2022, with scary scenarios of âautocracyâ and former President Donald Trump âcoups.â
To answer that question, understand first what is not behind these shrill forecasts.
They are not worried about 2 million foreign nationals crashing the border in a single year, without vaccinations during a pandemic. Yet it seems insurrectionary for a government simply to nullify its own immigration laws.
They are not worried that some 800,000 foreign nationals, some residing illegally, will now vote in New York City elections.
They are not worried that there are formal efforts underway to dismantle the U.S. Constitution by junking the 233-year-old Electoral College or the preeminence of the states in establishing ballot laws in national elections.
They are not worried that we are witnessing an unprecedented left-wing effort to scrap the 180-year-old filibuster, the 150-year-old nine-person Supreme Court, and the 60-year tradition of 50 states, for naked political advantage.
They are not worried that the Senate this year put on trial an impeached ex-president and private citizen, without the chief justice in attendance, without a special prosecutor or witnesses, and without a formal commission report of presidential high crimes and misdemeanors.
They are not worried that the FBI, Justice Department, CIA, Hillary Clinton, and members of the Obama Administration systematically sought to use U.S. government agencies to sabotage a presidential campaign, transition, and presidency, via the use of a foreign national and ex-spy Christopher Steele and his coterie of discredited Russian sources.
They are not worried that the Pentagon suddenly has lost the majority support of the American people. Top current and retired officers have flagrantly violated the chain-of-command, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and without data or evidence have announced a hunt in the ranks for anyone suspected of âwhite rageâ or âwhite supremacy.â
They are not worried that in 2020, a record 64% of the electorate did not cast their ballots on Election Day.
Nor are they worried that the usual rejection rate in most states of non-Election Day ballots plungedâeven as an unprecedented 101 million ballots were cast by mail or early voting.
And they are certainly not worried that partisan billionaires of Silicon Valley poured well over $400 million into selected precincts in swing states to âhelpâ public agencies conduct the election.
What then is behind this new left-wing hysteria about the supposed looming end of democracy?
It is quite simple. The left expects to lose power over the next two yearsâboth because of the way it gained and used it, and because of its radical, top-down agendas that never had any public support.
After gaining control of both houses of Congress and the presidency â with an obsequious media and the support of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, higher education, popular culture, entertainment and professional sports â the left has managed in just 11 months to alienate a majority of voters.
The nation has been wracked by unprecedented crime and nonenforcement of the borders. Leftist district attorneys either wonât indict criminals; they let them out of jails or both.
Illegal immigration and inflation are soaring. Deliberate cuts in gas and oil production helped spike fuel prices.
All this bad news is on top of the Afghanistan disaster, worsening racial relations, and an enfeebled president.
Democrats are running 10 points behind the Republicans in generic polls, with the midterms less than a year away.
President Joe Bidenâs negatives run between 50% and 57%âin Trumpâs own former underwater territory.
Less than a third of the country wants Biden to run for reelection. In many head-to-head polls, Trump now defeats Biden.
In other words, leftist elites are terrified that democracy will work too robustly.
After the Russian collusion hoax, two impeachments, the Hunter Biden laptop stories, the staged melodramas of the Kavanaugh hearings, the Jussie Smollett con, the Covington kids smear, and the Rittenhouse trial race frenzy, the people are not just worn out by leftist hysterias, but they also weary of how the left gains power and administers it.
Hey, remember all the way back to two weeks ago when I said that Turkey’s collapsing currency was something we should keep an eye on? Well, guess what? “Turkey Halts All Stock Trading As Currency Disintegrates, Central Bank Powerless To Halt Collapse.” ZeroHedge suggests that the collapse is engineered to disguise how much graft Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his cronies have stolen from the country.
The Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies has long brushed off questions about its role in Chinaâs state surveillance, saying it just sells general-purpose networking gear.
A review by The Washington Post of more than 100 Huawei PowerPoint presentations, many marked âconfidential,â suggests that the company has had a broader role in tracking Chinaâs populace than it has acknowledged.
These marketing presentations, posted to a public-facing Huawei website before the company removed them late last year, show Huawei pitching how its technologies can help government authorities identify individuals by voice, monitor political individuals of interest, manage ideological reeducation and labor schedules for prisoners, and help retailers track shoppers using facial recognition.
Citing both interviews and direct access to internal Apple documents about repeated visits by Cook to China in the mid-2010s, the report describes a $275 billion deal whereby Apple committed to investing heavily in technology infrastructure and training in the country.
The non-binding five-year deal was signed by Cook during a 2016 visit, and it was made partially to mitigate or prevent regulatory action by the Chinese government that would have had significant negative effects on Apple’s operations and business in the country.
The Information details the nature of the Chinese government priorities included in the 1,250-word deal:
They included a pledge to help Chinese manufacturers develop “the most advanced manufacturing technologies” and “support the training of high-quality Chinese talents.”
In addition, Apple promised to use more components from Chinese suppliers in its devices, sign deals with Chinese software firms, collaborate on technology with Chinese universities and directly invest in Chinese tech companies… Apple promised to invest “many billions of dollars more” than what the company was already spending annually in China. Some of that money would go toward building new retail stores, research and development centers and renewable energy projects, the agreement said.
“Disgrace: Biden abandoned over 60,000 Afghan interpreters, support personnel — along with 14,000 Americans.”
“Trump’s Social Media Platform Gets $1 Billion Investment Boost, Dems Get Nervous.” It will be interesting to see how quickly TRUTH Social can get off the ground.
In yesterday’s post, I forgot to link to these Log4J memes. Enjoy!
Why New York City lags the rest of the nation in unemployment. Thank lockdowns, shutdowns, and insane government. “The economy is not a light switch. The supply chain is not a light switch.” The money quote “New York City is just not that amazing!”
Popular Mexican singer Vincente Fernandez died, and the woke couldn’t wait to crap on his grave:
If you had to tell the story of why Hispanics are abandoning the Democrats in droves using a single image, it would look something like this.
Did you know that an Israeli airstrike hit a Syrian port last week? Did you see anything about that in the news? Seems like the sort of thing the media would cover before they decided that a bunch of lunatics shouting at J.K. Rowling is more important.
Texas House Speaker Dade Phalen attends fundraiser for quorum-busting Democrats in the Rio Grande Valley (including State Reps. Terry Canales, Sergio Munoz Jr., Oscar Longoria, Armando Martinez, and Bobby Guerra, and State Sen. Chuy Hinojosa) while skipping a Republican event a mile away. Remind me again why Phalen is speaker?
“Pasadena Mechanic Sues City Over Parking Space Regulation Prohibiting His Business from Operating.”
There’s nothing this Austin City Council can’t seem to ruin, including the Trail of Lights.
Speaking of science experiments: What happens when you hit a gong with a baseball traveling at Mach 1.5? And you know there’s super-slow motion involved…
Whoa:
A Hutchinson, KS business just West of the Airport destroyed during 80+ mph gusts around 4:30pm.#kswxpic.twitter.com/Yd6ul9EeBo
Few political falls have been so swift and complete as that of former New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo. In 2020, Cuomo was being talked up as an emergency replacement for Sundown Joe Biden on the presidential ticket despite having forced Flu Manchu patients into nursing homes, resulting in tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths, and signed a $5.1 million book deal to talk up the awesomeness of all his lockdowns and granny killing.
Here at the burnt-end of 2021, Andrew Cuomo is not only disgraced and out of office over sexual abuse allegations, his brother Fredo has been purged from CNN, ostensibly over his own sex abuse scandal. Now ex-Governor Cuomo has been ordered to turn that sweet $5.1 million over to New York State.
Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo has been ordered by the stateâs ethics board to forfeit $5.1 million in profits next month from the memoir he published over the pandemic.
In a near unanimous decision, a twelve to one vote, the New York Joint Commission on Public Ethics passed a resolution demanding that Cuomo return his earnings from the book, âAmerican Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.â This comes a month after the panel rescinded its prior approval giving the now disgraced governor permission to keep the book side hustle while he was still serving as governor of New York, confronting multiple scandals simultaneously.
Over the summer and into the fall, the New York attorney generalâs office launched a probe into Cuomoâs alleged abuse of state resources, including staff members, to draft and promote his book. During that criminal investigation, Attorney General Letitia James subpoenaed the ethics panel for information related to the book deal. The JCOPE then reversed its approval for Cuomoâs to collect income from the book deal, paving the road for fines to be potentially imposed or profits to be recalled.
According to the resolution, created by Republican commissioner David McNamara, the former governor âlacked the legal authority to engage in outside activity and receive compensation in regard to the bookâ since the panel rescinded its approval.
While I had no intention of making this Louis Rossmann Week, he has such a wonderful plate of profane schadenfreude over this turn of evens that I’m embedding it here.
How unpopular is Cuomo? Even former Gambino Family underboss Sammy “The Bull” Gravano said Cuomo’s granny-killing was beyond the pale. “I donât give a f— who tells me to do that, whether itâs [former President] Trump, the president, the vice president, you, him, I would never do it…And Iâm a badass. Iâd never do it.”
How bad do you have to suck to have a guy involved in 19 murders to think you’re scum?
Speaking of organized crime figures, Cuomo has clearly pissed off somebody deep in the Democratic Party power structure. I am very far indeed from the center of the New York Democratic Party, but there’s obviously something weird going on there. Having Letitia James take out Cuomo, only to drop out of the race to be his successor suggests someone beyond the public players made that call. Add that to the perfect table-run required to get Biden the nomination in 2020, the continued screwing of the Bernie Brigades, and the inexplicable rise of Pete Buttigieg, and it becomes very obvious that people very far indeed from the public figureheads of the Democratic Party are calling the shots from the shadows.
Not that Cuomo didn’t have it coming. He did. He’s a scummy asshole. But he was just as big a scummy asshole in 2020, and the Democratic Machine pulled out all the stops propping him up as some sort of messianic paragon of COVID-fighting virtue. Now the same people have done a 180° and plunged the knives into him.
