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Tranny Bathrooms And The Counterrevolution

Sunday, April 27th, 2025

The social justice left are always the aggressors in the culture wars, shrieking their outraged victimhood when conservatives merely roll back their unpopular excesses. Perhaps no issue is more emblematic of that than tranny bathrooms.

Before the Obama Administration, forcing ordinary people to accept men using women’s restrooms was never a policy Democrats promoted, but suddenly it became Holy Writ. It was an early sign that Social Justice was firmly in the diver’s seat of the Democratic Party, and the idiocy showed up everywhere, including Texas.

In Houston in 2014, openly gay mayor Annise Parker pushed the city into passing an ordinance that (in addition to many other gay agenda items like protecting “gender identity”) legalized men in women’s bathrooms. The backlash was immediate and severe, with ordinary Houstonians quickly putting together a ballot initiative push to undo the ordinance. Parker was so incensed that she actually subpoenaed the sermons of church pastors that might have opposed tranny bathrooms, because what’s trivia like the First Amendment when in stands in the way of the greater glory of social justice? When actual voters had their say, tranny bathrooms went down in flames.

Likewise, Fort Worth ISD Superintendent Kent Scribner tried to impose tranny bathrooms on his district in 2016, only to back down after widespread parental object and an adverse ruling from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

What brought up this trip down memory lane was the Texas senate passing a bill banning biological males from women’s bathrooms.

Biological males will be banned from using state-funded private spaces designated for biological women under proposed legislation, which passed the Texas Senate this week.

The “Texas Women’s Privacy Act,” Senate Bill (SB) 240 by Sen. Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston), passed the Texas Senate along party lines on Wednesday — hearkening back to highly-controversial legislation from 2017, where a similar “bathroom bill” was buried in opposition after receiving a special session by Gov. Greg Abbott to pass it.

While SB 240 was being heard on the Senate floor for its third reading prior to a record vote, multiple Democratic members stood to speak against the measure, which establishes a “statewide standard” for “private spaces” such as locker rooms or bathrooms in publicly-funded facilities such as prisons or domestic violence shelters. It states that they “must be designated based on biological sex as stated on a person’s original birth certificate.”

“As a husband and dad, I want my wife and daughter to be safe when using facilities designed for women’s privacy,” Middleton said in a press release upon passage of SB 240.

Middleton continued, “Safety and privacy are common sense things we all should want for women and our families. I authored and passed the Save Women’s Sports Act, prohibiting men from unfairly competing against women in college sports. Now, we must protect women’s safety from fringe activists that are fighting to allow men in spaces dedicated to girls and women.”

Hopefully the Texas House will quickly follow suit.

The craziness of social justice overreach brought Trump to power as an instrument of counterrevolution against Cultural Marxism, and now Trump47 is leading Republicans (and normies) to destroy the social justice craziness.

While going back through these posts, I came across this on the “doctor lady inventor” who was none of those things. Back then, the transsexual outrage brigade was infuriated by a journalist actually doing his job and revealing a dead con artist’s male birth name, just as the open borders crowd is absolutely outraged that Donald Trump is doing his job and deporting their precious gangbanging illegal alien felons. In that post, I said the following, which I believe remains a true, succinct summary of the issue:

This is another case of the intolerant acolytes of victimhood identity politics mobbing someone for daring to tell the truth. The animating idea behind it seems to be that no one has a right to say anything that might make a tranny (or any other member of a Designated Victim Group) feel bad, even if it’s the truth. They have abrogated for themselves the right to dictate to others what the acceptable limits to free speech are as regards members of said victim groups. It’s an attempt to silence critics (both actively and preemptively) who do not toe the political correct, neo-Marxist, Critical Race Theory line that the “privileged” (straight white heterosexual conservative males in particular) should not be allowed to speak on any issue that touches on the “marginalized” (i.e., the members of any left-wing victimhood identity politics group). Their terminology is Orwellian in the very specific way that it seeks to shape language and limit discourse in ways that make it impossible to object to the agenda being pushed.

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we’re not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,” he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. “Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”

Or, put another way by the same author, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

Or, to put it still another way, “Freedom is the freedom to say that a man is a man and a woman is a woman.” Those pushing the #JusticeForDrV tag are largely the same as those who assert Bradley Manning magically became a woman by changing his name. The idea that “gender is a social construct” is a great lie that they must furiously defend, no matter how obviously absurd.

The Gramscian contingent who have wormed their way into the heart of the Democrat Party are at war with any structure that would thwart their will to power. The biological reality of the male and female binary, the nuclear family, Christianity in general, and Catholics and evangelicals in particular, all provide competing wells of moral authority with which to resist the encroachment of an all-powerful revolutionary state. They want to force their opponents to parrot obvious lies as tokens of surrender to the ideology of social justice, hence the absurd pantomimes of tranny bathrooms and mandatory pronouns. Every act of resistance is a blow to their schemes of control, hence their incessant attacks against anyone, be it J. K. Rowling or a random Colorado baker, who defies their will.

Every. Knee. Must. Bend.

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Posted in Democrats, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 6 Comments »

LinkSwarm For April 25, 2025

Friday, April 25th, 2025

To hit or not to hit Iran, that is the question, illegal alien friendly judges land themselves in hot water, some party switch shenanigans in Florida, the Texas Senate passes some bills (good and bad), and updates on the proceedings against several disgraced politicos. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

Also, Texas residents should remember that the Sales tax Holiday starts tomorrow.

  • Trump evidently vetoed an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons development complexes. BUT
  • Trump says he’s willing to attack Iran if no nuclear deal reached. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Netanyahu is winning the war against Hamas because he just doesn’t care what the left thinks.

    Tenacity is the most important virtue of national leaders at war, which allows them to press on with no assurance of victory, fending off tremendous political pressures to fold. Winston Churchill displayed this quality in 1940. In June of that year, Germany appeared unstoppable. Paris and the entirety of Western Europe had fallen. The Luftwaffe was grinding down the grossly outnumbered British pilots, and German invasion barges were being assembled in Belgian ports. Even then, with Britain desperate for U.S. support, the American national debate on interventionism, prompted by the outbreak of war in September 1939, continued to break decisively in favor of the isolationists.

    Exploring an accommodation with Germany appeared as the eminently reasonable and prudent course of action because of Herr Hitler’s generous offer to leave Britain and its vast empire intact. When British parliamentarians pressed Churchill to explain his plan, he confessed to his intimates that he had no plan at all. He was determined to just keep buggering on.

    Then the situation became bleaker still for the British and for Churchill personally. In June 1941, the German army smashed its way into Russia, advancing rapidly toward what looked like an imminent victory. Although the Wehrmacht’s swift conquests promised to wholly remedy Germany’s only weakness—its lack of petroleum—the isolationists in the U.S. Congress remained dominant. Meanwhile, at home, London was abuzz with talk of Churchill’s heavy drinking, his personal dependence on gifts from his Jewish friends to pay for his extravagant tastes and, above all, his utter lack of strategy—he had failed to offer any path at all that could conceivably lead to victory.

    Things looked grim all around. In North Africa, the brilliant German tactician Erwin Rommel was outmaneuvering British forces with ease. Much worse were the first reports of Germany’s astonishing technological progress: the world’s first jet fighter that could easily outfly every single British and American fighter; the world’s first air-to-surface missile (Fritz X) that, in September 1943, would sink the Italian battleship Roma (to prevent it from surrendering to the Allies); and the Tiger tank that could crush British armor.

    Nevertheless, the isolationists in Congress refused to fund even a prosaic piston-engine fighter project—the P-51 Mustang, the war’s best Allied fighter—which was developed with fast-dwindling British funds.

    Churchill’s answer? Just keep buggering on.

    Snip.

    Whereas Churchill’s problem was an isolationist Congress that constrained a generally sympathetic president, Netanyahu enjoyed ample support on the Hill but faced an American administration determined to cut Israel down to size and to remove him from power.

    As Israel fought a major, multifront war in October 2023, key U.S. officials encouraged domestic uproar against Netanyahu and worked to constrain him and even collapse his government.

    That was not all the president’s doing, but Joe Biden’s administration was stacked with Barack Obama’s leftovers, who ran the gamut of pathological Israel haters, from Samantha Power to Robert Malley—the red-diaper baby of Stalinist Jewish parents in Paris whom I met in my youth when they were working for Algeria’s National Liberation Front, which was not merely fanatically anti-Israel but also declaredly anti-Jewish, much like Yemen’s Houthis today. With the CIA mostly very hostile (as it has been since it was established in 1947, as declassified documents fully reveal), only the Pentagon harbored some friends of Israel—although that hardly stopped the administration from using every trick in the book to delay mid-war weapons supplies to Israel.

    Netanyahu faced a concerted campaign, directed from Washington, that brought together Israeli nonprofits and Netanyahu’s political opponents. Almost from the get-go, Netanyahu had to overcome calls and protests by well-educated—and some even well-meaning—Israelis and American Jews, as well as all the usual suspects in European capitals and almost every other world government incessantly demanding a cease-fire, not as a pause, but as an end to the war.

    Worse still, several of Israel’s retired and barely retired generals threw their weight behind the cease-fire push. Some did so with the authority of true heroes, such as Yair Golan, the head of the unsubtly named The Democrats (a merger of the left-wing Labor and Meretz Parties) and former IDF deputy chief of staff no less. Golan jumped into his small car on Oct. 7 to successfully rescue people with his handgun, as did the former head of the IDF’s Operations Directorate Israel Ziv, now a very successful security contractor overseas after distinguished service, who became the guru of an entire cabal of retired generals, including some who served in Netanyahu’s government until they left it to oppose him. Then, inevitably, there were tawdry time-servers who somehow became generals without doing much other than talking, like Amos Gilead, who’s well known and much-favored in U.S. officialdom because of his hostility to Netanyahu.

    All those former generals demanded the same thing, albeit at different times: to stop the war with no way of recovering the Israeli hostages and no way of forcing Hamas to accept supervised disarmament, therefore allowing it to use a cease-fire to reconstitute.

    Furthermore, these generals offered no solution whatever to the Hezbollah dilemma in the north. The day after the Oct. 7 attack, Hezbollah started launching rockets against Israel. If Israel did not attack, Hezbollah forces, then assuredly the most powerful non-state army in the world, was certainly capable of burning every Jewish town and village north of Haifa with countless rockets (the number 110,000 that was widely circulated turned out to be simply invented) while targeting power stations, Ben Gurion Airport, port facilities, every chemical plant and refinery, and every air base with thousands of guided missiles. If Israel were to attack, those massive barrages would immediately begin.

    As Netanyahu pondered this dilemma, he had to deal not only with his security establishment but also with unremitting pressure from Washington. A mere few days after Oct. 7, the Biden administration intervened and made clear its opposition to an Israeli preemptive strike against Hezbollah—a position it would maintain over the next year. In fact, when Israel finally eliminated Hassan Nasrallah in a strike on his bunker on Sept. 27, 2024, Biden’s reaction was an irate “Bibi, what the fuck?”

    The Biden administration displayed a similar hands-off attitude toward Iran’s proxy in Yemen, allowing Tehran to pile more pressure on Israel. The Houthis joined the fight with their skirts, sandals, and Iranian supplied anti-ship missiles and drones that not only deprived Israel of its secondary Red Sea sea port access but also targeted commercial vessels, blocking navigation in the area and forcing shipping companies to find longer, more expensive routes, thereby augmenting U.S. and international pressure on Israel to end the war. Washington allowed Iran to stop maritime traffic in the Red Sea and Suez Canal without any retaliation against Tehran and its own maritime traffic, while Western disarray was compounded by the spectacle of very expensive European navies doing nothing much even as their Mediterranean ports lost all their Asian traffic.

    This shameful passivity reinforced the Israeli conviction that France, Italy, and Spain, unable and unwilling to defend even their own direct material interests, would only yield to Muslim demographic and political pressure in other respects as well. Only the British joined the United States in eventually striking the Houthis, though mostly symbolically and nowhere near the sustained and targeted campaign required to destroy Houthi capabilities.

    Between American permissiveness toward Iran’s multipronged campaign and Washington’s support for Netanyahu’s domestic opposition, calls for a Gaza cease-fire intensified and became the default position across the political landscape, from Israel’s left and even moderate center to most European governments, in addition to the Biden administration.

    It is against this backdrop that Netanyahu’s pure resolve must be understood. With this remarkable array of forces, external and internal, bearing down on him, his tenacity was the only thing that mattered.

    Read the whole thing.

  • The Houthis in Yemen are in the find out phase, as U.S. forces just blew up a vital oil port.

    Fresh US airstrikes on Yemen Thursday marked the single-deadliest known attack under President Donald Trump’s new campaign targeting the Houthi rebels. The Pentagon has been intensely bombing Yemen since March 15, when the Gaza truce collapsed.

    A Houthi spokesman announced Friday that the attacks killed 38 people and wounded 102 others. The death toll was hours later updated to at least 74 killed. The operation mainly targeted and destroyed the Ras Isa oil port, which sent massive fireballs shooting into the night sky.

  • “Tulsi Gabbard Exposes Alarming Biden-Era ‘Domestic Terrorism’ Strategy,” and it’s filled with gun-grabbing social justice BS.

    The final pillar of the plan, calling to “confront long-term contributors to domestic terrorism,” is laden with potentially controversial social proposals.

    This section identifies “ghost guns”—unregistered weapons without a serial number, often created via 3D printer—as one such contributor, and calls to “[r]ein in the proliferation” of such weapons, “encourage state adoption of extreme risk protection orders, and drive other executive and legislative action including banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.”

    It also called for “advancing inclusion” as part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic to “mitigate xenophobia and bias.”

    This would be in order to “address hate crime reporting barriers faced by disadvantaged communities by promoting law enforcement training and resources to prevent and address bias-motivated crimes,” according to the SIP.

    Additionally, the plan encouraged “teaching and learning of civics education that provides students with the skill to fully participate in civic life,” and promoting “literacy education for both children and adult learners and existing proven interventions to foster resiliency to disinformation.”

  • “Under Trump, border catch-and-release has dropped 99.99% from worst Biden month.

    The change at the border between President Biden and President Trump is nothing short of staggering, and two numbers best tell that story: 189,604 and 20.

    The first is the number of illegal immigrants Border Patrol agents caught and immediately released into the U.S. in December 2023, at the depths of the Biden border chaos.

    The second is the number of illegal immigrants agents caught and released into the U.S. in February — roughly one-hundredth of 1% of the total in Mr. Biden’s worst month.

    For years, Border Patrol agents have been telling anyone who would listen that catch-and-release was the driver of illegal immigration.

    Migrants who had a reasonable sense that they could live and work in the U.S. would pay $10,000 or more to smugglers to reach the border. If their chances of release were slim, they wouldn’t pay or make the trip.

    Mr. Trump’s policies have drastically cut the chances of catch-and-release from 778 per 1,000 border crossers in December 2023 to just 2 per 1,000 in February.

  • “New Mexico Judge Resigns After Housing Alleged Tren De Aragua Member. The resignation occurred a few days after law enforcement arrested illegal alien Cristhian Ortega-Lopez…Democrat Doña Ana County Magistrate Judge Joel Cano resigned after police arrested an alleged Tren De Aragua (TdA) gang member.”
  • And that’s not the only illegal-friendly judge in hot water this week: “FBI Arrests Wisconsin Judge Accused Of Helping Illegal Immigrant Hide From ICE.”

    FBI Director Kash Patel announced Friday that the bureau has arrested Judge Hannah Dugan out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on charges of obstruction, accusing the Dugan of obstructing an arrest of illegal immigrants last week.

    “We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, allowing the subject — an illegal alien — to evade arrest,” Patel said in a brief statement shared on X – which was subsequently deleted and re-posted. “Thankfully our agents chased down the perp on foot and he’s been in custody since, but the Judge’s obstruction created increased danger to the public.”

    The days when Democrats can blithely ignore immigration laws are coming to a close.

  • Dick quits.

    Senator Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), the second most powerful Senate Democrat, announced Wednesday his decision not to run for another term after nearly three decades in the world’s greatest deliberative body.

    Durbin, 80, is ending his Senate career after five terms, the longest tenure of any Senator in Illinois history. His retirement opens up a deep blue seat in 2026 and will create a leadership competition for Senate Democrats amid frustration with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and generational turnover within the party.

  • Remember, in Minnesota, crimes aginst designed hate objects are perfectly legal. “Progressive Minnesota Prosecutor Lets State Employee Off with No Charges for Alleged Tesla Vandalism.”

    The Hennepin County Attorney’s office is seeking diversion for Minnesota Department of Human Service employee Dylan Adams after he allegedly vandalized at least six Teslas in Minneapolis while walking his dog….

    Progressive County Attorney Mary Moriarty took office in 2023 and has faced strong criticism for her soft-on-crime approach. On several occasions, Moriarty has shown leniency to violent criminals, including suspects charged with murder and sexual assault, leading to disputes with prosecutors and outrage among victims’s families.

    Is she Soros-backed? You better believe it. I hope Elon Musk sues all of them for everything they own…

  • Ukraine hits a big ammo dump in Russia.
  • Well, this is disturbing. “Stunned cops allegedly find 180K rounds of ammo packed in minivan driven by two Mexican nationals.”

    Two Mexican nationals pulled over in a routine traffic stop in Colorado were found with 180,000 illegal rounds of ammunition in the back of their van, according to federal prosecutors.

    Caesar Ramon Martinez Solis, 41, and Humberto Ivan Amador Gavira, 24, were pulled over late last month for failing to dim their headlights and using a turn signal in Canon City, 35 miles southwest of Colorado Springs, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado.

    Officers then found 180 boxes stacked in the back of the van — each labeled as having 1,000 rounds of ammo, mostly .308 but also 30 boxes of 7.62, the feds said.
    Ammunition in back of minivan.

    Even among my friends, that’s a lot of ammo…

  • “White House Confirms COVID’s Lab Leak Origin.”

    The federal government’s main website on COVID-19 information has been taken down and replaced with a new version discarding the natural-origin theory of the coronavirus that was pushed by the Biden administration.

    Where the previous website pushed vaccine and testing information, the White House is now displaying scientific proof that the virus was man-made and leaked from a Chinese virus lab while calling out U.S. officials and agencies that it says “obstructed” the truth from the American people.

    Dr. Anthony Fauci is named along with Dr. Peter Daszak, Dr. David Morens and other public officials who are accused of engaging in “a multi-year campaign of delay, confusion, and non-responsiveness in an attempt to obstruct the Select Subcommittee’s investigation” and to hide incriminating evidence.”

    Now will Democrats finally accept the truth, or continue clinging to the “wet market” origins like they cling to all their other lockdown lies?

  • “Hegseth Denounces Journalists Who ‘Won’t Give Back Their Pulitzers for Discredited Stories as Pulitzer Board Facing String of Setbacks in Trump’s Lawsuit. He insists he is the subject of ‘hit pieces that ‘come out from the same media that peddled the Russia hoax.'” Soon the legacy media can be financially, as well as factually and morally, bankrupt.
  • “Polling pundit Nate Silver predicts Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) will be the 2028 Democratic presidential nominee.” Three years from now this prediction may look every bit as laughable as all those confident Jeb! predictions did in 2016.

    This meme still cracks me up.

  • So the Russians captured a Bradley in Ukraine. After analyzing how it compares to their own BMPs, they want one.

    The Russians have gotten a closeup look at an M2A2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle and seem to like it better than their own armored vehicles.

    The Bradley offers more protection and can fire more accurately than its Russian equivalent, the BMP-3, according to a Russian report that was leaked onto a Telegram channel earlier this month.

    Experts told Task & Purpose that the report appears to be legitimate.

  • The left is coming for your dogs. I don’t imagine that door-to-door sweeps would work out well for them…
  • “TSMC to build 30% of its 2nm and more advanced chips in the U.S., to speed up Fab 21 build out.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “Texas Senate Passes $50,000 Homestead Exemption Increase for Elderly, Disabled Homeowners. It brings the homestead exemption total for elderly homeowners to $200,000.”

    Priority legislation that would raise the homestead exemption for elderly and disabled homeowners by $50,000 passed the Texas Senate on Wednesday. With other planned exemption increases, elderly homeowners would receive a total of $200,000 in homestead exemptions.

    Senate Bill (SB) 23 and Senate Joint Resolution (SJR) 85 raise the school tax homestead exemption — a reduction in the taxable value of a home — for age 65 and over homeowners from $10,000 to $60,000. The proposal is estimated to cost the state $1.2 billion through the next biennium.

    Both passed by a 30 to 1 vote with the lone “no” coming from state Sen. Nathan Johnson (D-Dallas), which is the first “no” vote against a homestead exemption increase in the Senate in multiple sessions.

    Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick prefaced this proposal in an early-April press conference, during which he said he and Speaker Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock) were working together on the item.

    This is on top of the planned standard homestead exemption increase from $100,000 to $140,000.

  • “Texas Senate Approves Nearly $500 Million for Priority Film Incentive Program. The Texas residency requirement would be lowered to 35 percent.” Meh.
  • Just in case you hadn’t heard: Pope Francis dead at 88. “The pope, who led the Catholic Church for twelve years, passed away just one day after Easter Sunday when the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics celebrated the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Despite his ongoing health problems, he made several appearances during Holy Week, including a trip to St. Peter’s Basilica and a visit with Vice President JD Vance on Sunday.” Sic transit gloria mundi.
  • Hijacking thwarted. “A U.S. man hijacked a small plane in Belize on Thursday, stabbing two passengers and a pilot, before one of the stabbed passengers fatally shot him, officials in Belize and the United States said. The plane then landed safely.”
  • Florida party switch shenanigans the first: “State Senate Minority Leader Jason Pizzo said Thursday he is leaving the Democratic Party and that Senate Democrats will be asked to elect a new leader.”

    Pizzo, considered a possible candidate for governor in 2026, said unaffiliated voters helped elect him to office. He added that the state party needed new leadership, but Democratic leaders didn’t want him to be it. The party that his late father volunteered for in the 1960s, he said, “is not the party today.”

    “Here’s the issue: The Democratic Party in Florida is dead. But there are good people that can resuscitate it. But they don’t want it to be me,” he said.

    Pizzo’s stunning announcement — which caught Democrats completely by surprise — of a switch to no party affiliation is just the latest blow for Florida’s beleaguered Democratic Party. The state currently has 1.2 million more registered Republicans than Democrats, and no Democrat holds statewide elected office — a far cry from Florida’s former status as the ultimate swing state.

    It’s got to hurt to have the Minority leader of the third largest state in the union leave your party because it’s too radical. Especially since a quarter century ago Florida was still The Land of the Hanging Chad…

  • Florida party switch shenanigans the second: “David Jolly, a former Republican U.S. Congressman in Florida’s 13th Congressional District who left the GOP amid his distaste for President Donald Trump, has now registered as a Democrat. He’s also launched a political committee, Florida 2026, ahead of what many expect to be a gubernatorial bid.” I doubt someone who left office in 2017 is going to be at the top of anyone’s list, and Charlie Crist’s post-Republican career hardly offers a blueprint for success in Florida politics…
  • “Disgraced former Representative George Santos (R., N.Y.) was sentenced Friday to 87 months in federal prison for wire fraud and identity theft, completing his remarkable rise and fall from a newly elected swing-seat congressman to widely ridiculed conman whose colleagues expelled him from the House..”
  • “Rep. Jasmine Crockett Faces FEC Investigation Over Suspicious Act Blue Donations.”

    The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has opened an investigation into Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) over donations made to her 2024 campaign by the Democratic fundraising organization Act Blue.

    The FEC began its probe after receiving a complaint from the conservative Coolidge-Reagan Foundation in late March.

    The complaint alleges that Crockett received 53 separate donations of $595 from a 73 year old supporter named Randy Best through the Act Blue portal.

    However, when one of Crockett’s opponents for 2026 spoke to Best’s wife, she denied that the couple knew anything about donations, raising concerns that the Act Blue donations may have been made by others with donations being given under false names.

    Crockett’s campaign received more than $870,000 in donations through Act Blue.

    At this point, I think we have to assume that ActBlue was consciously constructed to enable fraud.

  • “Former Houston ISD Official, Contractor Convicted in Bribery Scheme. The pair provided cash, trips, and other gifts in exchange for lucrative contracts.”

    In the latest scandal to rock the state’s largest public school district, on Friday, a federal jury found Houston Independent School District’s (HISD) former chief operating officer, Brian Busby, and vendor Anthony Hutchison, guilty on 33 charges related to a long-running bribery scheme.

    The scheme, which prosecutors say began as early as 2011, included kickbacks to Busby as well as cash payments to former HISD board president Rhonda Skillern-Jones and multiple other officials in exchange for lucrative contracts for construction, landscaping, mowing, and maintenance at district schools.

    In some instances, Hutchison overbilled the district by $6 million through his exclusive contract to provide mowing and landscaping for the entire district. He also obtained contracts through Skillern-Jones to complete projects at several schools using funds derived from a 2012 voter-approved bond referendum.

    After a trial that lasted nearly four weeks, both Busby and Hutchison were convicted on charges of conspiracy, bribery, filing false tax returns, and witness tampering. Hutchison was also convicted of wire fraud.

    Skillern-Jones, who also later served as a Houston Community College trustee and worked for Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis (D-Pct. 1), entered a plea deal in 2021 and admitted that she had received $12,000 in cash from Busby in a Walmart parking lot.

  • Former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter wants you to know that magazine writing was best back when expense accounts were highest.

  • Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld says that the people at the top of Marvel comics, Dan Buckley, David Bogart and David Gabriel, have done a horrible job, especially with X-Men, and have to be fired.
  • And speaking of people getting fired for being bad at their job, Alyssa Mercante fired from Kotaku. Asmongold: “Put the fries in the bag.”
  • Ghost in the Shell director Mamoru Oshii thinks that wokeness is ruining western video games.
  • The Critical Drinker raves about Warfare.
  • “People Who Bypassed Legal Process In Migrating To USA Demand Legal Process Before Being Kicked Out.”
  • “CNN: Behind Closed Doors, Pope Is Still Focused, Sharp, And Energetic.”
  • “Catholic Church To Consider Electing Pope Who’s A Catholic This Time.”
  • “Dalai Lama Quietly Cancels Scheduled Meeting With JD Vance.”
  • “MS-13 Added To LGBTQ Acronym.”
  • “God Introduces New Hydrating, Zero Sugar Beverage With No Artificial Dyes.” Evidently the Babylon Bee writers are seeing the same irritating ads and Kickstarters I am…
  • Happy dog

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





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    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Guns, Media Watch, Military, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 11 Comments »

    Prepping Sales Tax Holiday This Weekend

    Thursday, April 24th, 2025

    There’s another Texas Emergency Preparation Supply Sales Tax Holiday sneaking up on us this weekend. The following items are covered:

    These emergency preparation supplies qualify for tax exemption if purchased for a sales price:

  • Less than $3000
    • Portable generators.
  • Less than $300
    • Emergency ladders.
    • Hurricane shutters.
  • Less than $75
    • Axes.
    • Batteries, single or multipack (AAA cell, AA cell, C cell, D cell, 6 volt or 9 volt).
    • Can openers – nonelectric.
    • Carbon monoxide detectors.
    • Coolers and ice chests for food storage – nonelectric.
    • Fire extinguishers.
    • First aid kits.
    • Fuel containers.
    • Ground anchor systems and tie-down kits.
    • Hatchets.
    • Ice products – reusable and artificial.
    • Light sources – portable self-powered (including battery operated).
    • Examples of items include: candles, flashlights and lanterns.
    • Mobile telephone batteries and mobile telephone chargers.
    • Radios – portable self-powered (including battery operated) – includes two-way and weather band radios.
    • Smoke detectors.
    • Tarps and other plastic sheeting.

    • In the past Amazon has participated in these sales tax holidays, so here are some items you can buy from them that should qualify:

  • First aid kit: There are a lot of different makes and models of these. This one has a little bit of everything. A good thing to keep in your car for emergencies.
  • Smoke alarm.
  • Carbon Monoxide detector. I need to get one of these myself, as my upstairs until just died emitted the Beep of Death.
  • Fire Extinguisher: Every home should have at least one, and make sure it’s not expired. This is what I have.
  • Flashlights. This Goreit flashlight seems bright, cheap, and gets pretty good reviews.
  • Batteries. D-Cells are still used in a lot of things, and you’re going to want, at a minimum, enough to reload every flashlight twice, which should be enough to get you through a couple of evenings of power outages. Most smoke detectors take 9 volt batteries. I’m low on AAA batteries, so I’ll be picking up these this weekend.

    • The Sales tax Holiday starts Saturday the 26th and runs through Monday the 28th.

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    Posted in Texas | 2 Comments »

    Is Austin Stealth Cutting APD Budget?

    Sunday, April 20th, 2025

    Remember the “Defund the Police” madness of 2020, and how the Austin City Council embraced the madness by cutting $150 million from the APD budget and how they proposed to fund a giant checklist of social justice lunacy?

    Well, it looks like the Austin City Council is about to use a budget deficit as an excuse to cut APD’s budget (as well as those of the EMS and Fire Department) again.

    The full text:

    APD, AFD, and EMS is loosing funding. The city will not tell you this, the mainstream media will. It report it.

    This coming Tuesday EMS will be shutting down ambulances to keep from calling in medics for overtime.

    How many ambulances will be placed out of servuce? They will make that determination by past call volume. This is the result of a 3 million dollar budget deficit and the city demanding a budget cut from every department. This will cut about 2.1 million from ems and 911.

    We already have enough problems with time to answer 911 calls and time to get help to people

    EMS will also be pulling administrative staff and putting them in single responder vehicles. These are squads that will dispatch the the critical calls. They can not transport.

    They are doing this just to make their response times seem faster and to stop the clock so to speak.

    IT DOSENT STOP THERE!

    AFD is losing $7 million from their budget and APD will loose somewhere around $4.1 million.

    Defeunded APD again.

    So police, fire and EMS, the three things the overwhelming majority of citizens agree are essential government services, are getting cut. Why?

    Because left wing Democrat Party activists can’t rake enough graft off those departments.

    And what are the things the Austin City Council is (probably) declining to cut? Well, let’s look at some of the items Austin was bragging about for the 24-25 budget cycle:

  • $3.6 million for the “I Belong Austin” tenant stabilization and eviction assistance program.
  • $2.7 million in one-time funding, as well as $440,000 in ongoing funding, across several City departments to support Austin Civilian Conservation Corps programming.
  • $2.2 million in planned capital spending for projects that stabilize, preserve and enhance the African American Cultural Heritage District, Red River Cultural District, 5th Street Mexican Heritage Corridor, and East Cesar Chavez District.
  • $463,000, including additional personnel, to investigate complaints of criminal illegal dumping.

    • Yeah, what do you want to bet that 95% of that illegal dumping comes from the drug-addicted transients the Austin City Council seems to love so much?

  • Six staff positions and funding to open and operate the new Colony Park District pool, the rebuilt Givens pool, and the expanded Mexican American Cultural Center.
  • Nearly $200,000 to implement a new website tool for accurate, culturally competent translation in many languages on the City of Austin website. 

    • Did Google translate cease to exist?

  • Homelessness response and prevention

    • All of these should be cut before APD. Indeed, some are things city government shouldn’t be undertaking at all, and some just seem to be designed to provide graft to the homeless industrial complex.

    So instead of cutting their precious graft, Austin City Council is, once again, defunding Austin police.

    Austin taxpayers deserve better.

    (Hat tip: John Zoch.)

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud | 6 Comments »

    School Choice Finally Passes Texas House

    Thursday, April 17th, 2025

    After seeing numerous attempts die at the hands of the Straus/Bonnin/Phelan/Burrows cabal over the years, the Texas House has finally passed school choice.

    In a historic move, the Texas House gave initial approval today to Senate Bill 2, a school choice proposal backed by Gov. Greg Abbott.

    The vote marks the first time a school choice bill has cleared the Texas House—a major shift from just last session when a similar proposal was voted down. The change comes after Abbott made the issue a defining battle in last year’s Republican primaries, endorsing challengers against GOP incumbents who had opposed school choice. Many of those incumbents were ousted, clearing the way for today’s vote.

    Ahead of the floor debate, House Republicans met privately and heard from both Gov. Abbott and President Donald Trump, who called into the meeting and urged them to stay united.

    “I just think it’s a really forward-thinking vote,” said Trump on the call. “There’s nothing complex about it. You’re not going to get hurt by it. It’s actually almost the opposite. People really want it.”

    Snip.

    The bill ultimately passed 86-63, with Phelan and State Rep. Gary Vandeaver (New Boston) being the only GOP members to vote against the measure.

    Phelan still insists on being the turd in the punch bowl.

    The bill now returns to the Senate, which can either concur with the House’s amendments or send the legislation to a conference committee.

    Finally getting school choice passed is a direct result of slaughtering so many Dade Phelan cronies in the 2024 Republican primary (and runoff), the success of such efforts greatly aided by Abbott, Ted Cruz and Ken Paxton all campaiging to defeat anti-school choice (and pro-Paxton impeachment) reps.

    It was a long time coming, but Texas voters finally got Republican representatives to vote like Republicans.

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    Posted in Republicans, Texas | 2 Comments »

    Nvidia News Roundup

    Wednesday, April 16th, 2025

    A few pieces of Nvidia-specific news have popped since Monday’s piece, so let’s do a quick roundup:

  • In a comment on Monday’s post, I mentioned that production at TSMC’s new Arizona fab hadn’t started yet. In fact, Nvidia just announced that TSMC’s Arizona fab just started work on their chips.

    On Monday, Nvidia announced that it has started producing its Blackwell AI GPUs at TSMC’s plant in Phoenix, Arizona, while companies within the state package and test them.

    TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., is the world’s biggest chipmaker and announced a $100 billion investment in US chipmaking last month. It began producing chips using the 4nm process at its Arizona factory in January and has plans to make chips with the more efficient 2nm technology by the end of the decade.

    Nvidia doesn’t say which Blackwell chips it has started producing at TSMC’s plant and whether it includes the latest Blackwell Ultra GB300 chip it revealed earlier this year. Blackwell chips use TSMC’s custom 4NP process, according to Nvidia’s website.

  • Nvidia has also announced a large expansion in Texas.

    The world’s leading manufacturer of graphics processing units (GPU) and advanced chips has announced it will build new plants in Texas, amid global economic shake-ups.

    Note: Plants, not fabs.

    NVIDIA has announced partnerships with Foxconn and Wistron to build “supercomputer manufacturing plants” in both Dallas and Houston. These global companies are “expanding their global footprint” and their international presence for the purposes of “hardening supply chain resilience” in their partnership with NVIDIA.

    “Manufacturing NVIDIA AI chips and supercomputers for American AI factories is expected to create hundreds of thousands of jobs and drive trillions of dollars in economic security over the coming decades,” the announcement states.

    The mass production of chips at these plants is expected to begin in the next 12 to 15 months. The $500 billion investment in AI infrastructure within the U.S. does not make mention of direct government subsidies or public financial incentives related to NVIDIA’s recent announcement.

    I’m quoting that summary because it demonstrates that it’s easy to misunderstand things about the industry if you aren’t familiar with it. The way it’s worded make you think the “plants” are the Texas facilities they’re going to be building in 12-15 months, but the actual Nvidia press release makes clear than TSMC is doing the fabbing:

    NVIDIA is working with its manufacturing partners to design and build factories that, for the first time, will produce NVIDIA AI supercomputers entirely in the U.S.

    Together with leading manufacturing partners, the company has commissioned more than a million square feet of manufacturing space to build and test NVIDIA Blackwell chips in Arizona and AI supercomputers in Texas.

    Note the more precise wording.

    NVIDIA Blackwell chips have started production at TSMC’s chip plants in Phoenix, Arizona. NVIDIA is building supercomputer manufacturing plants in Texas, with Foxconn in Houston and with Wistron in Dallas. Mass production at both plants is expected to ramp up in the next 12-15 months.

    The AI chip and supercomputer supply chain is complex and demands the most advanced manufacturing, packaging, assembly and test technologies. NVIDIA is partnering with Amkor and SPIL for packaging and testing operations in Arizona.

    Within the next four years, NVIDIA plans to produce up to half a trillion dollars of AI infrastructure in the United States through partnerships with TSMC, Foxconn, Wistron, Amkor and SPIL. These world-leading companies are deepening their partnership with NVIDIA, growing their businesses while expanding their global footprint and hardening supply chain resilience.

    Now, if that half trillion does get spent (no guarantee, since press releases aren’t legally binding; try to contain your shock), that would certainly buy a lot of cutting edge fabs. Nvidia is one of the few companies that has the financial resources to build their own cutting edge fabs (Apple is another), but I get the impression that they’re going to partner with TSMC. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they follow the Apple model, where they tell a company “Here’s X amount of money, go build a fab. You’ll give us the first 24 months of production at x-cost per chip, and after that the fab is yours free and clear.” This is one of the tools Apple used to become the dominate tech buyer, and what some call a monopsony.

    As far as building their own supercomputers, that’s great for Texas and not so great for Hewett Packard Enterprise, which finished their acquisition of Cray in 2021.

  • Finally, Nvidia’s AI chips are now banned from export to China.

    The Trump administration has effectively barred Nvidia (NVDA) from selling its custom artificial intelligence processors to customers in China. The move will force the AI chip leader to write off up to $5.5 billion in inventory and purchase commitments in its fiscal first quarter. Nvidia stock fell Wednesday.

    Late Tuesday, Nvidia disclosed in a regulatory filing that the U.S. government is now requiring it to get an export license to sell its H20 processor in China and other restricted countries. Nvidia said it was informed of the move on April 9, the same day NPR erroneously reported that the White House would not seek further restrictions on the chips Nvidia can sell in China.

    Your tax dollars at work.

    Nvidia said the U.S. government told it on Monday that the license requirement will be in effect for the indefinite future.

    Wall Street analysts say Nvidia’s write-off indicates that the company believes it won’t be granted licenses to sell H20 processors in China.

    The H20 was designed for the Chinese market to comply with Biden-era restrictions on selling advanced processors there. The H20 is less capable than the Blackwell series chips Nvidia sells in the U.S. and other markets.

    “With Nvidia writing off associated H20 inventory, it appears the company is taking the position that it will not be granted licenses to ship product to Chinese customers (with no other geography likely to take the governed silicon given the availability of more powerful standard Hopper or Blackwell SKUs),” Wedbush analyst Matt Bryson said in a client note Wednesday. SKU stands for “stock keeping unit,” a unique identifier for products used in inventory management.

    China represents a little over 10% of Nvidia’s revenue.

    The Trump Administrations believes (probably correctly) that AI is a key strategic industry and that we don’t need to give China any help there.

    • A half trillion dollars is a lot of cheddar, even for the (as of today) company with the third largest market cap in the world…

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    Posted in Economics, Media Watch, Texas | 7 Comments »

    LinkSwarm For April 11, 2025

    Friday, April 11th, 2025

    I hope your taxes are finished, or at least in the home stretch. Mine are done but not mailed out yet. I made so little last year that I’m getting every cent I sent in back, pitiful though it is.

    This week: The Supreme Court hands Trump two victories, more progress in the war against illegal aliens, a trade war reprieve for everyone but China, Jasmine Crockett seems to think illegal aliens pick cotton, Tim Walz proves he’s still a putz, and after 72 years, police finally arrest an infamous Mexican bandit!

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • “Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration to Fire Thousands of Federal Workers.”

    The Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to move forward with its plans to fire thousands of probationary federal employees, overturning a lower court order preventing the terminations.

    The Supreme Court lifted an injunction Tuesday from a California federal court barring the Trump administration from firing employees across six federal agencies. The lower court order came last month following a lawsuit from the American Federation of Government Employees, a powerful public sector union.

    “The District Court’s injunction was based solely on the allegations of the nine non-profit-organization plaintiffs in this case. But under established law, those allegations are presently insufficient to support the organizations’ standing,” the justices said in an unsigned ruling.

    Liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the court’s order. Sotomayor did not explain her reasoning, while Jackson said the Trump administration failed to demonstrate the urgency of the issue.

    Pink slip by pink slip, progress is made…

  • A quarter of IRS employees are about to get the axe.

    Nearly two months after a top Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) official and support team arrived at IRS headquarters to investigate waste and fraud—aiming to streamline a bloated and corrupt federal bureaucracy—the Trump administration has begun a sizeable workforce reduction across the federal agency.

    Fox News reported late Friday evening that the IRS will begin laying off about 20,000 staffers — up to 25% of the workforce — on Friday and through next week.

    Most job cuts will center around the IRS Office of Civil Rights and Compliance, which protects taxpayers from discrimination, audits, and investigations.

    White House spokesperson Liz Huston told Fox News, “In a stark contrast to the previous administration’s wildly unpopular plan to hire thousands of additional IRS agents, President Trump is focused on saving tax dollars, eliminating bloat, axing useless DEI offices, and increasing the agency’s efficiency.”

    Here’s more from Fox:

    In addition to the layoffs, the agency said in a letter to employees that it is eliminating its Office of Civil Rights and Compliance, which is responsible for protecting taxpayers from discrimination, audits and investigations.

    . . .

    “This action is being taken to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the IRS in accordance with agency priorities and the Workforce Optimization Initiative outlined in a recent Executive Order,” the letter states, referring to President Donald Trump’s executive order directing the Department of Government Efficiency to get rid of wasteful spending.

    The agency said it was approved to offer Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) and Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment (VSIP). Information about those programs will be shared with employees at a later date, the message said.

    “This calendar year to date, approximately 5% of this office left through the Deferred Resignation Program and attrition,” the message said. “An additional 75% of the office will be reduced through a RIF (Reduction in Force).”

    A Treasury Department spokesperson told Fox News, “The rollback of wasteful Biden-era hiring surges and consolidation of critical support functions are vital to improving both efficiency and quality of service. ” The spokesperson added, “The Secretary is committed to ensuring that efficiency is realized while providing the collections, privacy, and customer service the American people deserve.”

  • “DOGE Official: More Than One Million Migrants On Medicaid, Thousands On Voter Rolls.”

    An official with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said that millions of migrants are currently receiving taxpayer-funded Medicaid benefits while thousands are on voter rolls across the country and are illegally voting in American elections.

    DOGE official and equity firm CEO Antonio Gracias said that migrants have obtained Social Security cards after being released into the interior of the country with a notice to appear in immigration court, with court dates scheduled an average of six years after their release.

    “So now you’re in the country with some quasi-legal status, you’re waiting for your court date … you can fill out an asylum application,” Gracias explained during a recent appearance on the “All In” podcast, which featured Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro. “Once that application is in, you can file another form, a 765 to get work authorization, once you get that, you get a 766, which is the authorization and we automatically send you a Social Security card in the mail.”

    With access to Social Security cards, Gracias says, over a million migrants have been able to receive Medicaid benefits. “We mapped this through the benefit programs, we found every benefits program that is being accessed by these people, 1.3 million are on Medicaid right now, today,” Gracias said.

    He went on to explain that thousands of migrants have been found on voter rolls as well, also asserting that the Democratic Party opened the border in order to import new voters.

    “We looked at voter rolls and we found that thousands are registered to vote in friendly states. And we looked even further in those friendly states and found that many of those people had actually voted. It was shocking to us,” Gracias explained. “I think this was a move to import voters.”

    “This doesn’t include the 7.8 million that ICE has that have come in illegally that we know are here and all the people who are here illegally who we don’t know are here,” he explained.

    DOGE is uncovering illegal aliens and massive fraud. It’s easy to see why Democrats are upset…

  • The Supreme Court also gave Trump the greenlight to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport illegal aliens.

    The Supreme Court on Monday lifted a federal judge’s order that once blocked the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang to El Salvador.

    In a 5–4 majority opinion, the Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a major victory against legal challenges regarding his mass deportation agenda. The decision allows Trump to continue invoking the Alien Enemies Act to accelerate the removal of illegal immigrants believed to be in Tren de Aragua.

    The nation’s highest court, however, noted that the administration should give immigrants it seeks to deport “reasonable time” to challenge their removal from the U.S. in court. Those legal challenges must take place in Texas, where the detainees are held, and not Washington, D.C., the conservative majority ruled.

    “The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs,” the ruling states. “The detainees subject to removal orders under the [Alien Enemies Act] are entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal.”

  • “Trump Plans to Withhold All Federal Funding From Sanctuary City ‘Death Trap.'”

    President Donald Trump announced Thursday that his administration is finalizing plans to withhold all federal funding for sanctuary cities and states that provide safe harbor to illegal aliens.

    “No more Sanctuary Cities! They protect the Criminals, not the Victims,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “They are disgracing our Country, and are being mocked all over the World.”

    On his first day in office, Trump signed the “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” executive order laying out a framework to strictly enforce the nation’s immigration laws and “prioritize the safety, security, and financial and economic well-being of Americans.”

    In the E/O, Trump authorized the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security to “evaluate and undertake any lawful actions” needed to ensure sanctuary jurisdictions across the U.S. are not receiving federal funds.

    Now, it appears Trump is ready to drop the hammer on these Democrat strongholds.

    “Working on papers to withhold all Federal Funding for any City or State that allows these Death Traps to exist,” the president said in his post.

    Sanctuary jurisdictions are states, counties, or cities that refuse to cooperate with federal law enforcement agencies seeking to deport criminal illegal aliens.

    There are about a dozen states and hundreds of cities across the US that consider themselves “sanctuaries” for illegals.

    The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement held a hearing Wednesday to address the issue, titled “Sanctuary Jurisdictions: Magnet for Migrants, Cover for Criminals.”

    Republicans contended that sanctuary cities have been an impediment to the mass deportations the Trump administration has prioritized in its first 100 days of office.

    But Democrats defended Sanctuary Cities, arguing that trust between local law enforcement and the community erodes when the police comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

    In his opening statement, Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) argued that the strong measures were necessary after Democrats deliberately trafficked over eight million unvetted illegal aliens into the country, “including some of the most dangerous, vicious criminals and cartel members in the world.”

    “Congress must enact stronger laws that will prevent a future Joe Biden from ever again placing our families at risk, and that will stop today’s Democratic politicians from impeding the enforcement of our immigration and public safety laws,” said McClintock stated.

  • The usual talking heads said that Trump was going to trigger higher inflation (higher, that is, than the Biden inflation they’d been taking such pains to hide). Reality: Not so much. “CPI Shows 12 Month Inflation Rate at 2.4%; Lowest Core in 4 Years.”
  • ICE deport criminal illegal alien for the 40th time. “Julian Estrada-Garcia, 36, has four convictions for illegal entry and convictions for driving while intoxicated, possession of illicit narcotics, and fraud.” Just the sort of people Democrats are working so hard to keep us from deporting…
  • SAVE voter integrity act passes the House.

    The U.S. House of Representatives has passed Rep. Chip Roy’s (R-TX-21) Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.

    The SAVE Act would require states to verify U.S. citizenship and identity through documentary proof in-person when an individual registers to vote in federal elections, regardless of the registration method. Additionally, it requires states to remove “non-citizens” from voter rolls.

    “The American people have spoken very clearly that they believe only American citizens should vote in American elections. There’s nothing controversial about that,” Roy said on the floor before the vote.

    “This legislation is designed to restore that faith, to save our elections, to save election integrity,” he added.

    The U.S. House passed the SAVE Act 220 to 208, with four Democratic members voting in favor of the legislation — one of them being Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX-28). No Republicans voted against the bill.

    A Gallup poll from October 2024 found that 84 percent of respondents are in favor of requiring voters to provide photo identification at voting locations, and 83 percent favor requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.

    What do you know, another 80/20 issue Democrats are on the wrong side of. Of course, they’re lying about the SAVE Act, so if you see misinformation about it on facebook, ask them where in the ext of the bill itself do they see the nonsense they’re peddling.

  • “Trump Announces 90-Day Pause on Reciprocal Tariffs for Negotiating Countries, Hits China with 125 Percent Rate.”

    President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he is implementing a 90-day pause on retaliatory tariffs for countries that have come to the negotiating table, while raising tariffs on China to 125 percent following Beijing’s latest retaliatory levies.

    Trump stated on Truth Social that he is lowering the retaliatory tariffs he unveiled earlier this week for the “worst offenders” to the baseline rate of 10 percent after more than 75 nations expressed a willingness to negotiate new trade deals with the U.S. He vowed not to raise rates on those countries for 90 days while negotiations proceed.

    “Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately,” Trump posted.

    “Conversely, and based on the fact that more than 75 Countries have called Representatives of the United States, including the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and the USTR, to negotiate a solution to the subjects being discussed relative to Trade, Trade Barriers, Tariffs, Currency Manipulation, and Non Monetary Tariffs, and that these Countries have not, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form against the United States, I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately,” Trump added.

    Stocks immediately surged upon Trump’s announcement with each of the three major indexes jumping by over 7 percent. The Dow Jones and S&P 500 saw their biggest gains in five years, and the tech-oriented Nasdaq jumped over 10 percent. Wall Street had been reeling since last week when Trump announced a dramatic global tariff package consisting of a 10 percent minimum tariff and much higher tariff rates for many countries worldwide.

    Golly, It’s almost like Trump knew what he was doing and planned something like this all along, integrating both carrot and stick in his negotiating strategy. And it’s almost like China is on the outside looking in as Trump wins lower rates for American goods, accomplishing the decoupling of America from China and more firmly cementing other nations in America’s sphere of influence rather than China’s.

    A whole lot of promising return for one week of work…

  • Along those lines, the White House says more than 15 countries have made trade deal offers.
  • “Trump Has Xi and China Over a Tariff Cliff—Right Where He Wants Them.”

    This week, President Trump instituted a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs for the nations that are clearly interested in coming to the negotiating table to make deals more fair to the United States. The reality is brutally simple: America holds all the cards.

    “What’s the largest consumer market on Earth? The United States,” Kevin O’Leary noted this week. “Almost 40% of all goods consumed worldwide. What’s the largest GDP? 25 or 26% of the world? The United States of America. China needs the United States.”

    Even our top competitor in the global market, China, needs us more than we need them.

    During a recent appearance on “The Ingraham Angle,” investor Chamath Palihapitiya laid out a stark picture of China’s economic fragility, arguing that the ongoing tariff standoff gives the United States far more leverage than Beijing wants to admit.

    “Even the Chinese economists are admitting that the tariffs are gonna hurt China a lot more than the United States,” Ingraham said, pointing to growing concern within China itself. She quoted one Chinese economist who conceded, “The impact on China is mainly that Chinese products have nowhere to go. These companies will be hit very hard.”

    Palihapitiya agreed, saying Americans routinely underestimate just how dire China’s economic outlook has become. “Together, America and China represent almost half of world GDP,” he explained, “but underneath the covers, what we keep forgetting time and again is America is the market that matters.”

    He pointed to a series of structural problems dragging China down, including its rapidly aging population, tightening restrictions on foreign investment, and unreliable intellectual property protections. “Foreign investment in China has fallen off of a cliff,” Palihapitiya noted, painting a picture of a nation increasingly isolated and economically vulnerable.

    This tariff cliff is precisely what America needs to force real change.

    China’s economic trajectory, he warned, is far from sustainable. “They have a very difficult economic forecast if they shrink,” he said. “When you look at the China case, they’re in a worse position than we are, which is why they have to sort of come to the negotiating table now and figure out some reasonable thing.”

    Palihapitiya added that President Trump understands this imbalance well. “I think this is what President Trump was alluding to when he said, ‘They want to come to the table, and they don’t quite know how.’”

    With China’s economy teetering on the brink, the United States is in a far stronger position than most so-called experts ever imagined—and President Trump is wasting no time seizing the advantage.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “The Middle Eastern Children’s Alliance (MECA), a California nonprofit that designs K–12 curriculum material, has fiscal and personnel ties to U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations, according to a new report by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI).

    “Our investigation of MECA has yielded evidence suggesting it holds fiscal and personnel ties to US designated foreign terrorist organizations, chiefly the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), alongside a host of extremist anti-government actors based in the United States,” reads the report by the NCRI, released on Monday.

    MECA states on its website that it has sent more than $31 million in aid to children in “Palestine,” Iraq, and Lebanon since 1988. The nonprofit further purports to provide financial and professional assistance to community organizations in the West Bank and Gaza, fund university scholarships for Palestinians, and develop educational programs about the Middle East. MECA states that its “founding advisors” include Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Edward Said, and Maxine Waters.

    The supposedly humanitarian organization has expressed its support for violence against Israel. The day after October 7, MECA declared its support on social media for the attack: “We are witnessing the people of Gaza rising up to respond to decades of Israeli settler colonial violence. The US [government] bears responsibility for its political, economic & military support of this brutal apartheid regime. Join us to stand in solidarity with Palestine.”

    The NCRI report identifies deeper relationships between MECA and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which has been a designated foreign terrorist organization since 1997 and participated in the October 7 attack on Israel.

    MECA’s current director of Gaza projects, Dr. Mona El-Farra, previously served as the deputy director of the Union of Health Work Committees, which was recognized as the “health organization” of the PFLP in a 1993 USAID report. In 2014, El-Farra was reportedly denied an exit visa by Israel for “security reasons.” El-Farra and Barbara Lubin, MECA’s founder and current executive director, have both met with Leila Khaled, who joined the PFLP when it was founded in 1967 and became the first woman to hijack a plane.

    A media advisory released by MECA in 2011 listed Leena Al-Arian as its communications coordinator. Al-Arian is the daughter of Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist who was sentenced to 57 months in prison for “conspiring to violate a federal law that prohibits making or receiving contributions of funds, goods or services to, or for the benefit of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).”

    I think it’s far safer to assume that every middle eastern or Islamic charity raising money for “the children” is actually buying weapons for terrorists or lining the pockets of jihadis. But I’m cynical that way…

  • “Journalist Matt Taibbi is suing Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove for libel, after the California Democrat claimed during her opening remarks in a House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearing on Tuesday that he’s a ‘serial sexual harasser.'” Juding from that picture, I can only assume that Kamlager-Dove has never been on the receiving end of sexual harassment…
  • Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-ranged) evidently thinks that illegal aliens pick cotton. Eli Whitney died in vain. (Though it wasn’t until John Rust invented an improved picker that manual cotton picking finally died out after World War II.)
  • “Judge Rejects California’s Attempt To Block City’s Voter ID Law.” Score one for Huntington beach.
  • “Fairfax County School Board Member Embezzled Corporate Funds For Strip Clubs And Campaign, Lawsuit Says. Democrat Kyle McDaniel is the budget chair for the $4 billion Virginia school district.” You may remember Fairfax from such hits as “Fairfax, Virginia Schools May Expel Elementary Students For ‘Misgendering’ People” and “Let’s sue parents for publishing our misdeeds.”
  • Follow-up: “Collin County Residents Reject Planned Islamic ‘City‘. County Judge Chris Hill said he ‘cannot support’ the proposed EPIC City project.” (Previously.)
  • “THIRD Huntsville ISD Teacher Arrested for Sex Crime in Three Weeks. Lauren Rudolph was a dyslexia teacher and cheer coach at Huntsville High School.” Looks like whoever has been vetting teachers there has a lot of ‘splaining to do…
  • Live in Chicago? Enjoy having police do nothing about gangs of thieves who target drivers with aggressive parking scams.
  • Remember those pro-Hamas UT students arrested a while back? Well, a number of foreign students at Texas and Texas A&M their student visas revoked.
  • Tim Walz gets a savage heckling from veterans at the Minnesota state capital. Say what you want about Hillary’s losing Veep pick Tim Kaine, but he wasn’t a weirdo who didn’t know when to get off the stage and slink back into relative obscurity.
  • The Nanny State’s war on children continues apace. “California bill could ban children as old as 16 from sitting in the front seat.”
  • “Texas Supreme Court Justice Jeff Boyd Won’t Seek Third Term.”
  • Evidently made jealous by Amazon ruining J.R.R. Tolkien, Netflix decided to ruin C. S. Lewis. “Netflix offered Meryl Streep the role of Aslan in new ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ movie.”
  • “A dozen Texas Dairy Queen locations have closed in the last week.” Including one in Pflugerville. Seems to be a dispute between corporate and the particular franchisee.
  • “Gina Carano Wins Big Against Disney in Lawsuit Discovery Battle—Judge Orders Disney to Hand Over Actor Pay Records Within 20 Days.”
  • Good news, everyone! They finally arrested Speedy Gonzalez!
  • Hoovie makes a six figure error calculating the capital gains costs of trading in a Lamborghini Countach for a lease-to-buy Bugatti Veyron. Offered here as a public service for all my viewers leasing a Bugatti Veyron…
  • The MST3K cast reflects on the infamous Manos: The Hands of Fate.
  • “Protesters Demand Government Waste.”
  • “Democrats Worried Trump May Not Have China’s Best Interests At Heart.”
  • “Financial Advisor Announces It’s Time To Panic, Urges Clients To Make Hasty, Emotional Decisions.”
  • “Dire Wolves Extinct Again After New Dr. Fauci Experiments.”
  • Teambuilding!

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Regulation, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas, Waste and Fraud | 9 Comments »

    Murderer City?

    Thursday, April 10th, 2025

    Set the Wayback Machine for the 1980s, and Houston’s law enforcement and criminal justice community had a very different reputation than it does now. Back then, Houston was known as a shooting city, one where the police would indeed shoot you if you tried something particularly stupid. In some ways, this reputation was a follow-on to incidents from the days of desegregation up to the Joe Torres murder, but, good or bad, Houston had the reputation that, if you were a criminal, Houston had zero tolerance for you stepping out of line.

    Those days are long gone.

    Thanks to the Democratic Party’s takeover of the Harris County criminal justice system, Houston is now known as the city where murderers get to walk free.

    Mayor John Whitmire said that 900 people charged with murder are free on bond in Houston during a city council meeting this week.

    If true, the mind boggles. Houston had 320 murders in 2024, so that’s just under three years worth of alleged murderers walking the streets.

    The 248th District Court has been the subject of repeated criticism for releasing people charged with violent crimes, including capital murder, back into the community on bond.

    “There are multiple people that have been murdered by people who were out on bond from this court,” said Councilmember Fred Flickinger at the meeting.

    An analysis performed by KHOU 11 showed that about a third of those released are arrested for additional crimes committed while on bond.

    Flickinger added that it was time to start naming the judges responsible for releasing dangerous criminals.

    The National Police Association has done so.

    In an article published in 2021 by the NPA, Doug Wylie explained that “Judge Hilary Unger is unapologetic about a philosophy—no matter how flawed—that compels her to release into the world individuals who have shown a propensity for violence and a callous carelessness for human life.”

    The article details how district court judges regularly grant bonds to dangerous criminals who go on to victimize more people.

    Social justice is the gift that keeps on giving…

    One example occurred last week following a SWAT standoff when Houston police recovered the bodies of Austin Collette and his girlfriend. Authorities say he likely shot her before killing himself.

    Collette pleaded guilty to murder in 2019, but Judge Unger authorized his release and had not scheduled a sentencing hearing.

    “More blood is on Judge Hilary Unger’s hands. Austin Collette pled guilty to another murder in December of 2024, yet he was still allowed to be free before sentencing. Now he murdered his girlfriend and killed himself. This senseless tragedy was 100% preventable,” posted the Houston Police Officers’ Union on X.

    Earlier this year, Unger released on bond a man accused of murdering a Harris County Sheriff’s deputy.

    I previously covered Unger bonding out the accused murderer of Harris County Sheriff’s Deputy Fernando Esqueda here.

    Elections have consequences. Letting social justice Democrats run your criminal justice system, and electing George Soros-backed DAs, is a surefire recipe for higher crime and greater disorder. And now that DA Kim Ogg (originally Soros-backed, but who later broke with him to pursue more sane policies) has been replaced with hard left Soros-backed Sean Trende Teare, law abiding Houston residents can look forward to more murderers walking Houston’s streets.

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 11 Comments »

    Paxton Runs Against Cornyn

    Wednesday, April 9th, 2025

    As previously rumored, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is running against incumbent John Cornyn for the 2026 Republican senate nomination.

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton made his long-rumored bid for U.S. Senate official, looking to knock off Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) from the seat he’s held for two decades.

    “I’m excited to do this here, I am running for U.S. Senate against John Cornyn,” Paxton said on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show on Tuesday night. “We have a great senator in Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). But it’s time we have another one who stands up for America and stands by Donald Trump.”

    In the brief interview, Paxton hit Cornyn over his 2022 gun reform package that resulted in the senator being booed on stage at the Texas GOP convention, and the senior senator’s “opposition to funding a border wall.”

    His official campaign statement read, “I’m running for U.S. Senate to fight for President Trump’s agenda and take a sledgehammer to the D.C. establishment. John Cornyn has been in Washington for over two decades, and he has turned his back on President Trump and the America First agenda time after time.”

    “He’s said President Trump’s ‘time has passed him by’ and called President Trump’s border wall ‘naive.’ Texans deserve far better than a Senator who thinks it’s ‘naive’ to build a border wall to protect our citizens. It’s crystal clear that it’s time for a change. I’m a battle-tested Attorney General and conservative warrior who’s secured major victories against the establishment, the corrupt Biden Administration, and woke corporations. Now, I’m ready to take that same toughness to the U.S. Senate.”

    Paxton’s campaign website went live shortly before his Fox appearance.

    The attorney general foreshadowed this move last month, telling Punchbowl News that he would jump in if he could collect $20 million in commitments by June.

    The matchup is both titanic and long expected. Paxton and Cornyn have traded blows frequently on social media, including the senator telling the attorney general, “It’s hard to run from prison, Ken,” amidst the 2023 impeachment proceedings.

    Paxton was acquitted on all counts of impeachment by the Texas Senate after a 12-day trial in September.

    Yeah, that prison quip may turn out to be as ill-advised as Obama’s slam of Donald Trump in 2012.

    This is likely to be a bruising, big-money race, and Texas hasn’t had two such high profile incumbents run against each other since Kay Baily Hutchison unsuccessfully tried to eject Rick Perry from the governor’s mansion in 2010.

    With his record of suing both the Obama and Biden Administrations for their unconstitutional, radical left-wing policies, Paxton is much more popular with the Republican base than Cornyn. With all his previous legal issues resolved and the dramatic failure of the Dade Phelan-led impeachment effort against him, Paxton is better positioned to run than ever, and Cornyn is arguable the most vulnerable he’s ever been. But Cornyn still have all the advantages of incumbency, including juicy campaign contributions from a wide variety of business and special interest PACs.

    This will be a very interesting race.

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    Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | 12 Comments »

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