Russian forces have retreated from a Ukrainian airfield that was key to their original plan of overthrowing Volodymyr Zelensky’s government.
Hostomel airport, just oustide Kyiv, was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the Ukraine war, as Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, sought to establish an air bridge to the capital.
Control of the airport, 20km from Kyiv, changed hands several times, as Ukrainians at first defended fiercely and then attacked the Russian occupiers.
Five weeks on, the Russians have moved out having failed in their mission, according to a senior US defence official, as it abandons plans to take the capital and shift forces to the east.
This is a huge win for Ukraine, but it also means that surviving Russian forces can shift over to east Ukraine where the war is still hot.
Also: “Ukraine forces pulled off a rare attack on Russian soil Friday when two military helicopters destroyed a fuel depot in the city of Belgorod, situated roughly 40 miles north of the border with Ukraine.”
A key inflation metric monitored by the Federal Reserve soared 6.4 percent in February compared to a a [sic] year ago, reaching a new 40-year high.
The latest price surge, which affected the price of fuel, groceries and other consumer essentials, represents the largest year-over-year increase since January 1982, according to data released by the Commerce Department on Thursday.
Not taking into account food and energy fluctuations, which tend to be more erratic and can overemphasize inflation, the personal consumption expenditures price index, the preferred inflation gauge of the Federal Reserve, jumped 5.4 percent in February from a year prior. Including gas and groceries, PCE surged 6.4 percent.
It’s gonna get worse…
The Biden Administration is evidently all-in on tranny madness and grooming your children:
The Biden Administration has now determined that "gender affirming care" – including puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries – is a right of trans youth and "appropriate" and "necessary" for their health.
The Biden Justice Department will come after states that disagree.
Speaking of DeSantis, he has some pretty sweet talent lined up for this:
Johnny & Ronnie Van Zant, brother of original Lynyrd Skynyrd lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, made DeSantis’s new campaign video, “Sweet Florida,” replete with shots at the press, a dig at Fauci and loads of beach and flag-waving b-roll pic.twitter.com/Wd3F7u466Q
Through brand names like “comprehensive sex education” and one of its parent programs, “Social-Emotional Learning (SEL),” our government schools have been turned into Groomer Schools, and parents are beginning to notice. What many will not understand, however, is that this isn’t just a fluke of our weird and increasingly degenerate times. It is, in fact, a long-purposed Marxist project reaching back into the early 20th century. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, join James Lindsay as he explains the long history of the sexual grooming that has come into our schools through Critical Gender Theory and Queer Theory as they have crept into educational programs.
There’s an hour long video there I haven’t watched all of yet…
Speaking of groomers:
An Oregon elementary school teacher has been arrested near Seattle for two charges of attempted child rape & more. Andrew Bert Hammond, a fourth-grade teacher at Newby Elementary School, allegedly proposed to meet at a hotel & had handcuffs & duct tape. https://t.co/o2aJnzmZpX
Just how bad is the graft, waste and fraud in that $1.5 trillion porkulus bill? This bad. Look over that vast list of special subsidies and ask yourself “How many of these programs are designed to channel taxpayer money into the pockets of Democratic activists.” The answer seems to be “Most of them.”
“8 Joe Biden Scandals Inside Hunter Biden’s MacBook That Corporate Media Just Admitted Is Legit.” China, Ukraine, Russia, etc.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki is leaving for MSNBC. So many angles: A.) Rats, sinking ship. B.) That revolving door between Democratic staffers and the MSM continues apace. C.) I hear she has an offer to star in Chairman of the Board 2.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the supply chain: “22,000 Union Workers At 29 West Coast Ports May Strike…West Coast union dockworkers may strike if they don’t come to an agreement to replace their existing contract with marine terminals. The contract is set to expire at the end of June.” Labor strikes are yet another part of the classic winter of discontent formula the Biden Administration is using to bring back the worst of the 1970s.
Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner has presided over a surge in violent crime, and his new policy promises more of it. Krasner recently announced plans to de-prosecute crimes for offenders aged 18 to 25, ignoring how this age group tends to contain the most violent of criminal defendants.
Krasner’s office has established a new unit that will move some 18-to-25-year-old defendants into “rehabilitative programming” instead of seeking criminal punishments. As Krasner’s data dashboard demonstrates, “rehabilitative programming” is just a euphemism for dismissing charges. Krasner promises that the program will be limited to nonviolent offenses, including drug trafficking and other offenses. (The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that gun crimes will not be included, but Krasner has previously stated that prosecutions for illegal gun possession are “not only ineffective but unjust and racially discriminatory.” The link in the district attorney’s office data dashboard about Philadelphia’s Gun Violence Task Force takes the reader to a page that states “Article Not Found.”)
This new program reflects Krasner’s determination not to think like a prosecutor, but instead to think like the criminal defense lawyer he was. The program was developed by Sangeeta Prasad, a fellow with the district attorney’s office who previously served as a public defender in New York, New Mexico, and Philadelphia. Before assuming her current post, she had no prior experience as a prosecutor, just like Krasner. The chief public defender for Philadelphia has called the new unit “an incredible initiative,” but Philadelphia courts were not invited to the press conference announcing the plan and stated that they were not aware of the experiment.
The new initiative comes at an awkward time. In 2021, Philadelphia experienced the highest number of homicides in its history, and the violence is continuing in 2022. Indeed, Philadelphia homicides have risen every year that Krasner has been in office, as carjackings, shootings, and drug overdoses soar. What makes the policy more bizarre is that it runs counter to decades of criminological research. One of the iron laws of criminal conduct is the so-called age-crime curve, which demonstrates that the majority of serious crimes are committed by defendants between the ages of 15 and 25. This finding obtains around the world and has been replicated time and again.
Speaking of repeat offenders, Millen, Georgia police Officer Larry “Ben” Thompson quit after being caught on tape having public sex while on-duty. Fair enough, but his lengthy record of misdeeds makes you wonder why he wasn’t fired long ago, since he managed to shoot another officer in the arm (“negligent discharge”) and killed a guy in a traffic accident in route to a call. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Nevada/Utah Ponzi scheme leads to FBI shootout. “The alleged $300 million scheme, run by a lawyer named Matthew Beasley, came to a head when FBI agents went to his home earlier this month and Beasley drew a gun on himself, before pointing it at agents, prompting them to shoot him.”
“[Fort Worth Superintendent] Kent Scribner will leave the district this August instead of in 2024, when his contract ends. In response to recent outcry from parents regarding Superintendent Kent Scribner’s support of CRT-based policies, Fort Worth ISD’s school board voted 7-0 to move up Scribner’s last day as superintendent to August 31, 2022.”
Ouch! Texas “Taxpayers’ Property Appraisals Rising 20% to 50% as Supply Chain Disruptions Meet Population Growth.” Austin-Round Rock is slated for the biggest increase, some 35.4%.
Don’t look now, but there’s another big Zero Day Internet infrastructure exploit out in the wild. “Spring4Shell is a remote code execution vulnerability in Spring Framework that can be exploited for remote code execution without authentication.” Spring is a Java framework that’s almost 20 years old, so the issue could potential be lurking in a lot of places…
Speaking of false accusations of racism, Gibson’s Bakery win over Oberlin in court yet again. “A three-judge panel on the Ninth District Court of Appeals issued a unanimous decision to uphold a 2019 ruling by Lorain County Judge John Miraldi, who initially awarded the bakery more than $40 million in punitive and compensatory damages, Cleveland.com reported. However, the sum was later reduced to $25 million, though the bakery was awarded more than $6 million for lawyers’ fees.”
We were driving on the PA Turnpike when a warning came across about sudden snow squalls and possible dangerous highway conditions. We got snow but nothing like THIS! Prayers for all involved. 🙏🏻 pic.twitter.com/IrNX6inRQi
On Monday, airport officials in Austin, Texas warned of an impending jet-fuel shortage amid a surge in travel to and from the state’s capital city.
Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, which is ranked No. 29 in the U.S. based on 2021 passenger traffic, issued a fuel-shortage alert on Monday and urged airlines to carry extra fuel or send in more supplies via tankers, said Sam Haynes, a spokesperson.
“The on-hand supply just isn’t enough to keep up with demand,” she said. “This is all a result of the tremendous growth we’ve seen” in the Austin area.
Haynes also said that the airport’s two fuel-storage tanks haven’t been expanded or augmented since it opened in 1999, and as a result, the Austin facility typically holds just one to two days of supply, less than half the five-to-seven days of fuel stockpiled by most airports of similar size, she said.
Abandoned rental cars snaked down the road outside Austin-Bergstrom International Airport on Monday morning and passengers waited in a security line that reached outside the terminal and onto the sidewalk.
Some travelers waited in security lines for hours, missed flights or even had to make alternate travel arrangements over the weekend as the airport was unable to handle unusually high passenger traffic generated in part by several high-profile sporting events.
Snip.
“These volumes reflect thousands of Austin visitors traveling home after attending events,” including the Texas Relays, the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play and NASCAR races at Circuit of the Americas, the statement said.
I’m not sure how much I buy the “sporting event” excuse. The NASCAR event was expected to pull 50,000-55,000 people, while Texas Relays also draws about 50,000, and the Dell golf event, though annoying for anyone trying to drive 360, only draws about 10,000. By contrast, some 400,000 came in for Formula 1. Bergstrom may be suffering from the same staffing shortages hitting the rest of the economy, but this still seems to be a case of bad planning.
Bergstrom is run by the City of Austin, so it’s probably too much to expect the manifest incompetence that seems to plague all city governance not to show up there. Here’s the 2040 master plan for upgrading Bergstrom that the city put out in 2018. There’s lots of terminal expansion information, precisely one mention of “Fuel Storage Impacts” on one slide, and zero discussion of expanding fuel storage capacity.
The big scandal in the Hunter Biden Laptop story isn’t Hunter’s deplorable actions, it’s Joe Biden’s corruption.
Investigative reporter Peter Schweizer reiterated what he’s said about Hunter being close to criminal indictment. He said The New York Times “got a lot of cooperation from Team Biden” before they ran the story on Hunter that included their admission that the laptop was, indeed, real. He says Biden’s team was “trying to position themselves.” Of course, this case isn’t really about Hunter but the President of the United States, and a criminal indictment would open up “that whole can of worms” concerning dad’s connections to dirty money and the associated tax issues and huge national security concerns.
Snip.
George Soros, probably the most influential man in Ukraine, is a big part of this story, too. He gave $1 million to the humorously named Democratic Integrity Project, headed by Daniel J. Jones, a former FBI analyst and staffer for California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Jones had started the nonprofit (seems pretty profitable to me) after Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS approached him with the idea of forming the organization. Then, after filling its coffers to the tune of $7 million, Jones turned around and wrote a check to Fusion GPS for $3.3 million. I am not making this up. The same players keep turning up again and again.
Fusion GPS’s task: to research how Russian intelligence operations were affecting elections around the world. And they brought in Hillary’s campaign chairman John Podesta to help. Still not making it up, my friends. This was after Podesta’s and the DNC’s emails had been purloined (the narrative became that they were hacked by Russia) and published by WikiLeaks, to the DNC’s embarrassment.
(Incidentally, John’s lobbyist brother Tony was under investigation at that time for “cashing in” in Ukraine. He was paid $1.2 million to promote a plan conceived, ironically, by Manfort and Gates.)
Then there’s the story you know, the investigation of Burisma by prosecutor Viktor Shokin until then-Vice President Biden got him fired by threatening to withhold a $1 billion loan guarantee. By now everyone has seen the video of Biden bragging about it before a live audience — without mentioning Hunter was on the Burisma board.
There’s much more, involving Soros and an investigation by Shokin’s replacement into a Soros-funded organization, the ironically named Anti-Corruption Action Center (AntAC). This was when the new U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch (remember her from Trump’s impeachment?) gave the prosecutor a list of people not to prosecute, including a founder of AntAC. Second-in-command George Kent had already tried to discourage the prosecutor from investigating. According to reporter John Solomon, their message to Ukrainian officials was this: “Don’t target AntAC in the middle of an American presidential election in which Soros was backing Hillary Clinton to succeed another Soros favorite, Barack Obama.”
There are others in Ukraine tied to both the Russia hoax and Trump’s impeachment. California Rep. Adam Schiff, running the impeachment, trotted out our diplomatic “experts” from Ukraine to talk about Trump and his “impeachable” phone call to President Zelenskyy. Those were Americans, our diplomatic corps, who’d been telling Ukrainian prosecutors who they could and could not prosecute and treating a Soros-funded organization like some sort of sacred cow. Soros supported Hillary and was Trump’s political enemy. He funded an organization conceived by Glenn Simpson. Something smells like bad borscht.
Questions asked: “Did The New York Times Admit Joe Biden Is Corrupt So Democrats Can Get Rid Of Him?” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Will Rogers once famously said he did not belong to an organised political party because he was a Democrat. Yet today the traditional factiousness of the Democratic coalition has been engulfed by an almost Stalinist attitude that brooks no dissent on its most treasured policies – even though these do not resonate well with the bulk of the electorate.
To recover, Democrats need to find a way back to their historic base of working-class and minority voters, who now seem to be heading to the GOP. Franklin D Roosevelt’s alliance between big cities, small towns, labour unions and farmers was often awkward, but it still achieved remarkable success in restoring US confidence and winning the war. In contrast, President Biden’s boneheaded embrace of a progressive agenda that is widely detested across most of the population may prove to be one of the greatest political blunders of recent American history.
Given the probability of a significant loss in this November’s Midterms, we should expect – and hope for – a full-scale brawl over the party’s trajectory. There needs to be something equivalent to the New Democrats who, under Bill Clinton, revived the party after the devastating defeats of George McGovern and Michael Dukakis in the 1970s and 80s by moving the party to the centre and connecting it to the country’s diverse regions. ‘Too many Americans’, wrote New Democrats Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck in 1989, ‘have come to see the party as inattentive to their economic interests, indifferent if not hostile to their moral sentiments, and ineffective in defence of their national security’.
Snip.
The economic metrics are awful. Despite nominal GDP gains and higher wages, inflation, largely driven by energy prices, has been particularly cruel to minority and working-class voters. Overall, when asked if they are better off now than a year ago, twice as many Americans said ‘worse’ than better in a recent poll.
The cave-in to the greens has increased the Democrats’ economic vulnerability, particularly in the wake of Russian aggression and the continued role of China as the world’s dominant greenhouse-gas emitter. The well-funded American environmental elite lack the grudging sense of realism of their German counterparts, who have been forced to reconsider some of their energy policies in light of the invasion. But in resource-rich America, the green grandees still oppose boosting fossil-fuel energy supplies, despite 80 per cent of voters, and an equal percentage of Democrats, favouring the use of both fossil fuels and renewables. Public support for Net Zero / the Green New Deal hovers around 20 per cent.
Essentially the Democrats’ Net Zero obsession could result in a political disaster. In February, according to Gallup, only two per cent of voters named climate or the environment as their biggest concern, one-fifth the number who named inflation and barely one-tenth the number who cited poor government leadership. Relentless climate scaremongering has not moved the needle among voters. ‘Climate catastrophism’, notes political strategist Ruy Teixeira, is a political ‘loser’, particularly among working-class voters of all races.
Cultural issues represent another fault line between the bulk of the electorate and the tin-eared elites of the party. Democrats’ have embraced what former Bill Clinton strategist James Carville scathingly labels ‘the politics of the faculty lounge’, such as support for the increasingly discredited Black Lives Matter movement and its calls to ‘defund the police’. This idea may be beloved at places like Harvard, but among the less elevated mortals it is widely unpopular, even among minorities, including two of the nation’s Democratic African-American mayors, Houston mayor Sylvester Turner and New York City’s Eric Adams.
Voters view crime as the second-most pressing issue, after the economy and inflation. Here again the survey results are equally distressing for the progressive agenda. Voters, according to one recent survey, blame the Democrats for the current crime wave by a margin of two to one. Moderate Democrats, like retiring Florida congresswoman Stephanie Murphy, herself a refugee from Vietnam, found her support for legislation that would penalise undocumented criminals got her labeled as ‘anti-immigrant’ by the party’s dominant progressive mob.
“Hispanic Texans Overwhelmingly Believe There Is a Border Crisis and Support Security Measures.” “Almost three-quarters of respondents agreed that there is a crisis at the U.S. border with Mexico with only 23 percent disagreeing with that characterization.”
Turns out even Democratic primary voters don’t think you should be talking to kindergartners about sex:
“U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela will resign early from Congress. The South Texas Democrat announced last year that he wouldn’t seek reelection. He’s leaving early to take a job at a law firm.” Yeah, people don’t leave the United States Congress early for a law firm job. There’s something else going on there. (Hat tip: Push Junction, who noted Republicans have a good chance to flip the seat.)
“Hidalgo Staff Allegedly Plotted to Steer $11 Million Contract, ‘Slam the Door’ on Competing Bid, per Warrants. A grand jury investigation found probable cause of tampering with governmental documents and misuse of official information related to a contract awarded to a woman with ties to local and national Democrats.” My working theory is that whenever you see something like this going on, kickbacks, graft and illegal donations to hard left groups and individuals are all but a certainty.
Also: “Hidalgo Says Communications About $11 Million Vaccine Outreach Contract Were Private, Taken Out of Context.” When you’re talking about a public official discussing a public contract using taxpayer money with her public staff, also paid using taxpayer money, there is no such thing as “private.”
Nicholas Moran cautions to avoid drawing too many conclusions from the limited video information coming out of the Russo-Ukranian War. “That tanks unsupported by the other arms are easy prey is tanking 101, and what we are seeing in Ukraine isn’t revolutionary, it’s exactly what you would expect to happen if you send vehicles in unsupported into areas infested with infantry and not denied to enemy air.” Also: We’re only seeing the Ukrainian side because they’re the ones uploading cell phone footage, and an important reminder that an anti-tank hit is not an anti-tank kill. (Previously.)
Borepatch is not impressed with the level of security in the latest online voting scheme.
Heh:
I was robbed at a gas station in NJ last night. After my hands stopped trembling..I managed to call the cops and they were quick to respond and calmed me down….. My money is gone.. the police asked me if I knew who did it..I said yes.. it was pump number 9…
This seems disturbing: “Seven hospitalized ‘including four juveniles’ in mass fentanyl poisoning after deadly drug is released through air vents.” This was in Ohio. So add “aerosolized Fentanyl” to the list of things to worry about…
“United Airlines Rolls Back Vaccine Requirements for Employees. United Airlines announced that it would be changing its policy and that unvaccinated workers would be allowed to return to their normal positions by March 28.” Personally, I’d try to get them to pay through the nose for my return…
Another week, another high-profile staffer quitting Kamala Harris’ office. “On Monday, in the wake of Vice President Kamala Harris’ disastrous visit to Poland, it was reported that her National Security Adviser Nancy McEldowney, will become the latest staffer to leave Harris’ office.”
“Investors at BuzzFeed are reportedly pressuring CEO Jonah Peretti to close down its entire money-losing news operation as senior journalists announced their resignations on Tuesday.” See, the problem here is that they used “Buzzfeed,” “journalists” and “news” all in the same sentence…
Speaking of failing leftwing outlets, the Texas Observer is circling the drain.
In September, the Observer’s editorial staff comprised 13 journalists. As of this month, after a rash of resignations — and one firing — only four of them remain. The five-person business team dwindled to zero in February. This mass exodus, former staffers said, can be traced to a series of board decisions — from the handling of a complaint by former Editor-in-Chief Tristan Ahtone, which led to his resignation; to promising Executive Editor Megan Kimble the top job in the interim, only to pass her over for an outside hire; to unilaterally halting publication of the magazine just days before it went to print.
Read on for the blow-by-blow, but evidently the staff got too uppity for the board of directors and we’re shown the door, with some side orders of “diversity” and “a web-first publication.” I would say this was all good schadenfreude, but I doubt I’ve even thought of the Observer since George W. Bush was governor…
Louis Rossmann finds the same problems plaguing New York City also plague D.C., namely high retail vacancies and general disorder. “It’s literally like somebody just picked up all the problems of New York City, control-C, and control-V them somewhere else.”
Speaking of New York City, Democratic Mayor Eric Adams wants you to know that athletes and actors are simply better than you common peasants, so vaccine mandates don’t apply to them. “The exemption for athletes and entertainers comes ahead of the upcoming baseball season, opening the field for unvaccinated Mets and Yankees to play home games too. Roughly two-thirds of Yankees players and at least ten Mets remain unvaccinated and will now be able to participate, Jon Heyman of the MLB Network noted.” Plus Kyrie Irving on the Brooklyn Nets.
“Hits” is perhaps too strong, but it did touch down and do some damage right at the I-35/TX-45 flyover in Round Rock, which is about eight miles from my house. It did some damage but I’m not seeing any reports of fatalities thus far. One woman did get pulled from the wreckage of the home she was renting. There were also some power outages.
Hunter Biden’s laptop takes another turn in the news cycle, Democrat-connected sex offenders are popping up everywhere, a killer camel, and the return of Florida Man. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
And virtual no Russo-Ukrainian War news, since I did that yesterday.
I would say that everyone outside of the Democratic Media Complex knew that two years ago, but of course, more than half the Democratic Media Complex knew that as well and simply lied about it to get Biden elected.
Got to say this treat aged pretty well.
1. The Hunter Biden laptop story was true. 2. The story implicated Joe Biden in global pay-for-play graft from countries like Russia, China and Ukraine. 3. The #DemocraticMediaComplex suppressed the story because they wanted Biden to win.
The Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo has been transformed into a warzone after the arrest of a top cartel boss. Burning vehicles littered the streets, and heavy gunfighting was reported causing the U.S. consulate to go on lockdown and the U.S. border crossing to be temporarily shut down on Monday.
The chaos erupted late Sunday when Juan Gerardo Trevino, or “El Huevo,” the leader of one faction of the Northeast Cartel, the successor group to the Zetas Cartel, was arrested. He is also a U.S. citizen, a Mexican government official told Reuters. Trevino is on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) list of most wanted cartel members.
Trevino faces a U.S. extradition order for drug trafficking and money laundering.
In response to the arrest, cartel members hijacked and burned vehicles and attacked law enforcement and military personnel.
“During the night of Sunday, there were shootings, burning of trucks, and a grenade attack on the U.S. consulate,” Mexican newspaper El Occidental said.
On Monday, Nuevo Laredo Mayor Carmen Lilia Canturosas warned citizens in the border town to take cover.
The woke want to destroy science. “The giant plan to track diversity in research journals. Efforts to chart and reduce bias in scholarly publishing will ask authors, reviewers and editors to disclose their race or ethnicity.” Translation: Science is not sufficiently biased in favor of our political goals.
According to the latest Winston Group poll, voters still believe Democrats want to defund the police by a 48%-34% margin.
“In terms of what is the position of the Democratic Party, voters tend to believe that Democrats want to defund the police, ” pollsters David Winston and Myra Miller explain. “Among groups outside the Democratic Party, Hispanics believe this is what Democrats want (49%-32%), as do suburban voters (45%-36%). Independents believe this slightly at 41%-33%, but especially conservative independents (61%-20%).”
Despite the efforts to distance themselves from the movement, some in the Democratic Party still openly support defunding the police, which means that the public will continue to believe Democrats still embrace the radical Black Lives Matter. movement, not police.
Federal Reserve raises interest rates .25%, bringing it to .5%. Remember, in order to kill the last bout of inflation, Paul Volker hiked rates up to 20%. There’s a lot more pain ahead…and given the huge amount of quantitative easing centrals banks have done, and the extensive budget deficits most of the governments in the developed world are running, 20% may not be enough.
Researcher Kyle Becker produced in-depth, acclaimed portrait of just how much money Anthony Fauci was making. Result: Forbes fired him. (Hat tip: 357 Magnum.)
The electorate is increasingly pessimistic about the direction in which President Biden and Democrats are steering the country and feel that the party’s priorities do not align with their own.”
What’s the solution?
The pollsters advise that if Democrats want to have “a fighting chance in the midterms – as well as a shot at holding on to the presidency in 2024,” that they need to embark on a “broader course correction back to the center,” and show voters that they are focused on solving quality-of-life issues.
In short, Democrats need to reject their progressive wing and its embrace of big government spending and identity politics.
Indeed, a majority of voters (54 percent) — including 56 percent of independents — explicitly say that they want Biden and Democrats to move closer to the center and embrace more moderate policies versus embracing more liberal policies (18 percent) or staying where they are politically (13 percent).
Most voters (61 percent) also agree that Biden and Democrats are “out of touch with hardworking Americans” and “have been so focused on catering to the far-left wing of the party that they’re ignoring Americans’ day to day concerns” such as “rising prices” and “combatting violent crime.” -The Hill
The top issue for voters is inflation – which sits at its highest level in 40 years – according to 51% of respondents, followed by the economy and job creation (32%). Yet, just 16% of voters believe the economy is Biden’s main focus, and trust Republicans over Democrats to manage it (47% vs. 41%) and control inflation (48% vs. 36%).
Voters also see Biden and Democrats as weak on crime (56%) – perhaps due to four years of Democrats pushing ‘defund the police’ under Trump, while our sitting Vice President raised bail money for BLM rioters.
Speaking of groomers: “Clinton-Connected Haiti Pastor Indicted For Child Sexual Abuse & Assault…The United States is charging pastor Corrigan Clay with child sex abuse after “engaging in illicit sexual conduct” with a Haitian orphan he adopted…Corrigan is the co-founder of the non-profit charity “Apparent Project”, which is a Clinton-connected group selling jewelry, clothing and art made by Haitian orphans.”
Speaking of Democrats being soft on sex offenders, Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley uncovers why Biden Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson deserves to be rejected:
Judge Jackson has a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes, both as a judge and as a policymaker. She’s been advocating for it since law school. This goes beyond “soft on crime.” I’m concerned that this a record that endangers our children
With the Nickel market shuttered after a Chinese stainless steel tycoon was caught with a historic, potentially fatal $8 billion margin call hanging over its head, today the London Metal Exchange announced that it will reopen its nickel market on Wednesday, more than a week after it was closed last Monday, after the Chinese company at the center of the epic short squeeze was bailed out by a consortium of banks led by JPMorgan which is also the largest counterparty to the short (for a detailed breakdown read “The 18 Minutes of Trading Chaos That Broke the Nickel Market”) .
Trading in nickel will resume after Xiang Guangda, whose massive short position equivalent to approximately 150,000 tons of nickel, sent shockwaves across the commodity market last week, announced a standstill with his banks to avoid further margin calls as Bloomberg first reported earlier. Xiang’s Tsingshan Group had been in discussions with banks led by JPMorgan about a loan facility to backstop his short position and said Monday that talks on the funding would continue during the standstill period. As a reminder, Xiang is JPMorgan’s largest counterparty, and owes Jamie Dimon several billion, money which the largest US bank would not receive unless it bailed out the Chinese firm.
If you owe the bank $100,000, you have a problem. If you owe the bank $8 billion, the bank has a problem…
Category: Extremely unexpected horrifying headlines: Petting zoo camel kills two. Not in the zoo, fortunately, as Humpy had busted out of the joint and was on the lam… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Remember when foolish Flu Manchu lockdowns forced millions of people out of work? And remember how the federal government kept extending unemployment benefits?
Weirdly, paying people not to work results in people not working. Who knew?
It’s bad enough when politicians enact witless economic policies with huge price tags, but it’s even worse when those policies destroy American lives and livelihoods. New research shows that this will be the pandemic-era legacy of the politicians that forcibly closed businesses, made people stay home, then incentivized millions of out-of-work Americans to give up the opportunity to get their lives back on track.
It’s now clear that half the states kept destructive policies in place even after their devastating effects were known. What should have been a temporary bridge to keep people afloat while America tackled COVID-19 became a nightmare of dependence and depression.
In March of 2020, the federal government began paying weekly “bonuses” known as supplemental insurance to people on unemployment. That meant many people received more money from unemployment insurance than they did while working. It was even expanded to include those who hadn’t paid into the program.
By the fall, the country began emerging from the pandemic, vaccines became available, and business started to open again and look for workers. The speed of American resilience was something to behold. But the government refused to make the transition with the rest of the country and kept paying people to stay home.
Eliminating people’s jobs and paying them to be unemployed was robbing millions of Americans of the dignity that comes with finding purpose and achieving self-sufficiency. It destroyed lives, driving dependency on government, contributing to drug and alcohol addiction, and exacerbating isolation and depression.
These effects of the program were blatantly obvious through the spring of 2021 but that didn’t stop the Biden Administration and Congress from extending the benefits through September. By the summer of 2021, the nation had nearly 11 million unfilled jobs, a spike from just under 7.2 million at the beginning of the year.
That’s why 26 states decided to terminate the unemployment bonuses early instead of letting them expire in September 2021. At the time, some in the media portrayed the move as cruel, ripping critical funds away from those struggling during the pandemic.
But new research from the Texas Public Policy Foundation shows that the states that ended the benefits early had superior job growth, ending the soul-crushing dependency inflicted upon millions by the misguided policy. By the end of 2021, only Texas and three other states that ended the bonuses early had regained all the jobs that they lost during the pandemic.
In the states that continued paying the unemployment bonuses through September 2021, job growth was anemic. Roughly 3 million more people stayed on unemployment in states that maintained the increase in benefits versus the states that ended the program early.
More from Vance Ginn:
2/ Findings of enhanced UI:
“half the states kept destructive policies in place even after their devastating effects were known. What should have been a temporary bridge to keep people afloat while America tackled COVID-19 became a nightmare of dependence and depression.” pic.twitter.com/EbylQJyCgF
4/ “In the states that continued paying the unemployment bonuses through September 2021, job growth was anemic. Roughly 3 MILLION more people stayed on unemployment in states that maintained the increase in benefits versus the states that ended the program early.” pic.twitter.com/BGzaP7aLCu
Those results explain why the socialist pipedream of “Universal Basic Income” would be disasterous for all involved. It would balloon the deficit, create moral hazard and encourage welfare dependency among work-eligible citizens, suppress the economy, and knock some of the most vulnerable Americans off the skill ladder to success, all for the sake of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Basic economic incentives and human nature don’t change just because the Democratic Party finds them inconvenient.
Following a week of public outcry and multiple lawsuits over primary election issues in the state’s largest county, Harris County Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria submitted her resignation on Tuesday.
“Today I am submitting my resignation effective July 1. I think this date ensures that there’s a presiding officer during the major elections and allows the election commission the time they need to find a replacement,” Longoria said. “I remain committed to the office and its mission and hope to aid in defeating harmful radical rhetoric to ensure successful elections in the future.”
During a Wednesday morning press conference, however, Harris County Republican Party (HCRP) Chair Cindy Siegel announced that the party would continue to pursue its lawsuit over the election, noting that Longoria is slated to preside over the upcoming primary runoff and municipal elections in May.
HCRP attorney Steve Mitby said he would be going into an emergency hearing to request the court order an independent administrator to oversee the next Harris County election, and for the county to turn back on cameras live streaming the ballot counting process.
“We know there are 10,000 ballots that Harris County just found, that apparently had been lost, and they shut the cameras off when all this was going on,” said Mitby. “Under Texas law, Harris County is required to have a livestream and camera footage of all vote counting that’s going on.”
“The only reason why they would have been shut off is because somebody in Lina Hidalgo’s office had something to hide.”
Following an emergency hearing Wednesday morning, district court Judge Fredericka Phillips ruled that the court would supervise the counting of votes and ordered Longoria to report again to the court at 7:00 p.m.
Longoria said that cameras were not turned off but that the livestream was moved from the YouTube channel to another location on the Harris County website. Mitby told The Texan Longoria had not notified residents or observers of the change midway through the counting process.
He also refuted Hidalgo’s attempt to blame Senate Bill (SB) 1, the Texas GOP-backed election reform bill passed by the legislature in 2021.
“SB 1 did not cause the county to fail to deliver equipment, provide incorrect ballots, or supply the wrong sized paper. SB 1 did not delay the counting process or cause the county to lose ballots.”
Alan Vera, HCRP ballot security chair, added that another 175 uncounted ballots had been discovered Tuesday night.
On primary election day, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office announced that Longoria had informed them she would not be able to comply with a 1986 state law requiring reporting of a full early vote and election day count within 24 hours of polls closing.
The Harris County Republican Party waited until within one hour of the deadline, but on observing the slow posting of returns, filed a lawsuit requesting a district court impound materials and oversee the remaining count. After Longoria’s office completed the count at approximately 1:00 a.m. Thursday, the party agreed to dismiss the case.
By Friday, however, due to new reconciliation requirements in state law approved in 2021, the secretary of state’s office discovered that Harris County officials had neglected to include more than 10,000 ballots in the reported counts.
On Saturday night, Longoria posted a statement about the issue on social media without informing the local Democratic and Republican parties, which contract with Harris County elections department to conduct the primaries.
Turning off cameras during ballot counting should receive the same penalty that turning off a police camera does for officers: automatic termination for cause.
Again, the question is: Are Harris County Democrats committing fraud, or are they just massively incompetent?
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine grinds on, Hunter Biden’s bestie’s going to the big house, a massive voting problem (and possible fraud) winds up in court in Harris County, and a tiny bits on both Amazon and anime.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Not in this LinkSwarm: links on the Zaporizhzhia Ukrainian nuclear reactor, since I’m not sure I can trust any of the information sent out by either side.
It is not foreordained that Russia wins and Ukraine loses. Winning a war is not merely an exercise in numbers or technology. As General George S. Patton observed, “Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory.”
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to quickly topple the Ukrainian government and kill President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the war has widened into a contest involving almost the entire border region shared by the combatants along with the stretch of border between Belarus and Kyiv some 80 miles to the north of Ukraine’s capital city.
Much media attention has been given to Russia’s advances along the Sea of Azov in the south and on the approach to Ukraine’s third-largest city, Odessa, on the shores of the Black Sea as well as the remarkable attack that captured Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia. These Russian successes are discouraging for Ukrainian defenders but, in the grand contest, they matter far less than the battle for Kyiv.
Snip.
There are fascinating signs coming out of what may be a decisive battle to the northwest of Kyiv on the long, winding, secondary road from Chernobyl. This is the road where a 40-mile-long column of Russian vehicles was spotted by satellite. Most of the vehicles are supply trucks. They would be carrying fuel, ammunition, and food for the Russian forces that have advanced to the very outskirts of Kyiv itself but have seemingly been stalled for several days.
Snip.
Out of this come three reports that, if true, suggest the beginnings of a devastating reversal for Russian forces operating northwest of Kyiv.
First, reports today in multiple outlets that Russian Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky was killed in combat by a sniper. Sukhovetsky, 47, was an elite Russian Spetsnaz commando and veteran of Russia’s war in Syria. The commander of the Russian 7th Airborne Division, he was assigned the mission of leading the Russian thrust from Belarus to Kyiv. Men like Sukhovetsky have an outsized presence on the battlefield. They’re inspirational. Their personal leadership at the point of the spear often means the difference between victory and defeat during the fast-paced controlled violence of war. His loss would be devastating to his men and to the organizational momentum of the forces he commanded.
That Sukhovetsky was killed by a sniper suggests that he was personally trying to regain the initiative against Ukrainian forces who had fought him to a standstill.
The second report of merit is the heavy damage sustained in the town of Irpin on the northwest border of Kyiv’s city limits. The damage to this city suggests a major battle — an effort by the Russians to breakthrough. They didn’t.
The final piece of the puzzle is the Battle of Bucha. Ukrainian forces claimed the recapture of Bucha hours after the devastation visited on Irpin. The timing is important here. The Russians tried and failed to take Irpin and then the Ukrainians retook Bucha two miles to the northwest of Irpin.
The roughly 80-mile route from the Belarus-Ukraine border from the Chernobyl salient to Kyiv on the western side of the Dnieper River runs over a secondary asphalt road. This road frequently crosses rivers, runs through small villages, or is bordered on both sides by the eastern extent of the mighty Pripyat Marsh — the geographical feature which defines the border between Ukraine and Belarus.
The road is not able to support a large military force, even if unopposed in an exercise, especially during the spring and fall months during a time the locals call “Rasputitsa” — the mud season. Unfortunately for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his military commanders, Ukrainian soil never froze solid this winter, so the fall Rasputitsa is still a factor.
This is why there have been so many photos coming out from the conflict that show all manner of Russian military vehicles bogged down in the mud. As soon as a vehicle on a narrow road becomes disabled or is destroyed in combat, or as the vehicles maneuver off-road in response to combat, they risk becoming mired. Even if they don’t get stuck in the mud, they end up consuming far more fuel that must be delivered to them than they would were the ground frozen solid.
Thus, that 40-mile-long column of “tanks” is more likely mostly trucks carrying fuel, ammunition, and food to the advanced forces of the Russian 20th Combined Arms Army on the outskirts of Kyiv. That this column hasn’t apparently moved much may mean that the Russian forces just north of Kyiv are running low on basic supplies.
This greatly increases the importance for the Russian army to achieve success to the east of Kyiv where the road network is far more developed and, if the terrain is captured and secured, capable of bringing in the volume of supplies needed to properly surround Kyiv and place it under siege.
In the meantime, the forces near Kyiv may be vulnerable to a Ukrainian counterattack. While some of the Russian conscript soldiers and even the veteran contract troops may be more likely to surrender due to low morale exacerbated by a lack of food and fuel.
In about three weeks, we’ve seen a Vladimir who was “off” go from chess to raising on a busted flush in something that is well beyond “off.” The nuclear escalation is not exactly unexpected, at least if you know a bit about the Soviet playbook for such things. What matters is if he still has full control, and/or the extent to which Dead Hand has been brought online. All I will say is that if his ability to give certain orders has been unofficially curtailed, it would not be the first time. If it hasn’t, it is not a good idea to poke the crazy man with the button via official actions.
And there are a lot of official actions out there that are not going to help in regards the deteriorating man. Among others is Switzerland deciding that they are neutral, but not that neutral. Add to it firm allies who have told him no, even after he just helped them out literally a few weeks ago… Even Xi has said no on some fronts. None of this is likely to slow down the deterioration. Or provide enough of a reality check to get through to him as he rages in his bunker with his captive oligarchs.
And while we are at it, let’s look at the attack itself and the absolute fuck up that it, and subsequent actions by STAVKA (call it what it is), truly are. It was billed as a demonstration of the new Russian way of war, their version of “Shock and Awe.” Problem is, S&A or any other form of blitz is heavily dependent upon superior logistics, something the Soviets nor the Russians have ever had. You need massive amounts of ammo, fuel, parts, and replacement troops to pull it off. Replacement troops not only because of losses, but the need to detail out troops to hold key points as you go. It also requires highly trained troops who know land nav inside and out.
From what I am learning, the order went out to make this happen. The actual order, however, may not have even approached what would be given for a small-unit special ops strike. Contingency plans? Decap. No? Then try for decap again. Decap. Decap. Try it again damnit! There are differing reports on the number of Wagner troops killed or captured, but a good number were sent in on assassination missions. They were not alone. Problem was, they were all alone as the original push down got bogged down; the efforts to do airmobile and airborne ops were shot down (literally in some cases); and, the public is now on high alert to the saboteurs and assassins roaming major cities trying to mark targets, etc. Don’t expect rules of war for those caught marking civilian buildings for strikes. For now, expect a return to grinding Soviet bombardment, civilian casualties be damned.
The fact is, Vladimir has already lost simply because he didn’t win. He is committed, and is committing Russia and all its people, to a long, grinding, bloody slog that is going to have severe economic impacts. Just replacing ammunition, gear, people, is going to have a severe impact. Add to it the growing official and unofficial sanctions? The Russian people are going to feel this one, in ways they never have before. Current Vladimir does not care. He’s lost to that. He has no way to go in and control the country, or even the parts he’s tried so desperately to annex. Even those are likely to slip from him given the current state of “uppitiness” on the part of the Ukrainians.
The Ukrainians have not won. At best they have pushed things into a long grind with some chance of a stalemate. Yet, by doing this they have won. They have prevented the cheap and easy victory on which Vladimir counted. They have forced him into committing military and economic resources he does not have over the long term. Heck, even the short term. Russia’s economy was already teetering, current operations and responses are going to crater it unless something major happens. I’ve lived through a couple of power struggles in the Kremlin; under these circumstances, I hope we all do live through what is to come. A quick clean change of leadership seems unlikely given the Keystone gang we’ve seen so far, but it may be our best hope.
All we can do is wait and see what happens. While current circumstances are not new or unique on many levels, I will note that in my lifetime I’ve never seen a situation like this where key leadership was this insecure. Xi is in some ways hanging by a thread, and knows his enemies in the CCP are looking for any excuse to bring him down. Vladimir we’ve discussed. The Europeans, particularly the Germans? They are not secure either, especially since the Green policies have caused them to firmly place their mouth around Putin’s, er, finger, in regards energy. To see them decide to fund their own military, back off on the idiocy of green (maybe), and truly support the Ukraine strikes more as a desperation move than a rational push. Johnson is a non-entity right now, and not to be taken seriously. Our own dementia patient? Hell, he’s just waiting for his ice cream and to be allowed to go back upstairs to watch Matlock. Those behind him, however, are desperate beyond belief. Not one major stable leader anywhere in the world. That’s a new one and I thought I had about seen it all after watching the Soviets/Russians for more than 40 years now.
No NATO no-fly zone. Good. I very much want to see Putin defeated, but clearly NATO can’t be expected to respond to an attack on a non-member country, and that would be a dangerous escalation.
“More than a year” for $60 million in fraud? Seems a little lite.
The defendant, Devon Archer, was sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison by Manhattan Judge Ronnie Abrams, who said the crime was “too serious” to let him just walk.
“There’s no dispute about the harm caused to real people,” Abrams said, noting that the defrauded tribe, the Oglala Sioux, is one of the poorest in the nation.
Archer will also have to pay more than $15 million in forfeiture by himself and more than $43 million in restitution with his co-defendants in the case.
The convicted fraudster has maintained his innocence and intends to appeal the conviction and sentence, his attorney, Matthew Schwartz, said in court Monday.
In brief statements to Abrams just before Archer was sentenced, he and Schwartz claimed he was taken advantage of by corrupt businessmen who wanted to use him in the scheme.
“He came under the influence of a person he trusted too much and didn’t ask enough questions,” Schwartz said.
“Trusted too much.” Yeah, he trusted he wouldn’t get caught because of his powerful friends.
What are the odds this was the only crooked deal Archer had his fingers into? I’d say pretty close to zero.
The Democrats will suffer historic losses in the November midterms.
This disaster for their party will come about not just because of the Afghanistan debacle, an appeased Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the destruction of the southern border, the supply chain mess, or their support for critical race theory demagoguery.
The culprit for the political wipeout will be out-of-control inflation—and for several reasons.
First, the Biden Administration is in such denial of inflation that it sounds to Americans simply callous and indifferent to the misery it has unleashed.
Biden officials have scoffed at price spikes as “transitory.” Or they have preposterously claimed spiraling costs are a concern only to the elite. They blame the Ukraine crisis. Or they fault the out-of-office bogeyman, Donald Trump.
The administration assures us that consumer prices are only rising at an annualized rate of 7.5 percent—as if the steepest increase in 40 years actually is not all that bad.
Yet the middle class knows that inflation is far worse when it comes to the stuff of life: buying a house, car, gas, meat, or lumber.
Second, inflation is an equal opportunity destroyer of dreams. It undermines rich and poor, Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals. It unites all tribes, all ideologies, all politics against those who are perceived to have birthed the monstrous octopus that squeezes everything and everyone it touches.
The conservative passbook holder sees his meager life savings eaten away. The liberal teacher’s car payments stretch from six to 10 years.
The prospective Republican home buyer sees his hard-earned potential down payment eaten away each month. The Democratic carpenter feels his new higher wages buy even less.
Third, inflation is ubiquitous, inescapable, omnipotent—and humiliating. It destroys personal dignity. And its toxicity is insidious, sort of like seeping, odorless, colorless, but nevertheless lethal carbon monoxide.
Unlike now-unpopular critical race theory, it cannot be avoided for a day. You cannot tune it out like one does the mess in Afghanistan or the now nonexistent southern border. Inflation attacks everyone in 24/7, 360-degree fashion.
It belittles you at the gas station. It downsizes you at the food market. It humiliates you in the obscene real estate market. It makes you look stupid when you are paying for a new car. It ridicules you when you buy lumber. Suddenly you apologize that you really cannot afford your child’s braces.
Fourth, inflation undermines a civil and ordered society. It unleashes a selfish “every man for himself” mentality, the Hobbesian cruelty of a “war of all against all.”
Inflation is the economic and emotional equivalent of smash-and-grab or carjacking. It is a brazen robber in broad daylight that so infuriates Americans by its boldness. It convinces them their very civilization is dying.
“Federal Court Declares Diversity Initiative At Thomas Jefferson High School To Be Unconstitutional.” “Judge Claude Hilton ruled that the county unconstitutionally engineered the reduction of Asian-American students to achieve greater racial diversity.”
Did you know that one of the biggest freight management companies in America was temporarily locked down by a cyberattack? “Expeditors International, a top-five freight management company by revenue, disclosed Wednesday that last month’s cyberattack will have a “material adverse impact” on finances and that it will be late filing its 2021 annual report because of difficulty accessing information on its accounting systems.”
Once again Harris County has drawn scrutiny over a slew of election day problems and may need a court order to continue counting votes beyond a state proscribed deadline.
Issues with elections procedures began days before March 1 as election judges found that supplies were not available for pickup at the appointed time on Friday, February 25. Even after the delayed distribution of supplies on Saturday, election workers complained that many kits were lacking essential equipment.
The situation worsened by Tuesday, and during a conference call with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office (SOS) and representatives from the local Democratic and Republican parties, Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria notified the state that her department may not be able to count all early and election day ballots by the statutory deadline of 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 2.
According to a statement from Secretary of State John Scott, the counting delay was “due only to damaged ballot sheets that must be duplicated before they can be scanned by ballot tabulators at the central count location.”
“Our office stands ready to assist Harris County election officials, and all county election officials throughout the state, in complying with Texas Election Code requirements for accurately tabulating and reporting Primary Election results. We want to ensure that all Texans who have cast a ballot in this year’s Primary Elections can have confidence in the accuracy of results.”
According to the state election code, however, any votes counted after the statutory deadline may not count unless the county obtains a court order. Furthermore, under laws in effect since 1986, failure to deliver precinct election returns by the deadline is a Class B misdemeanor.
Calling the county’s elections problems the “worst in 40 years,” Harris County Republican Party (HCRP) Chair Cindy Siegel told KPRC news, “This has been a complete mess. We’ve had equipment delays, we’ve had equipment problems, equipment wasn’t delivered, we had polls that were unable to be set up.”
In a statement to The Texan, HCRP said that after consulting with the SOS, “if the count does not appear to be near completion in all races by [Wednesday] afternoon, the parties have tentatively agreed to seek a court order to require the Harris County Election Administrator to continue counting beyond the 24-hour deadline required by law, and to enjoin the law to allow the count to continue.”
Responsibility for conducting primary elections falls to the two main political parties, but they have contracted with the Harris County elections division to administer the elections.
Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston) who formerly served as the Harris County voter registrar, called for immediate changes to the elections division.
“[Harris County Judge] Lina Hidalgo must fire her hand-picked election administrator,” Bettencourt told The Texan. “Because if she doesn’t, I don’t think we’re going to have an election in November.”
In 2020, the three Democrats on the Harris County Commissioners Court overruled objections from two Republican commissioners and the Democrat elected voter registrar Ann Harris Bennet to create the new office of elections administrator. Prior to the revamp, the elected county clerk and elected voter registrar managed elections in the state’s largest county.
The commissioners court then appointed Longoria, a former staffer for state Sen. Sylvia Garcia (D-Houston) who had previously run unsuccessfully for Houston City Council, with an annual salary of $190,000.
Under Longoria’s guidance, the county approved $54 million for the elections division last summer which included $14 million to purchase new voting equipment.
Earlier this year, Longoria told commissioners the March primary would cost more than $8.8 million.
In 2020, Harris County received nearly $10 million in grants from Mark Zuckerberg’s Center for Tech and Civic Life and another $1 million in 2021 just before the Texas Legislature restricted such private grants.
According to sources familiar with the equipment, the second page of the paper ballot has been jamming machines and now requires entry by hand. Allegedly, although the early voting period ended Friday,
The question, of course, is whether this is a sign of manifest incompetence, or a sign of widespread attempted vote fraud?
If it was a fraud attempt, we should be grateful that it was bungled so badly in the primary that a lot more attention will be paid.
And the judge didn’t sound pleased:
Update: the "court finds it is required…to impound the precinct election materials in the possession of Ms. Longoria and her staff and for the court to supervise the activities necessary to complete the count…" https://t.co/h1FL7F5XTn
Iowa Republican Governor Kim Reynolds signs bill banning men from women’s sports. I’ll take “Headlines no one would understand 20 years ago” for $400, Alex.
Democratic Party Gaslighting: The Continuing Journeys:
The party that painted this now wants you to believe they support Law Enforcement. Americans won’t forget this — especially not on Election Day. pic.twitter.com/nCBkDmI6yf
— Kari Lake for AZ Governor (@KariLake) March 3, 2022
This time, we have some bipartisan politicians behaving badly! Of course, the Democrat is indicted for committing actual corruption, while the Republican was sticking his salami where it shouldn’t go, but still: Bipartisan!
First: According to the Feds, Former Democratic Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives Michael Madigan has been a very, very bad boy.
Former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, for decades the most powerful politician in the state, was indicted Wednesday on federal racketeering charges alleging his elected office and political operation were a criminal enterprise that provided personal financial rewards for him and his associates.
The 22-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury comes after a yearslong federal investigation and alleges Madigan participated in an array of bribery and extortion schemes from 2011 to 2019 aimed at using the power of his office for personal gain.
The long-awaited charges punctuate a stunning downfall for Madigan, the longest serving leader of any legislative chamber in the nation who held an ironclad grip on the state legislature as well as the Democratic party and its political spoils. He was dethroned as speaker in early 2021 as the investigation swirled around him, and soon after resigned the House seat he’d held since 1971.
Both Madigan and his attorneys denied the allegations in written statements Wednesday and said they intended to fight them in court.
Also charged in the indictment was Madigan’s longtime confidant, Michael McClain, a former state legislator and lobbyist who is facing separate charges alleging he orchestrated an alleged bribery scheme by Commonwealth Edison.
Illinois’ state government has long been reputed to be among the most corrupt in the nation, with “The Combine” running a corrupt insider pay-for-play operation. Democrats have controlled the Illinois House of representatives for the past quarter century, but The Combine includes members of both parties.
Back to Madigan:
That same alleged scheme forms the backbone of the indictment returned Wednesday, outlining a plan by the utility giant to pay thousands of dollars to lobbyists favored by Madigan in order to win his influence over legislation the company wanted passed in Springfield.
The indictment also accused Madigan of illegally soliciting business for his private property tax law firm during discussions to turn a state-owned parcel of land in Chinatown into a commercial development.
Though the land deal never was consummated, it’s been a source of continued interest for federal investigators, who in 2020 subpoenaed Madigan’s office for records and communications he’d had with key players.
Then-Ald. Daniel Solis, who was secretly cooperating with the investigation, recorded numerous conversations with Madigan as part of the Chinatown land probe, including one where the speaker told Solis he was looking for a colleague to sponsor a House bill approving the land sale.
Closer to home, incumbent Republican U.S. Congressman Van Taylor (TX-03), dropped his reelection bid despite making the runoff because he was dipping his wick in an “ISIS Bride”.
U.S. Rep. Van Taylor, R-Plano, has decided to end his reelection campaign after he was forced into a primary runoff amid 11th-hour allegations of infidelity.
Taylor made the stunning announcement Wednesday, hours after he finished his five-way primary with 49% of the vote, just missing the cutoff for winning the primary outright. The runner-up was former Collin County Judge Keith Self, who is now likely to become the next congressman for the 3rd District.
“About a year ago, I made a horrible mistake that has caused deep hurt and pain among those I love most in this world,” Taylor wrote in an email to supporters. “I had an affair, it was wrong, and it was the greatest failure of my life. I want to apologize for the pain I have caused with my indiscretion, most of all to my wife Anne and our three daughters.”
The day before the primary, the conservative outlet Breitbart News posted a story that Taylor had had a monthslong affair with a Plano woman, Tania Joya, who he had paid $5,000 to keep quiet. The publication reported that she provided it a phone screen shot purporting to be communications with Taylor and a bank record showing that she deposited $5,000 into her account. The Texas Tribune has not been able to independently verify the report.
Taylor is married with three children.
Joya is known as a former jihadist who was once married to a commander for the Islamic State. Tabloids have referred to her as “ISIS bride.”
So not only is he bowing out due to sleazy adultery and paying hush money, he was doing it with a woman who ran off to join the Islamic State. There’s not enough hot in the world to put up with that level of crazy, up to and including “Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch” hot.
Keith Self will now become the Republican nominee (and likely winner in November).
In one way Taylor is getting off lucky. Joya helped the U.S. government drone strike her last ex…
As predicted, incumbent Republican governor Greg Abbott cruised to victory with over 66% of the vote, and steams into the general election against Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (who slaughtered his no-name opponents with over 91% of the Democratic primary vote) with nearly $50 million cash on hand. Allen West and Don Huffines finished distant second and third, with just over and under 12% of the vote.
Incumbent Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick pulled in just under 75% of the vote, with all four challengers in single digits.
Incumbent Republican Attorney General got 42.68% of the vote, and is headed into a runoff with Land Commissioner George P. Bush at 22.7%, with Eva Guzman and Louie Gohmert each garnering just over 17%. Basically, all Paxton has to do is grab half of Gohmert’s voters in the runoff, which should be easily doable.
Incumbent Republican Agriculture Commissioner Side Miller garnered 58.5% of the vote, holding off a spirited challenge from James White with 31%. He’ll face Democrat Susan Hays in the general.
Dawn Buckingham garnered 41.3% of the vote, and is headed to a runoff as the overwhelming favorite against Tim Westly, who eked out 14.7% of the vote.
Incumbent Republican Comptroller Glenn Hegar cruised to victory with 81.6% of the vote.
Incumbent Republican Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian was unable to avoid a runoff, garnering 47.1% of the vote, and will now face Sarah Stogner, whose claim to fame is evidently appearing semi-nude in a campaign Tik-Tok. Expect Christian to make short work of her in every demographic except guys who send money via OnlyFans.
The biggest surprise to me among the Democratic primary results was Joe Jaworski (who I expected to cruise to victory) coming in a distant second (19.6%) behind Rochelle Garza (43.2%), an open borders Social justice Warrior type. This is probably just a case of me not paying attention to that race (the last few months have been a bear).
Mark Loewe beat loon Robert Morrow for the Republican nomination for State Board of Education District 5. Gonna be an uphill struggle against Democratic incumbent Rebecca Bell-Metereau for an Austin-centered district.
A Republican runoff between Pete Flores (46%) and Raul Reyes (32.8%) in Texas Senate District 24. Kathy Jones-Hospod is the Democratic nominee.
(Note: I’ve had the Texan News results page crash on me several times…and take out other Firefox windows (like YouTube videos) as a side effect. The Texas Tribune page is an alternate source for results.
