Much of this Prager U video on why California wildfires are burning out of control will be familiar to you, but this succinct six minute overview does a good job of hitting the highlights.
“In 2018 [government owned Pacific Gas & Electricity] spent $2.4 billion on renewables. By comparison, in 2017, it spent $1.4 billion on existing infrastructure.”
“The forests grow ever more dense [because California Democrats have all but outlawed logging].”
“Brush builds up because controlled burns are not permitted.”
“Developers build in wilderness areas.”
“The dominant power company chases its renewable energy mandate at the expense of nuts and bolts line maintenance.”
“PG&E is in bankruptcy, sued into oblivion, with no viable plan to fix the grid.”
“Instead of bringing vital infrastructure into the 21st century, California is voluntarily turning itself into a third world country. That’s what happens when progressives and environmentalists run things.”
“The Golden State isn’t going green, it’s going broke and it’s going dark.”
As the entire nation watched in horror at the devastation being unleashed on California by multiple wildfires, the American people were treated to a preview of what a Gavin Newsom presidency might look like.
As fires raged throughout Los Angeles and surrounding hills this week and forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their homes. Gavin Newsom surveyed the fires as Americans saw firsthand what a Newsom presidency might look like.
“A flaming hellscape? Ok, good to know that’s what we’d have to look forward to,” North Dakota resident Mark Larsen said. “Add in rampant taxes, thousands of illegal aliens pouring across the border, and no prosecution for criminals? The country’s future has never looked brighter. Brighter because of fire.”
Many critics have linked the wildfires to Newsom’s governance, or lack thereof, and are grateful to know now what the entire country would look like if he were president. The governor was quick to defend his record.
“My results speak for themselves,” Newsom said to reporters. “And when I am president, I can assure every American that the United States will look exactly like California.”
Trump is sentenced to nothing, Los Angeles burns, the Rotherham scandal boils, Biden flips off the nation (twice) before leaving office, Trudeau to go, and Germany starts disarming people who disagree with the government. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
President Joe Biden will ban new offshore oil and gas drilling in more than 625 million acres of federal waters, the White House announced Monday, striking a final blow against domestic energy production just two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
The outgoing president is set to use his authority under the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect offshore areas along the East Coast, West Coast, eastern Gulf of Mexico, and additional portions of the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska from future oil and gas leasing.
Snip.
The move comes on the same day that Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris is set to be certified by Congress. Trump has vowed to increase oil and gas production on a simple three-word energy policy: “Drill, baby, drill.” Biden’s latest action, however, poses an obstacle to the incoming president’s energy plans.
Asked about the ban during a Monday radio interview, Trump told host Hugh Hewitt he would “unban it immediately.”
Established 72 years ago, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act governs energy leasing activities in submerged lands under U.S. jurisdiction that extend three miles beyond the shoreline. An open-ended provision in federal law gives a president the authority to permanently withdraw portions of the Outer Continental Shelf without providing a way for a succeeding president to reverse course.
Therefore, the solution may not be as simple as Trump signing an executive order on his first day in office to undo the action. Congress would need to take legislative action. Or if Trump decides to revoke Biden’s withdrawal, that action may prompt legal challenges.
Democrats seem bound and determined to keep Americas broke for the sake of their environmental virtue signaling.
Those 34 hush money “felonies” were so serious that President Trump was sentenced to serve no jail time.
LA wildfire toll: “10 Dead, 10,000 Structures Burned In Los Angeles Area Inferno As Fire Damage Could Exceed $150 Billion.”
During the fire, hydrants ran out of water because nobody in the Democrat-dominated state could be bothered to fill the reservoir.
How badly does Los Angeles Democratic mayor Karen Bass suck? Just look at this timeline. She thought it was more important to jet off the Ghana than stay around when LA was faced with wildfire weather.
It gets better: A man apprehended setting fires with a blowtorch around LAwon’t be charged with arson. Because I guess burning people’s homes is social justice or something.
Canadian Prime Minister and all-around tool Justin Trudeau is resigning, though not until his successor is chosen in general elections. Canadian citizens enjoyed rough per-capita GDP economic parity with U.S. citizens when he took office. Now? “The gap between the Canadian and American economies has now reached its widest point in nearly a century.” And workers in Canada earn less than workers in even the poorest U.S. states. Heck of a job, Justin!
After an Elon Musk tweet brought up the Rotherham child gang rape scandal again, Keir Starmer’s Labour government went into full denial mode.
Gangs of predominantly Pakistani men have been raping and torturing vulnerable underage girls over the past three decades, with several independent inquiries having indicated systemic failures to investigate the crimes (because it would be ‘racist’). Three separate reports, published in 2013, 2014 and 2015 revealed that local politicians and police covered up the rapes.
Of note, foreigners are three times as likely to be arrested for sex offenses vs. British citizens.
In response Elon Musk launched an attack on Starmer, accusing him of failing to properly investigate and prosecute the gangs, which he called a “state-sponsored evil,” and alleging that Starmer was “complicit in the RAPE OF BRITAIN.”
And as The Telegraph notes, the state “had to bury the story.”
Denial about the extent of the problem is rooted deep in Britain’s political system. At times, it appears that the government’s approach to multiculturalism is not to uphold the law, but instead to minimise the risk of unrest between communities. Confronted with gangs of predominantly Pakistani men targeting predominantly white children, the state knew exactly what to do. For the good of community relations, it had to bury the story.
In Rotherham, a senior police officer told a distressed father that the town “would erupt” if the routine abuse of white children by Pakistani heritage men became public knowledge. One parent concerned about a missing daughter was told by the police that an “older Asian boyfriend” was a “fashion accessory” for girls in the town. The father of a 15-year-old rape victim was told the assault might mean she would “learn her lesson”.
Islamist MP Naz Shah just stated outright that raped girls should “shut their mouths for the good of diversity.” Just as with Democrats and illegal aliens, a little child rape is considered a small price to pay for all that glorious multiculturalism…
So, British MPs have voted against making a national inquiry into grooming gangs, in a 364-111 vote.
Man, when the “ruling class” of public servants don’t want something discussed, they really let us know about it. Big shots in England, who have no problem discussing American issues of governance, and even were fine with some of their citizens coming over the pond to campaign during our last election, are really, really annoyed that Americans are beginning to talk about the “grooming gangs” (read rapist gangs) who have operated in Rotherham and elsewhere who have been doing their thing for years, and with seeming impunity.
They’re really very annoyed about the American intrusion, you know. So much so, some are saying if the Americans don’t shut up about it, England should come cold all over its relationship with the USA.
Well, that’s gobsmacking, isn’t? It’s basically saying, “Shut up, stop talking about all the raping we did nothing to address or nip in the bud, or we won’t be your friends, anymore. We’ll take our soccer ball and go home, we will!”
I shouldn’t be so surprised. I’ve seen, and noted, in the past that for some there are two classes of sexual abuse/rape victims. The justly and properly acknowledged victims of priests, ministers, rabbi’s and religious — anything that involves church-centered abuse) and then the abused and raped people whose victimhood appears to be a lesser ken: Non-minor vulnerable adults; victims of public school teachers and staff; victims in state-run facilities. And now, apparently, English girls.
Fortunately, here in the U.S., the rule of law still actually means something. “Federal Judge Blocks Biden Administration’s Title IX Rewrite Protecting ‘Gender Identity.’”
Meta is immediately ending its DEI programs days after enacting sweeping changes to promote free speech on its platforms ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Meta vice president of human resources Janelle Gale sent an internal memo Friday announcing the company’s decision to terminate its DEI programs, Axios first reported, making it the latest large corporation to put an end to progressive workplace initiatives.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed Axios’s reporting when NR asked for comment. NR has reached out for additional comment.
“The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing,” Gale said in the memo, echoing the justifications given by other companies in walking back DEI.
“The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI,” the memo adds.
“The term ‘DEI’ has also become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others.”
Meta is getting rid of its DEI team and changing the role of chief diversity officer Maxine Williams. Additionally, Meta is ending its equity and inclusion programs, and its supplier diversity goals.
“We believe there are other ways to build an industry-leading workforce and leverage teams made up of world-class people from all types of backgrounds,” Gale said.
Likewise, Meta is abandoning its diversity hiring approach and its corporate representation goals to prevent the impression that the company is hiring solely based on demographic characteristics.
“It’s important to us that our products are accessible to all, and are useful in promoting economic growth and opportunity around the world. We continue to be focused on serving everyone, and building a multi-talented, industry-leading workforce from all walks of life,” the memo concludes.
Earlier this week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company will be replacing its fact-checking program with a “community notes” style approach mimicking Elon Musk’s X. The “community notes” feature on X allows for crowdsourced fact checking and demonetizes posts that get slapped with a note for misleading information.
Zuckerberg conceded that the fact-checkers Meta partnered with following the 2016 election were too politically biased, a nod to a longstanding complaint among conservatives. Meta is also reducing its “content moderation” policies to allow for greater freedom of speech on Facebook and Threads on controversial topics such as immigration and gender ideology. On that note, Meta is bringing back its promotion of political posts and moving its content moderation teams to Texas to prevent political insulation.
Well, Austin, anyway…
In August, Zuckerberg admitted that Meta was wrong to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story and criticized the Biden administration for pressuring Facebook into suppressing certain content related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Online censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story and skeptics of stringent Covid-19 policies was a priority for congressional Republicans in their investigations over the past two years.
He also went on Joe Rogan and added UFC head Dana White to Meta’s board. If Zuckerberg is a weather-vane, the MAGA winds must be very strong indeed…
Biden’s letting 11 terrorists out to fly to Oman because of course he is. All 11 are Yemanis. At least he’s not letting Khalid Sheikh Mohammad go. Yet…
Remember how in The Prisoner, one security device was a giant rolling ball? China evidently took inspiration from that, but there version is made out of metal.
Meanwhile, in Germany: “Saxony-Anhalt begins disarming AfD members. AfD members in many German states are stripped of many of their rights, including the right to privacy and lawful gun ownership.” You know, I get the feeling I’ve seen this movie before… (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
How car theft rings are stealing exotic cars by posing as legitimate car transport companies.
I don’t often cover New York sports teams or link to ESPN, but this story about how the “New York Football Giants” (to use Dwight’s preferred nomenclature) went 3-14 puts the fun in dysfunctional, including asking their starting cornerback to take a pay cut…right before a game.
Before social justice was the ruling religion/scam of the far left, The Church of Global Warming held sway in their hearts. They still mutter the catechisms, and lots of Democratic Party bigwigs still have their fingers in the green scam pie, but the world as a whole, freed from their bondage to Big Green thanks to shifting political sands, is jumping off the “carbon neutral” bandwagon while the jumping is good.
In Texas, scrutiny from Attorney General Ken Paxton has caused several big banks to pull out of NetZero pacts.
Attorney General Ken Paxton has revealed that three major United States-based banks have withdrawn from the United Nations-led Net-Zero Banking Alliance.
Launched in April 2021, the group comprises banks “committed to aligning their lending, investment and capital markets activities with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050,” according to the alliance’s website.
The group’s first commitment statement provides more details, pledging to “transition all operational and attributable GHG emissions from our lending and investment portfolios to align with pathways to net-zero by mid-century, or sooner.”
In October 2023, Paxton opened a review of the statuses of Bank of America, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and other financial institutions pursuant to Senate Bill 13, first passed by the Texas Legislature in 2021.
The law prohibits governmental entities from entering into contracts with companies that boycott oil and gas companies. The financial institutions’ membership in the NZBA raised questions about their compliance with this law.
His review specifically focused on companies required to provide letters detailing their compliance with SB 13. Those already known to be a part of NZBA—like Bank of America, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo—are listed in the letter.
Other financial institutions listed are Barclays, DNT Asset Trust, Fidelity Investments, RBC Capital Markets, the Royal Bank of Canada, State Street, and TD Bank.
“Any company submitting a standing letter to us in the future must inform us if it or any affiliate is a Net Zero Alliance Member. To the extent we learn that a company with a current standing letter, or its affiliate, is a Net Zero Alliance Member, the company will be treated similarly to the companies identified on the attached list,” explained Paxton’s letter on the review process.
Wells Fargo announced it was leaving the alliance on December 20, followed shortly thereafter by Bank of America on December 31. Morgan Stanley left NZBA on January 2, and JPMorgan exited on January 7.
“More and more financial institutions are taking a major step in the right direction by leaving the radical and anti-energy Net-Zero Banking Alliance. The NZBA seeks to undermine our vital oil and gas industries, and membership could potentially prevent banks from being able to enter into contracts with Texas governmental entities,” explained Paxton. “I am glad that Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan have terminated their NZBA membership.”
In addition to the four banks pursued by Paxton, financial giant Citigroup left the alliance on December 31. Goldman Sachs left on December 10, kicking off the mass exodus.
It turns out that the vast majority of Americans are far more interested in such frivolous objectives as “feeding my family” and “paying rent” than paying $120 trillion to theoretically drop the temperature of the globe by 1.5°C three-quarters of a century hence. Banks, now free of having to curry favor with radical “environmental justice” warriors in Biden’s ghost administration, are following suit and backing away from pie-in-the-sky decarbonization goals.
If you’re looking for a sign that Trump Derangement Syndrome is finally breaking across America, the news that Apple CEO Tim Cook is donating $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration is a pretty good sign.
Apple CEO Tim Cook plans to donate $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund, reports Axios. The donation will be a personal donation directly from Cook rather than a donation from Apple.
Following Trump’s win, Cook congratulated him on social media site X, and in December, Cook had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Cook aimed to maintain a relationship with Trump during Trump’s first term as president, and it appears Cook plans to continue on with that plan going forward.
Sources that spoke to Axios said that Cook is donating to the inauguration “in the spirit of unity.” Apple is not expected to make a donation.
Trump is taking office as Apple faces regulatory pressure both in the United States and in other countries. In March 2024, Apple was sued by the United States Department of Justice for allegedly violating antitrust law in multiple ways with its platforms. The Apple vs. DoJ legal battle will play out during Trump’s term.
Amazon, Meta, Uber, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Coinbase, Toyota, Ford, GM, AT&T, Black & Decker, and Charter Communications are also making donations to Trump’s inauguration fund.
Some will point out that Cook is not a Republican, and in fact donates to Democrats. Yes, that’s the point. Big executives used to routinely donate money to a President’s inauguration to curry favor. That Cook, the CEO of one of the largest corporations in the world, one with a granola-crunching lefty reputation to boot, would donate to Orange Cheeto Hitler, is a sign that the fear of being dragged by social justice warriors for daring to deal with Trump is finally dissipating.
Like an evil spell being lifted, the online shrieking of purple haired radicals is no longer enough to keep ordinary people from working with Trump. The demonization of Trump as a figure beyond the pale was one of the left’s biggest efforts in systemic preference falsification. That it’s now collapsing, just like the fake popularity of “defund the police” and “sex is a social construct” collapsed, is a sign that social justice is finally losing what power it had over the general public, and the radical left can no longer maintain the illusion of popularity and inevitability they tried to cultivate for so hard and so long.
It turns out that the social justice left is the one on the wrong side of history…
If you look at some of the key ills plaguing America over the last ten years, Facebook has certainly had a hand in perpetuating some of them. Wokeness, censorship, echo chambers, commodification of user information and spam are just some of the evils Facebook (AKA Meta) has helped inflict on the citizenry.
Now Facebook is inflicting AI-generated profiles on its users.
Kneon: “Facebook is experimenting with AI generated profiles on Facebook and Instagram.”
K: “it’s going to be pretty scary because I mean you already don’t know who you’re dealing with on the internet, and I’ve heard some pretty convincing or seen some pretty convincing video. They actually had uh one of the uh AI video generators doing like an influencer video for Tik Tok and you couldn’t tell it wasn’t a real person.” If you’re doing influencer videos on Tik-Tok, I’m already halfway convinced you’re not a real person…
K: “It’s going to make it a lot harder to tell who you’re dealing with on the internet.”
Is one of the profiles woke? Of course it is. Geeky Sparkles: “‘Proud black queer mama of two, truth teller.’ It’s a truth teller, but it’s an AI, so it’s already not real but it’s going to tell you the truth. ‘Your realest source for life’s ups and downs.’ Uh, but it’s not real, it’s an AI who doesn’t know about life’s up and ups and downs, but you know it’s a black queer, it identifies as ‘a black queer mama.'”
K: “Their parent company Meta company is rolling out a wide array of AI products, including one that helps users create AI characters on Instagram and Facebook.”
GS: “Why? Why do you need an AI character?” Why indeed?
K: “From someone who worked in marketing for years, and as a business owner, we have had some interesting things happen with Facebook advertising, and I don’t think all your money is going to ads being seen by real people.”
GS: “If advertisers are upset, and bots are a problem and bots and fake accounts are a problem because advertisers are getting scammed, they feel like they’re getting scammed and it’s an issue and we have to stop bots, why would flooding the market with generative AI characters and make your own make sense?”
K: “Meta hopes to attract a younger audience in a face off with competitors like Tik Tok and Snapchat.” First, why would Meta think younger users are all like “Hey, you know what I love? Fake profiles!” Second, if you’re taking your cues from Tik-Tok and Snapchat, you’ve already lost.
GS: “It’s hard to be a Tik tocker and make content all the time, or it’s hard to have enough content to keep going, but these AI can generate it indefinitely, so we’ll just tell people on Tik Tok to buy your shit.”
Maybe the goal is to create Ai influencers who pimp one company’s product and slam competitors.
Or create fake women on OnlyFans to make a mint.
In fact, there are already AI influencers earning money.
GS: “They’re talking about the Dead Internet Theory. And Dead Internet Theory, for those who don’t know is [basically] more and more accounts and activity on the internet are done by computers and fake people than real people.”
K: “Facebook feels dead now. Like endstage MySpace.”
In the wake of these revelations, there are conflicting accounts in different MSM sources as to whether Facebook has shut these accounts down or not.
Maybe different MSM writers are talking to different AI bot pretending to be “inside sources.” Or maybe the MSM “writers” are bots as well.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m sure a lot is advertiser driven, but I wonder if some of the investment boom in AI is coming from lefty executives watching the collapse of their systemic preference falsifaction falling away due to events like Trump’s election (all of them) and Brexit and thinking to themselves “Shit, we need to fool the rubes even harder” by using social justice bots to give The Narrative the illusion of popularity.
Fortunately for us, I think it’s too late for them to pull it off. Maybe Bluesky could finally surpass Twitter/X in user base, if we ignore that 98% of them are bots…
But still, caution seems to be in order. More than ever, everything you see online should be treated with a degree of skepticism, even if you agree with it.
Knife-wielding Tren de Aragua gang members are mobbing border crossings at El Paso, Texas, in an attempt to break into the US — and have said they will attack border guards who try to stop them, according to a shocking Texas law enforcement memo leaked to The Post.
Last week, 20 of the Venezuelan gangbangers — armed with blades, tire irons and broken liquor bottles — tried to force their way into the US at a border gate, the missive from the Texas Department of Public Safety read.
Another attempt to break through is expected for New Year’s Day, the memo warned.
Before the social justice warriors running the Biden Administration threw open the borders, I had never heard of Tren de Aragua, but now they’re taking over hotels in El Paso, apartment complexes in San Antonio and Colorado, and now they’re even in our middle schools.
Someone somewhere in the bowels of the Obama/Biden policy establishment made the conscious decision to let criminal illegal alien gangbangers into the United States, knowing full well that the side effect would be more dead Americans. And they made the judgment that those dead Americans were acceptable collateral damage for reaching that “permanent Democratic majority” they were dreaming of.
November’s election results suggest that American voters strongly disagree.
Congratulations on making it to the end of a difficult but exhilarating 2024, and I hope you had a Merry Christmas! Christmas week is always slow, so this will be a smaller LinkSwarm than usual, and thank goodness for that. More Biden misdeeds, lots of Russian stuff blows up, two horrible gay pedophiles go to prison forever, and Democratic judges going out of their way to punish the victims. Let’s dig in!
President Joe Biden is transferring more student loan debt onto American taxpayers with only weeks left until he departs the Oval Office.
The Biden administration announced Friday that it is giving $4.28 billion of student debt relief to almost 55,000 more public service workers including teachers, nurses, and law enforcement officials.
“From Day One of my Administration, I promised to make sure that higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity,” Biden said in a statement.
“Because of our actions, millions of people across the country now have the breathing room to start businesses, save for retirement, and pursue life plans they had to put on hold because of the burden of student loan debt.”
The Department of Education is forgiving the debt through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, a policy that permits the forgiveness of remaining student loans for public employees who have made 120 monthly payments.
Federal bureacurats are simply more equal than mere citizens…
Remember how Biden commuted and pardoned some of the worst people in the world earlier this month? Well, he found worse ones still.
President Joe Biden on Monday commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 men on federal death row, reclassifying their sentences to prevent President-elect Donald Trump from allowing their executions when he returns to office in January.
The 37 men were all convicted of murder. Their sentences will be reclassified from execution to life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to the White House.
The men whose sentences are being reclassified include Shannon Agofsky, who murdered a bank president, dumped his body in a lake, and then killed another man in prison; Brandon Basham and Chadrick Fulks, who escaped from prison and killed two women while on a 17-day crime spree; Ricky Allen Fackrell, a white supremacist who killed a prison inmate; and Daryl Lawrence, who killed a police officer during a bank robbery.
“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in statement. “But guided by my conscience and my experience, . . . I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”
Biden only left three men on federal death row: Robert Bowers, the gunman who shot and killed eleven worshipers at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue in 2018; Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who killed nine people at a black church during a Bible study in 2015; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber.
Biden’s so opposed to the death penalty he only refused to commute sentences for those criminals the public would pay attention to…
Do blue state Democratic officials think they can defy the federal government on deporting illegal aliens? A hard rain is gonna fall.
Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson said Thursday that incoming border czar Tom Homan is starting with Democratic Chicago to deport illegal immigrants in order to set a precedent for other cities threatening to block his efforts.
Since President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Homan as border czar, the former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting director has warned Democratic mayors to step aside as some have threatened to refuse cooperation with ICE on mass deportations.
Snip.
Hanson argued that Homan’s focus on Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson will set a precedent, emphasizing that the incoming border czar is listening to Democratic constituents concerned about illegal immigration in their city.
Snip.
I know the most obnoxious, the most crazy, the most nullification advocate in one of the second or third largest cities is Chicago, that crazy Mayor Johnson,’” Hanson continued. “‘So we’re going to tell him first, you try to stop the federal government and you think you’re South Carolina 1832 or you think you’re firing on Fort Sumner. You’re going to regret it because you were breaking federal law and we have a lot more federal laws that you would want us to follow in your interest than you do federal laws to break.’”
“That’s going to be interesting because what Homan is basically doing is talking over the mayor’s head to the black constituencies of Chicago and saying, don’t worry, your mayor doesn’t, he’s going to break the law, but I’m going to follow it and I’ll put him in jail for your benefit so that you don’t have to worry about Venezuelans and Colombians shooting you or taking over your social services,” Hanson added.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump plans to continue military support for Ukraine, the Financial Times reported on Dec. 20, citing undisclosed sources.
Three officials familiar with discussions revealed that Trump intends to keep supplying US military equipment to Ukraine after his inauguration.
Trump’s foreign policy team also informed European officials that he plans to push NATO allies to raise their defense spending to 5% of their GDP. NATO member states currently follow a goal of allocating 2% of their GDP to defense spending.
A Georgia couple was sentenced to 100 years in prison without parole after adopting two boys and sexually abusing them.
William and Zachary Zulock will each spend the rest of their lives behind bars, after pleading guilty to aggravated sodomy, aggravated child molestation, incest, and sexual exploitation of children. Each were sentenced on Dec. 19.
Sanders said he first encountered some of these services while investigating Kremlin-funded disinformation efforts in Ukraine, as they are all useful in assembling large-scale, anonymous social media campaigns.
According to Sanders, all 122 of the services he tested are processing transactions through a company called Cryptomus, which says it is a cryptocurrency payments platform based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Cryptomus’ website says its parent firm — Xeltox Enterprises Ltd. (formerly certa-pay[.]com) — is registered as a money service business (MSB) with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC).
Sanders said the payment data he gathered also shows that at least 56 cryptocurrency exchanges are currently using Cryptomus to process transactions, including financial entities with names like casher[.]su, grumbot[.]com, flymoney[.]biz, obama[.]ru and swop[.]is.
These platforms are built for Russian speakers, and they each advertise the ability to anonymously swap one form of cryptocurrency for another. They also allow the exchange of cryptocurrency for cash in accounts at some of Russia’s largest banks — nearly all of which are currently sanctioned by the United States and other western nations.
An analysis of their technology infrastructure shows that all of these exchanges use Russian email providers, and most are directly hosted in Russia or by Russia-backed ISPs with infrastructure in Europe (e.g. Selectel, Netwarm UK, Beget, Timeweb and DDoS-Guard). The analysis also showed nearly all 56 exchanges used services from Cloudflare, a global content delivery network based in San Francisco.
“Purportedly, the purpose of these platforms is for companies to accept cryptocurrency payments in exchange for goods or services,” Sanders told KrebsOnSecurity. “Unfortunately, it is next to impossible to find any goods for sale with websites using Cryptomus, and the services appear to fall into one or two different categories: Facilitating transactions with sanctioned Russian banks, and platforms providing the infrastructure and means for cyber attacks.”
“Wells Fargo Exits Net-Zero Banking Alliance After Texas Probe Into Anti-Energy Policies Attorney General Paxton has ended a review of the bank and allowed state governmental entities to do business with Wells Fargo again.”
Another day, another fake hate crime hoax. “A Tennessee college revealed that racist messages found written on campus were fabricated by a student in an apparent attempt to make Donald Trump supporters look bad. Rhodes College confirmed to Fox News Digital that a student had admitted to leaving the messages strewn about campus that were found over Thanksgiving break and were being investigated as a hate crime. Instead, it turned out to be yet another race hoax.”
Georgia woman arrested for evicting squatter from her house. And then the judge scolded her for her “privilege.” Sounds like a whole lot of people need federal equal protection lawsuits filed against them. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Ken Paxton is giving women in college athletics an early Christmas present this year: A lawsuit against the NCAA for allowing men to compete in women’s athletic competitions.
Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued the National Collegiate Athletic Association for allowing biological males to compete against women.
The lawsuit, announced Sunday, accuses the NCAA of “engaging in false, deceptive, and misleading practices by marketing sporting events as ‘women’s’ competitions only to then provide consumers with mixed sex competitions where biological males compete against biological females.”
Paxton argues that by allowing biological men to compete with women, the NCAA has violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act—a law that “protects consumers from businesses attempting to mislead or trick consumers into purchasing goods or services that are not as advertised.”
“The NCAA is engaging in false, deceptive, and misleading practices by advertising using logos and branding representing that the goods and services offered to consumers are for ‘women’s’ sporting events when, in fact, the sporting events are ‘mixed’ with both male and female participants,” the lawsuit reads. “The NCAA is further engaging in false, deceptive, and misleading practices by failing to disclose to consumers which participants in ‘women’s’ sporting events are women and which are men, leaving consumers who want to purchase goods and services associated with women in women’s sporting events confused and frustrated.”
As a result of the deceptive practices, Paxton is asking the court to grant a permanent injunction that will prohibit the NCAA from allowing biological males to compete in women’s sporting events held in Texas or that involve Texas teams. Alternatively, the NCAA could stop marketing its events as “women’s” if they involve mixed-sex competitions.
Paxton also said that by allowing men to compete in women’s sports, the NCAA is actively jeopardizing females’ safety.
Previous lawsuits seem to have been filed under equal protection clauses, or various Title IX passages, but the deceptive practices angle has the twin virtues of being both novel and true.
Trying to force transsexualism down America’s throats constantly polls as one of the Democratic Party’s least popular policies. People with XX chromosomes are female, and people with XY chromosomes are male. Everything else is genetic abnormality or sophistry. 2+2 does not equal 5 no matter how fervently The Party insists it must.
Hopefully Trump’s 2024 election victory will mark the end of transsexual madness, but an awful lot of social justice warriors will need to be sued before this particular reality-denying delusion is purged from our institutions.
Because I had to get out my book catalog last week, I’ve been as busy as Kathleen Kennedy on Ruin Star Wars Day, so this is another two-weeks crammed into one LinkSwarm. It’s just been a packed two weeks, with so many major stories breaking up not going to tease them up here, so let’s jump right in.
A new report has revealed that 21 George Soros-linked district attorneys across the United States have been replaced by “tough-on-crime” prosecutors. The report also noted that four have left office, either through recall efforts or other means.
Among those listed by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund were former Portland District Attorney Mike Schmidt, who lost a May election to Democrat challenger Nathan Vasquez, Western Judicial Circuit District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez, who lost her reelection bid to Kalki Yalamanchili, and Kim Foxx, the former Cook County State’s Attorney who in 2023 announced that she would not seek reelection.
For those who were removed from office, there is Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, who in November was indicted on federal bribery charges, and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, who was recalled last month after serving just 18 months in office, per The National News Desk.
Replacements also noted by the report were Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, who lost to challenger Nathan Hochman in last month’s election, and former Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who lost the 2022 Democratic primary election to Ivan Bates. Since her election loss, Mosby has been found guilty of one count of mortgage fraud.
All of them need to go.
Speaking of Soros tools: Subway Samaritan Daniel Penny found not guilty on all charges. Just like Kyle Rittenhouse, he never should have been charged in the first place. Soros tool Alvin Bragg needs to be impeached and removed from office.
Christopher Wray steps down as FBI head. This shouldn’t keep the Trump Administration from prosecuting for his manifest interference in the political process.
More Democratic Party fundraising fraud. “ActBlue, the massive online fund-raising platform for liberal causes, has informed Congress it did not automatically block donations made with foreign-bought gift cards until recently.” Almost like the entire party is a giant money laundering scam…
Busted. “Georgia Court Removes Fani Willis from Trump Case over Relationship with Special Prosecutor.”
An appellate court removed Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis (D) from the racketeering case against President-elect Donald Trump over her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
Georgia’s court of appeals ruled Thursday that Willis will be removed from the case because of the appearance of misconduct surrounding her relationship with Wade, but did not throw out the case all together.
“While we recognize that an appearance of impropriety is generally not enough to support disqualification, this is the rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings,” the three judge panel ruled.
Left unstated is that her lawfare attack on Trump was both illegal and unconstitutional.
He also handed Iran access to $10 billion, because promoting terrorism, plotting to destroy Israel, and trying to build nuclear weapons are activities that Democrats seem eager to reward.
Winning. “ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos have reached a settlement in a defamation suit brought by President-elect Donald Trump, which requires the network to apologize, contribute $15 million to a ‘Presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for Plaintiff,’ and pay Trump’s legal team $1 million.”
The battle lines are now drawn between West Coast liberals, Bernie Sanders-socialists and moderate technocrats in the Midwest, who insist the party has completely lost touch with the average American voter.
But first, there is one thing that all sides seemingly agree on: The current political establishment must be chased out of national politics for good. A reckoning is coming.
‘The people that are responsible for this s**tshow are the Obama people. They’re just grifters,’ a well-connected Democratic donor exclusively told Daily Mail. He singled out Jen O’Malley Dillon, who went from Biden 2024 campaign chair to serve in the same role for Harris’s camp, and David Plouffe, an ex-Obama 2008 campaign manager turned top Kamala adviser.
“Trump sues Des Moines Register, pollster for ‘brazen election interference’ over faulty polling in presidential race.” I think it’s very unlikely that Trump will win this lawsuit, thanks to First Amendment protections and the “absence of malice standard.” Plus pollster Ann Selzer can always just claim “I just sucked at my job.” She retired after the election.
Israel pounded Syrian army bases on Tuesday in strikes it says aim to keep weapons from falling into hostile hands, but denied its forces had advanced into Syria, toward Damascus, beyond a buffer zone at the border.
Regional security sources and officers within the now-fallen Syrian army who spoke to Reuters described Tuesday morning’s airstrikes as the heaviest yet, hitting military installations and airbases across Syria, destroying dozens of helicopters and jets, as well as Republican Guard assets in and around Damascus.
The rough tally of 200 raids overnight had left nothing of the Syrian army’s assets, said the sources.
The Israeli Air Force has carried out over 300 airstrikes in Syria since the collapse of the regime, destroying advanced weapons and other capabilities.
Strikes reportedly carried out by Israel in Damascus’s Barzeh area completely destroyed a defense ministry research center, AFP correspondents reported on Tuesday. Western countries including the United States struck the facility in 2018, saying it was related to Syria’s “chemical weapons infrastructure.”
Plus they sunk the entire Syrian navy.
Speaking of pounding the snot out of things:
According to a US official, the US used B-52 bombers, F-15 fighter jets and A-10 aircraft to strike ISIS leaders, operatives and camps in central Syria. pic.twitter.com/QreZe4ATau
“Palantir CEO Alex Karp Eviscerates Democrats: Voters ‘Do Not Want To Hear Your Woke Pagan Ideology.'”
Alex Karp, the co-founder and CEO of Palantir, said late last week that Democrats lost the 2024 election because they did not understand the fundamental human desire to feel safe.
Karp made the remarks during a panel discussion at the Reagan National Defense Forum while talking about what Americans expect out of the U.S. government.
“Americans are the most loving, God-fearing, fair, least discriminatory people on the planet,” he said. “They want to know that if you’re waking up and thinking about harming American citizens, or if American citizens are taken hostage and kept in dungeons, or if you’re a foreign power sending fentanyl to poison our people, something really bad is going to happen to you and your friends and your cousins, and your bank account and your mistress, and whoever was involved.”
He continued, “When Americans are spending a trillion dollars on ‘defense,’ what I want and what I think my peers want is: why are these people keeping our citizens as hostages, torturing our people, attacking our allies, maligning us in what was once called the United Nations — basically a discriminatory institution against anything good? We need to stand up and those people need to be scared.”
He said that it was critical for the U.S. to dominate because “we have the best products in the world, and we can not have parity.”
“Our adversaries do not have our moral compunction,” he said. “If it is even, they will take advantage of our niceness, our kindness, our desire to be at home in Nebraska and New Hampshire or wherever we live, in our peaceful environments.”
“They need to wake up scared, and go to bed scared, and if you give that to the American people, the American people will go back and say — and honestly, I probably shouldn’t say this, this is why I thought the Democrats were going to lose the election, and why they did, because people want to live in peace,” he continued. “They want to go home. They do not want to hear your woke pagan ideology. They want to know they’re safe. And safe means the other person is scared. That’s how you make someone safe.”
Democrats are now, finally, pissed at Obama. “There are people there are people who are now multi-millionaires as a result of the Harris campaign, and we know exactly who they are. And I just want to say that half a billion dollars in advertising went to just four well-heeled Democratic firms. This whole thing is deeply incestuous.”
“Ozy Media Founder Carlos Watson Sentenced To Hefty Prison Term For Defrauding Investors. [He] was sentenced to 116 months, or nearly ten years, in prison for conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in an unusual case that briefly captivated the media world.”
More of that voting fraud Democrats swear doesn’t exist. “2020 Carrollton Mayoral Candidate Admits to Mail Ballot Fraud. Zul Mohamed pleaded guilty Monday to 109 voter fraud felonies.”
“After Donald Trump flipped his county for the first time in a century, longtime Democratic Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina has announced he is switching parties to the Republicans saying that “the [Democratic] party left me, and the people of South Texas behind.”
Three U.S. Army soldiers have been arrested in Texas on criminal charges relating to smuggling illegal aliens.
The three soldiers were based at Fort Cavazos, which is near Killeen in Central Texas.
Fort Cavazos is The Fort Formerly Known As Fort Hood. I might have been a little more worked up over the name change if Hood hadn’t been such a shitty general.
U.S. Border Patrol agents made an initial traffic stop of a suspicious vehicle in the city of Presidio, located in West Texas on the Rio Grande. As an agent approached the vehicle’s passenger side, the driver sped away—hitting a second Border Patrol vehicle and injuring the agent inside.
The vehicle was eventually stopped by local law enforcement officers who detained four individuals in the car. Three were illegal aliens, and one was identified as U.S. Army soldier Emilio Mendoza Lopez.
The driver of the vehicle was reported as being another soldier named Angel Palma, who fled on foot from the vehicle but was located in Odessa a day later.
Presidio is nearly 500 miles away from where the soldiers were stationed.
“Mendoza Lopez and Palma allegedly traveled from Fort Cavazos to Presidio for the purpose of picking up and transporting undocumented noncitizens,” announced the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas. “A third individual, Enrique Jauregui, is alleged to be the recruiter and facilitator of the human smuggling conspiracy.”
Three Texas teachers made news last week over charges of child pornography—also known as child sexual abuse material, as the images and videos depict sex crimes being committed against minors.
The educators worked in Dallas, Leander, and Wall Independent School Districts. Two of the three taught band.
On December 13, Dallas Police arrested Sean Turner, 34, and charged him with possession of pornography featuring a child younger than 10 years old—a first-degree felony.
Snip.
Retired principal Curtis John Locklear was arrested December 12 and charged with felony possession of child porn.
Locklear was arrested by the Montgomery County Precinct 3 Constable’s Office working with the Houston-area Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force.
Snip.
Also on December 12, a federal judge sentenced Joshua Carroll to 30 years in prison for possessing and producing child porn.
Carroll was an assistant band director in Wall ISD from January 2022 until his crimes were discovered earlier this year.
Texas Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw got dinged by the Internet for insider trading. So then Crenshaw attacked the Internet. It didn’t go well for him.
Google on Monday introduced a new chip called Willow, which solved in five minutes a computing problem that would take a classical computer more time than the history of the universe.
Tech companies are chasing quantum computing in hopes of developing systems that perform at speeds far faster than traditional silicon-based computers.
The building blocks of quantum computers, called “qubits”, while being fast, are error-prone, making it hard to ensure quantum computers are reliable and commercially viable.
The more qubits used in quantum computing, the more errors typically occur. But Google said on Monday it found a way to string together qubits in the Willow chip so that error rates decline as the number of qubits rise, adding that it can also correct errors in real time.
My understanding of how quantum computers work is limited to popular explanations, but D-Wave is evidently still in business, so maybe they work?
The trailer for James Gunn’s Superman dropped. I’ve never seen a Superman film in theaters, and this will not be getting me in. But you’ve got to give Gunn credit for thinking way outside the box and including Krypto the Superdog and Hawkman, two characters that absolutely no one in the greater viewing public was clamoring for.
The incoming Trump47 administration has made it clear that they intend to start deporting illegal aliens with criminal illegal aliens.
Incoming Border Czar Tom Homan revealed that ridding the United States of violent criminal organizations like Tren de Aragua and MS-13 is going to be a “major priority” of the incoming Trump administration.
“So this is going to be a huge operation,” Homan said in a Fox News interview. “I’m looking forward to getting it started. I haven’t started the operation yet, but I have already worked with the Texas governor on the plans and the Texas border czar.”
Homan also argued that sanctuary cities should allow immigration officials to enter jails and conduct removals of violent criminals already in captivity, rather than waiting until the criminal is released back onto the streets.
“So let us in the jail,” he said. “It’s safer for everybody and it’s the right thing to do.”
In addition to meeting with Texas officials, Homan said that he has discussed plans with New York Mayor Eric Adams as well as hundreds of sheriffs across the country.
“The National Sheriffs Association is ready to go to work with us. So, January 20, game on,” he concluded.
I think that deporting criminal illegal aliens is a strategy pretty much all sane Americans agree with. Unfortunately, the woke-led Democrats are not sane. The Biden Administration refused to deport illegal alien felons despite the widespread unpopularity of that position, and to social justice warriors, national borders and law and order are both part and parcel of “white supremacy.” Notice how the left raged a law-abiding citizens like Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny daring to defend themselves against murderous criminals.
The Law and Order issue is one that has bit Democrats on the ass again and again, from the 1988 Presidential race to the 1993 New York City mayoral race to a whole lot of 2024 DA races. Slightly saner Democrats like New York City Mayor Eric Adams have recognized and changed course on illegal alien criminal deportations. But while the radical left, Democrat/Soros-backed soft-on-crime policies are deeply unpopular with the American electorate as a whole, they’re still a key tenant of the poisonous woke ideology that animates the ideological core of the Democratic Party.
There’s majority approval for deporting illegal aliens, and overwhelming support for deporting criminal illegal aliens. Will Democrats heed the will of the American people, or their woke radical activists?
