When radical leftwing city officials push insane, impossible policies, are they merely engaging in virtue signaling, hope to profit off graft for the issue, or want to inflict as much pain on ordinary Americans as possible?
Two Texas cities are participating in an emissions-cutting program that seeks to end meat and dairy consumption.
According to the organization, “C40 is a global network of nearly 100 mayors of the world’s leading cities that are united in action to confront the climate crisis.”
Although largely funded by Democrat billionaire Michael Bloomberg, C40 has other donors including FedEx, Google, and the Clinton Foundation.
Both Austin and Houston are listed as participating cities, with “membership operat[ing] on performance-based requirements, not on fees.”
Houston is a “Megacity,” according to the C40 membership ranking. Megacities are “Cities that show exceptional climate leadership at the global level, and have an urban population that currently/is expected to exceed 3 million or more people by 2030.”
Austin is in the “Innovator” membership category, which includes “cities that show exceptional climate leadership at the global level, but do not meet the population/size criteria of a Megacity.”
Altogether, the participating cities make up a quarter of the global economy.
According to C40 Cities Executive Director Mark Watts, “As always, C40 has adopted a science-based approach and that science is clear: average consumption-based emissions in C40 cities must halve within the next 10 years. In our wealthiest and highest consuming cities that means a reduction of two-thirds or more by 2030.”
Watts stated this in a report from C40 Cities in 2019 entitled, “The Future Of Urban Consumption In A 1.5°C World.” The report lays out “ambitious targets” for cities to meet regarding the urban consumption of building materials, food, clothing and textiles, private transportation, electronics, and household appliances, as well as private aviation travel.
The report defines “ambitious targets” as the following:
“Target level of ambition for consumption interventions that is more ‘ambitious,’ based on a future vision of resource-efficient production and extensive changes in consumer choices. This level was typically informed by expert judgment rather than existing research.”
Under meat and dairy consumption, the ‘ambitious target’ would be 0 kilograms of either for all citizens.
Of course, the idea that a large city in Texas is going to give up meat is absolutely bonkers. Barbecue is one of the biggest civil religions in Texas, only slightly behind football. You might as well ask Frenchmen to give up wine. And I’d really like to see leftwing apparatchiks attempt to close down every taqueria in Houston, as the beat-downs they’d receive would be epic.
We could ask why liberals continually push policies that they would hate living under themselves, but we all know the answer to that: They’ll never live under the rules they apply to others. You have to give up private vehicles and all air travel in the name of global warming, but they’ll feel no compunction in continuing to jet off to Davos because they’re special. The Gavin Newsoms of the world will always eat at the French Laundry, no matter how much they slam you for daring to leave your house to buy a hamburger.
Rules are for the little people. Nancy Pelosi will never give up here freezer full of high-end ice cream, but she’ll happily castigate you for daring to ignore the dictates of the ruling nomenklatura.
Those pushing eating the bugs will never have to eat the bugs themselves. The point is to make you eat the bugs…
Hunter Biden’s lawyers played heavy with the Department of Justice, effectively threatening to force President Joe Biden to testify in any criminal trial against the First Son if a plea agreement wasn’t reached over his multiple alleged crimes.
“President Biden now unquestionably would be a fact witness for the defense in any criminal trial,” wrote Hunter Biden attorney Chris Clark in a 32-page letter last fall, Politico reports, calling the news that there was enough evidence to charge Hunter an “illegal” leak.
That letter, along with more than 300 pages of previously unreported emails and documents exchanged between Hunter Biden’s legal team and prosecutors, sheds new light on the fraught negotiations that nearly produced a broad plea deal. That deal would have resolved Biden’s most pressing legal issues — the gun purchase and his failure to pay taxes for several years — and it also could have helped insulate Biden from future prosecution by a Republican-led Justice Department.
The documents show how the deal collapsed — a sudden turnabout that occurred after Republicans bashed it and a judge raised questions about it. The collapse renewed the prospect that Biden will head to trial as his father ramps up his 2024 reelection bid.
The number of people unaccounted for has stubbornly remained at about 1,000, suggesting that the death toll will almost undoubtedly increase.
As the staggering toll continues to be tallied, it is becoming apparent that the Maui wildfires may reasonably be classified as the first “woke-caused” disaster.
To begin with, the rush to eliminate carbon emissions may have killed the implementation of effective fire prevention policies.
Legal Insurrection readers recall my recent reports that downed power lines were being blamed as the initiating case of the fire. At the end of 2019, Hawaiian Electric issued a press release about wildfire risks assessed after hurricane-based winds contributed to a 2018 blaze.
The Wall Street Journal notes that Hawaiian Electric was well aware of the potential for this situation, but diverted resources away from fire safety support in order to meet state-required green energy mandates.
In 2015, lawmakers passed legislation mandating that the state derive 100% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2045, the first such requirement in the U.S.
The company dove into reaching the goals, stating in 2017 that it would reach the benchmark five years ahead of schedule.
In 2019, under pressure to replace the output of two conventional power plants set to retire, the company sought to contract for 900 megawatts of renewable energy, the most it had pursued at any one time.
“You have to look at the scope and scale of the transformation within [Hawaiian Electric] that was occurring throughout the system,” said Mina Morita, who chaired the state utilities commission from 2011 to 2015. “While there was concern for wildfire risk, politically the focus was on electricity generation.”
When you have limited capital, choices have to be made. However, Hawaiian Electric may have made different choices if woke legislators adhering to climate change theology didn’t mandate the drive to renewables.
Equity considerations are apparently another contributing factor in this disaster. A state water official delayed the release of water that landowners wanted to help protect their property from fires, because water is to be revered and not used.
“Charlotte Pride now says no one will be awarded the 2023 Harvey Milk award for exceptional “LGBT+” advocacy after the announced winner’s past as a convicted child sex offender came to light.” What are the odds? (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
“San Francisco Catholic Archdiocese Files for Bankruptcy amid Hundreds of Outstanding Sexual-Assault Lawsuits.” Huh, if only there were some reason the San Francisco Archdiocese might have more pedophiles than other archdioceses…
The Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG) filed a lawsuit against Planned Parenthood that, depending on the ruling, could reportedly have “devastating consequences” for the abortion-providing organization.
The case, which was heard on August 15 by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, could determine whether Planned Parenthood will have to pay back upwards of $1.8 billion to the state/federal government.
If Kacsmaryk rules in favor of the OAG, the large sum that would need to be paid out is, according to Vox, “more than enough to bankrupt Planned Parenthood Federation of America.”
The Texas OAG filed the lawsuit in 2022 on behalf of Alex Doe, an anonymous realtor, who is alleging that despite the organization being removed from Texas Medicaid it has continued to receive payments from the program.
Amarillo City Council: Hey voters, want to pass this bond to help us rebuild a civic center? Voters: Nah. Amarillo City Council: Well, we’re just going to do it anyway. Judge: REJECTED! AGAIN!.
Three of Andy Ngo’s attackers must pay him $100,000 each. “Defendants Corbyn “Katherine” Belyea, Madison “Denny” Lee Allen, and Sammich Overkill Schott-Deputy were found liable by Judge Sinaplasai for assault, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Transients from homeless camp break into local businesses. Austin Police clear out camp in February. Homeless creep back in.
Small businesses in South Austin are trying to recover after having their windows smashed. This isn’t the first time the owners have dealt with homeless-related crimes in the area.
The employees in the area said a church nearby feeds the homeless, so they flock there every day, but they also linger and cause destruction at night.
Video shows multiple people walked up to the Headspace Salon in South Austin and threw rocks into the front glass.
In the last probably two months, we’ve had, easily, well over $10-15,000 worth of damages,” Headspace Salon and Co-op Owner Laura North said.
She said, as a small business, it hits hard.
“They’re just coming there and smashing things with rocks and just walking off and not understanding for small business owners that is a huge, huge financial hit for us, and it’s just not sustainable,” North said.
Oh they understand, it’s just not relevant to their need to get high and stay high, so they don’t care.
Other businesses nearby have been dealing with similar issues.
“The guy came around and that’s when we had the rocks, we saw him on camera, we got him right over here. He threw it on the second floor window and busted out the window in the hallway, and then he busted out the window around this corner, and he busted out that window,” said Jason Dawkins, an estimator who works in a building that was vandalized.
“We see a lot of drug use, a lot of open sexual behavior, a lot of defecation and urinating in public areas and a lot of that stuff, and I will say it seems like some of that has gotten better, but it seems like definitely the vandalism and the kind of destruction, especially later in the evening has gotten significantly worse,” North said.
Drug-addicted transients shitting in public: Your number one sign of social justice “compassion” for the homeless.
“‘The city will step in kind of help very briefly, and it does not last long, and then it just goes right back to how it was before,’ North said.”
Why it’s almost like the Social Justice allies of the Austin City Council make money off the homeless and don’t care what you think…
The City of Austin will again be on the search for someone to head its police department after Chief Joseph Chacon announced his intention to retire next month.
Chacon had been in charge of the Austin Police Department (APD) since September 2021, when he was appointed as the permanent chief after serving on an interim basis following Brian Manley’s retirement earlier that year.
“Working at APD has been the privilege of my life,” said Chacon. “Being the Chief of Police is something that I never thought would have been possible, and it has been the pinnacle of my career.”
In a letter to the department, Chacon said he first began considering retirement a few months ago and ultimately decided his 25-year run at APD was nearing its end.
APD Chief of Staff Robin Henderson will be named interim police chief once Chacon’s retirement becomes effective in the first week of September.
Then comes the more interesting part: The stalemate between police who want to do their jobs and the Austin victimhood identity politics establishment who want to prevent them from doing that continues:
During Chacon’s tenure, APD has been marked by staffing hemorrhage; a labor contract dispute with the city council; and a thorny relationship with Travis County District Attorney José Garza, who’s taken an active approach in prosecuting officers for alleged misconduct.
Garza’s uncle, Jesús Garza, is the interim city manager.
As of March APD has seen 89 officer departures, leaving the department 300 positions down from its 2019 staffing level. In 2020, the city council’s $150 million APD budget cut and redirection removed authorization for 150 patrol positions.
Austin’s police and elected officials have spent much of the last 12 months in a prolonged standoff over a new labor contract.
The Austin City Council, led by Mayor Kirk Watson, rejected a four-year agreement with the Austin Police Association in favor of a one-year extension of the now-expired deal. That leaves APD employment to be governed by Chapter 143 of the Local Government Code.
The impasse came largely over how much authority to vest in the Office of Police Oversight (OPO).
The city’s “reimagine policing” activists wanted to make the OPO significantly stronger, including enabling it to conduct investigations into alleged officer misconduct rather than its current role of simply fielding complaints and observing the process.
You remember the “Reimagining Police” initiative, don’t you? If not, this should refresh your memory.
In 2021, the OPO and its former head Farah Muscadin were found by an arbitrator to have violated the police labor agreement — just the latest chapter in a string of actions by the OPO that’s strained a contentious relationship.
The two sides remain at an impasse, and APA has no intention of giving in to the progressive activists’ demands.
Good.
Kirk Watson was elected mayor in large measure due to his promises to get crime under control and cut back on the radical Social Justice agenda driving the city. So far he hasn’t done much to deliver on those promises.
San Diego tries enforcing the law, a sampler of the lies Obama told about his life, Blade-Runners take on Big Brother’s cameras, a nuke rises in Texas, and a Cthuloid horror swims the chilly waters of Antarctica. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
San Diego tries “this one weird trick” to deal with homeless problem: Enforcing the law.
Police began enforcing San Diego’s controversial new camping ban Monday, and although officials said they’ve so far focused only on Balboa Park, the new ordinance combined with other enforcement of laws long on the books has already made notable changes in the encampment landscape.
The “Unsafe Camping Ordinance” allows officers to force people off public land if they’re sleeping within two blocks of a school, shelter, trolley station, waterway or park “where a substantial public health and safety risk is determined.”
Capt. Shawn Takeuchi, head of the city’s neighborhood policing division, said his five-member team did arrest several homeless people Monday by Balboa Park, but only for existing warrants.
Others were given a warning, he said. If any of the same people are found illegally camping a day later, they’ll get a ticket even if they’ve moved locations.
Nobody in Balboa Park accepted offers for shelter Monday, the captain added. Enforcement will continue to focus on schools and parks in the near future, and officials declined to say where the team might move next.
Do you think Austin’s government might start enforcing the city’s camping ban? Of course not. Then how are they supposed to rake off the graft? (Hat tip: Instapundit, who offers some takeaways worth highlighting:
1. The homeless respond to policy and incentives like anyone else. The mere announcement of a future camping ban (plus some enforcement of other existing rules) rapidly cleared out major problem areas.
2. The provision of shelter or housing is neither necessary nor sufficient to accomplish these clear-outs. Of the people asked to leave Balboa Park on the first day of enforcement (issuance of warnings), none accepted offers of shelter.
3. The NGOs that have colonized the homeless problem have neither the incentive nor the knowledge to solve it. The head of one shelter was confused by the magical disappearance of his potential clients. “Where did they go?”
There is a fascinating passage in Rising Star, David Garrow’s comprehensive biography of Barack Obama’s early years, in which the historian examines Obama’s account in Dreams from My Father of his breakup with his longtime Chicago girlfriend, Sheila Miyoshi Jager. In Dreams, Obama describes a passionate disagreement following a play by African American playwright August Wilson, in which the young protagonist defends his incipient embrace of Black racial consciousness against his girlfriend’s white-identified liberal universalism. As readers, we know that the stakes of this decision would become more than simply personal: The Black American man that Obama wills into being in this scene would go on to marry a Black woman from the South Side of Chicago named Michelle Robinson and, after a meteoric rise, win election as the first Black president of the United States.
Yet what Garrow documented, after tracking down and interviewing Sheila Miyoshi Jager, was an explosive fight over a very different subject. In Jager’s telling, the quarrel that ended the couple’s relationship was not about Obama’s self-identification as a Black man. And the impetus was not a play about the American Black experience, but an exhibit at Chicago’s Spertus Institute about the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann.
At the time that Obama and Sheila visited the Spertus Institute, Chicago politics was being roiled by a Black mayoral aide named Steve Cokely who, in a series of lectures organized by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, accused Jewish doctors in Chicago of infecting Black babies with AIDS as part of a genocidal plot against African Americans. The episode highlighted a deep rift within the city’s power echelons, with some prominent Black officials supporting Cokely and others calling for his firing.
In Jager’s recollection, what set off the quarrel that precipitated the end of the couple’s relationship was Obama’s stubborn refusal, after seeing the exhibit, and in the swirl of this Cokely affair, to condemn Black racism. While acknowledging that Obama’s embrace of a Black identity had created some degree of distance between the couple, she insisted that what upset her that day was Obama’s inability to condemn Cokely’s comments. It was not Obama’s Blackness that bothered her, but that he would not condemn antisemitism.
Snip.
Perhaps the most revealing thing about Jager’s account of her fight with Obama, though, is that not one reporter in America bothered to interview her before David Garrow found her, near the end of Obama’s presidency. As Obama’s live-in girlfriend and closest friend during the 1980s, Jager is probably the single most informed and credible source about the inner life of a young man whose election was accompanied by hopes of sweeping, peaceful social change in America—a hope that ended with the election of Donald Trump, or perhaps midway through Obama’s second term, as the president focused on the Iran deal while failing to address the concerns about rampant income inequality, racial inequality, and the growth of a monopoly tech complex that happened on his watch.
The idea that the celebrated journalists who wrote popular biographies of Obama and became enthusiastic members of his personal claque couldn’t locate Jager—or never knew who she was—defies belief. It seems more likely that the character Obama fashioned in Dreams had been defined—by Obama—as being beyond the reach of normal reportorial scrutiny. Indeed, Garrow’s biography of Obama’s early years is filled with such corrections of a historical record that Obama more or less invented himself. Based on years of careful record-searching and patient interviewing, Rising Star highlights a remarkable lack of curiosity on the part of mainstream reporters and institutions about a man who almost instantaneously was treated less like a politician and more like the idol of an inter-elite cult.
Snip.
Progressive theology is built on a mythic hierarchy of group victimhood which has endured throughout time, up until the present day; the injuries that the victims have suffered are so massive, so shocking, and so manifestly unjust that they dwarf the present. Such injuries must be remedied immediately, at nearly any cost. The people who do the work of remedying these injustices, by whatever means, are the heroes of history. Conversely, the sins of the chief oppressors of history, white men, are so dark that nothing short of abject humiliation and capitulation can begin to approach justice.
It goes to say that nothing about the terms of progressive theology is original. It is the theology of Soviet communism, with class struggle replaced by identity politics. In this system, Jews play a unique, double-edged role: They are both an identity group and a Trojan horse through which history can reenter the gates of utopia.
Read the whole thing to see all those facts about Obama that the media ignored…including his fantasies about having sex with men.
Members of the IPCC, such as Pedro Moura-Costa (above) and Gareth Philips, had major conflicts-of-interest. They owned, created and/or worked for businesses — such as Ecosecurities and SGS Forestry — that would directly profit from the report’s conclusions.
In fact, the IPCC panel members’ companies were positioned to earn millions of dollars from the report. But the mainstream media did not report these conflicts and instead piled on the “global warming” and “carbon offset” bandwagons.
Solar energy portal Ecotopia reported that members of the IPCC “…had vested interests in reaching unrealistically and unjustifiably optimistic conclusions about the possibility of compensating for emissions with trees… [and] should have been automatically disqualified from serving on an intergovernmental panel charged with investigating impartially the feasibility and benefits of such ‘offset’ projects.”
According to accounts of four people with knowledge of the situation, M. Kaleo Manuel, a Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner and DLNR’s deputy director for water resource management, initially refused West Maui Land Co.’s requests for additional water to help prevent fires from spreading to properties managed by the company. Manuel eventually released water but not until after the fire had run its course.
His office has not yet commented on the delay of water resources.
How much damage could have been prevented with the extra water is not yet known. However, the question of “Why?” needs to be addressed in the wake of one of the worst natural disasters in Hawaii’s history. Though bureaucratic red tape might be the most obvious suggestion, a recent interview with M. Kaleo Manual offers some interesting and disturbing insight. Manuel waxes philosophical on “water equity” (“equity” being a pervasive woke buzzword) and an ancient “reverence” of water as god-like. He uses these beliefs to support his rationale for keeping tight controls over Hawaiian water supplies; not as a resource to be used, but as a holistic privilege offered by the government.
Economist who named BRICS says the idea of a common BRICS currency is “embarrassing.”
“It’s just ridiculous,” [Lord Jim O’Neill] told the Financial Times in an interview on Monday. “They’re going to create a BRICS central bank? How would you do that? It’s embarrassing almost.”
The economist spoke ahead of the 15th BRICS summit next week, where the nations will meet to decide whether to expand membership to other countries and may also float the idea of the common currency.
The following story was related to me by a former Governor of Minnesota, who was of Norwegian descent. A number of years ago, a Norwegian dignitary (the Prime Minister, I think) visited Minnesota. Talking to our governor, the Prime Minister tut-tutted about Minnesota’s crime rate, saying that there was much less crime in Norway. Minnesota’s governor replied, “We don’t have a crime problem with our Norwegians, either.”
That anecdote came to mind when I read, in the London Times, “Sweden’s slide from peaceful welfare state to Europe’s gun-killings capital.”
Today, Sweden is Europe’s capital of gun homicide. Last year, according to the Swedish national council for crime prevention, 63 people were shot and killed: more than double the European average and, per capita, multitudes higher than London or Paris.
… The effect on Swedish society has been striking. As well as the lives lost, the violence has brought down a government, changed laws and policies, and become the biggest talking point in a country that once prided itself on its reputation as a peaceful welfare state.
Violent crime will do that, although, to be fair, Sweden’s homicide rate is considerably lower than ours. But it is now significantly higher than homicide rates in quite a few other European countries, including Norway. Why is that? Have Swedes suddenly started getting violent? No.
It has also kicked the hornet’s nest of integration. Today, one fifth of all people living in Sweden were born outside the country.
Dow Chemical is planning to build a small nuclear reactor to power their plant in Calhoun County. Good for them. The TRISO-X fuel they’re using sounds like it will be a pebble bed reactor design.
“Target Sales Dipped in Last Quarter Due to Pride Backlash.”
A massive manhunt is underway for two suspects in relation to a shooting of a Harris County sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop Wednesday night. Both men were free on bond for other charges and had a history of not complying with the conditions of their release.
According to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, the deputy went on patrol at about 7:40 p.m., but within minutes emergency dispatch received calls about an officer down on Homestead Road just inside Houston’s Beltway 8 and the Eastex Freeway.
Law enforcement agencies have issued a Blue Alert for Terran Green, 34, and James Green, 37. Although Gonzalez announced the suspects’ vehicle had been found overnight, the two men remain at large.
Harris County records indicated that Terran’s criminal history dates to at least 2007 and includes five felony convictions and three separate stints in state prison. In May 2022, he was sentenced to two years for Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon.
Democrats love to talk about “gun crime,” but deep blue Democratic Party prosecutors seem loath to actually prosecute the criminals who commit crimes with guns.
Terran was charged in March 2023 with Felon in Possession of a Firearm and Aggravated Assault of a Family Member, for which the Harris County District Attorney’s Office requested no bond, but Judge DaSean Jones of the 180th District Criminal Court approved bonds of $55,000. Terran was released on April 1, but after failure to appear in court his bonds were forfeited. He has been a wanted fugitive since May 30.
James also has a criminal history, dating back to 2011. He was given personal recognizance (PR) bonds requiring no payment for Carrying a Handgun in a Motor Vehicle in 2020 and 2022 and possession of one to four grams of cocaine on June 7, 2022. He was rearrested on August 7 after bond forfeiture but released on a $5,000 surety bond just last Saturday.
A self-proclaimed socialist, Jones has often drawn media attention for awarding bond release to violent, repeat offenders. In 2021 he reduced bond for a suspect facing felony charges of human trafficking, assault, sexual assault of a child, and compelling prostitution of a child.
Sexual predators of children seem very near and dear to the hearts of the Democratic Party’s cadres of social justice activists.
Harris County began shifting release policies in 2019, when local judges adopted new bail guidelines and a federal judge approved a consent decree in the ODonnell v. Harris County lawsuit over misdemeanor bail. The decree has formally governed misdemeanor bail policy and mandated county spending on pretrial services for defendants, but a ruling from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in a similar lawsuit against Dallas County earlier this year overturned ODonnell, leaving the future of the consent decree uncertain.
Crime Stoppers of Houston’s Andy Kahan has tracked the number of persons murdered in Harris County by suspects out on multiple bonds and PR bonds since 2018, noting there have been at least 197 such victims.
Still more Biden corruption comes to light, Yellow goes belly-up, things get worse in China, and a truly horrifying food discovery. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The Biden family and its business associates received millions of dollars from oligarchs in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine while Joe Biden was vice president, according to bank records obtained by the House Oversight Committee.
With the new payments included, the committee says it has now identified more than $20 million in payments from foreign sources to the Biden family and their business associates. Those foreign sources include not only the three aforementioned countries, but also China and Romania as well.
Hunter Biden’s former business associate Devon Archer previously testified that then-Vice President Biden joined roughly 20 phone calls on speakerphone with Hunter Biden’s foreign business associates and attended dinners with foreign oligarchs who paid large sums of money to Hunter Biden.
The foreign funds were sent to accounts tied to Devon Archer that used the Rosemont Seneca name and were then doled out in incremental payments to Hunter Biden, the records show, in what the committee suggests was an attempt to hide the source and size of the payments.
Those payments included $3.5 million sent from Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina to the shell company Rosemont Seneca Thornton in February 2014. Roughly $1 million was transferred to Devon Archer, while the rest was used to fund a new account Rosemont Seneca Bohai, which was used by both Archer and Hunter Biden to receive other foreign wires.
After Baturina sent the massive sum to Rosemont Seneca Thornton, then-Vice President Joe Biden attended dinner with Baturina, Archer, Hunter Biden, and others at Cafe Milano in Washington, D.C.
Then-Vice President Joe Biden attended dinners with Hunter Biden; Archer; Baturina; Burisma executives; and Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakhstani oligarch, in the spring of 2014 and 2015 at Cafe Milano.
In February 2014, Hunter Biden met with Rakishev at the Hay Adams Hotel in Washington, D.C. In emails to Archer discussing the D.C. meeting, Rakishev, who was a director at Kazakhstan’s state-owned oil company KazMunayGas, asked that then-Secretary of State John Kerry visit Kazakhstan. Archer said, “if we have some business started as planned I will ensure its planned soonest.”
So members of the extended Biden business family were asking the Secretary of State of the United States of America to visit a foreign country so the Biden clan could do business. Are all American institutions now corrupted for the sole purpose of enriching Democratic Party insiders?
In April 2014, Rakishev wired $142,300 to the Rosemont Seneca Bohai account. The figure amounted to the exact price of Hunter Biden’s sports car that the account purchased one day later.
After receiving the payment, Archer and Biden arranged for executives at Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma to visit Kazakhstan in June 2014 to discuss a deal between Burisma, a Chinese state-owned company, and the government of Kazakhstan. Rakishev had a working relationship with Karim Massimov, who became prime minister in April 2014. Earlier this year, Massimov was sentenced to 18 years in prison for treason, abuse of power, and attempting a coup.
Also in spring 2014, Archer and Biden joined the Burisma board of directors at a salary of $1 million per year each. President Biden visited Ukraine soon after Archer and the younger Biden received their first payments — payments that were sent to Rosemont Seneca Bohai and later sent in incremental amounts to Hunter Biden’s different bank accounts.
The committee confirmed IRS whistleblower testimony that Archer and Hunter Biden received $6.5 million in funds from Burisma, which is owned by Mykola Zlochevsky, a Ukrainian oligarch who bribed officials $6 million over the investigation into the natural gas company.
Archer told the committee last week that Hunter Biden’s value on Burisma’s board was “the brand.” Archer said then-vice president Biden was “the brand.”
“Burisma would have gone out of business if ‘the brand’ had not been attached to it,” Archer said, according to the committee.
We can’t let corrupt foreign companies that keep Hunter in cocaine go tits-up, can we?
Text messages that have recently been given to the FBI show that a Chinese energy company sought to utilize its connections to Hunter Biden in order to purchase domestic energy assets within the United States.
According to Just The News, the text exchange in question took place between two of Hunter’s business partners, James Gilliar and Tony Bobulinski, on Christmas Eve of 2015. This exchange was shortly after Hunter had first been told about the conglomerate, CFEC China Energy, led by wealthy businessman Ye Jianming.
“I think this will then be a great addition to their portfolios as it will give them a profile base in NYC, then LA, etc,” said Gilliar in the text message. “For me it’s a no brainer but culturally they are different, but smart so let’s see. … Any entry ticket is small for them. Easier and better demographic than Arabs who are little anti US after trump.”
This evidence further supports the bombshell claims made by another former business partner of Hunter, Devon Archer, in closed-door testimony before Congress earlier this week. Archer testified that Joe and Hunter Biden both actively sought to promote their “influence” to potential foreign partners, and that the two of them were considered a package deal in efforts to sell the “brand” of their family name and political power while Joe was Vice President.
According to calendar schedules from his abandoned laptop, Hunter eventually did have a meeting with CEFC Executive Director Jianjun Zang in December of 2015. By March of 2016, two of Hunter’s business partners, Gilliar and Rob Walker, drafted a memo for Hunter to sign and send to CEFC, to which Hunter agreed.
The text messages, exchanged between 2015 and 2017, eventually reveal that CEFC simply hoped to gain “influence” through its partnership with the Bidens, in order to eventually enter the American energy market with the purchase of energy assets in America and elsewhere in the West.
“Still closing the perimeters of ops with the Chinese, will know Thursday if we are driving U.S. investments,” Gilliar wrote to Bobulinski in May of 2016, adding that things might be “still a little premature.”
Want to know who funded that dirty Chinese bioloab in California? Would you believe Gavin Newsom?
Yellow files for bankruptcy, citing union contracts. Look how they shine for you. And all the things that you do…
Judge slams Southwest Airlines for ignoring ruling over firing an employee for daring to have wrongthink on abortion. “The judge said the airline acted as if its own policy limiting what employees can say is more important than a federal law protecting religious speech.” (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
Teacher who made racist statements and bragged about how she couldn’t be fired fired. (More.)
Many U.S. states have outlawed men from participating in women’s college sports. (An absurdity that would never have to be outlawed in sane times, but social justice and transexual madness has rendered this an insane society.) Now Texas has officially joined their ranks.
In a ceremony at the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame in Denton, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law the Save Women’s Sports Act. The new law is designed to protect women’s collegiate sports and competitions from men masquerading as women.
“We’re here because women’s sports are threatened across the entire country,” said Abbott. “Some women are being forced to play against biological men. … College records that women set are being threatened. Women’s sports, women’s records, women’s teams, women’s locker rooms all are jeopardized when biological men are allowed to compete for those titles, for those teams, for those records.”
Now, according to Abbott, “the legacy of women’s sports is safeguarded by the law for generations to come.”
The legislation, Senate Bill 15 by State Sen. Mayes Middleton (R–Galveston), bans Texas’ public universities and colleges from allowing biological men to compete against women.
Brady Gray, president of Texas Family Project, told Texas Scorecard he was “proud to be present for the historic signing of SB 15.”
“We are thankful for the work of Riley Gaines and others who helped champion this historic legislation to save women’s sports,” said Gray.
Gaines, a former collegiate champion swimmer, was forced to compete against a biological male and even lost championship titles due to his biological advantage. She was also forced to change with him in a locker room.
“This new law will protect the integrity of women’s sports,” said Gaines during the ceremony.
“It’s pretty amazing that this law is even necessary,” she continued, stating it’s obvious that “men are––and this is a fact––on average taller, stronger, more powerful, [and] can jump higher than women.”
Slowly but surely, sane states are pushing back against transsexual madness, as well as all the other social justice insanities. And ordinary Americans, even many who previously thought themselves Democrats, are growing increasingly fed-up with the crazy spewing from the loony left.
More Biden Crime Family evidence surfaces, another mysterious Chinese bio-lab (this one much closer to home than Wuhan), more blue city real estate disaster, and Tim Scott screws up. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
President Joe Biden vehemently denied ever talking business with his son, “or with anyone else” in the run-up to the 2020 election. In fact, Biden even fat-shamed an Iowa voter who approached the subject during the Democratic primaries. On the debate stage with Donald Trump, the former vice president peddled conspiracies of Russian interference when emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop revealed otherwise.
On Sunday night, the New York Post reported on anticipated testimony from Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer. The 48-year-old who went golfing with the Bidens in 2014 is expected to tell the House Oversight Committee how Hunter Biden put his father in contact with foreign businessmen and potential investors at least 24 times. According to the Post, such meetings were either in person or by speakerphone, with Hunter Biden often dialing in Joe.
Beyond those meetings, there are more than 180 other episodes where the president interacted with his son’s business partners, contrary to his campaign claims of “absolute” separation.
As the evidence for at least an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden mounts, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and co-host Ben Ferguson discussed the latest bombshell – 170 suspicious activity reports (SARs) from six banks over the past few years – on their podcast with House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY).
As Townhall reports, these SARs are submitted and sent to the Treasury Department when banks “have a strong suspicion” that a crime has been committed, so as to protect the bank.
As Comer emphasized, these are submitted “very seldom.”
If someone were to have two, the chairman explained, it would be hard for that person to open up a bank account.
Submitting an SAR, Comer added, also is “inviting the regulators to come in and regulate,” which is the last thing banks want.
The full transcript from Devon Archer’s sworn testimony before the House Judiciary Committee from Monday, July 31, has been released. During that testimony, Archer told Rep. Dan Goldman that Hunter Biden had been placed on the board of directors for Ukrainian energy company Burisma in order to “legally” intimidate people.
During that question period, Goldman asked Archer “So based on everything you saw, heard, and observed, did you have any knowledge of Joe Biden having any involvement with Burisma?”
Archer said that while he did not have “direct” knowledge, it was his view that Burisma would not last were in not for Joe Biden’s involvement. “My only thought is that I think Burisma would have gone out of business if it didn’t have the brand attached to it. That’s my, like, only honest opinion,” Archer said. He went on to say that the company was able to survive for as long as it did because Hunter was on the board.
“Just because of the brand,” Archer said. The “brand” refers to the Biden name. Speaking with The Post Millennial, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said that the brand was not only Biden, but the vice presidency during Biden’s tenure.
“How does that have an impact?” Goldman asked.
“Well, the capabilities to navigate D.C.,” Archer said, “that they were able to, you know, basically be in the news cycle. And I think that preserved them from a, you know, from a longevity standpoint. That’s like my honest—that’s what I—tht’s like how I think holistically.”
“But how would that work?” Goldman asked.
“Because people would be intimidated to mess with them,” Archer replied.
“In what way?” Goldman pressed.
“Legally,” Archer said.
Archer also spoke about the meetings during which Joe Biden would call in, or be called. “He put him on speakerphone, again, occasionally. Specifics, like, you know, dinner—you know, dinners occasionally.” Archer was asked to describe the dinners, and said “I remember a dinner in Paris with a French energy company that was—we were speaking to an advisor, and then—we were speaking to. And it was really a Rosemont Seneca Advisors type of—a Rosemont Seneca Advisors kind of a pitch, at the end of the day. And there was a talk, and he said that we’re at this—you know, we’re at this restaurant in Paris, and he put him on the speaker. So that did happen. There were other people there.”
That dinner, specifically, was attended by “myself; Hunter; Eric Schwerin; and then the executives from the French energy company,” Archer said.
Another was in “Beijing, at, you know, some restaurant,” Archer said, “—or Chengdu or something like I don’t remember the—I don’t remember specifics. This was just—it was not—t was like a, you know—especially with the time zone difference, there was—you know, there were meetings where his dad would call and he would be talking to him or put him on speaker. I’m not going to—you know, that’s—that happened.”
Archer said that the conversation at that dinner, with Jonathan Li, was primarily niceties. But it was his contention that getting the vice president on the phone, showing off that kind of access, was what those calls were all about. Archer testified that Hunter Biden would say things like “Hey, guys, my dad’s on the phone.”
Another call, which Archer revealed during questioning by Rep. Jim Jordan, took place in Dubai. During this impromptu meeting, Hunter Biden was contacted by Burisma’s CEO Zlochevsky, who said “We’re under pressure. We need to go—we want to talk to Hunter.” Hunter called DC, and Archer was “not in the earshot” of that call.
It was only 5 days after that call that Joe Biden “has a trip to the Ukraine, and he makes a statement: ‘It’s not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption. The Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform.” That was in 2015, and Biden withheld $1 billion in loan guarantees from Ukraine until such time as the prosecutor Viktor Shokin was fired.
Bill Stevenson, who was married to Jill Biden between 1970 and 1975, told Newsmax last week that the president’s brother, Frankie Biden, tried to intimidate him during his divorce with Jill, and claimed the family threatened him with repercussions.
“Frankie Biden of the Biden crime family comes up to me and he goes, “Give her the house or you’re going to have serious problems,”” Stevenson said. “I looked at Frankie and I said, “Are you threatening me?” and needless to say, about two months later, my brother and I were indicted for that tax charge for $8,200.”
When asked to clarify whether he thinks Joe Biden was behind the tax charge, Stevenson told host Greg Kelly: “I not only think it, but I know it,” adding that he “could not believe the power of Joe Biden and the Department of Justice. I couldn’t believe it.”
Kelly also noted the parallels between Stevenson’s case and Hunter Biden’s ongoing tax troubles – noting that Hunter was hit with just two misdemeanor counts for $2.2 million in unpaid taxes, while Stevenson and his brother were slapped with two felonies for just over $8,000 in unpaid taxes.
This is a weird, disturbing story: Mysterious Chinese bio-lab discovered in Reedley, CA in the central San Joaquin Valley.
Court documents detail the horrors and dangerous nature of an illegal lab found in Reedley, California, exposed several months ago by a city code enforcement officer. What was found inside prompted the fire chief to send a letter to city officials describing it as a “potential disaster for the city.”
An investigation into the warehouse was prompted by a simple garden hose that was illegally attached and coming out of a wall in the back of the building.
“Frankly, we knew that should not have been there and when she went to investigate, she found that there was activity or operation or something happening within that building,” said Reedley City Manager Nicole Zieba.
The city then obtained a search warrant to look inside what should have been an ordinary warehouse. Inside, they found thousands of vials, many of which contained bio-hazardous materials like human blood, and other unknown substances.
“There was over 800 different chemicals on site in different bottles of different acids. Unfortunately, a lot of these are being categorized under ‘unknown chemicals,’” said Assistant Director of the Fresno County Department of Public Health Joe Prado. “A lot of these labels have been removed from bottles so there was only so much testing we could do [on] those chemicals.”
Health officials also discovered nearly 1,000 lab mice, 200 of which were dead.
Prado said the warehouse occupants claimed they were “doing some testing on laboratory mice that would help them support [and develop] the COVID test kits that they had on-site.”
According to court documents, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested what they could and determined that at least 20 potentially infectious viral, bacterial, and parasitic agents were present, including E. coli, malaria, and the virus that causes COVID-19.
“Scientists Call for Full Retraction of Nature’s Proximal Origin Paper, as Fraud Accusations Mount.” Their response was simplicity itself: They lied.
A growing number of people, including prominent scientists, are calling for a full retraction of a high-profile study published in the journal Nature in March 2020 that explored the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
The paper, whose authors included immunology and microbiology professor Kristian G. Andersen, declared that evidence clearly showed that SARS-CoV-2 did not originate from a laboratory.
“Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” the authors wrote in February.
Yet a trove of recently published documents reveal that Andersen and his co-authors believed that the lab leak scenario was not just possible, but likely.
“[The] main thing still in my mind is that the lab escape version of this is so friggin’ likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario,” Andersen said to his colleagues, according to a report from Public, which published a series of Slack messages between the authors.
Anderson was not the only author who privately expressed doubts that the virus had natural origins. Public cataloged dozens of statements from Andersen and his co-authors—Andrew Rambaut, W. Ian Lipkin, Edward C. Holmes, and Robert F. Garry—between the dates January 31 and February 28, 2020 suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 may have been engineered.
” …the fact that we are discussing this shows how plausible it is,” Garry said of the lab-leak hypothesis.
“We unfortunately can’t refute the lab leak hypothesis,” Andersen said on Feb. 20, several days after the authors published their pre-print.
The rap on Tim Scott is that he is too nice to be a modern Republican, but that’s wrong – he’s too weak to be a modern Republican. The man consistently defaults to submission to the woke left, but the times call for a warrior and his brand is soft surrender. Yeah, it would be nice to live in an era where we have the luxury of a president who dodged the draft in the culture wars, but we do not live in that time. Tim Scott needs to stay right where he is, an affable but unaccomplished senator firmly within the tradition of the political puffballs that South Carolina’s GOP inexplicably turns out. Let him be nice somewhere where his alleged niceness won’t shaft us again.
It could have been different, but that would require a different man than Tim Scott. There are moments that define a candidate, moments where they have a choice and the choice they make makes or breaks them. Kamala Harris decided to take what is essentially a footnote within the Florida history standards and contort it into some sort of lie about how Ron DeSantis loves slavery. It’s one of those issues where the claim is so facially ludicrous that you have to wonder if Kamala is stupid or cynical – and come to the conclusion that she is probably both. But she went with it and DeSantis pushed back and we were moving on when someone in the regime media asked Tim Scott about it.
This was his decision point. It was an opportunity to show who he is. And Tim Scott whiffed.
Taking the wrong side in the social justice war is disqualifying. Scott has gone from being maybe my third favorite candidate in the field and a strong Veepstakes possibility to being behind Doug Bergrum and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Oakland residents are sick and tired of our intolerable public safety crisis that overwhelmingly impacts minority communities. Murders, shootings, violent armed robberies, home invasions, car break-ins, sideshows, and highway shootouts have become a pervasive fixture of life in Oakland. We call on all elected leaders to unite and declare a state of emergency and bring together massive resources to address our public safety crisis…
Failed leadership, including the movement to defund the police, our District Attorney’s unwillingness to charge and prosecute people who murder and commit life threatening serious crimes, and the proliferation of anti-police rhetoric have created a heyday for Oakland criminals. If there are no consequences for committing crime in Oakland, crime will continue to soar.
People are moving out of Oakland in droves. They are afraid to venture out of their homes to go to work, shop, or dine in Oakland and this is destroying economic activity. Businesses, small and large, struggle and close, tax revenues vanish, and we are creating the notorious doom-loop where life in our city continues to spiral downward. As economic pain increases, the conditions that help create crime and criminals are exacerbated by desperate people with no employment opportunities.
We are in crisis and elected leaders must declare a state of emergency and bring resources together from the city, the county, and the state to end the crisis. We are 500 police officers short of the number that experts say Oakland needs. Our 911 system does not work. Residents now know that help will not come when danger confronts them. Worse, criminals know that too…
There is nothing compassionate or progressive about allowing criminal behavior to fester and rob Oakland residents of their basic rights to public safety. It is not racist or unkind to want to be safe from crime. No one should live in fear in our city.
Speaking of blue city retail apocalypses: “Field Office, a Trophy Complex Unable to Find Tenants, Defaults on $73.8 Million Loan. Goldman Sachs and Lincoln Property stopped making payments.”
The owners of Field Office, a 290,375-square-foot office complex near the Willamette River, have defaulted on their $73.8 million loan after being unable to find enough tenants, becoming the latest office owners to throw in the towel on Portland’s struggling office market.
Field Office is owned by New York investment bank Goldman Sachs and Lincoln Property Co., a Dallas-based real estate firm with operations in Portland. The pair bought Field Office from local developer Project^ and National Real Estate Advisors, an investment firm based in Washington, D.C., for $118 million in April 2019, according to public records.
Funny how letting antifa/#BlackLivesMatter rioters and crime run rampant through your downtown destroys property values. #ThisIsYourCityOnSocialJustice
Black Florida State University professor who published numerous studies on “systemic racism” is fired for just making shit up. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
You’re a Texas republican congressman who’s also an ER doctor and you try to assist a teenage girl having a medical emergency? That’s a handcuffing.
A former employee of a large food service corporation is suing the company in federal court after it fired her for refusing to participate in a program that discriminates against white male employees.
Courtney Rogers worked for Charlotte, North Carolina-based Compass Group USA Inc. from her home office in San Diego, California.
The company had more than 280,000 employees and $20.1 billion in revenue in 2019, according to its LinkedIn profile.
“Back in 2018, NBA megastar LeBron James opened his I Promise School in Akron, Ohio with the noble goal of transforming the lives of at-risk students and parents in his hometown. But it appears that the school has some major challenges five years into its existence. According to a report from the Akron Beacon Journal, the I Promise School’s fall class of eighth graders has has not seen a single student pass the state’s math test in five years – since the group was in the third grade.”
“It’s as simple as people thought everything was permitted in pursuit of getting rid of Donald Trump.”
Taibbi says he wasn’t pushed out of Rolling Stone, he just thought he could make more money by leaving. And he was right! “Let’s just say that I’m making many times over more than I was making at Rolling Stone.”
MT: I don’t believe a lot of the identity politics that are being proffered by the current version of the Democratic Party are genuine. And my first experience with this, where I really, really thought about this, was when I was following Bernie Sanders’s campaign in 2016. And there was a moment in that campaign where he first started to really draw blood against Hillary right. You might remember it was like in February, uh, or late January of 2016. He was hammering her on her ties to Goldman Sachs and other Banks. The New York Post interestingly did this, published this big list of all of her speech commitments and it was kind of amazing. And she wouldn’t release the transcripts right she wouldn’t release the transcripts. I mean, even the schedule was amazing. She was doing three hundred thousand dollars in the morning and then flying to some place and doing 400 Grand or something.
Reason: Yeah circle of the Bilderbergers, or whatever.
MT: And they tried everything to hit back, and nothing worked until she said: “If we break up the banks tomorrow, will that end racism?” And Bernie was paralyzed by that.
Reason: Yeah, Bernie’s an old school, he’s a real old school Commie. I mean, like where it’s class and everything else is a distraction, right? That, you know, capitalists will use race in order to keep the workers from realizing, no, they’re all on the same side well
MT: I almost wish he was that, because you know Bernie also marched in, you know, in for the civil rights movement in the 60s. And he was terrified of the idea that he might be accused of racism. It mortified him, and I think it really slowed his campaign.
Reason: There was also that moment, I think it might have been in Seattle or something, where he was almost literally pushed off the stage by a couple of black activists, who were like “We need to be talking about racial concerns,” not whatever he was talking about.
MT: Right, not your class thing. [And] that was when they started to sort of demonize the white working class, right, which is a brilliant strategic move. Also, interestingly, it was the exact opposite of what the Clintons had done in the 90s. You know the Clinton’s whole strategy was let’s peel off a little bit of that white working class-
Reason: We feel their pain.
MT: We feel their pain, right. And that’s, you know, they just got over the finish line doing that. So we can add to the sins of Hillary Clinton that she also injected identity politics.
With all due respect to Taibbi, identity politics had been injected into the Democratic Party’s DNA long before the 2016 presidential race.
“Trump [has] been an enormous Boon to the intelligence Services they’ve been able to say hey if you if you code as somebody who sides with Trump…essentially they’ve created what I like to call the One Villain Theory of the Universe. Which is if you’re on Trump’s side, that means you’re on Putin’s side, which means you’re also on Assad’s side, you’re on Orban’s side, you’re on the side of domestic violence.”
MT: “Covid has a whole long list of things that have added to Middle America’s grievances. Beginning with the fact that it it increasingly looks like they lied to us about the origins of the disease for some pretty weak reasons. Maybe they were trying to cover up some research they were doing. That’s thing one that’s looking increasingly likely. At the very least they excluded the possibility of that illegitimately and used
Reason: “And that’s where the government was telling Twitter and Facebook, like, don’t run this stuff or they’ll squelch it.”
“I did a story about Loudoun County, Virginia, when Republicans won the gubernatorial election there. And there were people there who were furious at the way they had been portrayed in the media, as racists or anti-vaxxers. Really, they wanted their kids to go back to school, because they had done their own research online, they found the kids weren’t really at risk, and their kids weren’t learning anything, and it was a burden on them personally, right? So there’s a million things like this.”
I don’t agree with all Taibbi’s takes, and a whole lot of things were going wrong with the left long before he deigned to notice it, but over all it’s an interesting interview.
