Archive for the ‘video’ Category

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Q: What Does It Take To Fire A Black Female SJW Professor? A: Holding A Machete Against A Reporter’s Neck

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2023

To be a black, Hispanic female, social justice warrior professor is to sit pretty close to the top of the victimhood pyramid. (She just needs be a disabled lesbian to hit for the cycle.) Given those exalted victimhood credentials, you have to wonder: How bad would her transgression have to be to get her fired?

Well, we now have an answer! You have to hold a machete against a reporter’s neck on camera.

We’ve found the line!

The manic Manhattan college professor who threatened a Post reporter with a machete has been fired, the school said Tuesday — as it emerged she is suing the NYPD for allegedly abusing her during the 2020 George Floyd protests.

Shellyne Rodriguez was sacked by Hunter College just hours after the adjunct professor was caught on camera holding the blade to the veteran reporter’s neck while threatening to “chop” him up outside her Bronx apartment.

“Hunter College strongly condemns the unacceptable actions of Shellyne Rodriguez and has taken immediate action,” school spokesman Vince Dimiceli told The Post.

“Rodriguez has been relieved of her duties at Hunter College effective immediately, and will not be returning to teach at the school.”

The unhinged art professor wielded the machete and spewed the menacing remarks after the veteran Postie approached her regarding a viral video that showed her flipping out on pro-life students at Hunter College earlier this month.

So evidently the line is holding a bladed weapon at someone’s throat.

Good to know…

(Hat tip: Dwight.)

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Posted in Border Control, Budget, Democrats, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, unions, video | 16 Comments »

Russians Invade Russia?

Monday, May 22nd, 2023

This is some curious news. Evidently members of anti-Putin Russia militias the Russian Volunteers Corps or the Freedom for Russia Legion has evidently invaded the border town of Kazinka in Belgorod, Russia, with forces that evidently included at least one tank:

There’s at least some confirmation via Reuters.

The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region said on Monday that a Ukrainian army ‘sabotage group’ had entered Russian territory in the Graivoron district, which borders Ukraine.

In a statement on Telegram, Vyacheslav Gladkov said that the Russian army and security forces were taking measures to repel the incursion.

Earlier, the Telegram channel Baza, which is linked to Russia’s security services, had published footage apparently showing a Ukrainian tank attacking a Russian border post.

It’s a curious story that probably deserves considerable caution in drawing conclusions. False flag operation? Ukraine-backed distraction designed to force Russia to draw troops away from other regions in advance of Ukraine’s anticipated counteroffensive? Who knows? It seems a bit of a sideshow at this point.

The one thing I wouldn’t expect is for this to be part of a broader anti-Putin uprising by Russians tired of the madness of his disasterous war. That would be too convenient, and we would be far more likely to see evidence of that in Chechnya or Moscow than along the Ukraine border.

Developing…

Update: Reports of Russians fleeing Belgorod.

Update 2: “Not far away from the Ukrainian border there is the town called Golovchino, and here is the Russian storage for the nuclear weapons.”

That makes me feel that it’s more likely this is a false flag operation to give Putin the excuse to use tactical nukes on the pretext that Ukraine had captured some. But I’m a cynical sort…

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Military, video | 15 Comments »

“Does The US Military’s New Combat Rifle Kinda Suck?”

Sunday, May 21st, 2023

Remember the U.S. Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapon, AKA the XM-5, AKA the XM-7, AKA 6.8 x 51mm? Brandon Herrera has managed to get Sig Saur to send him the prototype of the new weapon (the Sig Spear) to test, and…he has some reservations.

The caveat here is that this is not an actual 6.8 x 51mm XM-7, it’s chambered in 308 Winchester/7.62 x 51mm (two calibers that are extremely close but not exactly the same), so the ballistics and operation are likely to be slightly different. (To make matters worse, the civilian version of the round is being marketed as 277 Fury. As far as I can tell from looking at Gunbroker, 277 Fury ammunition is available now, but models of the Sig Sauer MCX Spear chambered for the round aren’t yet on the civilian market.)

Pros:

  • Short stroke piston doesn’t need a buffer tube, meaning that the gun can have a folding stock. “Actually pretty cool.”
  • Decent trigger.
  • “This little right side bolt release here. Kind of a fan. Feels a little flimsy, but I like the placement.”
  • Left side fold-out charging handle is good.
  • “Hand guard here offers a lot of space to mount whatever shit you want.”
  • Two gas settings.
  • Silencer works (even if not hearing-safe quality).
  • Likes the flat dark earth (FDE) finish. “In my opinion, it’s a pretty sweet looking gun.”
  • “Gun recoil impulse not bad.”
  • “Running it suppressed it’s not that gassy.”
  • Very reliable, at least over the initial 200 rounds.

    • The cons:

  • “It’s fucking heavy, dude!…Unloaded it comes in at 8.9 pounds. For reference that is one full pound, or 13% heavier, than a full-size SCAR 17, which is also a semi-automatic 308 with a 20 round magazine.”
  • Folding aside, the stock isn’t great and wants to slip.
  • “This charging handle in the back is borderline fucking unusable. It feels, really flimsy, like I feel like I’m gonna fucking break it. And it’s stiff. It is so
    fucking stiff! ‘How stiff is it, Brandon?’ Joe Biden in a room full of school kids.”

  • Potentially the biggest combat problem: Overinsertion of the magazine. “If you put too much force on the magazine when you’re inserting it, you will actually run up past the magazine release and get the weapon jammed.” Yeah, that sounds like a huge problem, and Sig needs to get that fixed ASAP.
  • The spring is a bit hard to get back in.
  • Super expensive right now.

    • From the comments on the video: “The fact that he’s actually able to unironically hold up a Scar 17 as a lighter, more affordable option is just batshit insane.”

    Yeah, looks like Sig needs some more work here before it’s ready to field…

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    Posted in Global Warming, unions, video | 45 Comments »

    Followup: Austin Homeless Industrial Complex Graft Scheme Thwarted (For Once)

    Thursday, May 18th, 2023

    Remember Austin’s scheme to hand millions to the homeless industrial complex to clean up the mess they created, and the shady, recently-created “P Squared Services, LLC” they picked to give $1.7 million to?

    That attracted so much attention that that particular piece of graft is now off the table:

    Kudos to blogger Teddy Brosevelt (I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that’s a pseudonym) and Austin City Council member Mackenzie Kelly for killing this giant bucket of graft.

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    Posted in Austin, Democrats, ObamaCare, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions, video, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 6 Comments »

    China’s Targeted Espionage Continues Apace

    Sunday, May 14th, 2023

    With all that’s going on, it’s easy to forget that China’s “Thousand Talents” program of systematic industrial espionage continues apace.

    While China has attempted to steal trade secrets in semiconductors, aerospace and biotech, their espionage also has far more prosaic targets. Here’s the interrogation of a woman who stole the secret formula for the chemical lining inside a Coke can:

    Dr. Xiaorong You, aka Shannon You, was just sentenced to serve 168 months in prison.

    According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, You stole valuable trade secrets related to formulations for bisphenol-A-free (BPA-free) coatings for the inside of beverage cans. You was granted access to the trade secrets while working at The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta, Georgia, and Eastman Chemical Company in Kingsport, Tennessee. The stolen trade secrets belonged to major chemical and coating companies, including Akzo-Nobel, BASF, Dow Chemical, PPG, Toyochem, Sherwin Williams, and Eastman Chemical Company, and cost nearly $120,000,000 to develop.

    You stole the trade secrets to set up a new BPA-free coating company in China. You and her Chinese corporate partner, Weihai Jinhong Group received millions of dollars in Chinese government grants to support the new company. Documents and other evidence presented at trial, showed You’s intent to benefit not only Weihai Jinhong Group, but also the governments of China, the Chinese province of Shandong, and the Chinese city of Weihai, as well as her intent to benefit the Chinese Communist Party.

    If China can steal something, they will steal something. Design your corporate security appropriately.

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    Posted in Communism, Crime, Foreign Policy, video | 9 Comments »

    How California Destroyed Its Middle Class

    Saturday, May 13th, 2023

    The decline of California under one-party Democrat rule has been one of the long-running themes of this blog. Today Victor Davis Hanson discusses how California’s wealthy destroyed the middle class with policies whose baleful effects they knew wouldn’t fall on them.

  • “The irony is that, as we created more wealth and more leisure, because of the very success of the middle class citizen, the middle class citizen and his central role in western government was forgotten.”
  • “California in the 1960s had the largest middle class in the United States. California had the finest educational system. California invented the idea of a modern freeway and a modern airport.”
  • “California had a state where two-thirds of the people lived with one-third of the precipitation, and yet they built the greatest transference of water with reservoirs and aqueducts the world had ever seen.”
  • “California had the most successful oil, timber and mineral industries in the world. They had some of the finest universities…Again this was a product of, both democratic governors and Republican governors.”
  • “However, today when we look at California, it’s got the highest number of homeless people in the United States. Half of all of America’s homeless live in California.”
  • “One-third of all the welfare recipients in the United States live in California. One-fifth of all Californians live below the poverty line.”
  • “California yet has the highest taxes in the country in the aggregate, the highest property taxes because of the enormous assessed evaluations…highest sales tax at over 10 to 11%, highest income tax at up to 13.2%.”
  • “The result of all of that that is is the middle class finds itself unable to pay and be competitive with other businesses in other states.”
  • “They look at all of these higher taxes, and they say themselves ‘I’m willing to pay it if I’m economically viable,’ but the regulations that the state creates fall heavily on the small farmer, the hardware store owner, the tire [store?] owner, but not necessarily on the Silicon Valley corporation that has an array of lawyers, or legal teams, or analysts, or economists, that find ways not to pay it.
  • “And so the middle class leaves, they vote with their feet they go to places where it’s more conducive for middle class livelihoods. We’ve lost somewhere between 8 and 12 million people of the middle class.”
  • At the same time, America has allowed in 20 million illegal aliens, half of which have ended up in California.
  • “We have not built an aqueduct in California in about 40 years. The schools that were rated in the top 10 percent of comparative state rankings are now in the bottom 10 percent. The airports are decrepit.”
  • “That the more taxes I pay, the worse schools I get.”
  • “In this period, there was about five trillion dollars in market capitalization that grew out of Silicon Valley alone. And we created sort of a medieval caste, a wealthy caste of Barons and Lords that were not subject to the consequences of their own ideology. So they had so much wealth they felt they were exempt from worries about taxation.”
  • “We created a very, very wealthy elite that was not subject to the consequences of their own ideology.”

  • Whether out of virtue signaling and guilt, or whether out of contrived political necessity, they made a political alliance with the very poor of California. And the poor said “Give us more entitlements, tax the middle class, transfer that money to us we need it.” And the wealthy said “Yes, we will open the borders. We’ll transfer money, but you have to vote for issues that we’re in favor of. And we’re in favor of them precisely because they don’t affect us.”

  • And of course, the left’s disdain for the middle class shows up in their language: They’re the “bitter clingers,” the “deplorables,” the “chumps and dregs of society.”
  • “Muscular labor was no longer essential to the American experiment. In other words, you could make have things made overseas in China or southeast Asia or Mexico. And the great middle class territory of the middle west of the United States—Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana—started to become hollowed out.”
  • “We’ve taken the middle class, the backbone of citizenship, and we’ve eroded it and destroyed it.”

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    Posted in Democrats, Economics, Social Justice Warriors, video, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 11 Comments »

    A Bakhmut Reversal?

    Wednesday, May 10th, 2023

    Over the last several months, Russia would grind out costly gains in the fighting around Bakhmut, only to see Ukraine reverse most or all of those gains a few days or weeks later. This pattern repeated for month after month, with Russia slowly grinding out costly net gains of territory in and around Bakhmut, without ever completely taking the city.

    However, in the last 24 hours, Ukraine seems to have made significant gains around Bakhmut in the last 24 hours.

    A Ukrainian military unit said on Wednesday it had routed a Russian infantry brigade from frontline territory near Bakhmut, claiming to confirm an account by the head of Russia’s Wagner private army that the Russian forces had fled.

    Later in the day, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, who heads Ukraine’s ground forces, said Russian units in some parts of Bakhmut had retreated by up to 2 km (1.2 miles) as the result of counterattacks. He did not give details.

    Wagner units have led a months-long Russian assault on the eastern city, but Ukrainian forces say the offensive is stalling.

    Snip.

    Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has repeatedly accused Moscow’s regular armed forces of failing to adequately support his men, said on Tuesday the Russian brigade had abandoned its positions.

    “Our army is fleeing. The 72nd Brigade pissed away three square km this morning, where I had lost around 500 men,” Prigozhin said.

    This follows up on Friday’s news that Wagner Group troops around Bakhmut had run out of ammo.

    Suchomimus has a video that includes a hefty doses of both Azov head (I think Mykyta Nadtochiy) discussing the advances and Prigozhin complaining about it.

    Significant news? I think so. Sector collapses in a front that Russia has poured so much equipment and manpower into can’t be good news for their war aims.

    Is this Ukraine’s much-vaunted Spring Counteroffensive? I rather doubt it, though a full-scale front collapse would likely draw a significant investment of Ukrainian forces here.

    Rather, I think this is a fixing attack, one designed to force Russia to keep all currently assigned troops in this sector to avoid surrendering gains, making it impossible to relocate them to areas of the front where the main action will actually fall.

    But that’s just a guess…

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    Posted in Media Watch, unions, video | 19 Comments »

    China’s Slacker City

    Saturday, May 6th, 2023

    Remember how a bunch of young Chinese just decided to give up and let it rot? Recently, a whole bunch of them have decided to make Dali in Yunnan Province their own slacker city.

    Takeaways:

  • “Recently a city has become popular because it has been occupied by young people who want to lie flat. It’s Dali, a historical and cultural city in Yunnan province, southwest China, with a population of about 650,000. It has few factories in the area, and tourism accounts for a large share of the municipality’s revenue.”
  • It’s built around a large lake.
  • “A few video bloggers who are secondary landlords in Dali city claim that an army of 100,000 people lying flat have gathered and have occupied the city.”
  • “Here 350 yuan a room per month.” That’s a bit over $50.
  • “The cost of living in Dali is 8,000 Yuan a year. That is $1,162.”
  • “Young people [in China] see no hope for their future and choose to lie down. Their motto is no buying a home, no car, no marriage, no baby, no consumption.”
  • Chinese woman: “It isn’t that I don’t want to have children. I can’t afford it. Housing is so stressful! Without a home, I’m afraid to get married. The cost of having a baby is high. There’s no money or time to raise them, and women’s work is easily affected by childbirth.” All things that help contribute to China’s disasterous demographics.
  • “I’m a leek. I resigned myself to my fate, but I won’t drag a child down to this mess.” “Leek” was a buzzword five or six years ago for someone the Chinese government regarded as a disposable worker/consumer. Sort of like “cog in the machine.”
  • “Before the lying flat people converged on the city of Dali, it had already become a gathering place for digital nomads,” i.e. people who can work remote jobs from anywhere with a decent Internet connection.

  • For the past 20 years, the professional software engineer has been synonymous with young and rich in China. They’re the 996th Generation, who work from 9 AM to 9 PM, 6 days a week, sacrificing their health, but also enjoying the dividends of China’s dotcom boom over the last 20 years. But now China’s Internet industry has entered an era with State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in, private companies out, where even big tech companies are being nationalized. The overall economy is slowing down, regulatory bans are proliferating, and the epidemic is exacerbating this trend. Engineers are at increased risk of losing their jobs, and their income and benefits are reduced from time to time. Engineers who have lost their jobs will join the ranks of those who are lying flat. They usually have nothing to do, spending most of their time on the internet playing games and chatting, consuming two packs of instant noodles a day.

  • “The employment market in Shanghai is very bad right now…what is scary is that there are no jobs for you to work again. Private companies are closing their doors, going bankrupt.”

    • As always, it’s hard to determine just how widespread “lying flat” is among young Chinese. If the videos are anything to go by (a big “if”), they all seem considerably cleaner and better behaved that America’s ranks of tent-dwelling, drug-addicted transients. And many seem to be actually renting space for their tents.

    At 9:50 in, you see that cyberpunk dystopian scene of hundred of young video blogger “hosts” broadcasting from their own tiny spaces under a bridge. “Why are there so many young people in China working as online hosts? It’s not that it’s glamorous, it’s more of a helpless attempt under the current job hunting predicament.” Supposedly this happens in multiple Chinese cities, though evidently streaming locally in rich areas like Shanghai brings higher “tips.”

    What a life…

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    Posted in Communism, video | 15 Comments »

    Lina Hidalgo’s Continued Contempt for Transparency

    Thursday, May 4th, 2023

    Remember Democratic County Judge and de-facto Queen of Harris County Lina Hidalgo, she of the numerous staff corruption charges? There have been a lot of Freedom of Information Act requests coming her way over all the alleged crooked dealings, so she went to her legal counsel to thwart transparency.

    With the state’s largest county already facing at least one lawsuit over refusal to comply with public records requests, a leaked memo from Harris County officials appears to outline a strategy for avoiding the release of documents related to County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s travel and taxpayer-funded expenses.

    Investigative reporter Wayne Dolcefino reported this week on a leaked chain of emails that began with a January 25, 2023 open records request from Houston Chronicle reporter Jen Rice seeking travel records for Hidalgo and “her entourage” between January 2019 and January 2023.

    After requesting clarification, Hidalgo’s legal counsel Kathryn Kase forwarded the request and instructions for handling it to several Hidalgo staffers and Glenn Smith of Affinity Dynamics. The county auditor’s office lists payments totaling $35,000 to Smith’s company in 2020, but none this year.

    “The law does not require us to create documents in response to this PIA request and I ask that you not create such documents,” wrote Kase. “For example, if we do not have a list of the Judge’s trips outside Harris County that the County paid for in whole or part between 1/1/ 2019 and 1/25/2023, then the law does not require us to create such a list, nor do I want you to create one.”

    Kase also stated that staffers do not have to ask other departments for documents responsive to the request.

    “If, for example, the Auditor or the Treasurer have copies of reimbursements to Judge Hidalgo, do not ask the Auditor or the Treasurer to provide them to you.”

    Rice’s request likely stems from reports of Hidalgo taking private security, paid for by Harris County taxpayers, on her personal vacations to Mexico, Columbia, and according to sources familiar with the matter, Thailand, earlier this year.

    Until last April, the Precinct 1 constable’s office provided security for Hidalgo, but in a 3 to 2 vote the commissioners court approved a no-bid contract to private security company XMi Protection at a price of $121,524 for three months. The commissioners later approved a budget of up to $500,000 for XMi, although reportedly Hidalgo’s security is now provided by the Harris County Fire Marshal’s Office while XMi continues to cover other employees.

    Remember that Queen Lina’s previous legal troubles stemmed from handing out contracts to connected Democrat firms and not wanting public scrutiny for that either.

    As far as I can tell, XMi Protection seems to employee exactly one person: Cortez Emilio Richardson. (Maybe he hires temps to round out his team?) Also strange: The listed address for XMi protection is 9900 Spectrum Drive, Austin, TX, 78717, which is the address of Integreon, a “global outsourcing partner” that doesn’t list “executive protection” among its services, as well as LegalZoom, which seems to be a “one stop set-up-your-business” shop. (Maybe he set up his LLC through them?) However, Richardson’s LinkedIn profile says that he’s in Houston, and XMi Protection is based in nearby Spring. Two other LinkedIn accounts that show XMi Protection entries are a Paquita Bailey who lives in Detroit and is evidently working four different jobs at the same time (lot of sidehustle they’ve got going on there), and the following private listing:

    Which is for a pharmacy technician from Anna, Texas (which is north of Dallas), both of whom would seem to be deeply unlikely to be working a protection detail in Houston.

    $40,000 a month is an awful lot of cheddar for one guy.

    Back to the story.

    Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale and Dolcefino have also filed a lawsuit against the county, seeking access to public election records that the county has refused to release on the grounds that they are related to litigation and a criminal investigation of Tatum and the elections department.

    In response to multiple complaints over delay and evasion tactics employed by government agencies across the state, Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston) has pushed legislation that would punish those using the appeals process to delay compliance. His Senate Bill 1579 has been approved in committee, but it has not yet been scheduled for a vote on the Senate floor.

    According to attorney Bill Aleshire, public information requests must be carefully tailored so as not to offer any loopholes. Aleshire opined that instead of asking for a “list,” Rice should have requested specific documents and included multiple departments in her original demand.

    “Having said that, a public office devoted to transparency would not quibble with a requestor seeking travel records; it would just provide the records they’ve got, in good faith,” Aleshire told The Texan.

    Snip.

    In another leaked internal Harris County memo, legal fees approved by the Harris County Commissioners Court last March totaling $671,383 are described as covering legal costs for Kase, [County Commissioner Rodney] Ellis, and other county employees related to the investigation of a since-canceled $11 million COVID-19 vaccine outreach contract and allegations that Ellis had stored an African art collection at taxpayer expense.

    The memo also includes “talking points” from “GS” that former Justice Administration Director Jim Bethke and other county officials, including Tatum, have been harassed by District Attorney Kim Ogg.

    Payments for legal expenses appear to have been approved for McClees Law Firm, PLLC; Rusty Hardin and Associates, LLP; and Khalil Law PLLC. In addition to Ellis, Hidalgo, and other employees, the memo notes expenses were also covered for Commissioner Adrian Garcia (D-Pct. 2).

    Something stinks in Harris County government, and there are a whole lot of questions about how Lina Hidalgo is spreading around taxpayer money that she really doesn’t want to answer…

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    Posted in Budget, Communism, Democrats, video, Waste and Fraud | 3 Comments »

    Fire In The Night

    Saturday, April 29th, 2023

    Busy Saturday, so enjoy a couple of Suchomimus videos about a Crimean oil refinery that Ukrainian drones made blow up real good.

    Here’s footage of the refinery burning bright in the forests of the night:

  • “This video is showing a burning oil refinery in Depot at Kozaka Bay near Sevastopol Harbor in Crimea.”
  • “This took place at 4:30 AM, and it was said to be a UAV. Given the size of a blaze I would say it seems that multiple UAVs were used here.” Maybe. Or maybe it’s just that refined petroleum products are naturally very sploady and Russian safety standards and precautions suck harder than Kamala Harris.

    • And follow-up footage of the fire mostly controlled, but showing two oil storage tanks totally destroyed and several others damaged:

    “This oil storage facility is one which supplied the Black Sea Fleet, so we’re going to have to wait and see if it’s loss will have an impact on operations from there.”

    It remains an open question how much Russia has actually used its Black Sea Fleet since the sinking of Moskva over a year ago. Maybe I just haven’t been paying attention, or maybe not much news leaks out, but we don’t hear a lot about the black Sea Fleet playing a significant role in the conflict beyond occasionally participating in the missile wave attacks against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.

    Also, one wonders how much gasoline and diesel is flowing into Crimea without the Kerch Strait Bridge back at full rail capacity. I see only one other oil refinery in all of Crimea, a tiny one near Voinka Boihka that could just be a storage facility. And given the lack of visible cars and trucks in Google map images, it may not even be active.

    All the more reason to believe that a counterattack taking Melitopol would make Russian resupply of troops in Crimea exceptionally difficult…

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    Posted in Military, video | 5 Comments »

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