The fake Kamala bubble evaporates, another would-be Trump assassin is arrested, more Chinese spies on the staff of high profile Democrats, more NYC corruption raids, Ukrainian drones heat things up around Moscow, Intel and Stellantis layoff thousands each, another Harris County Democrat double-dips, a bit about Idaho, and some really stupid sailor shenanigans.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Evidently jailing Trump right before an election was a kangaroo too far even for this kangaroo court, so Trump’s sentencing has been pushed to after the election. “Judge Juan Merchan ruled Friday that Trump’s sentencing will take place on November 26, three weeks after election day, ensuring that Trump will not be sentenced in any of his criminal cases leading up to the election.”
In the friendliest possible format — a joint interview with VP nominee and emotional-support midwesterner Tim Walz, conducted by Dana Bash with the delicacy of an ornithologist gently hand-feeding hatchling chicks — Harris has revealed that her gaseously mindless word-cloud of a campaign is in fact an accurate reflection of her own personal vacuousness.
To be sure, Harris did not memorably self-destruct tonight. Whatever her failings, they are not those of Joe Biden, who couldn’t even articulate his words without slurring by the end. Her inarticulateness tonight was of the sort already known to be a Harris trademark, the endless jumble of nonsensical, comically vapid stock language. When she could fall back on a memorized list of talking points, she presented somewhat normally; the second she was required to respond directly to a question, then she began to spin out otiose nonsense like a pasta chef catering a Sicilian banquet. You could practically see the gears turning inside her head as she cast her eyes downward, stared laser-beams into the floor, and groped for cliches. She was more muted tonight than usual — her aides clearly ordered her never to display mirth under any circumstances, for fear the Kamala Kackle might emerge — and as a result, while she simulated sobriety for the most part, her body language was pronouncedly downbeat.
And all throughout she offered no answers to any policy questions whatsoever, nor any explanation for her various changes of position between 2020 and now. In theory, Bash asked most of the “right questions”; in practice, the way she solicitously asked them — sometimes even helpfully offering in advance a multiple-choice list of acceptable answers for Harris to choose from — turned them into cream puffs that Harris immediately used to serve up word salad.
Bash’s most pointed moment was when she pushed Harris about why she changed her position on a national fracking ban between 2020 and the present campaign. Harris’s answer was little more than, “Well, because I changed my mind when I became Joe Biden’s VP.” In the real world, anyone familiar with politics well understood that her “position” changed because Joe Biden — the presidential nominee — demanded it, and no other reason. Which of course is why it’s impossible to believe her when she says this is now her sincerely held view, as opposed to something to later be discarded once she can set her own priorities.
Eric Weinstein told Chris Williamson on the “Modern Wisdom” podcast that Donald Trump’s presidency has disrupted the old “rules-based international order,” which many view as an attempt to control global stability and wondered if the Republican nominee will “be allowed” to reenter the White House if elected in 2024. Weinstein argued that Trump’s unorthodox approach challenged the status quo, exposing flaws in the system and revealing that the impact of populist leaders on democracy and international agreements is more complex and significant than previously understood.
CHRIS WILLIAMSON: When we spoke at the start of the year, I said it was way too close to November to switch anybody out. Turns out that I was wrong.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Beginner’s luck.
CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You said what are the odds that Joe Biden has a debilitating event between now and November including death, so he runs a one in 20 chance of dying in any given year or above that. I don’t think you know whether he’s even going to make it to November debilitating event could have been a debilitating public event
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I purposefully left it vague. I didn’t say the other part of it, which I now feel comfortable saying, which is…
CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What do you mean by that?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I think there’s a remarkable story, and we’re in a funny game, which is: are we allowed to say what that story is? Because to say it, to analyze it, to name it, is to bring it into view. I think we don’t understand why the censorship is behaving the way it is. We don’t understand why it’s in the shadows or why our news is acting in a bizarre fashion. So let’s just set the stage, given that that was in February.
There is something that I think Mike Benz has just referred to as the rules-based international order. It’s an interlocking series of agreements, tacit understandings, explicit understandings, and clandestine understandings about how the most important structures keep the world free of war and keep markets open. There has been a system in place, whether understood explicitly or behind the scenes or implicitly, that says the purpose of the two American parties is to prune the field of populist candidates so that whatever two candidates exist in a faceoff are both acceptable to that world order.
From the point of view of, say, the State Department, the intelligence community, the defense department, and major corporations involved in international issues—from arms trade to, oh, I don’t know, food—they have a series of agreements that are fragile and could be overturned if a president entered the Oval Office who didn’t agree with them. And if the mood of the country was, “Why do we pay taxes into these structures? Why are we hamstrung? Why aren’t we a free people?” So what the two parties would do is run primaries with populist candidates and pre-commit the populist candidates to support the candidates who won the primaries. As long as that took place and you had two candidates that were both acceptable to the international order—that is, they aren’t going to rethink NAFTA or NATO or what have you—we called that democracy. And so democracy was the illusion of choice, what’s called magician’s choice, where the choice is not actually, you know, “pick a card, any card,” but somehow the magician makes sure that the card that you pick is the one that he knows.
In that situation, you have magician’s choice in the primaries, and then you’d have the duopoly field: two candidates, either of which was acceptable, and you could actually afford to hold an election. That way, the international order wasn’t put at risk every four years because you can’t have alliances that are subject to the whim of the people in plebiscites.
Under that structure, everything was going fine until 2016, when the first candidate ever to not hold any position in the military nor any position in government in the history of the Republic, Donald Trump, broke through the primary structure. Then there was a full court press: “Okay, we only have one candidate that’s acceptable to the international order. Donald Trump will be under constant pressure—he’s a loser, he’s a wild man, he’s an idiot, and he’s under control of the Russians.” And then he was going to be, you know, a 20-to-1 underdog, and then he wins. There was no precedent for this. They learned their lesson: you cannot afford to have candidates who are not acceptable to the international order and continue to have these alliances. This is an unsolved problem.
A Missouri man is facing federal charges following a series of alleged violent threats made via social media against former President Donald Trump, Republicans at large, and law enforcement officers, according to a criminal complaint filed in the Western District of Missouri on Aug. 30.
Justin Lee White, 36, is accused of using interstate communication to spread a slew of online threats to injure Trump, Republicans, and law enforcement in violation of federal law, culminating in a multi-agency investigation led by the FBI, according to the complaint.
Speaking of Trump assassination attempts, DHS personnel assigned to the protective detail for Trump’s Butler rally were given rigorous training. And by “rigorous training” I mean “they sat through a two hour webinar.”
Remember that “Harris Surge” in polls? Yet again, it was a case of oversampling.
As we’ve been highlighting since 2016, polls are not to be trusted thanks to various ‘tricks of the trade’ – most commonly, oversampling.
Last month we noted how the founder of the main outside spending group backing Kamala Harris for president says their own internal opinion polling is “much less rosy” than public polls.
“Our numbers are much less rosy than what you’re seeing in the public,” said Future Forward super PAC president Chauncey McLean said during a Monday event hosted by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.
Now, the Washington Times reports that some pollsters are even sounding the alarm over Vice President Kamala Harris’ so-called ‘surge’ in the polls – which Harris pulled ahead in after replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee on July 21.
Since the switch, Harris is leading Trump nationally by nearly 2 percentage points and is either leading or tied with him in all seven battleground states. However, Republican analysts argue that these polling numbers may not accurately reflect voter sentiment due to biased polling methodology…
Critics point out that many polls have been sampling a disproportionately smaller share of Republican voters compared to exit poll data from the 2020 presidential election. The result, they say, is a misleading “phantom advantage” for Ms. Harris. According to them, this skewed sampling could be a strategic move to boost enthusiasm and fundraising for Ms. Harris’ campaign.
Trump campaign strategist Jim McLaughlin echoed this sentiment, stating, “They undersample Republicans” intentionally “to tamp down support and donations for Trump.” He added that the polls are part of a larger effort to create a narrative that favors Harris.
Trump has openly criticized the poll results. “It’s fake news,” Trump declared during a rally in Michigan. “They can make those polls sing.”
“Billionaire Mark Cuban Asked His Followers If They’d Prefer Their Kids Be Like Trump or Harris.” Turns out they preferred Trump by more than 2-1. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Another week, another high profile Democrat’s aide turns out to be a Chinese spy.
Linda Sun, a former aide to New York governor Kathy Hochul, acted at the direction of Chinese government and Chinese Communist Party officials while serving in state government, federal prosecutors alleged in an indictment Tuesday.
In a statement, the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York said that Sun was arrested Tuesday morning with her husband, Christopher Hu. They were expected to be arraigned later in the day.
Sun is a former deputy chief of staff to Kathy Hochul and has served in numerous roles throughout New York State government since her first post under the administration of former governor Andrew Cuomo in 2012. Before that, she served as Representative Grace Meng’s chief of staff, when the Queens Democrat served in the New York State assembly.
“As alleged, while appearing to serve the people of New York as deputy chief of staff within the New York State Executive Chamber, the defendant and her husband actually worked to further the interests of the Chinese government and the CCP,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said.
The federal government is alleging that Sun was an unregistered agent of the Chinese government and that her husband engaged in money-laundering while they benefited from millions of dollars in bribes from Chinese officials.
The indictment details a shocking pattern of collaboration with China’s consulate general in New York, with Sun at one point in 2020 letting a Chinese diplomat listen in on a private conference call for New York officials regarding the state government’s response to the Covid pandemic.
Chinese-government and CCP officials directed her to block Taiwanese officials from engaging with officials from New York. Beijing views the current government of Taiwan as a traitorous separatist movement and wants to annex the country.
According to court documents, Taiwan’s de facto consulate in New York City invited an unnamed politician, a description that matches the profile of then-governor Andrew Cuomo, to attend a banquet honoring then-Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen during her stopover in the city in 2019. Sun forwarded information about the invite to a Chinese official, telling that individual, “I sent you an email / Just an FYI / I already blocked it.” She then declined the invitation without consulting other New York executive chamber officials.
When Sun later asked a colleague to check if the politician was registered for the banquet, that staff member said that it was not on the schedule. Sun replied: “Perfect!”
She also manipulated messaging from the New York governor’s office, while consulting Chinese diplomats, the indictment stated.
Federal agents on Wednesday zeroed in on the highest ranks of Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, searching a home and seizing the phones of the New York City police commissioner, the first deputy mayor, the schools chancellor and others, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The police commissioner. They seized the police commissioner’s phones. Wow.
Among the other officials the federal investigators sought information from were the deputy mayor for public safety and a senior adviser to the mayor who is one of his closest confidants, the people said. Both men have had other legal challenges.
The agents also searched the home and seized the phone of a consultant who is the brother of both the schools chancellor and one of the deputy mayors, the people said.
The nature of the investigations is unclear, but it appears that one is focused on the senior City Hall officials and the other touches on the police commissioner, the people said.
…
Representatives of the City Hall officials — the first deputy mayor, Sheena Wright; her partner, Schools Chancellor David C. Banks; the deputy mayor for public safety, Philip Banks III; and a senior adviser to the mayor, Timothy Pearson — could not be reached or declined to comment.
The consultant, Terence Banks, a brother of Philip Banks and David Banks, recently opened a government and community relations firm aimed at closing a gap “between New York’s intricate infrastructure and political landscape.” He, too, could not be reached for comment.
Several of the officials had their phones seized or records of their communications subpoenaed.
…
In addition to the police commissioner, Edward A. Caban, several other department officials, including Mr. Caban’s chief of staff and two Queens precinct commanders, also had their phones taken by federal agents, two of the people said.
Says Dwight: “It sounds like the whole Adams administration is so packed with corruption, they can’t even keep the lid screwed on.”
Behind the statistics: “August: 635K Foreign-Born Workers Gained Jobs as 1.3 Million Americans Lost Jobs.”
Germany’s conservative, populist, pro-border security Alternative for Germany won big in this week’s elections. Of course, the media, in unison, denounces anyone who objects to the mass importation of unassimilated Muslims into any European country as “far right.” And in Germany, this means they invariable compare Alternative for Germany to a certain mustachioed National Socialist.
President Trump endorses marijuana decriminalization vote. “Florida’s Amendment 3, titled Recreational Marijuana, would allow adults who are at least 21 years of age have up to 3 ounces of marijuana (a ‘small amount’?) and up to 5 grams of marijuana concentrate. At present, the state only allows medical patients with qualifying conditions to legally buy and possess cannabis.” Marijuana prohibition hasn’t worked. Full-bore marijuana legalization seems to have brought a whole host of problems, especially in blue states. Florida will provide another statewide laboratory of democracy to calibrate an approach.
Lowes may be getting out of the culture wars, but Home Depot is still in, having “partnered with LGBTQ mafia organization Human Rights Campaign on a school program that taught radical gender theory to elementary school kids.”
That budget deficit might also cause the Labour government to pull out of the F-35 procurement program. “Despite previous plans to acquire 138 F-35s, only 48 have been ordered.”
The head of Harris County’s Public Health Department, who was fired last week, has also been working for a California county since last January. Questions are swirling about her work in Texas, including her role in awarding a contract for sending mental health workers instead of police on some 911 calls.
Sources also say there is a pending criminal investigation into the county’s health department and related contracts.
County officials announced last Friday that Executive Director of Harris County Public Health Barbie Robinson had been dismissed, just days after the Houston Chronicle reported on communications surrounding a $6 million contract awarded to DEMA, a California-based company, to run the county’s Holistic Assistance Response Teams (HART).
The Texan has learned that in January 2024, Robinson also contracted with Yuba County, California to provide services for a three-year period. Robinson’s work for Yuba County’s public health department provides her with nearly $200,000 in compensation for hundreds of hours of work, all while managing Harris County’s public health department.
Sources familiar with the matter say that Robinson claimed to have obtained approval from former County Administrator David Berry and the County Attorney’s Office to engage in the additional work, but that current County Administrator Diana Ramirez was unable to confirm Robinson’s claims.
Other sources indicate that the Harris County District Attorney’s Office (HCDAO) has been investigating Robinson and nearly a dozen other individuals with the county, HART, and DEMA for several months.
This week, the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office dismissed murder charges against two Houston men involved in the self-defense incident at a party near the Baylor University campus, finally determining it was a justifiable homicide. While that was good news to Calvin Nichols Jr., it hardly makes up for the 635 days the man spent locked up in jail while the DA’s office slowly dragged its feet over the case.
According to police reports, on the night in question Nichols and his cousin, Jaytron Damon Scott, were invited to a party attended by a number of Baylor students, including football players. According to partygoers, Joseph Craig Thomas Jr. showed up uninvited and began threatening others with a gun, including a female student who asked him to move his car.
He later stuck a gun under the chin of a Baylor football player. And when Scott and Nichols were leaving the party, Thomas began to pistol whip Nichols.
That’s when Scott, acting in defense of his cousin, fired his pistol at Thomas, striking him multiple times and killing him. Murder charges were then filed against Scott and Nichols, a fact that Scott’s attorney, Bryan Cantrell, found unbelievable.
“I don’t know how this case got indicted,” Cantrell told KWTX.com. “This was the clearest self-defense case I have ever seen. And I think the problem is a lot of attorneys and, certainly the people of the community, don’t understand the law of self-defense.”
You would hope that the end of Abel Reyna’s term as McLennan County DA put a stop to this sort of thing, but evidently not.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is preparing to implement the Biden-Harris administration’s Sustains Act which aims to regulate who will own environmental services.
According to private property rights advocates, American Stewards of Liberty (ASL), examples of environmental services include “the air we breathe, photosynthesis, pollination, and even the health benefits of open space.”
Specifically, the new law allows private funds to be used for conservation efforts on private land. The USDA will oversee the program, and the Secretary, preparing its implementation, will also decide who owns the environmental service.
Although the public may still provide the USDA with comments about the plan until September 16, 2024, ASL refers to the new law as “critical for proponents of the United Nations’ sustainable development agenda to achieve.”
The private property rights advocates see the program as a means to “provide the path to transfer America’s real assets from private citizens to federal and international interests.”
Screw both the Biden Administration and the UN.
The latest Stolen Valor Democrat is Maryland governor Wes Moore, who didn’t earn the Bronze Star he claimed he did.
Speaking of Idaho, how Micron defied the odds to become one of the biggest DRAM manufacturers in the world.
Intel just cancelled their 20A (2nm) node and will be fabbing their Arrow Lake processor at TSMC. “Intel projects it will save half a billion dollars by skipping the 20A node. The announcement comes as Intel embarks on a vast restructuring in the wake of troubling financial results last quarter. The company continues to lay off 15,000 workers, among the largest workforce reductions in its 56-year history.” It’s supposedly going full speed ahead with its 18A node, theoretically due in 2025. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Intel and Japan are teaming up to work on EUV. Hard to see them making much progress given how large a lead ASML has…
Rael Enteen, Vice President of the Washington Commanders football team (AKA The Artist Formerly known As The Washington Redskins) has been fired.
He told…that, “over 50% of our roster is white religious, and God says, ‘F— the gays.’ Their interpretation. I don’t buy any of that. Another big chunk is low-income African Americans that comes from a community that is inherently very homophobic.”
…Enteen also said some players are “dumb as hell” and said some who were smart don’t stay that way after getting hit in the head too many times. He also said those who “get their heads knocked around a few times” are more susceptible to conspiracy theories.
Enteen also said, “I don’t think the commissioner of the NFL hates gay people, hates black people. Jerry Jones, who really runs the NFL, I think he hates gay people, black people.”
And James O’Keefe claims another scalp…
Legal Insurrection’s William A. Jacobson just got dis-invited from speaking on antisemitism at a synagogue in Tampa. “How could any Jew look around at the current geopolitical landscape and conclude that it’s safe to ignore all the various threats to their existence — not just Hamas terrorists in Gaza, but also the various murderous entities backed by the Islamic radical regime in Iran, to say nothing of Democratic primary voters in Dearborn, Michigan — because Trump is the real danger? What kind of cocoon are these people living in?”
We had previously covered the various failures of Austin’s toy train Project Connect light rail project to achieve its stated goals. Now a lawsuit has been filed to put the light rail tax out of our misery.
A new class action lawsuit filed in Travis County 126th District Court claims that the City of Austin is collecting annual property tax illegally to fund Project Connect since the project is not following through on delivering the public transit development that voters agreed to in 2020.
As KVUE reported, voter-approved Project Connect has faced legal action in the past from taxpayers and is now facing another lawsuit brought by the same group of plaintiffs who want to prevent the city from continuing to collect millions of dollars in property taxes to fund the now reduced Project Connect plan.
The plaintiff’s lead counsel, Bill Aleshire, said, “They’re pursuing what I call a ‘miniature’ Project Connect that’s not city wide.”
Aleshire explained that Project Connect “started as a $7 billion plan that included 30 miles of rail, a route to the airport and downtown, now has a more than an $11 billion price tag and half the routes.”
He also argued that the city “miscalculated” its 2024 tax rate and that the funds already collected are not being spent on the transit project.
“Not including this year’s $187 million, Austin’s Project Connect tax levy has been for over $630 million. But there is $476 million on hand, unspent, uncommitted,” Aleshire said.
Project Connect managers, the Austin Transit Partnership, described the lawsuit as “baseless” and stated the funds collected would be utilized in the future, according to KVUE.
Lead plaintiff Cathy Cocco referred to the transit project as “an unaffordable, outdated, yesterday idea not suited for the 21st century city that needs to be efficient, agile, affordable, and more equitable for all Austin residents.”
While Project Connect had the potential to benefit the Austin community, Cocco sees the plan as a “bait and switch scheme.”
The group wants city leaders to stop the tax, revisit the project, and ask Austinites to vote on it again.
At this point it’s obvious that Austin voters were sold a bill of goods. They’ve coughed up a lot of taxes and gotten an underutilized toy train that doesn’t meet the promises made in the bond language. The entire project should be scrapped and money returned to taxpayers. Of course, that would mean Austin’s ruling political establishment would have to admit they were wrong and give up control of a big bucket of money, so we know that’s not happening without a fight…
On Joe Rogan, Peter Thiel has an interesting answer to conservatives wondering why California hasn’t collapsed already: California is essentially Saudi Arabia.
Joe Rogan: “California just jacked their taxes up to 14[% at the highest marginal rate], what was it, 14.4[%]?”
Peter Thiel: Something like that, yeah. 14.3[%] I think.”
JR: “You want more money for doing a terrible job, and having more people leave for the first time ever.”
PT: “But it gets away with it.”
JR: “I know! People are forced with no choice. What are you going to do?”
PT: “There are people at the margins who leave, but the state government still collects more and more in revenues. You get 10% more revenues and 5% of the people leave you still increase the amount of revenues you’re getting. It’s inelastic enough that you’re actually able to increase the revenues.”
PT: “This is sort of the the crazy thing about California. There’s always sort of a right-wing or libertarian critique of California that it’s such a ridiculous place, it should just collapse under its own ridiculousness and it doesn’t quite happen.”
PT: “The macroeconomics in it are are pretty good. 40 million people, the GDP is around 4 trillion. It’s about the same as Germany with 80 million, or Japan with 125 million. Japan has three times the population of California same GDP means one-third the per capita GDP, so there’s some level on which California as a whole is working, even though it doesn’t work from a governance point of view.”
PT: “The rough model I have for how to think of California is that it’s kind of like Saudi Arabia. They have a crazy religion, wokeism in California, Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia. You know not that many people believe it, but it it distorts everything.”
PT: “Then you have like oil fields in Saudi Arabia and you have the big tech companies in California, and the oil pays for everything.”
PT: “Then you have a completely bloated, inefficient government sector, and you have sort of all sorts of distortions in the real estate market where people also make lots of money, and sort of the government and real estate are ways you redistribute the oil wealth. And that’s the big tech money in California.”
PT: “It’s not the way you might want to design a system from scratch, but it’s pretty stable. People have been saying Saudi Arabia is ridiculous, it’s going to collapse any year now. They’ve been saying that for 40 or 50 years. But you know, if you have a giant oil field you can pay for a lot of ridiculousness.”
PT: “I think that’s the way you have to think of California. There’s things about it that are ridiculous, but there’s something about it. It doesn’t naturally self-destruct overnight.”
JR: “There’s a lot of people that are still generating enormous amounts of wealth there, and it’s too difficult to just pack up and leave.”
PT: “I think it’s something like four of the eight or nine companies with market capitalizations over a trillion dollars are based in California: Google, Apple, now Nvidia, Meta…I think Broadcom is close to that.”
Thiel also points out the great weather, and notes that there’s no large enough city in a zero income tax state tempting enough (at least for him) to move to. Austin he dismisses because “Austin’s a government town and a college town and a wannabe hipster San Francisco town, so in my books, three and you’re kind of out.”
Of course, the big difference between Apple, Nvidia, etc., and Saudi Aramco, is that all those tech companies could still move to another state, as Elon Musk proved by moving much of Tesla and SpaceX to Texas. But that oil isn’t going anywhere until the Saudis (or the western companies they hire) pump it out.
Also, under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudis have sidelined the Wahhabist clerics, so that the state religion is moving (if slowly) in a more modern direction.
Alas, since the pact between Muhammad bin Saud and Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab dates back to about 1745, this metaphor suggests that wokeism still has a quarter millennium to run.
Let’s hope that the poisoned cult of social justice has a much shorter stretch until its richly deserved demise.
Real inflation is running about 20%, Kamala parties like it’s 1971, the New York Times is shocked, shocked to discover Hunter Biden asking for state favors for foreign cronies, gold hits new highs, laughing at an old SNL skit is now a thoughtcrime, and an update on Intel’s woes.
The New York Times reports that the federal government is accelerating the naturalization of immigrants in America as part of a process of “reshaping the electorate, merely months before a pivotal election,” according to one observer quoted in the piece.
“The federal government is processing citizenship requests at the fastest clip in a decade, moving rapidly through a backlog that built up during the Trump administration and the coronavirus pandemic,” reports the newspaper.
One Honduran woman marveled at the fact that authorities were able to process and approve her application in as little as six months.
The story highlights how many of these new citizens will immediately become eligible to vote in key battleground states, including Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
The piece includes a very revealing quote from Xiao Wang, chief executive of Boundless, a data analysis company.
“The surge in naturalization efficiency isn’t just about clearing backlogs; it’s potentially reshaping the electorate, merely months before a pivotal election,” said Wang.
“Every citizenship application could be a vote that decides Senate seats or even the presidency,” he added.
In other words, knowing that immigrants are far likelier to vote Democrat, the Biden administration is importing them at breakneck speed in order to tip the scales for Kamala Harris.
3.3 million immigrants have become citizens during Biden’s time in office, with data showing that more will vote Democrat than Republican.
This has partly driven the Trump campaign’s efforts to appeal more to “Jamal” and “Enrique,” and not so much “Karen,” although the strategy has caused division amongst Trump’s base.
The legacy media has consistently denounced the idea of mass migration being a deliberate ploy to increase the voter base for Democrats as part of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, while simultaneously admitting it’s happening.
Democrats have declared that they have no confidence in the electorate and must create a new one…
Restaurant owner says that the real inflation rate is closer to 20% over six months:
The owner of four restaurants made this video when inflation was at 3.5%. Today, we’re told that inflation is at 2.9%. He looked at the prices of some products and concluded that the government’s inflation numbers don’t make sense. Since February, food prices have increased:
How does Kamala Harris plan to combat inflation? By channeling Richard Nixon from 1971 and imposing wage and price controls.
After the unoriginal Vice President Kamala Harris stole former President Trump’s proposed ‘no tax on tips’ policy, she’s at it again with yet another recycled idea. This time, she’s echoing President Biden’s actions and rhetoric to crack down on sky-high food prices by proposing the first-ever federal ban on “corporate price-gouging in the food and grocery industries”—a move that reeks of socialism.
“There’s a big difference between fair pricing in competitive markets, and excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business,” the Harris campaign wrote in a statement, adding, “Americans can see that difference in their grocery bills.”
The Harris campaign said the vice president will unveil the new federal proposed ban on Friday at a campaign rally in the battleground state of North Carolina as part of a broader economic policy platform. The proposal will ensure food companies can’t exploit consumers to increase profits, according to CBS News, citing Harris-Walz campaign officials.
Harris’ policy speech will also call on the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys to examine corporations violating price-fixing rules. Her remarks are expected to echo Biden’s actions and rhetoric, especially with his war against meat processing companies that he alleges are responsible for higher burger prices at the supermarket.
VP Harris’ campaign argues that lowering Americans’ costs is a function of socialist-style price controls. Yet this is the quickest way to understand that Harris’ economic team has no actual understanding of inflation.
Heritage Foundation’s EJ Antoni explained, “Here’s your “price gouging” narrative: average costs paid by businesses have risen just as much as costs charged to consumers – if businesses are being “greedy,” they’re doing it all wrong…”
Instead of curbing out-of-control government spending, which debt rises $1 trillion every 100 days, and understanding that monetary inflation driven by the Federal Reserve’s money creation is the root cause of inflation, Harris deflects the actual problem: The Fed. She instead goes after big corporations for ‘illegal price gouging.’
Thus unable to understand the disasterous economic policies of the past are doomed to repeat it…
“Conversation Between Musk And Trump Generates Over A Billion Views.” You can see a transcript of the interview here.
In a post last month (“How The Democrats Los Silicon Valley”), I mentioned that top Silicon Valley venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz had endorsed Trump.
Ben Horowitz, in particular, seemed like an unusual Trump supporter, coming from a liberal Jewish background. Now it looks like Trump has another, thanks to his X space with Elon Musk last night: Zynga founder Mark Pincus. During the first Trump administration, Pincus opposed Trump’s “Muslim ban”, but after the leftist celebrations following October 7th last year, he seemed to have some second thoughts about that.
Despite corporate media’s unabashed u-turn to support Kamala Harris, her campaign has been busted creating made-up headlines next to the names of real news outlets to trick people into thinking they’ve stumbled upon the real thing, Axios reports.
Upon hearing the news, The Guardian lost their shit, telling Axios: “While we understand why an organization might wish to align itself with the Guardian’s trusted brand, we need to ensure it is being used appropriately and with our permission. We’ll be reaching out to Google for more information about this practice.”
The ads include links to real articles from the outlets, however the headlines and supporting text were altered.
“Democratic California State Lawmaker Switches To Republican Party…State Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil, who represents the state’s fourth Senate district, said she joined the Senate Republican Caucus and party after deep reflection and to help ‘in their fight to fix California.'”
While Joe Biden was vice president, his son Hunter attempted to obtain State Department assistance in securing a deal for Ukrainian gas company Burisma, of which Hunter was a highly-compensated board member despite having no experience in its industry, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. The revelation of the 2016 episode underscores allegations that Hunter sought to enrich himself by trading on his father’s influence.
The Times report draws on newly-released government records pertaining to Hunter’s pushing of a Burisma deal in Italy. The Biden White House had resisted releasing the files for years, only to relent soon after Biden was pressured into abandoning his reelection bid.
One wonders how long the New York Times would have waited to report this if Biden were still seeking reelection? My guess is never.
Go figure. It’s amazing what some actual reporting — and a withdrawal from a presidential election — can shake loose, no?
Just four short years ago, we were all assured by the Protection Racket Media that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, and that allegations of influence-peddling by the Bidens were just political dirty tricks, right? Right? Wrong. The New York Times’ Ken Vogel reports that Hunter’s efforts to sell influence within the administration were well known during Joe Biden’s term as Vice President. It’s even about Burisma, the company that we were told paid Hunter a lot of money for his energy-industry expertise.
Oh, and the records of it got “withheld” by the Biden administration for “years,” too:
Hunter Biden sought assistance from the U.S. government for a potentially lucrative energy project in Italy while his father was vice president, according to newly released records and interviews.
The records, which the Biden administration had withheld for years, indicate that Hunter Biden wrote at least one letter to the U.S. ambassador to Italy in 2016 seeking assistance for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, where he was a board member.
Well, we did have records in October 2020. Hunter Biden kept records of these dealings on his laptop, which he abandoned in a repair shop. When the New York Post reported on the contents of the laptop, including a number of emails that made clear he leveraged his fathers office to sell influence at Burisma and elsewhere, the media ignored it — even though one of Hunter’s partners (Tony Bobulinski) publicly authenticated the messages when asked.
Nearly four years later, the NYT gets around to the truth. And if you’re questioning the timing, you have good company, because Vogel appears to be somewhat curious about it as well:
The department’s release of documents to The New York Times came shortly after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race, and as his son prepares to stand trial next month on charges of evading taxes on millions of dollars in income from Burisma and other foreign businesses.
Go figure again! It’s as if the cover-up extended as long as Joe Biden had electoral interests to protect. Now that Biden has pulled out of the race, there’s no need to keep covering up for Biden Inc.
“California Sheriff Blasts Harris For Using His Image In “Misleading” Campaign Ad, Says He Supports Trump.” “In light of a recent political ad put out by Kamala Harris featuring Sheriff [Mike] Boudreaux, as well as other local law enforcement, the Sheriff wants to make it abundantly clear that his image is being used without his permission, and he does NOT endorse Harris for President or any other political office.”
The same Jew-haters who drove Columbia University’s president Minouche Shafik off are now coming for Kamala Harris.
Only a short week ago, Harris was heckled by pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters, like those who has spilled out from college campuses after October 7. Protesters screamed out at her as she stood on stage repeating her stump speech. As they yelled, Harris tried to shame them. “I’m speaking,” she said, hearkening back to her VP debate against Mike Pence in 2020. “I’m speaking” in context means several things, including an attempt to grab control based on her identity factors: black, female. By identitarian logic, the vice president is oppressed, and by the logic of progressive discourse, that means that she gets to speak first, and that what she has to say carries all that much more weight. An event simply in favor of her candidacy was crashed in New York City on Wednesday night where agitators set off smoke bombs and held up signs saying “No Votes for Bombala’s Genocide.” 14 of them were arrested.
The agitators wanted some kind of response, some kind of indication of what Harris’ policy on Israel and Gaza might be if she gets voted into the White House. And they haven’t gotten it. Meanwhile, there are clearly massive anti-Israel events planned for the Democratic National Convention next week. While Kamala is trying to keep the euphoria going, attempting to dance and sing her way into the White House, her base will be out in the street demanding answers. Will she be lenient like Magill? Bend over backwards like Gay? Or call in a bigger force, like Shafik, because she doesn’t know how to handle it on her own?
The far left of Harris’ party hates Israel. They love Palestinians not for their culture or policies–which include anti-LGBTQ and anti-female regulations as in other strict, Muslim countries–but simply because they are “oppressed.” And Harris can’t handle them. Even at her speech, rarefied identity wasn’t enough to keep them in their place. The campus riots will likely start up again. As soon as the college-bound finish their orientations, they’ll be picking up their marching orders and protest signs to join their comrades on the quad.
There is already noise that Harris would like to throw Israel under the bus, to eradicate funding and arms shipments. The same woman that waved the flag of Ukraine in Congress as she promised to send him endless weapons and aid, may think the aid packages and arms sales to Israel go too far. Harris may sympathize with the protesters.
before his honeymoon [in Communist China in 1994], Walz launched a company called Educational Travel Adventures, which specialized in bringing American students to China. An article in the local Chinese media reported that he and his bride brought 50 students from America. The company continued to send students to China until 2003. It is important to note that operating a business in China requires all kinds of permits—both official and unofficial—from Chinese authorities at the local, provincial, and central levels. These permits were typically obtained either by paying bribes or by securing endorsements, whether tacit or open, from government officials.
Professional atheist Richard Dawkins posts that men and women are different and male boxers shouldn’t be competing with female boxers. Result: Facebook nuked his account.
So what do you do when your software problem brings a customers operations down hard? Well, if you’re Crowdstrike and the customer is Delta airlines, then you slam Delta for not recovering fast enough.
Python Development Foundation suspends developer for enjoying old “Jane, you ignorant slut” skit. I can only imagine the snowflake reactions to the Chevy Chase/Richard Pryor word association skit…
Flock of self-driving Waymo cars in San Francisco honk all night in their parking lot. As you might be able to guess, nearby residents are just thrilled at this development…
Speaking of electric cars, there’s concerning over letting them park in parking garages because of the possibility of them catching fire and the difficulty of extinguishing same.
Remember how Intel said the problem with their chips was microcode? Yeah. That may not be the case (or at least not the whole case), and it may actually be a process problem involving oxidation of vias (i.e., the connection between two metal layers).
There’s too damn much going on in the world right now! Compiling the LinkSwarm used to be more like hunting and gathering, but the last few weeks have been like drinking from the firehose.
The real unemployment rate is crushing ordinary Americans, another Trump assassin thwarted, Maricopa cues up illegal alien voter fraud again, Tim Walz’s own National Guard unit accuses him of stolen valor, Ukraine captures a chunk of Russia, Google is declared a monopoly, a global censorship organization immediately folds at the first sign of scrutiny, the leader of Bangladesh flees, and California fines a business for daring to fly Old Glory.
There are lies, damned lies, and government statistics — and maybe none is more damnable than the official unemployment rate which is half the actual rate, according to Rasmussen. Worse, the number of Americans who are neither retired nor employed is more than four times higher than July’s official rate of 4.3%.
I’ve been writing for months now in quick-hit Instapundit items that this country has been in a jobs recession since the COVID lockdowns and, thanks to Bidenomics, never recovered from. Well, the latest Rasmussen unemployment survey has the numbers.
The report is paywalled, but I pay the subscription fee (and take the tax write-off) so you don’t have to if you ever wondered where some of your VIP membership dollars wind up.
Rasmussen surveyed nearly 9,000 American adults and found that in July the percentage of Americans who are unemployed and looking for work — this is the number that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) should report each month — was 8.4%. The BLS reported a rosy 4.3% unemployment rate last month, up from June’s equally imaginary 4.1%.
From there, things only get worse. Because under Bidenomics, of course, they do.
One in four adult Americans is retired, which is nice for them. Fifteen percent say they’re entrepreneurs (that can be anything from driving an Uber to launching a Silicon Valley startup), and just under 30% are employed by a private company.
Nearly one in 10 work for the government at one level or another. Those workers are supported entirely by tax dollars without producing any material wealth. Every government employee involved in regulation makes it harder for the rest of us to do so.
If you’ve been keeping track of these numbers in your head, you might notice they don’t add up to anything close to 100%. About three percent of adults surveyed answered “not sure” about their employment situation, the kind of answer that I assume involves smoking weed. The remaining 9.7% said they were unemployed but not looking — i.e., “Not in Workforce.”
That means the percentage of Americans who could be working and perhaps would really like to be working but either can’t find work or have given up finding work is 18.1%. That’s more than four times the official unemployment rate.
An alleged Iranian agent plotted to hire hitmen to assassinate US government officials — including possibly former President Donald Trump, according to sources and a federal criminal complaint.
Pakistani national Asif Merchant, 46, is accused of planning political assassinations in New York City in August or early September, and paid $5,000 in advances to men he believed to be contract killers, according to US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace.
“The Iranian indicted in Eastern District today is 100% an agent of the Iranian government,” a law enforcement source told The Post.
The plot was allegedly in retaliation to the 2020 Trump-ordered killing of prominent Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani, US Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed Tuesday.
Trump has been a known target of previous Iranian-backed assassination plots, and the feds believe he may have been one of Merchant’s targets, law enforcement sources told The Post. But, the accused terrorist never divulged the name of who he planned to kill during his meetings with undercover agents — instead cryptically saying only that the target would have “a lot of security.”
Last week’s plea bargain deal to let 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and accomplices Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi avoid the death penalty broke a little late to include in the last LinkSwarm, but defense secretary Lloyd Austin has nixed the deal.
Although the last few weeks have had their alarming aspects – chief among which was the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13, the odds-on favorite candidate for president – they have also had their amusing moments.
In the latter category, I place the sudden queen-for-a-day-like coronation of Kamala Harris.
True, that coronation was in the nature of an anti-democratic semi-soft-coup (or anti-democratic “inversion of a coup”). Biden and his handlers, right up until the morning of July 21, were insisting that he was not dropping out, that he was “in it to win,” etc. But someone made him an offer he couldn’t refuse and out he went.
Here’s the amusing bit. Until the moment Biden was chased out of the race, Kamala Harris functioned primarily as political life insurance. “You might not like me,” Biden communicated, “but if I go, you’re stuck with her.”
Biden’s polls were in the toilet and, following his catastrophic debate with Donald Trump, were circling the drain, poised for oblivion. But Kamala’s polls were even worse. She was cordially disliked by—well, by everyone. Her staff, her colleagues, but above all, by voters. In the 2020 race, she got no delegates: none, zero, zip. She dropped out of the race for president but was then tapped to be VP only because this half Indian, half Jamaican woman was swarthy enough to pass as black and Biden had promised to select a black female as a running mate. Kamala truly is, as Biden himself acknowledged recently, a DEI vice president.
And sure enough, Kamala was every bit the disaster people predicted she would be. As a matter of clinical interest, she proved that senility is not the only cause of supreme rhetorical incoherence. Some people, and she is one, come by it naturally. Her tenure as vice president is littered with examples, and she provided another doozy just a couple of days ago when she attempted to comment on the prisoner exchange with Russia.
It’s painful, as are all the many video clips of Harris angrily denouncing people who say “Merry Christmas,” of her presiding as “border czar” over the disaster of our non-existent southern border, of her outlining how she wants to give Medicare, as well as the franchise, to all illegal immigrants, and how she wants to develop a national data base of gun owners so that she can confiscate firearms by force.
Can such a person win the presidency? No.
Then, how can we explain the sudden efflorescence of Harrismania? Democrats are wetting themselves with glee over their sudden fundraising windfalls ($200 million in a week, it is said) and sudden surge in the polls. New York magazine just beclowned itself with a cover showing Kamala sitting on top of the world with Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and even Joe Biden dancing and whooping it up below. “Welcome to Kamalot,” we read: “In a matter of days, the Democratic Party discovered its future was actually in the White House all along.”
Was it? Again, the answer is no. It is a temporary sugar high caused partly by the feeling of liberation following the sudden release from Joe Biden, partly by the slobbering media jumping all over the reinvention of Kamala like dogs vibrating over a bitch in estrus. The feeling of intoxication may linger through the Democratic convention, but there are already signs that it is fading. I think James Piereson is correct. Kamala’s position now is akin to that of Michael Dukakis (remember him?) in 1988.
Dukakis was way ahead of George Bush in the summer of 1988. Then it all unraveled.
The puppeteers have stopped pretending. “Obamaites Take Over Team Kamala.”
Ho hum, nothing to see here, just another cycle in which Barack Obama runs for president. What is this, five in a row now?
In this case, though, we may have to give Kamala Harris a pass. It’s not as if she developed a team of campaign experts on her own. Or that they’d stick around for long if she did (via Memeorandum):
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris hired a battery of new senior advisers to her campaign this week, moving swiftly to replace lifetime loyalists of President Biden with Democratic campaign veterans, including multiple leaders of Barack Obama’s presidential bids, according to people briefed on the campaign shifts.
David Plouffe, a top strategist on both of Obama’s presidential campaigns, joins Harris as senior adviser for strategy and the states focused on winning the electoral college. Stephanie Cutter, the deputy campaign manager for Obama’s reelection who has been working in recent months with Harris, is the new senior adviser for strategy messaging. Mitch Stewart, a grass-roots organizing strategist behind both Obama wins, will become the senior adviser for battleground states. David Binder, who led Obama’s public opinion research operation and previously worked for Harris, will expand his role on the Harris campaign to lead the opinion research operation.
All of the new hires will report to campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, another veteran of Obama’s two campaigns. She managed Biden’s 2020 campaign and built his 2024 operation from the White House before moving to Wilmington, Del., this year. Harris took control of Biden’s campaign as soon as Biden announced he would not seek reelection, an operation consisting of more than 1,300 employees and more than 130 offices. She asked O’Malley Dillon to remain in charge.
O’Malley Dillon tried gaslighting this right off the bat, although the Washington Post doesn’t put it that way. “This team is a reflection of the vice president,” she declared, but the Post’s reporting makes it abundantly clear that it reflects Obama rather than Harris. Harris’ existing staffers will remain in place, but the reporting strongly suggests that they will be eclipsed by people who [checks notes] know how to get to Iowa in a primary cycle.
On one hand, this is smart politics, especially given Harris’ record of abysmal performance on the campaign trail. Until now, Harris has only faced one significant competitive election against a Republican, the AG race in California, which she almost lost while other Democrats won statewide races by double digits. Thanks to California’s jungle-primary system, she won her Senate seat against a fellow Democrat in the general election. She then failed to get to a single primary contest in 2020 after entering that primary cycle as one of the favorites, melting down in two debate exchanges with Tulsi Gabbard and utterly failing to inspire Democrat primary voters.
If anyone needs an Obama rescue, it’s Kamala.
Still. During most of Biden’s presidency, Obama’s team largely drove policy, especially in foreign affairs, and Biden’s clear cognitive decline made it appear that someone pulled the strings behind the scene — and Obama was the most likely suspect. Then Biden got humiliated in a debate he demanded and suddenly Obama became even more of a public puppeteer in forcing Biden to withdraw. And now practically his entire political team has taken over Team Kamala even more than they had with Team Biden.
And not to be too conspiratorial about it, but how did we find out about this? In the oh-so-traditional Friday afternoon news dump.
It seems like the Democrats’ rule of thumb is: if you can’t win, cheat.
On Thursday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed itself and will now allow Arizonans to register to vote in federal races without having to prove citizenship.
“It’s another dizzying swerve in the legal battle over a 2022 law that aims ultimately to reverse a portion of the National Voter Registration Act and require all Arizona voters to show proof of citizenship to register to vote,” reports USA Today. “The order reopens a path for potential voters who just two weeks ago were barred from using the state voter registration form to sign up to vote unless they could produce proof of U.S. citizenship. It comes with two months left before the Oct. 7 registration deadline for the high-stakes presidential election.”
The order means people can again use the state-issued voter registration form even if they don’t produce proof of citizenship. Instead, they attest under penalty of perjury that they are citizens, and are limited to voting in federal races only.
In the first 10 days after the July 18 ruling that required the documentary proof, the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office said it had rejected 200 voter applications.
On Thursday, the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office clarified the impact of the ruling.
“Election officials may not reject voter registration applications submitted without DPOC, regardless of which form is used,” communications director Aaron Thacker said. DPOC is shorthand for documentary proof of citizenship.
There is only one reason to allow Arizonans the ability to register to vote without proving citizenship: to let illegals vote. That’s why Joe Biden opened up the border, and that’s why the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed itself.
America First Legal (AFL) has filed a lawsuit against Maricopa County, Arizona recorder Stephen Richer for failing to remove non-citizens from county voter rolls.
On Monday the legal organization founded by former senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller sued Richer and Maricopa County on behalf of the Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona and a registered voter and naturalized citizen, for allegedly refusing to verify the citizenship of voters registered in the county, Just the News reports.
On July 16, AFL sent letters to all 15 Arizona counties demanding that election officials follow state and federal law by ensuring that non-citizens were unable to vote, and warned of legal action if they didn’t by the following week.
America First Legal (AFL) has filed a lawsuit against Maricopa County, Arizona recorder Stephen Richer for failing to remove non-citizens from county voter rolls.
On Monday the legal organization founded by former senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller sued Richer and Maricopa County on behalf of the Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona and a registered voter and naturalized citizen, for allegedly refusing to verify the citizenship of voters registered in the county, Just the News reports.
On July 16, AFL sent letters to all 15 Arizona counties demanding that election officials follow state and federal law by ensuring that non-citizens were unable to vote, and warned of legal action if they didn’t by the following week.
Richer replied via his legal counsel, claiming that he’s following the law by verifying the citizenship of voters – however AFL says he’s lying, as voter rolls have had an increase in the number of registered voters without confirmed citizenship under his watch, and that databases have not been accessed which would verify voters’ citizenship.
CNN: “Do you think Kamala Harris is black?” Actual black people in a barbershop: “Nope.” CNN: “You black people have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Tim Walz’s first executive order as the Democratic governor of Minnesota governor was establishing a diversity, equity and inclusion council for all of the state government’s actions and designated himself as the chair. On Tuesday, Waltz was selected to be Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 presidential election.
The Democratic Vice Presidential nominee told The Associated Press in 2019 that the “One Minnesota Council on Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity” would ensure the “lens of equity” for all state government businesses, including “recruiting; retaining and promoting state employees; state government contracting; and civic engagement.”
“Walz told reporters Wednesday he’ll chair the council,” the AP said at the time, “patterned on a similar council formed by former Gov. Mark Dayton, but expand its scope to include geographic diversity and other considerations.” Walz said that the point of the council, per AP, was to “work to ensure that all Minnesotans have the opportunity to fully participate in the development of state policy. He says it will ensure that the ‘lens of equity’ is focused on everything the state does, whether it’s transportation projects or hiring.”
He has spoken many times about the “privilege” he’s been given as a “white man.” “I understand the privilege I’ve been given as a white man,” he said during his leadership, saying that he was in office “not just to talk about the problem” of racial disparity “but the solve the problem.”
It was late in the spring of 2005 when Tom Behrends, a farmer in his mid 40s with three kids, got the call from his superiors: The Minnesota National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery was being sent to Iraq. Tim Walz, the unit’s command sergeant major, had just resigned to run for Congress. Behrends was in line to take his place.
He’d need to talk with his family, Behrends told his bosses. He had a farm to run and his youngest child was still in elementary school. Because he wasn’t in the unit when it was activated, technically Behrends had to volunteer to go.
But Behrends told National Review it was clear what he needed to do.
“My first reaction was, I’m not going to let my soldiers down,” he said.
Behrends ended up spending 17 difficult months in Iraq with the unit. Among the unit’s tasks was maintaining a key supply route, keeping it clear of explosives. Three of his soldiers were killed and dozens more were injured during the tour, he said.
Although they were both first sergeants in the Minnesota Guard, Behrends said he didn’t really know much about Walz. They were in meetings together. “The only thing I knew about him is he talked too much, and he liked to hear himself talk,” Behrends said.
When Democrats decide they need a veteran to help disguise their radical nature, they inevitable seem to pick a “blue falcon,” dating back at least as far as tapping John Kerry in 2004.
The Tim Walz Stolen Valor story goes back to the very beginning of his political career. From the onset of his foray into national politics, Walz sold himself to the public and the media as a combat veteran of the Global War on Terror, masking the reality that he quit the military to run for office and avoid being deployed to Iraq.
Thanks to some quality reporting, we know that the Minnesota governor — who yesterday officially joined the Kamala Harris campaign for President as its VP on the ticket — quit the military in 2005, after learning that his battalion was about to be sent to Iraq. Walz spent his entire career in the Army National Guard learning to lead people into battle, with training and his lone six month overseas deployment to Italy provided at U.S. taxpayer expense. He then retired when he learned he was going to be leading people into battle in Iraq, leaving Minnesota’s 125th Field Artillery Regiment high and dry for a career in politics.
But that’s not what Tim Walz told the public when he decided to run for public office upon abruptly leaving the military.
Just months after leaving his battalion to go to Iraq without him, he announced a run for Congress, and the dissembling about his service record began immediately.
Instead of being honest about his early departure from the military, Walz told the media a much more heroic tale, one that was entirely fictitious.
To this day there are Democrats who believe that Walz served in Iraq, when he never got closer than Italy.
When the US Marine Corps asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it.
When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, he dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him. I think that's shameful. pic.twitter.com/Dq9xjn4R51
Minnesota National Guard spox Army Lieutenant Colonel Kristen Augé told Just the News that Walz, Kamala Harris’ vice presidential running mate, was demoted and did not retire as a command sergeant major as he has claimed for years – including on his official gubernatorial biography – as he failed to complete a 750-hour course in the Army’s Sergeants Major Academy, a mandatory course for E-9s, the Army’s highest enlisted rank.
While Walz temporarily held the title of command sergeant major he “retired as a master sergeant in 2005 for benefit purposes because he did not complete additional coursework at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy,” Army Lt. Col. Kristen Augé, the Minnesota National Guard’s State Public Affairs Officer, told Just the News.
The statement reignited a controversy that began during his 2018 election for governor in which National Guardsman claimed on social media and in a paid ad that Walz declined to deploy to Iraq for combat duty in 2005 and forfeited his title of command sergeant major. Walz chose to run for Congress that year. -Just the News
The governor’s biography, however, says that “Command Sergeant Major Walz” retired from the Minnesota National Guard in 2005. At the time he was serving as one of the highest ranking members of the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion.
How is it that stolen valor and career embellishment are so endemic among Democratic office holders? Is it status anxiety, or the arrogance of the entitled? “It’s OK to lie about my record, because I deserve this!”
Ex-UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter’s home in upstate New York was raided by the FBI as part of a federal investigation, Wednesday, officials said.
An FBI spokeswoman confirmed to The Post that agents conducted a raid on the Delmar home as part of a federal investigation. She declined to comment further, citing the ongoing probe.
Ritter, a convicted sex offender, told reporters outside his Delmar home after the raid that the warrant focused on potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the Times Union reported.
He recently had his passport seized by the US Department of State as he tried to fly to Russia for a conference – a brouhaha he contended in the Russian propaganda site RT was a spiteful move against his pro-Russia stances.
The raid came a day after Ritter, the former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, palled around with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was in an Albany courtroom for a hearing over whether the independent presidential candidate should be on New York’s November ballot, the Times Union reported.
Ritter is indeed a Russian tool, but the timing from our increasingly politicized FBI does seem a tad suspicious…
Google has engaged in illegal activity by using its search-engine dominance to thwart competition, a federal judge ruled on Monday in a landmark decision that could have major implications for the way Americans consume information.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled against Google this week, after the Department of Justice and a coalition of state attorneys general challenged the tech company’s market dominance in 2020. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said in the decision that Google is a “monopolist” that has “acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” Google paid $26.3 billion in 2021, for example, to promote its search engine as the default option on smartphones and browsers.
“The default is extremely valuable real estate,” Mehta wrote. “Even if a new entrant were positioned from a quality standpoint to bid for the default when an agreement expires, such a firm could compete only if it were prepared to pay partners upwards of billions of dollars in revenue share and make them whole for any revenue shortfalls resulting from the change.”
“Google, of course, recognizes that losing defaults would dramatically impact its bottom line. For instance, Google has projected that losing the Safari default would result in a significant drop in queries and billions of dollars in lost revenues,” he added.
Once again, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton took a leading role in bringing the lawsuit. “The legal battle began in October 2020 when Paxton announced that Texas had sued Google for utilizing business strategies to squelch competition for search advertising and internet searches.”
We have been discussing media rating systems being used to target advertisers and revenue sources for certain cites and companies. NewsGuard and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) have been criticized as the most sophisticated components of a modern blacklisting system targeting conservative or dissenting voices. I recently had a series of exchanges with NewsGuard after a critical column. Now, the House Judiciary Committee under Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is moving forward in demanding documents and records from leading companies utilizing the GARM system, a company that I have previously criticized. It is a welcomed effort for anyone who is concerned over the use of these blacklisting systems to curtail free speech. However, time is of the essence.
The demand to preserve evidence went to various companies, including Adidas, American Express, Bayer, BP, Carhartt, Chanel, CVS and General Motors.
In my new book, I discuss the rating systems as a new and insidious form of blacklisting.
It is an effort to strangle the financial life out of sites by targeting their donors and advertisers. This is where the left has excelled beyond anything that has come before in speech crackdowns.
Years ago, I wrote about the Biden administration supporting efforts like the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) to discourage advertisers from supporting certain sites. All of the 10 riskiest sites targeted by the index were popular with conservatives, libertarians and independents. That included Reason.org and a group of libertarian and conservative law professors who simply write about cases and legal controversies. GDI warned advertisers against “financially supporting disinformation online.” At the same time, HuffPost, a far-left media outlet, was included among the 10 sites at lowest risk of spreading disinformation.
Once GDI’s work and bias was disclosed, government officials quickly disavowed the funding. It was a familiar pattern. Within a few years, we found that the work had been shifted instead to groups like the GARM, which is the same thing on steroids. It is the creation of a powerful and largely unknown group called the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), which has huge sway over the advertising industry and was quickly used by liberal activists to silence opposing views and sites by cutting off their revenue streams.
Notably, Rob Rakowitz, head of GARM, pushed GDI and embraced its work. In an email to GARM members obtained by the committee last month, Rakowitz wrote that he wanted to “ensure you’re working with an inclusion and exclusion list that is informed by trusted partners such as NewsGuard and GDI — both partners to GARM and many of our members.”
GARM is being used by WFA to achieve what GDI failed to accomplish. The WFA sites refers to Rakowitz as “a career change agent” who will “remove harmful content from ad-supported digital media.”
Rakowitz’s views on free speech are chilling and his work shows how these systems can be used to conceal bias in targeting the revenue of sites with opposing views.
Rakowitz has denounced the “extreme global interpretation of the US Constitution” and how civil libertarians cite “‘principles for governance’ and applying them as literal law from 230 years ago (made by white men exclusively).”
He appears to be referring to free speech.
Know who else isn’t wild about GARM? Elon Musk, who’s suing them for coordinated boycott of Twitter/X.
Elon Musk’s X sued a coalition of advertisers leading a boycott against the social platform, accusing the group of conspiring to “collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue.”
The suit takes aim at the World Federation of Advertisers and its initiative called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), which led a boycott against the platform formerly known as Twitter after it was acquired by Musk in 2022.
“The boycott and its effects continue to this day, despite X applying brand safety standards comparable to those of its competitors and which meet or exceed those specified by GARM,” reads the lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in Texas federal court.
X accused the coalition and several specific advertisers, namely Unilever, Mars and CVS, of violating antitrust law and circumventing the competitive process with their boycott.
“The brand safety standards set by GARM should succeed or fail in the marketplace on their own merits and not through the coercive exercise of market power by advertisers acting collectively to promote their own economic interests through commercial restraints at the expense of social media platforms and their users,” the platform argued.
Since Musk’s takeover of the platform, X has struggled to retain advertisers, which were wary of the tech billionaire’s early decisions to roll back content moderation policies and reinstate previously banned users, like former President Trump.
An advertising industry initiative targeted by an Elon Musk lawsuit is “discontinuing” its activities and has deleted the member list from its website.
On Tuesday, Musk’s X Corp. sued the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) over what X claims is an illegal boycott spearheaded by a WFA initiative called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). The WFA isn’t disbanding but is halting GARM’s activities, and the GARM member page now produces a 404 error. An archived version of the page from yesterday shows the initiative members, including X.
X’s antitrust lawsuit has drawn skeptical responses from law professors, who say it will be difficult to prove that companies violated antitrust laws by stopping advertisements. But while X may never obtain financial damages from the advertising group or corporations like CVS and Unilever that it also named as defendants, fighting the lawsuit could be costly.
Business Insider reported on the GARM shutdown today:
The advertising trade group The World Federation of Advertisers told its members on Thursday that it was “discontinuing” activities for its Global Alliance for Responsible Media initiative following an antitrust lawsuit filed by Elon Musk’s X against the company earlier this week.
Stephan Loerke, the CEO of the WFA, wrote in an email to members, seen by Business Insider, that the decision was “not made lightly” but that GARM is a not-for-profit organization with limited resources. Loerke said that the WFA and GARM intended to contest the allegations in X’s suit in court and were confident the outcome of the case would “demonstrate our full adherence to competition rules in all our activities.”
If that’s not an open admission of guilt, it will do until one comes along. In the meantime, expect this censorship hydra to put up again under another same.
What has all that investment in “green” energy gotten California? “Since January 2014, residential average rates for the PG&E service area have jumped by 110%, those of SCE have surged by 90%, and SDG&E rates have soared by 82%….A total of 18.4% of the customers of the three investor-owned utilities are in arrears in their energy bills.”
“Bangladesh Leader Flees Country In Helicopter As Protesters Storm Parliament.” “Bangladesh’s long-serving Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, resigned and fled the country on Monday, after protesters defied a military curfew and stormed her official residence. Hasina, who had been in power for 15 years, fled the capital Dhaka along with her sister by a helicopter to India, the daily newspaper Prothom Alo reported, after weeks of violent crack downs on protesters left nearly 300 people dead.”
“Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus took charge of Bangladesh’s caretaker government on Thursday, hoping to help heal the country that was convulsed by weeks of violence, forcing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to quit and flee to neighbouring India. Known as the ‘banker to the poor’, Yunus is the pioneer of the global microcredit movement. The Grameen Bank he founded won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for helping lift millions from poverty by providing tiny loans to the rural poor who are too impoverished to gain attention from traditional banks.” I’d be more enthused about Yunus if their bank hadn’t been a contributor to the Clinton Global Initiative.
Just a normal everyday traffic stop: pulling over a couple of Chinese nationals, driving through Texas, with $250,000 worth of gold bars on their person.
That was the scene last week in Van Zandt County, according to KETK NBC.
Sgt. Charlie Hughes of the Wills Point Police Department was monitoring traffic on I-20 near the 533-mile marker when he saw a White Chevy Malibu with Michigan plates committing a traffic violation.
He then stopped the vehicle and identified the driver as 25-year-old Weijian Chen.
KETK writes that due to a language barrier, Hughes asked Chen to use a translator app in his patrol vehicle to communicate.
The officer said that during the interview he “observed multiple factors that lead [him] to believe there was criminal activity afoot.”
The driver said that he was heading to Dallas and had also been in Florida to “play”.
The vehicle was rented under the name of the passenger, 46-year-old Wenqiang Lin, who consented to a search but appeared uncertain. A K9 unit alerted to the front passenger door.
Inside, officials found a Spirit Airlines boarding pass indicating that Weijian Chen had flown from Los Angeles to Atlanta on July 30-31 without any bags. The rental agreement showed the car was rented in College Park, Georgia, on July 31 and was due in Los Angeles by August 3, the report continued.
A bag behind the driver’s seat contained gold bullion bars worth an estimated $200,000 to $250,000, including:
Seven 1-ounce 999.9 gold bars
Three 5-gram 999.9 gold bars
One 1-gram 999.9 gold bar marked with 20 squares
Eight 10-ounce 999.9 gold bars
After arresting Chen and Lin, Sgt. Hughes contacted U.S. Homeland Security, which revealed both men had entered the country illegally. Lin entered on September 15, 2023, and was awaiting immigration processing in Los Angeles. Chen entered on December 17, 2023, and is also pending immigration judicial action.
“Austin ISD Chief Financial Officer Arrested on Insurance Fraud Charges. Austin Independent School District (ISD) Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Eduardo Ramos has been placed on paid leave following his arrest on charges of insurance fraud unrelated to district activities.” Maybe. But I’d still say a forensic audit is in order…
The New York State Supreme Court has denied New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s request for a preliminary injunction against busing illegal immigrants from Texas to the city.
Adams, who faces challenges from New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and others in his reelection bid next year, filed a lawsuit against 17 charter bus companies in January.
His goal was to stop the companies from busing migrants, many of them undocumented, from communities in Texas to New York. The mayor cited Social Services Law 149, which stipulates that any person “who knowingly brings, or causes to be brought, a needy person from out of state into this state for the purpose of making him a public charge” has an obligation “to convey such person out of state or support him at his own expense.”
But in her nine-page July 29 ruling, Judge Mary V. Rosado found that the lawsuit was “unconstitutional.”
Maybe if NYC hadn’t gone out of its way to declare itself a “sanctuary city” I might feel a tiny more smidge of sympathy. Who am I kidding, no I wouldn’t. This is all on Adams’ Democratic Party. Choke on it.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has provided an update to an investigation related to allegations that the Democratic fundraising operation ActBlue is involved in illicit activities.
“ActBlue has cooperated with our ongoing investigation. They have changed their requirements to now include ‘CVV’ codes for donations on their platform,” Paxton said in the press release.
“This is a critical change that can help prevent fraudulent donations.”
Paxton added that “suspicious activity on fundraising platforms must be fully investigated to determine if any laws have been broken.”
This alleged “suspicious activity” by ActBlue in Texas has been an ongoing point of contention.
Current Revolt first reported on the investigation into ActBlue and the allegedly illegitimate donations last week.
Journalist James O’Keefe recently produced a series of videos where he purported to show alleged money laundering by ActBlue in Texas.
According to O’Keefe, some individuals in Texas are being reported by ActBlue to have made thousands of individual donations, but said individuals deny them when asked if they made those contributions.
O’Keefe received a statement from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office regarding some of these incidents.
“It appears that both donors made voluntary contributions through ActBlue. One donor was reimbursed after contesting some of the charges, while the other cannot recall whether all or only some of the donations were authorized,” the sheriff’s office told O’Keefe.
I suspect ActBlue will drop any reforms just as soon as they need to launder more money.
“Federal Court Orders California College To Drop Censorship Policy. A federal judge ordered a California community college on Aug. 2 not to enforce a poster policy that was used against three students whose anti-communist posters were taken down. U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston found that the poster policy of Fresno-based Clovis Community College violated the students’ First Amendment and 14th Amendment rights.”
Warner Brothers Discovery took $9.1 billion write-down on it’s network TV assets. As many have observed, this means that not only is CNN worthless from the standpoints of truth, philosophy and morals, but that it’s quite literally worthless as an economic asset as well. It may actually be worth less than your grandmother’s closet full of Beanie Babies…
Actually, it could be worth considerably less than nothing. “CNN Could Be Forced to Pay Upwards of $1 Billion from Defamation Suit from Tapper Show.”
The case may not be as well known (yet), but CNN could be facing a defamation liability rivaling or exceeding the $787 million Fox News paid out to Dominion Voting Systems. NewsBusters recently reported on Florida’s First District Court of Appeals affirming that plaintiff Zachary Young could seek punitive damages, in addition to economic and emotional damages, from the Cable News Network in a civil trial after they allegedly defamed him regarding his work in getting people out of Afghanistan. The total could near or exceed $1 billion.
For that outcome to be remotely in the cards, Young needed to prove malice and according to the ruling, he’s done exactly that. “Young sufficiently proffered evidence of actual malice, express malice, and a level of conduct outrageous enough to open the door for him to seek punitive damages,” Judge L. Clayton Roberts wrote in the court’s ruling.
The court felt the high bars for actual and expressed malice were met because of internal CNN messages that were extremely vicious toward Young. Correspondent Alex Marquardt, the “primary reporter” expressed in a message to a colleague that he wanted to “nail this Zachary Young mfucker” and thought the story would be Young’s “funeral.” On that declaration of wanting to “nail” Young, CNN editor Matthew Philips responded: “gonna hold you to that cowboy!”
Alongside Marquardt, CNN senior editor Fuzz Hogan, who’s a member of CNN’s internally lauded “Triad” of editorial, legal, and standards/practices oversight personnel, described Young as “a shit.”
In an interview with NewsBusters, Vel Freedman, the lawyer representing Young, said that “everyone makes mistakes” but what CNN’s messages showed was a “systemic problem” inside the network. He added that their internal mechanism for accountability had “clearly failed” and opened themselves to “massive, massive liability.”
Freedman told NewsBusters that his client had lost between $40-60 million in economic opportunity over the course of his now-damaged career as a security contractor since people in the field no longer wanted to work with him. If a jury awarded his client for emotional damages, the upper end could be as high as $600 million. The court recognizing the malice and outrageous conduct by CNN, effectively removed the cap on punitive damages in the State of Florida.
All of that meant CNN could be facing upwards of $1 billion in total damages.
Dell lays off 12,500 employees. The Biden Recession is bad for everyone, but especially tech workers.
“Tim Walz Vows To Make America As Great As Minneapolis.” “As the governor who presided over the looting and burning of Minneapolis during the summer of 2020, I have full confidence that I will be able to apply my experience stirring up race riots on the national scale as well as I have in my home state.”
I think these LinkSwarms have gotten too long. Since I’m I’m still between jobs, I have more time to waste on read the Internet. “Oh, there’s a link I should include!” Wash, rinse, repeat. I’m either going to have to start cutting these down in size or start doing multiple LinkSwarms a week.
Austin’s leftwing political class always wants to be at the forefront of any trendy ecofriendly or green initiative. That includes transitioning to an all-electric bus fleet. How well is that working out for them? According to this piece Dwight sent over, not so hot.
Capital Metro is slamming the brakes on an ambitious goal of transitioning to an all-electric bus fleet, citing problems with the range of battery-electric buses.
Austin voters were promised a transit system with exclusively electric vehicles when they authorized a tax increase in 2020 to fund Project Connect, the largest transit expansion in the city’s history. Zero-emissions buses are quieter and don’t blast hot exhaust in the faces of people on the sidewalk.
“Honestly, we thought and hoped that the technology would progress a little faster than it has,” CapMetro CEO Dottie Watkins told KUT. “The biggest downside of a battery-electric bus today is its range.”
Diesel buses can run from early in the morning until past midnight. A battery bus only runs about 8 to 10 hours before it needs to be recharged, creating tough logistical hurdles in scheduling routes.
An analysis by the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) — a state-funded research agency at Texas A&M University — found battery-electric buses could only cover 36% of Capital Metro’s bus schedules.
“If [the route] is too long, it won’t make it,” said John Overman, a research scientist with TTI. “You’re going to have to charge them mid-route or wherever it is.” Austin’s hills drain batteries faster. So does trying to cool buses in the city’s oppressive heat.
Why rely on the opinions of experts when they’re at odds with your green fantasies?
But range shortcomings are only part of the problem.
Data obtained by KUT through the Texas Public Information Act revealed CapMetro’s battery-electric buses are far less reliable than their diesel counterparts. E-buses had mechanical failures on average every 1,623 miles over the last year — less than half the typical distance between failures for the fleet as a whole.
Mechanical problems should be an area where electrical vehicles shine, as there’s so many things that can go wrong in a diesel engine. The fact they’re less reliable is a big red flag.
Mechanical problems, coupled with challenges in procuring parts and doing repairs, mean battery-electric buses are often unavailable for service. In 2022, almost 52% of e-buses were down, on average. In 2023, the number of vehicles out for repair improved slightly to an average of just under 50%.
“Getting the expertise up and being able to have those vehicles be as reliable as our old workhorse diesel buses have been is a challenge,” Watkins said. “It’s something that we are up to.”
On top of range and reliability issues, both companies Capital Metro hired to build its battery-electric buses faced major financial challenges. Proterra and New Flyer blamed the problems on pandemic-related supply chain issues and inflation that drove up manufacturing costs after major contracts were signed.
One of the two bus builders didn’t survive.
Proterra, a company from the San Francisco Bay area, went bankrupt last year and sold off the firm in pieces to pay back debtors. The new owner of Proterra’s e-bus business — Anaheim, California-based Phoenix Motorcar — still has no battery provider or vehicle software ready to deploy, TTI’s Overman said.
The other supplier — New Flyer — bled almost $300 million after the pandemic but appears to have staunched the wound. The Winnipeg, Canada company reported a smaller loss of $9 million in the first quarter of 2024 thanks to record-breaking order numbers.
CapMetro is operating 23 battery-electric buses among a fleet of 402 buses, not including commuter buses or shuttle buses. Another 87 e-buses already ordered are expected to be delivered by the end of the year. Some will replace aging diesel vehicles.
Once all the e-buses arrive, Watkins says, about a quarter of CapMetro’s fleet will be battery-powered. The agency will then “sit for a minute while we wait for the battery technology to catch up.”
By most measures, CapMetro is a leader in the shift to an all-electric fleet. With 25% electric buses, the transit agency’s adoption rate would exceed that of countries with far more political and financial support for zero-emissions vehicles like Belgium, Norway and Switzerland.
“China is a leader in electric bus sales, and about a quarter of the bus fleet in China is electric today,” said Elizabeth Connelly, a transportation electrification researcher at the Paris-based International Energy Agency. “So if Austin’s reaching that same level, I think it’s nothing to scoff at. I think it’s pretty impressive.”
Knowing Chinese quality, their electric busses are probably just as unreliable.
Santiago, Chile — considered a world leader in electric bus adoption — has 30% of its fleet running on batteries, Connelly said.
“Reaching the 100% level can be fairly tricky,” she said. “It’s not as easy as it seems.”
New buses ordered by Capital Metro over the next two to three years will be hybrid diesel vehicles, which are electric buses powered by an on-board diesel generator. The transit agency also wants to use federal grants to buy a small number of hydrogen fuel cell buses, an even more cutting-edge and untested technology than battery-electric buses.
The hybrid and hydrogen vehicles would have a similar range to a diesel bus, Watkins said.
Capital Metro announced the shift to an all-electric fleet in 2018 under then-CEO Randy Clarke. The next year, Clarke invited TV cameras to watch a demolition crew smash down an old mattress factory to make way for a bus charging yard in North Austin.
“This is it!” Clarke exclaimed to reporters. “We’re knocking down an old facility … to build the bus fleet facility of the future.”
Later that day, the CapMetro board followed suit, authorizing the agency’s largest electric bus purchase ever at the time: 10 vehicles from Proterra. Each bus cost more than a million dollars, almost twice as much as the diesel buses approved for purchase the same day.
“We’re going to be able to save money, provide a better customer service and deal with climate change issues,” Clarke pledged to the board. In 2022, Clarke left Austin to lead the transit system in the Washington, D.C. area.
Some were hesitant about betting big on emerging technology. Eric Stratton, a Williamson County representative then just four months into his tenure on the CapMetro board, wondered if Proterra would be able to stand by its relatively new product.
“So that five years in, six years in, eight years in, [if] things start happening, we’ve got the support behind it so we can continue to maintain it. Do you all feel comfortable this is the case?” Stratton grilled Watkins, then vice president in charge of bus services.
“Yes, that is indeed the case,” said Watkins, enthusiastic about the future of electric propulsion. “Proterra’s a very strong partner and I have no concerns at all that they won’t be able to support the bus for the full life of the bus.”
The board gave unanimous approval to the $11 million contract. But that was just the beginning.
In 2021, the board shoved its stack of chips on the table. Capital Metro would plop down up to $255 million for 197 electric buses. This time, the deal would be split between two manufacturers: Canada’s New Flyer and Proterra, the politically connected California firm that hosted President Biden for a virtual tour earlier that year.
Long before CapMetro received all its electric buses, Proterra would be in a Delaware bankruptcy court chopping up the company and selling it off in pieces. Transit agencies across North America revealed private concerns in public court fillings, alleging the buses were mechanically unreliable, lost range in adverse weather and in rare cases would burst into flames.
That surefire Biden touch at work again.
Capital Metro admitted at the time of the bankruptcy proceedings that the shift to an all-electric fleet was hitting speed bumps.
“The reliability of electric buses no matter the manufacturer is less than a diesel bus. I’m not going to tell you they operate as well as diesel bus,” CapMetro chief operating officer Andy Skabowski told KUT last December. “We’re going to see some vehicles that are down a little bit longer than a diesel bus.”
In many ways, busses are a better fit for electrification than cars: Regular routes plus nighttime storage at a bus yard that can be equipped with industrial strength chargers should theoretically eliminate the range and recharging anxiety still common for many electric car owners. But poor range and lousy quality show that electric busses (at least the ones Austin bought) aren’t ready for prime time. The high environmental costs of lithium battery production means they don’t reduce those dreaded “carbon emissions” when considering the whole lifecycle of the product. And given newer clean diesel technologies, improvements in day-to-day emissions are probably pretty marginal as well.
From light rail to electric busses, when it comes to “green” transportation initiatives, Austin seems to have a real knack for picking losers.
More dirt comes out about the (intentionally?) shoddy security at Trump’s Butler rally, Netanyahu addresses congress, China bribes some Democrats, Israel hits the Houthis, Redbox users are screwed, and Sanrio upends the world with a shocking revelation. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
More whistleblowers are coming forward with damning allegations about the law-enforcement failures surrounding the failed assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump.
Whistleblowers with “direct knowledge” of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) handling of the Trump rally in Butler, Pa., last weekend came forward to Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) alleging that the rally was a “loose” security event featuring personnel drawn from a different wing of DHS who were not trained for such an event.
“Whistleblowers who have direct knowledge of the event have approached my office. According to the allegations, the July 13 rally was considered to be a ‘loose’ security event. For example, detection canines were not used to monitor entry and detect threats in the usual manner. Individuals without proper designations were able to gain access to backstage areas. Department personnel did not appropriately police the security buffer around the podium and were also not stationed at regular intervals around the event’s security perimeter,” Hawley wrote in a letter sent Friday to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
“In addition, whistleblower allegations suggest the majority of DHS officials were not in fact USSS agents but instead drawn from the department’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). This is especially concerning given that HSI agents were unfamiliar with standard protocols typically used at these types of events, according to the allegations.”
Embattled Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday after her refusal to answer basic questions in front of a congressional committee drew bipartisan calls for her resignation.
Cheatle stepped down ten days after the assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump, one of the most significant law-enforcement failures in American history, and the defining moment of her law-enforcement career.
Snip.
At a hearing with the House Oversight Committee Monday, Cheatle brought Republicans and Democrats together in calling for her resignation. She repeatedly failed to answer basic questions about what went wrong at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pa., instead deflecting to the Secret Service’s ongoing investigation and the FBI’s separate investigation.
Cheatle admitted the assassination attempt was the Secret Service’s most consequential failure in decades, but did not disclose much information, despite being under subpoena.
She did not have a specific timeline of what law enforcement did after the shooter was first discovered, failed to explain why agents were not deployed onto the rooftop the gunman equipped, declined to comment on specific personnel assignments for the Trump rally, did not elaborate on why the rooftop was outside of the Secret Service’s perimeter, would not commit to firing anyone involved with the Trump rally, and deflected each time Trump’s requests for enhanced security came up.
She did tell lawmakers that she had not visited the crime scene, nine days after Trump was wounded when a bullet grazed his right ear. After the attack, Cheatle said she called Trump to apologize.
The Secret Service will have an internal report on what went wrong at the Trump rally in 60 days, a timeline multiple lawmakers told Cheatle is unacceptable given the intensity of the presidential campaign and America’s political climate.
We're only starting to dig into the cover-up of Biden's cognitive decline. Everyone knows Kamala Harris is going to be under the microscope.
But key to the cover-up was Kim Cheatle. Look at her record (detailed below), and it's clear she was hired to help conceal from the… pic.twitter.com/Q9uHlhgm0E
Never in modern presidential history has a political party staged a veritable inside coup to remove their current president from his ongoing candidacy for his party’s nomination and reelection.
Stranger still, the very elites and grandees, who now are using every imaginable means of deposing Biden as their nominee, are the very public voices that just weeks ago insisted that candidate Biden was “sharp as a tack” and “fit as a fiddle.” And they damned any who thought otherwise!
They are also the identical operators whose machinations ensured that there would not be an open Democratic primary. They demonized the few on the Left who weakly challenged Biden in the primaries. Yet now they will select a replacement candidate who likely never received a single primary vote.
Note further: Biden’s impending forced abdication is not because he is non compos mentis.
Rather, the inside move is due to Biden’s disastrous debate exposure that confirmed his dementia could no longer be disguised by a conspiracy of leftist politicos and media.
But far more importantly, the impetus for removal is driven by the admission that the cognitively Biden is headed for a climactic November defeat.
Were Biden now ahead in the polls by five points, these same backroom machinists would be insisting that he was still Pericles.
Yet now Biden is being un-personed and Trotskyized, as we prepare the new groupthink narrative of his likely surrogate—a soon to be praised eloquent, mellifluous, and articulate Cicero-Harris.
That Biden will likely remain as president until January 20, 2025, should remind the country the Left is more worried about its own next four-year continuance in power than the fate of the country that now admittedly will be guided in the next six months by a president judged unfit by his own supporters to run for the very office that he will still keep holding.
Further irony arises when those who, as supposedly guardians of democratic norms, pontificated to the country the last nine years about the Trump-Hitlerian threat to democracy. Yet now they so cavalierly work overtime on how:
a) to pull off the removal of their candidate from the November ballot on grounds of senility,
b) but not the removal of the same president from office (their own fate is more precious than our collective fate as a nation),
c) while trying to select, rather than elect, a replace candidate,
d) without ever offering any explanation, much less an apology, how a Democrat president from January 20, 2021, was daily declared vibrant, dynamic, and engaged but suddenly one day after June 27, 2024, was remanufactured as not?
In this report on cell phone location (presumably from publicly-sourced advertising data, which should terrify you), the Heritage Foundation claims one device that regularly visited the Crooks home was tracked to DC near an FBI office.
Also strange was the fact that a device linked to the Crooks home had visited Butler twice in the week or so before the shooting (an hour and twenty minute drive).
Another device repeatedly visited Plymouth, Massachusetts, although how that connects to the Trump shooting is unknown.
Going back to last August, one device visited a local gun shop (again, not suspicious for an American to visit a gun shop unless this was the visit where the AR was purchased).
If this proves to be true link between the FBI and Crooks, the implications here are pretty frightening…
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was addressing congress, the pro-Hamas Useful Idiot Brigade was busy vandalizing national monuments.
Thousands of demonstrators filled the streets of downtown D.C. carrying signs with messages like “arrest Netanyahu” and “end all U.S. aid to Israel.” Groups waving Palestinian flags, and chanting “Free, free Palestine,” marched toward the U.S. Capitol.
Outside Union Station, protesters removed American flags and hoisted Palestinian ones in their place. The Columbus Memorial Fountain in the circle outside the station was defaced with the words, “Hamas Is Coming,” written in red paint. Other monuments, like the Freedom Bell and various statues, also suffered damage. FOX 5’s Stephanie Ramirez says law enforcement is preparing for more possible protests Thursday.
U.S. Capitol Police officers deployed pepper spray after they said some protesters became “violent” and “failed to obey” orders to move back from the police line.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had harsh words for anti-Israel protesters in his Wednesday address to a joint session of Congress, slamming the activists as “useful idiots” for Iran and other bad actors even as they congregated outside the Capitol.
“Defeating our brutal enemies requires both courage and clarity,” he said. “Clarity begins by knowing the difference between good and evil. Yet, incredibly, many anti-Israel protesters choose to stand with evil. They stand with Hamas. They stand with rapists and murderers. They stand with people who come into the kibbutzim — into the home — with the parents and the children, the two babies in the secret attic, and murder the parents, find the secret latch to the attic, find the babies, and they murder them. These protesters stand with them. They should be ashamed of themselves.”
Netanyahu referenced the claims from many anti-Israel protesters that Hamas terrorism constitutes legitimate resistance while Israel’s retaliatory war is out of bounds.
“They refuse to make the simple distinction between those who target terrorists and those who target civilians — between the democratic state of Israel and the terrorist thugs of Hamas,” he told the chamber.
The prime minister stressed in his speech that anti-Israel protesters are not just opposed to the existence of the Jewish state but are anti-American as well.
“These protesters burn American flags even on the Fourth of July.”
According to the 3,000-participant, three-year study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, giving people $1,000 per month increased leisure time, as recipients spent less time on sleeping, child care, community engagement, caring for others, and self-improvement.
The study also found that recipients’ income, not including the free money, reduced their incomes significantly, as “for every one dollar received, total household income excluding the transfers fell by at least 21 cents, and total individual income fell by at least 12 cents.”
“The takeaway from the best study done so far about UBI in the United States is that handing out money isn’t the solution to all our problems,” Daniel Di Martino, a economics researcher and graduate fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told The Center Square. “In fact, sometimes it makes things worse.”
Or they could have read pages 150-152 of Charles Murray’s Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980 for his summary of the results of the SIME/DIME experiments, which were similarly bleak.
After letting camps of drug-addicted transients overrun his state for years, California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom decides that he can finally start clearing out those camps, now that he has the cover of a Supreme Court ruling.
California governor Gavin Newsom directed state officials to remove homeless encampments across the Golden State on Thursday after the Supreme Court ruled in June that local governments have a right to ban public camping and impose fines for violators.
Newsom announced the guidance in an executive order, advising cities to crack down on encampments on public property while providing social services and housing alternatives. The order, first reported by the New York Times, represents a sharp departure from the accommodative homelessness policies adopted by progressive state governments over the last decade.
Note that “providing social services” means that the Homeless Industrial Complex will still be able to rake off the graft…
Food for thought:
Democrats are rigging their own election. Does anyone still believe they didn’t rig the 2020 election? https://t.co/G3svXIpKmp
CBS said nearly half of Americans can’t afford healthcare, but for some reason didn’t mention ObamaCare.
Americans spend more money on health care on a per capita basis than people in any other developed nation, yet almost half say they’ve struggled recently to pay for medical treatment or prescription drugs, according to a new study from Gallup and West Health.
About 45% of those polled by the organizations said they’d recently had to skip treatment or medicine either because of cost or lack of easy access. Of those, about 8% said they also wouldn’t have access to affordable care if they required it today, a group that Gallup and West Health termed ‘cost desperate.’
Snip.
The Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, became law back in 2010, and President Obama promised Americans that his legislation would “reduce the costs of health care” and that “families will save on premiums.” He said Americans could even keep their doctors and health plans – over and over again, in fact.
Instead, here’s what Obamacare did, according to America First Policy Institute:
Premiums have increased by 80%.
From 2010 to 2023, the average premium for family coverage increased 80%, from just over $13,000 to nearly $24,000.
Total healthcare costs for a family of four now exceed $30,000 per year — increasing from $18,000 per year when Obamacare was passed.
Deductibles have increased over 50% since Obamacare was implemented in 2013.
Speaking of Obama, he officially endorsed Harris, which presumably puts a surprise Michelle Obama nomination at the convention off the table.
Well you can add this to a list of reasons Democrats just can’t seem to stomach Elon Musk any more.
The U.S. subsidiary of Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BYD and its top executive, Stella Li, have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates and organizations over the past decade.
A review of federal and state political spending records by the Daily Caller News Foundation reveals these contributions.
They found that between 2020 and 2023, BYD and Stella Li contributed over $40,000 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Additionally, they have invested more than $30,000 into organizations supporting President Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign.
BYD, the world’s largest EV producer, was recently banned by Congress from selling batteries to the Pentagon due to security concerns, according to Bloomberg News.
The report says that between 2018 and 2023, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom received about $60,000 from Li and BYD USA. Newsom faced criticism for awarding BYD a $1 billion no-bid contract for protective equipment during the pandemic and later test-drove a BYD vehicle in China in 2023.
Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa received over $10,000 from Li for his unsuccessful 2018 gubernatorial campaign, while the California Democratic Party got about $19,000 from Li and BYD USA between 2018 and 2020.
In 2015 and 2016, BYD USA and its executives donated over $11,000 to Michael Antonovich, former Chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, who often supported BYD-friendly initiatives.
Additionally, BYD USA contributed $25,000 in 2018 to Californians For Safe, Reliable Infrastructure, a group opposing Proposition 6, which aimed to repeal a gas tax.
In 2017 and 2018, BYD USA and Stella Li donated over $19,000 to Los Angeles City Councilman Kevin de Leon. De Leon, then President pro Tempore of the California Senate, praised BYD at a 2017 ribbon-cutting for its Lancaster manufacturing facility, emphasizing the company’s role in job creation.
There’s an old saying in politics that “personnel is policy” which refers to a lot more than just having someone competent in the job. It’s a reflection that politics is about coalitions – building them and maintaining them. The coalition members get their cut of the government largess, and pay for it with loyalty to the guy at the top. If they’re not loyal, he gives them their pick slip and they lose the largess.
This was actually Trump’s biggest mistake when he was president, not filling the Federal Government with his coalition. In his defense, he was in the middle of a Republican civil war, where there were multiple factions and multiple coalitions.
That’s exactly what the Democrats face now, and why they can’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together. Because there are multiple coalitions, whoever emerges on top won’t know if he (she?) can trust these coalitions because they aren’t his coalitions. They might be able to be integrated into his coalition, given time, but time is exactly what the Democrats do not have right now.
It takes time to forge a governing coalition – just look at any parliamentary system: when the government is stable it is because the governing coalition is solid. Ministers can issue policy with a reasonable expectation that it will be supported and carried out by the coalition members. When the governing coalition is unstable, chaos results. Orders get ignored or slow walked or subverted because the Minister no longer has the loyalty of the coalition members.
Eventually a leader emerges who can attract key talent from outside coalitions and integrate it into his. This will involve rewards like positions in the bureaucracy or some such – featherbedding is the name of this game. But until this all gets sorted out and the new coalition is filled with people who think they’re better off with the new leader than without, nothing is going anywhere.
Even worse, there will always be serious back stabbing between different coalitions. Trust is not a virtue most politicians hew to, and quite frankly until they are in a position to remove perks as well as give them, they would be a fool to trust just about anybody.
Some day a leader will emerge to stitch together the various coalitions that make up the Democratic party. It won’t happen in the next 100 days, sure as God made little green apples.
The biggest implication of this is that it will be much more difficult for the Democrats to “fortify” the upcoming election via 2020-style shenanigans. Sure, the party bosses will want to, but how much do they trust the other coalitions to support them? Would other coalitions even go so far as to rat them out (with plausible deniability, of course) – leading to various party elders behind bars. That certainly would make it easier for other party elders to construct a winning coalition once they’ve taken out some of the competition.
Althouse: “Joe Biden seems bereft of the ordinary tools of human interchange.”
“Visibly Angry Kamala Harris Lashes Out At Israel After Netanyahu Meeting.” Of course she did. How dare Israel defend itself when she needs to suck up to all those pro-Hamas voters Democrats insisted on importing to Michigan?
Dispatches from the Biden Recession: Commercial real estate bond default rates hit “8.7% in 2024, nearly three times higher than two years ago.”
“Judge Rules for Musk’s SpaceX in Lawsuit Against National Labor Relations Board.” “Members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and administrative law judges (ALJ) employed by the board, are likely unconstitutionally protected from removal by the president, according to U.S. District Judge Alan Albright.”
Israel hits the Houthis. Looks like Israel is kicking just about all Iran’s catspaws in the nuts…
According to an indictment filed with the federal court, beginning in 2021 defendants working for or with AABLE Bonds of Houston created or co-signed fraudulent bond agreements that allowed non-qualifying suspects to obtain pre-trial release.
“An integral part of the criminal justice system, as old as the system itself, is the bail bond – a device that allows defendants temporary release while awaiting trial by guaranteeing future court appearances,” said U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani in a statement. “Honesty in the underwriting of those bail bonds is essential to ensuring compliance and protecting the community. However, this indictment alleges employees of AABLE Bonds and many others conspired to violate that trust.”
In addition to the 50 arrested, officials are seeking three fugitives: Tawana Jones, 44, Pamela Yoder, 60, and Amir Khan, 60.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office stated that co-conspirators allegedly emailed or submitted falsified co-signer financial reports via electronic communications. The office noted that the government and insurance agencies rely on these financial reports to enter into third-party agreements known as surety bonds.
Most of the 53 co-conspirators are charged in connection to alleged conspiracy to commit wire fraud, while AABLE Bonds CEO Sheba Muharib is charged with affecting persons engaged in the business of insurance.
The 11 named criminal defendants who obtained release under the allegedly fraudulent enterprise include Curtis Holliday, who has pleaded guilty to killing his wife and stuffing her body in a freezer. Another is the man who shot to death 17-year-old David Castro as the teen rode in a car with his family after an Astros baseball game in 2021.
David’s father Paul Castro noted on social media that Muharib had bonded out his son’s killer on a discount bond, but he also pointed to the role played by Harris County Justice of the Peace Angela Rodriguez.
“Remember that Judge Angela Rodriguez voted to renew Muharib’s bond license after Muharib showed herself to be a danger to our community,” wrote Castro.
Muharib has been the focus of investigations for several years. Her brother Wisam Muharib provided bail to a murder suspect who was later charged in the murder of Harris County Constable Deputy Omar Ursin.
Andy Kahan, Victim’s Advocate for Crime Stoppers of Houston, emphasized during a press conference Thursday that there were victims impacted by the fraudulent releases of suspects.
During the press event, resident April Aguirre said that after the man charged in the shooting death of her nine-year-old niece Arlene Alvarez was released on a bond by AABLE Bonds, her family became suspicious of some local bail bond companies.
Aguirre, Castro, and others worked with elected officials to change Harris County’s rules in 2022 to require that suspects charged with violent offenses pay at least 10 percent themselves to ensure release from jail, but during a press conference with Crime Stoppers of Houston, she said they suspected fraud was continuing.
“Murderers were still getting out on discounted bonds,” said Aguirre. “So, we started making complaints to the bail bond board and to our federal partners asking for help. We didn’t know what we were dealing with, and we could never have imagined how large this is.”
“But I can say one thing, we need to stop making money off dead children and we need to stop making money off of homicide victims. This should not be a lucrative business, it’s sick.”
Mario Garza, President of the Professional Bondsman of Harris County, said that there were bondsmen who followed the rules and helped support the criminal justice system but lamented that what was supposed to be a partnership between bondsmen and elected judges had broken down.
“Judges used to take that discretion seriously,” said Garza. “What we have is what’s morphed out a soft-on-crime criminal justice system that’s allowed a company like this to do what they’ve done.”
Kahan expressed concern that bail bond companies elsewhere may be operating similar schemes.
Cann’s files for Chapter 11 and will be closing 9 Texas stores, including one in Austin. When I was getting ready to move into my house in 2004, they were one of the stores I thought about buying appliances from, but people told me they hated dealing with Conn’s, so I ended up buying them from Lowes.
“Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley who was blocked from the Twitter account of the University of Oregon’s Division of Equity and Inclusion after tweeting ‘All men are created equal.'”
Unclear on the concept: “California judge says school was justified in punishing 7-year-old who said all lives matter because ‘she’s too young to have First Amendment rights.'”
Intel says it’s software, not hardware that is causing its latest generation of chips to fail. “Our analysis of returned processors confirms that the elevated operating voltage is stemming from a microcode algorithm resulting in incorrect voltage requests to the processor.” OK, microcode is embedded in the heart of the chip, but can be updated, which means that it doesn’t require expensive mask fixes.
The CDC is trying to keep people from importing dogs into the U.S.. This is going to impair the efforts of many dog rescue groups. A bipartisan group of senators is opposing. “The unprecedented requirements included in the final rule, such as the six-month minimum age requirement for dogs to enter the United States and the need for a microchip before a rabies vaccination and additional documentation and certification would create significant barriers to low-risk entry from Canada into the United States and have a disproportionate effect on border communities in our states.”
Everyone who “purchased” a movie from Redbox is now screwed because now that Redbox is bankrupt it turns out they’ve got nada.
If I’m reading between the lines here, Social Justice Warriors seized control of the Romance Writers of America, blew it up when they got caught, and left the organization $3 million in debt.
“Judge Refuses To Dismiss Trump Defamation Lawsuit Against ABC, Stephanopoulos. On Wednesday, a federal judge rejected a motion by ABC News and George Stephanopoulos to dismiss the defamation lawsuit filed against them by former President Donald Trump.”
In addition to setting the stage for amnesty to create more Democratic Party voters, the Biden Administration’s aiding and abetting an illegal alien invasion of the southern border has allowed leftwing social justice organizations to rake in billions of dollars in federal subsidies to house, feed, etc. those same hordes of illegal aliens.
Disturbing allegations are detailed in a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) against a large Texas-based nonprofit organization tasked and funded by the federal government for years with housing unaccompanied minor children (UMC) who are not legally present in the country.
According to data from the Congressional Research Service, the number of UMCs entering the United States has spiked to record numbers in recent years, with 2021 and 2022 seeing over 140,000 UMCs annually — one of many elements of the ongoing crisis at the southern border.
The lawsuit explains that UMCs are children largely from Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and all over the world who arrive at the U.S. southern border alone, with no parent or legal guardian. Immigration authorities turn the UMCs over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).
ORR then uses grant funding, usually by hiring nonprofit housing organizations, to provide shelter care for the UMCs in the “least restrictive setting possible” and that “will be in the best interest of the child.”
In this case, one of those nonprofits is Austin-based Southwest Key, which from 2015 to 2023 received $3 billion in federal grant funding and operates 29 facilities in Texas, Arizona, and California, housing 6,350 children.
The DOJ said during this timeline, multiple Southwest Key employees subjected children as young as 5 years of age to “repeated and unwelcome sexual abuse, harassment, misconduct, and hostile housing environments.”
The suit further details allegations that the children were victims of sexual abuse, rape, and inappropriate touching. The perpetrators employed by Southwest Key took advantage of the multiple vulnerabilities to carry out their crimes, such as language barriers.
The DOJ also said that despite Southwest Key knowing their employees were harming the children in their care, they did nothing, violating the federal Fair Housing Act.
Graphic details are included in the lawsuit, including how one of the workers sexually abused a five-year-old girl and an eight-year-old girl at the facility in El Paso, and kept them silent about their abuse by threatening to kill their families if they told anyone.
Pages of the lawsuit lay out in horrific detail similar instances occurring at Southwest Key facilities across Texas.
Remember how “kids in cages” under the Trump Administration (never mind that it started under Obama) was the Worst Thing Ever? So instead of cages, illegal alien children now have to endure rape at the hands of those paid to take care of them.
Funny how social justice Democrats have shifted their focus to the homeless and illegal aliens, two constituencies among the least able to complain that they’re being abused, or that promised services aren’t being delivered, making it all the easier to siphon off allocated funds for graft.
And illegal alien children are the least capable of complaining of all…
The assassination attempt against President Donald Trump was less than a week ago and a ton of news has come down the pike since. Biden replacement rumors fly hot and heavy, Trump secures renomination, Windows machines across the globe are down thanks to CrowdStrike, a League of Assholes rises in Africa, Chuy’s gets sold, and we say goodbye to a comedy legend. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The 81-year-old president repeatedly lost his train of thought on the call and was dismissive of the Democrats’ concerns about his 2024 re-election campaign following his train-wreck debate performance last month, Puck reported Wednesday, citing multiple sources…
‘The call was even worse than the debate. He was rambling; he’d start an answer then lose his train of thought, then would just say “whatever.” He really couldn’t complete an answer. I lost a ton of respect for him,’ one person on the call said.
‘The president was rambling, dismissive of concerns, unable or unprepared to present a campaign strategy,’ added a second source, who is a member of Congress.
Joe Biden’s escalating dementia and the long media-political conspiracy to hide his senility from the public are the least of the Democrats’ current problems.
Biden’s track record as president may be more concerning than his cognitive decline. He has literally destroyed the U.S. border, deliberately allowing the entry of more than 10 million illegal aliens. His callous handlers’ agenda was to import abjectly poor constituencies in need of vast government services without regard for the current struggles of a battered American middle class and poor.
The widespread poverty of a vast new cohort of illegal immigrants could serve as indictments of a “racist,” “unequal,” and “unfair” America—as if the residents of East Palestine, Ohio or inner-city Chicago had anything to do with the centuries-long corruption and oppression of Mexico and Latin America that daily drives thousands of their own poorest citizens northwards to a society founded on very different ideas than those of their homelands.
Note that the left, neither in Mexico nor in America, never asks why millions of these impoverished people prefer to break into a supposedly racist America. Much less do they even distinguish those principles and values that once made America prosperous, free, and secure from their antitheses that have sadly made much of Latin America mostly poor, without freedom, and insecure.
Biden inherited near-zero real interest rates and inflation at 1.4 percent. Almost immediately, in nihilistic fashion, Biden did to a sound economy what he had done to a secure border. So, he recklessly printed money at a time of spiraling, quarantine-ending demand and supply chain disruption. Middle-class wages never caught up with Biden’s inflation, as prices for key staples are nearly 30 percent higher than when he took office.
The cost of servicing the ballooning national debt at high interest is now nearly $1 trillion per year. The world abroad is aflame, lit by Biden’s inexplicable withdrawal from Kabul, his mixed signals to Vladimir Putin on the eve of his invasion of Ukraine, his deliberate alienation of Israel, his appeasement of Iran and China, and his cuts in the defense budget, coupled with his woke war on mythical “racists” in the military.
Energy prices soared, even as Biden’s green agenda proved unworkable and prompted draining the strategic petroleum reserve and begging foreign oil despots before key elections. The “unifier” Biden by design needlessly alienated nearly half the country, and in his debate, he reiterated why Trump supporters do not deserve his concern. And more ominously and recently, Biden grossly told hundreds of his donors that “it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye”—just days before the attempt on Trump’s life.
The greatest absurdity of the Biden White House is the gaslighting talk of Biden’s “achievements.” Biden’s actions over the last four years are not offsets for his senility that warrant his continuance in office, but again, sadly, they serve as force multipliers, furthering claims of his dementia and for his removal.
I’ve been saying for a month or so now that I’m really impressed with the way that Trump has been conducting himself in this campaign. Yes, I was a fan before, but he’s really been hitting all the right notes this year, especially given the pressure of the the Democrats’ un-American lawfare assault on him.
The Donald J. Trump who took the stage in Milwaukee last night was a reflective, determined elder statesman and it was glorious. This is what my ultra mega super MAGA friend Kevin wrote about it:
Trump took to the stage with a bandage covering the wound left by the would-be assassin’s bullet. He kicked off his mesmerizing speech by thanking the GOP for the nomination and promising to stand for all Americans, stating: “We rise together or we fall apart.”
Trump’s speech was unlike any of his others. It lacked the bombast and sarcasm of earlier speeches, which I find entertaining. Instead, it focused on unity.
Trump’s sotto voce, conversational tone was perfect, and a counter to the angry maniac that the commies in the mainstream media like to portray him as. He was the adult in the room at a time when the Republic desperately needs that. His recounting of the assassination attempt provided yet another deeply emotional moment at this convention.
I’ve only briefly glimpsed some of the MSM hacks’ response to the speech, and it’s mostly been awful and not reality-based. They’re desperate and losing and their opinion doesn’t matter.
The man who accepted the Republican nomination last night is the man who this country needs to right the wrongs of the Biden administration’s wrecking ball reign of error.
Borepatch sees a preference cascade for Trump that may have the effect of minimizing cheating. “It’s one thing to stuff ballot boxes when you think that everyone on your side is on board and your guy is going to win – and any potential investigation will be done in the most slipshod manner. It’s quite a different thing when you wonder just how many of the guys on your side are actually going to go through with this, and if the other guy wins will you be facing 20 years in Club Fed.”
New York jury convicted Senator Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) on 16 felony charges on Tuesday, including obstruction of justice, acting as a foreign agent, bribery, extortion and honest services wire fraud.
Over the course of a two-month trial, prosecutors accused the three-term senator and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, of accepting bribes — including hundreds of thousands of dollars, gold bars, and a Mercedes-Benz convertible — from three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for help with a number of legal issues. Menendez was also accused of accepting bribes to work as a foreign agent on behalf of Qatar and Egypt while he served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Shortly after the verdict was handed down on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) urged Menendez to “do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country, and resign.”
You know it’s been a pretty news-packed week when the conviction of a Democratic senator on bribery charges is this far down the LinkSwarm…
Kamala Harris has the same approval rating among Black women as President Biden, according to a new poll, which must come as a blow to the Vice President as Biden’s electoral fortunes falter.
And it comes as a surprise, as Black women have been pivotal for securing Harris her spot on the ticket.
The poll, conducted by Split Ticket between July 12 and 14, asked Black voters in battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin about their opinions on Harris, as well as Biden and Donald Trump.
According to the poll, if the 2024 election was a toss up between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, 76 percent of Black voters would vote for Biden, compared to 17 percent for Trump. The gender split was 72 per cent of male voters and 79 percent of females backing Biden.
In contrast, 12 percent of Black women and 23 percent of Black men said they would vote Trump.
But if the election were a toss up between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the results were virtually the same, with an equal proportion of voters opting for Harris over Trump, and a split of 79 percent of Black women and 73 percent of Black men preferring the Vice President.
You know who else doesn’t want to vote for Democrats any more? Young male voters.
A years-long collapse in support for Democrats among young Gen Z “Zoomer” males accelerated to a dizzying speed during the Presidentish Joe Biden administration — and that’s before Donald Trump’s display of sheer damn manliness in the moments after Saturday’s assassination attempt.
The collapse began in 2016, the same year Donald Trump was elected to his first term in office — and, looking back, it seems almost inevitable. That was the year the American Left went from merely unhinged to flying off the rails like Doc Brown and Clara Clayton at the very end of “Back to the Future Part III.”
Daniel Cox — aka The Liberal Patriot — wrote Monday, “A mounting number of polls suggest that young voters are shedding their Democratic attachments” and that “the way young people relate to the two major political parties is undergoing a momentous change.”
A recent Pew study found that “young Americans are evenly divided between the parties: 47 percent lean towards or identify as Republicans and 46 percent identify as Democrats.”
Look at these other numbers from Gallup. They’re unsustainable for the so-called Party of Youth.
Democratic support among young men (18-29) collapsing
Federal appeals court blocks all of Biden student debt relief plan. “The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request, by seven Republican-led states to put on hold parts of the U.S. Department of Education’s debt relief plan that had not already been blocked by a lower-court judge.” Good. I don’t see how the Constitution allows the President to simply declare billions of dollars of subsidies to favored classes of individuals absent congressional approval. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Remember CrowdStrike, the company that helped wipe Hillary’s equipment? An update to their security product Falcon is blue-screening Windows machines across the world today. “The U.S. Emergency Alerts System said 911 lines in multiple states were down.”
Biden can’t remember the name of his own Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and calls him “The Black Man.” We all know this would be career-ending for a Republican, yet it’s just another expected “senior moment” for Slow Joe…
Here’s some news I missed a while back: China expelled a bunch of defense chiefs from the Communist Party in a “corruption crackdown.” “The moves against Li Shangfu and his predecessor, Wei Fenghe, follow a series of shake-ups at the top of the world’s largest military — Li was ousted from the role last year after disappearing without explanation.” Actual corruption, or simply suspicion of disloyalty to Xi?
Barry Diller has lost $9 million propping up The Daily Beast. I know a lot of political publications lose money, but I’m pretty sure you could prop up a leftist website for less than 1/10th that…
Welcome to Africa’s League of Assholes. “The military regimes of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso marked their divorce from the rest of West Africa Saturday as they signed a treaty setting up a confederation between them….All three have expelled anti-jihadi French troops and turned instead toward what they call their ‘sincere partners’ — Russia, Turkey and Iran.” More.
“Newly selected Austin City Manager T.C. Broadnax has presented his proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2025 that totals $5.9 billion — a record for the city.” You can look at the entire 1,162 page document here. Of course there’s plenty of line items for “equity” and “homeless.” That’s where some of the graft is…
Terry and her husband Max Boot, a Washington Post national security columnist, put up their tony Upper West Side apartment as collateral for her $500,000 personal recognizance bond as a condition of her release before trial.
The six-room, $1.8 million turn-of-the-century home features lavish wood paneling, built-in bookcase, stained glass windows and airy 10-foot ceilings, according to its StreetEasy listing.
The taste for such luxury is what allegedly drove Terry — a native of Seoul who formerly worked as a CIA analyst before becoming a prominent policy expert linked to several think tanks — to disclose US secret to South Korean spies, Manhattan federal prosecutors said.
Terry traded her access to information from top US officials, including US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, in exchange for luxury goodies such as a $3,450 Louis Vuitton handbag and a $2,845 Dolce & Gabbana coat, prosecutors said.
“Democratic Socialists Of America Withdraws Endorsement Of AOC.” Because she’s just not anti-Israel enough. Which has jack all to do with democracy or socialism. This is just another sign that victimhood identity politics has eaten the far left whole.
The US Army is seeking a wheeled, self-propelled 155mm cannon-based air defense system capable of firing cheaper hypervelocity rounds.
A cost-effective alternative to current capabilities based on surface-to-air missiles is being sought, particularly in expeditionary scenarios against the rising threat of cruise missiles.
Projectiles fired by the Multi-Domain Artillery Cannon (MDAC) will be guided by offboard sensors, eliminating the cost of onboard sensors in current rounds.
“Current air and missile defense munitions require onboard guidance and targeting components that drive high munition procurement costs,” a service request for information explains.
“In contrast, the MDAC seeks to significantly reduce munition costs and enhance expeditionary utility by developing a 155mm artillery cannon-based air defense system capable of firing Hypervelocity projectiles, integrated into a wheeled platform.”
Additionally, the system will be linked with an external Command and Control Battle Manager and the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System.
A prototype contract award is expected in the third quarter of 2025, with deliveries by the last quarter of fiscal 2027 and demonstration in fiscal 2028.
This is another case of “everything old is new again,” as Germany’s 88mm and 128mm flak cannons were generally considered very effective anti-aircraft weapons in World War II, and I bet 155mm is more than capable of putting a hurt on drones.
Ukrainian sniper takes record for world’s longest sniper shot, using a 12.7x114mm cartridge at 4,155 yards. (Hat tip: Reader John Zoch.)
Local TexMex chain Chuy’s is being bought by Darden Restaurants for $605 million. I didn’t know they actually had more than 100 locations. The food is good, but here in Austin they’ve been in the “no one goes there anymore, they’re too crowded” category for a while. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Generation Kill author Evan Wright RIP. That was a very solid book following a Marine recon unit into Iraq in 2003, and is well worth reading if you haven’t already.
Comedy legend Bob Newhart, RIP. I’m sure everyone and their dog will be posting the justly famous Newhart finale, but we’re going to kick it old school with a selection from his comedy albums.
Brits visit an HEB+. They’re astounded at the size and blown away by Blue Bell. They’re also amazed that a plain, fresh-baked tortilla can taste so good…
A whole lot of Elon Musk news of note has popped up this week, so let’s dig in.
First, in the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt against Trump, Musk endorsed Trump for President.
Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla, publicly endorsed Donald Trump for the first time in the U.S. presidential race, calling the Republican former president “tough.”
Musk, the world’s richest person, posted the endorsement with a video of Trump with blood on his face pumping his fist after multiple shots rang out at Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. Trump was safe.
The posts cement Musk’s shift towards right-wing politics and hand Trump a high-profile backer in his quest to return to the White House in the Nov. 5 election.
“I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” Musk posted.
“The martyr lived,” he wrote, citing a reported debate between conservative venture capitalist Peter Thiel and LinkedIn co-founder and Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman.
Musk later posted a photograph of Trump at the event, followed by: “Last time America had a candidate this tough was Theodore Roosevelt.”
It IS true that Twitter’s current version violates the Digital Services Act, arguably, because the Digital Services Act is nothing but a censorship regime intended to shut down any speech that doesn’t parrot exactly what the Davos Elites want out there. That isn’t even an exaggeration; that is what it is intended to do.
If George Orwell wanted to write a law to make 2024 look like 1984, the DSA would be a great first start. It is, I say unironically, evil.
Elon clearly wants this fight, and he took his first shot back at the E.U. by revealing that they offered him and the other social media platforms a deal: comply with our censorship demands and we will help you deceive your users. He accuses the other social media platforms of taking the deal, and I believe him. Nobody is taking any shots at them because they have knuckled under.
The European Union isn’t just doing it for their own Elites–they are collaborating with US policymakers, the intelligence “community,” the MSM, and the censorship industrial complex to do their dirty work because there are limits placed on what government can do due to the First Amendment.
Billionaire Elon Musk said he is moving the headquarters of X and SpaceX out of California after governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill barring school districts from requiring teachers to notify parents if a child changes their gender identity.
“This is the final straw,” Musk said in a social-media post Tuesday afternoon. “Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas.”
Musk said he previously told the California governor a new law like this one would “force families and companies to leave California to protect their children.” Tesla moved its headquarters out of California to Austin, Texas in 2021.
California is the first state to pass such a law, and conservative groups have said they plan to challenge it in court. Ongoing litigation may complicate those efforts. A San Bernardino County judge already blocked one school district’s parental notification policy after the state’s attorney general sued last year.
The California Policy Center, a conservative think tank in the Golden State, said the new law “opens the door to child exploitation.”
“Gov. Newsom has okayed a bill that was based on the flawed logic that parents are dangerous and not to be trusted, and that the state or strangers are better positioned to deal with the difficulties of adolescence than parents,” said Lance Christensen, vice president of education policy and government affairs. “Hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements with victims of sex assault by public school employees is evidence that the opposite is too often true.”
Musk is reportedly moving Twitter/X headquarters to Austin. If so, I happen to know a Senior Technical Writer who is currently between jobs…
