A full scale ground war may or may not be developing in Gaza, the Biden recession claims bank branches, California declares itself a “child molesters across from schools” friendly zone, and lots of criminals making very poor decisions. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
There was also a screening today for reporters of footage of the atrocities carried out by the organization so many college lefties are cheering for.
I joined about 20 other journalists in a 14th-floor Manhattan conference room to watch the horrific video, which includes footage and images from a range of sources — such as cameras that Hamas attackers wore, dash cams, traffic cameras, and the phones of terrorists, their victims, and first responders — providing evidence of the crimes that Hamas carried out in Israel this month. The footage shows gagged and bound civilians burnt to an unidentifiable crisp; the casual and summary execution of people, including children, cowering under desks in the dark as they hide from terrorists wearing headlamps; the grisly decapitation of a Thai worker already bleeding from the stomach by a terrorist using a garden hoe; and other horrors.
In Gaza, by contrast, there are no visible military facilities, while Hamas fighters can shed their fashionable black outfits and dress like civilians. This will not, however, frustrate the Israeli offensive, which still has fixed, immovable targets. These are the deep tunnels — too deep for aerial bombing — that Hamas has been excavating and lining in concrete for more than 10 years, using construction equipment and vast quantities of cement donated by different governments and international organisations “to house refugees”. As a result, Gaza’s refugee “camps” do not contain a single tent. Instead, they are home to a forest of high-rise apartments, which is undoubtedly a good thing, except for the fact that both machines and cement were also diverted for tunnelling on the largest scale.
These tunnels house relatively sophisticated rocket-assembly lines, motor-assembly works, sheet metal and explosives’ stores, and warhead-fabrication workshops. More tunnels house Hamas command posts and its ordnance stores of small arms, mortars and rockets. Even deeper tunnels house its leaders’ lodgings and headquarters. Finally, there are the exfiltration tunnels, though there is no sign that they were used in the October 7 attacks, perhaps because their exits had been detected and blocked long before.
When Israel’s forces enter Gaza, they will engage any enemies who resist them, but they will not go looking for them. Their task is to escort combat engineers to their job sites — the camouflaged places from which tunnels can be accessed. How do they know where these entry points are? While Israel’s aerostats with cameras, satellite photography and the pictures generated by radar returns cannot reveal tunnels, they have been used to monitor where cement-mixer trucks have stopped over the years. They cannot pinpoint tunnel entrances by doing so, but they can at least identify places worth exploring with low-frequency, earth-penetrating radars or simple probes.
The obvious danger here is that, even before the escorting troops and combat engineers descend underground to fight off Hamas’s guards and place their demolition charges, they will keep losing casualties to snipers and mortar bombs on their way to the sites.
To minimise the danger, however, the Israeli army can rely on the most heavily protected armoured vehicle ever developed: the Namer infantry combat vehicle. As well as having significantly more armour than any other combat vehicle anywhere in the world, it uses an active defence weapon to intercept incoming anti-tank missiles and rockets, and also has machine guns to fight off infantry attackers. In urban combat, tank crews firing machine guns from the top of their turrets are desperately vulnerable, but the Namer’s crew remains “buttoned up” inside the vehicle, relying on TV screens to see the outside world and operate their weapons remotely. In 2014, the last time Israeli troops fought in Gaza, most were riding thinly armoured M.113s, which were easily penetrated by RPG anti-tank rockets, with some 60 soldiers killed and hundreds wounded. Not this time.
After they reach the suspected tunnel sites, the Namers will line up to form a perimeter — an improvised fortress — to protect the combat engineers as they go about their task. It is very likely that there will still be skirmishing before, during and after each de-tunnelling operation, with Hamas mortar teams in action, as well as snipers hidden in ruins. Fortunately, the Israelis will have their 70-ton Namers, as well as their post-2014 street-fighting training, to protect them.
And they will need that protection, as dismantling Hamas’s tunnel network will take time: the one certainty in all this is that the planting of demolition charges cannot be done quickly without suffering many fatalities. This means there will be at least two weeks of war in the Gaza strip — and even this optimistically assumes that the entire tunnel system in the evacuated northern part can be cleared in a week, allowing the Israelis to do the same in the southern sector, after evacuating the southerners and sending home the northerners. The Government’s vow to persist until the destruction of Hamas will be tested every day.
During the first week of October alone, U.S. banks closed a whopping 54 local branches…
Major US banks are continuing to close branches across the US, leaving an increasing number of Americans without access to basic financial services.
Bank of America axed 21 branches in the first week of October, according to a bulletin published by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) on Friday.
Wells Fargo shuttered 15, while US Bank and Chase reported closing nine and three respectively.
In total, some 54 locations had either closed or were scheduled to close between October 1 and October 7.
That is just one week!
Of course bank branches have been closing at a frightening pace for quite some time now.
Last year, U.S. banks shut down about 2,000 more branches than they opened.
I do wonder how many of those closed-branches are in crime-happy Soros-backed-DA zones…
Scenes from the decline of law and order in California: “Dude is a sex offender with a loophole that allows him to be near a school and he can set up the ‘free fentanyl’ sign because he doesn’t actually have the drugs on him.” Social Justice Warriors seem to love pedophiles almost as much as radical Muslim terrorists…
“NewsGuard, a company which claims to rate media outlets’ level of ‘trustworthiness’ and therefore has a meaningful influence over ad revenue, has been sued along with the Biden administration by Consortium News, which also named the Pentagon’s Cyber Command for “contracting with NewsGuard to identify, report and abridge the speech of American media organizations that dissent from U.S. official positions on foreign policy.”
Sometimes you start working on a story, only to find out there are too many unknowns to fairly approach it from a blogging angle, or because you run the risk of looking like a complete jackass. Such is the case with this story of APD Chief Data Officer Jonathan Kringen being charged with domestic violence. Kringen is married to Anne Kringen, who seems to have been brought into APD to wage social justice against it in the wake of the “rimagining Austin police” lunacy. “I think it’s fundamentally important to involve the community voice into policing in all spheres, including the academy, and I’ll work to foster a culture of inclusivity that reflects the needs of a city as diverse and exciting as Austin.” “Provide insight into institutionalized racism and explores the underlying causes of inequality as well as tools to address these causes.” No one should be the victim of domestic abuse, but it appears that neither Kringen should be employed by APD.
Trump’s gag order is so extreme that even the ACLU agrees his free speech rights are being infringed.
The truth about Postcolonialism: “We started with Frantz Fanon calling for violent revolution, and ended with Gayatari Spivak trying to use postmodern philosophy to attack western ideas of knowledge…Decolonization for Fanon was replacing all the colonizers with colonized people, using violence (or threats of violence) in order to free colonized people from the shackles of western influence…Decolonization is the systematic destruction of any and all western influence anywhere and everywhere by any means necessary.”
“On Thursday, 32-year-old veteran NYPD Officer Grace Rose Baez was arrested along with 42-year-old Casar Martinez and charged with conspiracy to distribute narcotics and the distribution of narcotics after they allegedly tried to sell large quantities of drugs to a federal informant between Oct. 9 and 29.” Even NYPD frowns on such shenanigans as setting up your own fentanyl distribution network while on duty…
And they say retail workers aren’t ambitious these days: “California Home Depot Employee Arrested For Allegedly Embezzling $1.2 Million.” “She was basically just manipulating the books on how much she was depositing” and would walk away with spare cash. I know theft in California is bad, but I’m pretty sure Home Depot has all those sales computerized, and is going to catch on when you keep coming up short…
Robber: “Stop! Hammertime!” Gun store owner: “Nope!” BLAM!
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has laid out the devastating results of runaway government spending on the middle class and why it’s so important to claw back lost ground for the average American, who has “received a pay cut for 24 consecutive months … as inflation has persisted.”
He also noted the average American family has lost the equivalent of more than $7,000 in annual income.
There is a direct link between spending, borrowing and printing trillions of dollars, and these disastrous results for Americans.
President Biden has spent trillions of dollars the nation didn’t have.
These unchecked costs drove the deficit to record highs and pushed the debt over $31 trillion.
A former Connecticut Planned Parenthood honcho took his own life days after police failed to arrest him on child pornography charges — botching the raid by knocking down the door of the suspect’s New Haven neighbor.
Tim Yergeau, 36, the former director of strategic communications at the Southern New England branch of Planned Parenthood, died by suicide on Tuesday amid a child pornography investigation in Connecticut last week.
The Biden administration on Thursday unveiled a proposal that would prohibit schools from instituting policies that “categorically ban transgender students from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity.” The policy would allow schools to implement certain limitations in the interest of fairness or safety, however.
The proposed rule, which would impact any school or college that receives federal funding, would expand Title IX protections to include gender identity. Under the proposal, a “one-size-fits-all” ban on transgender athletes playing on teams that match their stated gender identity would be a violation of Title IX. The rule, which is likely to face challenges, will face a lengthy approval process.
This is, in fact, the exact opposite of the text of Title IX, which provides special protection for biological women, not men pretending to be women.
Under the radar, a package of bills is ramming through sweeping changes that will reorient our public schools around a new paradigm — subordinating academic basics to an obsessive, politicized preoccupation with race and social justice activism.
“Critical Social Justice” ideology (CSJ) — the vehicle for manipulating our young people into adopting this worldview — is laced strategically through a variety of bills, including “ethnic studies” (HF 1502), “Teachers of Color” (HF 320) and now the House and Senate omnibus education bills (HF 2497/SF 2684).
Taken together, this legislation will inject reductive, racialized thinking into every classroom in Minnesota’s approximately 500 school districts and charter schools; change the fundamental mechanics of education in our state; and give the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) and the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB) broad new powers that amount to an end-run around our state’s hallowed tradition of local control.
Here’s a story I missed earlier: “Kazakhstan Impounds Property of Roscosmos Subsidiary.” That’s the Russian company that’s the main operator of Baikonur spaceport. Haven’t seen any resolution to this, mainly because Russia is so broke thanks to mismanagement, sanctions, and an illegal war of territorial aggression.
Jay Leno drives the 1,025 horsepower 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170. I have an irrational desire to own something with a Hellcat engine, which I need like I need a hole in my head. Plus I like the look of the Shelby GT-500 Mustang better, and I’m not buying one of those either.
“Disney has proudly employed sex predators for years, and this act of aggression by DeSantis will force thousands of our proud pedo-American workers to leave the park to stay outside the 1,000-foot radius required by law,” said Disney CEO Bob Iger. “This is tyranny!”
If you’re stressing over your taxes, you might be slightly relieved to know that they’re not due until April 18. Thus week: More Blue City violence and decline, lots of Social Justice Warrior backlash, Facebook shows snowflakes the door, and Budweiser commits brand suicide.
“Ex-ABC Senior Producer Who Rolling Stone Covered For Indicted On Child Porn Charges. Former ABC senior producer James Gordon Meek has been indicted on three counts of child pornography nearly one year after the FBI raided his Arlington, Virginia home.”
Something about the apparently random street murder of Silicon Valley tech executive Bob Lee seems to have overturned a crawly rock in San Francisco’s political scene, suggesting a brewing power struggle on the horizon.
On the one hand, we have a very vocally angry Silicon Valley tech community speaking out about the out-of-control crime situation in the city, with the valued and talented Lee’s untimely death from some night creature who crawled out from some sewer or encampment and stabbed him to death, quite possibly in a drug-addled haze. That’s expected if you live in a place full of bums and criminals, but Lee didn’t live in a place full of bums and criminals. He had actually fled the city for Florida based on its engulfing crime and come back only for a brief business trip.
On the other hand, we have a soggy, entrenched political establishment seeking to assure that there’s really no crime problem at all. This is evident enough in the “crime is down” coverage seen in the political establishment’s house organ, the San Francisco Chronicle, and in the surreal statements of the city hall power establishment, which is rooted in special interests, particularly the most powerful one, the homeless industrial complex. I wrote about that here. San Francisco currently spends about as much on homeless “services” as it does on police, and by some studies such as the one cited below, actually more.
Not surprisingly, as per Thomas Sowell’s observation, you can have all the poverty you want to pay for, and San Francisco pays a lot.
The Hoover Institution’s Lee Ohanian has noted:
Spending $1.1 billion on homelessness is just the latest installment in San Francisco’s constant failure to sensibly and humanely deal with an issue that it chronically misdiagnoses and mismanages about as much as is humanly possible. Since fiscal year 2016–17, San Francisco has spent over $2.8 billion on homelessness, and the city’s politicians remain seemingly baffled, year after year, as the number of homeless in the city skyrocket, as opioid overdoses kill more than COVID-19, and as the city has become nearly the most dangerous in the country. https://www.hoover.org/research/why-san-francisco-nearly-most-crime-rid….
Since 2016, the number of homeless in San Francisco has increased from 12,249 to 19,086, which comes out to about $57,000 in spending per homeless person per year. With a total population of about 860,000, roughly 2.2 percent of San Francisco residents are homeless, which is over 12 times the national average. There is little doubt that as San Francisco spends more, homelessness and its impact on the city worsens.
Do the homeless get that $57,000 being spent on them? Of course not. The princelings of the NGO establishments got that money — for themselves. That’s what’s made them politically powerful, enough to call the shots at city hall.
Democrats and Social Justice Warriors view homelessness as a huge profit center, and seek to increase the ranks of the homeless at every opportunity.
Also, an arrest was made in the Lee case and it was a fellow tech guy who knew him. “A tech executive named Nima Momeni was arrested by San Francisco police Thursday morning in the April 4 killing of Cash App founder Bob Lee…Lee and Momeni were portrayed by police as being familiar with one another. In the wee hours of April 4, they were purportedly driving together through downtown San Francisco in a car registered to the suspect.” So not a random gibbering drug-addicted transient.
Speaking of San Francisco street crime, a Whole Food closes one year after opening due to violence and theft.
A St. Louis judge sanctioned St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s office last week for allegedly withholding evidence in a double-murder case, while allowing the suspect out on bond, amid rising criticism about left-wing prosecutors allowing crime to flourish in major U.S. cities.
Alex Heflin, 23, was held without bond since January after he was initially charged with two counts of second-degree murder and armed criminal action, local media reported. But those charges were recently reduced to involuntary and voluntary manslaughter before he was released, while his April 17 trial has been postponed until June 12.
Judge Theresa Counts Burke ruled in favor of Heflin’s lawyers after they filed a motion accusing a prosecutor under Gardner of violating discovery rules. They alleged that her office did not turn over evidence, including a 911 call recording and DNA evidence.
“The court finds that there have been repeated delays by the state in obtaining discovery and providing it to the defense,” Burke wrote, according to local reports.
“There has been a lack of diligence on the part of the state in following up and providing discovery to the defendant in a timely fashion. As a result of the state’s actions and lack of diligence, the court grants defendant’s second motion for sanctions.”
Under Burke’s order, Heflin will have to remain on GPS monitoring. She also ordered the circuit attorney’s office to hand over their list of witnesses within 24 hours, provide DNA test results within 24 hours, or ask a crime lab for the DNA results.
“Molotov balloons are a ball filled with sulfuric acid, but white strips are a type of paper treated with potassium chlorate and a sugar mix. When the balloon breaks, the acid reacts with the potassium chlorate and sugar, which causes ignition.”
Another girlboss indicted: “Penn grad Charlie Javice, founder of Frank, charged with fraud over $175M JPMorgan deal.” Seems the heart of the indictment is fake users.
Prosecutors and the SEC allege that Javice orchestrated a scheme to deceive JPMorgan into believing that Frank had access to valuable data on 4.25 million students who used the company’s service when in reality the number was less than 300,000.
Prosecutors said when JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) sought to verify the number of Frank users and the amount of data collected about them, Javice fabricated a data set. She is alleged to have an unnamed co-conspirator who first asked Frank’s director of engineering to create an artificially generated data set. Prosecutors said the director of engineering declined the request after expressing concerns about its legality.
Javice, according to prosecutors, then approached an outside data scientist and hired him to create the synthetic data set — which was then provided to an agreed-upon third-party vendor in an effort to confirm to JPMorgan that the data set had over 4.25 million rows.
Based on that alleged fraudulent data, prosecutors said JPMorgan agreed to buy Frank for $175 million. As part of the deal, the nation’s largest bank hired Javice and other Frank employees. Prosecutors said Javice received over $21 million for selling her equity stake in Frank and, per the terms of the deal, was to be paid another $20 million as a retention bonus.
Prosecutors said as the fabricated data set was being created, Javice and her co-conspirator sought to purchase real data for over 4.25 million college students to cover up their misrepresentations.
Treading the fine line between “fake it until you make it” and “interstate wire fraud.”
Bud light tranny pander wrecks brand. “I’ve never seen such little sales [as] in this past few days.”
One quarter of the year gone! Career criminals coddled by Soros Stooges, crazy woman who thinks she’s a man murders children, lots of Flu Manchu fraud, and Botox makes you crazy(er). It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Everyone and their dog is covering the ham sandwich Trump indictment, so I’ll leave that to others. I will note that Alan Dershowitz is not impressed. “Based on what we know about this case, it may be one of the weakest cases in my six years of experience.”
On the morning of Election Day last November, William French went to his local polling place in Freeland, Pennsylvania, to cast his vote. But the qualified and registered voter wasn’t allowed to. The disabled U.S. Army veteran was told that the precinct had run out of paper for ballots and he had to come back later in the afternoon.
So that’s what he did, returning at 3:30 p.m. But the precinct still didn’t have ballots. Election workers told him to return yet again. But by nightfall, it was too difficult. French has endured 17 surgeries on his destroyed leg and uses a cane to walk. But the sidewalks are a mess, and he was worried about the risk of falling and further injury.
That same morning, Melynda Reese and her husband went to their polling location in Shickshinny, Pennsylvania. But only Reese’s husband was allowed to vote, and for the same reason: The precinct had run out of paper. They came back at 4:00 p.m. and were told there would be a lengthy wait.
Reese is a corrections officer and her husband’s primary caregiver. He had recently suffered two cardiac arrests and a stroke. He required regular medication and attention and couldn’t be left alone. Long waits were also too much to bear. The couple returned at 6:30 p.m., and saw a line that stretched so long that they knew they couldn’t wait. Around 9:15 p.m., an election official called Reese and told her that ballots were finally available and she could vote. But her husband had just taken his sleeping pills and she couldn’t leave him unattended.
French and Reese are just two of the thousands of voters affected by poor election administration in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. The two just sued Luzerne County, its Board of Elections and Registration, and its Bureau of Elections in federal court for violations of their constitutional right to vote.
“Voters in Luzerne County through no fault of their own, were disenfranchised and denied the fundamental right to vote. William French and Melynda Reese are two of those voters. They bring suit to vindicate the denial of their sacred right to vote, to make sure voters are not disenfranchised in the future, and to bring integrity back to elections in Luzerne County,” said Wally Zimolong, lawyer for French and Reese.
The House Oversight Committee is investigating the explosive claims by Dr. Gal Luft, a former Israel Defense Forces lieutenant colonel with deep intelligence ties in Washington and Beijing, who says he was arrested to stop him from revealing what he knows about the Biden family and FBI corruption — details he told the Department of Justice in 2019, which he says it ignored.
Luft, 56, first made the claims on Feb. 18 on Twitter, after being detained at a Cyprus airport as he prepared to board a plane to Israel.
“I’ve been arrested in Cyprus on a politically motivated extradition request by the U.S. The U.S., claiming I’m an arms dealer. It would be funny if it weren’t tragic. I’ve never been an arms dealer.
“DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe, Jim, and Hunter Biden.
“Shall I name names?”
Luft remains in jail awaiting extradition to the US over what he says are trumped-up charges of arms trafficking to China and Libya, and violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Luft claimed that he tried to reach out to the DOJ about the Chinese energy company CEFC paying Hunter $100,000 and James Biden, Joe’s brother, $65,000 “in exchange for their FBI connections and use of the Biden name to promote China’s Belt and Road Initiative around the world.”
James O’Keefe has not allowed his forced exit from Project Veritas to stop him. His new journalism outfit, O’Keefe Media Group (OMG), just released a video uncovering evidence of what O’Keefe calls a possible “money-laundering scheme” for the Democrats. Some individuals reportedly appear to have donated thousands of times over a relatively short period to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars to ActBlue and Biden for President, based on Federal Election Commission records.
“FEC data shows that some senior citizens across the U.S. have been donating thousands of times per year,” O’Keefe began. “Some of these individuals’ names and addresses are attached to over $200,000 in contributions. We went and knocked on a few of their doors to corroborate the data that we received from a group of citizen journalists called Election Watch in Maryland.” The video then showed O’Keefe visiting someone who is listed as donating over $217,000, through 12,000 separate contributions. This money was earmarked for various entities through leftist platform ActBlue over three years’ time. Some of the donations were made with variations of the person’s name and address, O’Keefe stated.
The data he obtained was state and FEC data, O’Keefe said. “We’re wondering if these donors are victims of what appears to be a money-laundering scheme, or [if] these residents actually participated in the scheme. We’re making phone calls, we’re knocking on doors, these are things that you can do, we hope you do that.” There are “bizarre amounts of data” on homes and individuals making many thousands of dollars of donations, O’Keefe said, urging others to help him investigate.
The first person shown opening the door to O’Keefe, a Marylander listed as donating $32,000 in 3,000 different contributions, said he was unaware of the donations but advised O’Keefe as a solution to hit Donald Trump “with a bat.” The man added, “I want to see a scar on his f**king head. Now stop f**king with me,” and slammed the door.
Another donor, Cindy, according to O’Keefe, supposedly donated over $18,000 in 1,000+ donations to ActBlue in 2022, which would necessitate donating “three times a day, every day, for the whole year.” When asked if she’d donated over $18,000, Cindy responded with a quick laugh, “I doubt that. No, I don’t think so… I wish I could have donated $18,000 to Biden’s presidency.”
Meanwhile Carolyn Lenz, in Tucson, Ariz., told OMG that she “absolutely [did] not” donate over 18,000 times for $170,000+ to ActBlue. She looked at the data showing “she” donated multiple times a day, often in $5 to $15 increments, and insisted that the donations were not hers. “They must be” fraudulent, Lenz said.
After rejecting her in 2018, the voters of Alameda County, California selected Pamela Price as their new District Attorney last year. Price had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from George Soros for her two campaigns. That probably tells you most of what you need to know, since Soros only funds candidates who are soft on crime and willing to empty the jails as much as possible. Price quickly proved herself no exception, seeking to cut a plea deal with a killer who had been arrested for one triple murder for hire, was accused in the murder of a court witness, and several other violent crimes. Rather than the 75 years to life sentence that Delonzo Logwood was eligible for, Price wanted to cut him loose after fifteen years. Thankfully, a County District Judge stepped in and rejected the deal out of hand. (Free Beacon)
A California judge this week blocked a newly-elected progressive prosecutor’s effort to slash a triple murderer’s sentence.
Alameda County district judge Mark McCannon rejected District Attorney Pamela Price’s plea deal for a 31-year-old man jailed for a 2008 triple murder-for-hire, among other crimes. Price, who took office in November and has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from the progressive billionaire George Soros, attempted to sentence Delonzo Logwood to just 15 years in prison, though he was eligible for a sentence of 75 years to life.
You can’t keep a bad man down. Keith Chastain, 38, is a one-thug crime spree.
Chastain racked up an impressive array of arrests in Fresno County, California, (of course). Between Feb. 19 and March 21, he was arrested 10 times for a menagerie of crimes encompassing 15 misdemeanors and 18 felonies, including:
six stolen cars
fraud
DUI (duh)
drugs (duh)
vandalism
Chastain was hit with three additional charges — DUI, trespassing, and auto theft — but those were dropped when cops failed to file the charges in time.
Snip.
“Unfortunately, this is not as unique of a situation as it seems,” Tony Botti, spokesman for the Fresno County Sherriff’s office, stated. “California has watered down the laws so much over the years for property criminals and repeat offenders that they are not held accountable like they should be. Sadly, it is our community members who suffer due to these soft-on-crime policies.”
According to court documents, Edwin Maldonado spent many months thumbing his nose at what he was ordered by the court to do.
His punishment for that is more like a prize.
“You’ve got someone who was rewarded for being a failure, and this guy was a failure over 1,000 and some odd times,” said Andy Kahan with Crime Stoppers.
First, Maldonado gets a felony charge for drug possession. A few weeks later, he’s charged with aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. He makes his $30,000 bond and walks out of jail.
“I’ve certainly had clients hauled back into court on violations, maybe two or three times that have been alleged,” said criminal defense attorney Emily Detoto.
Associate Judge Tiffany Hill presided over a bond revocation hearing for Maldonado.
“For obvious reasons, you are not abiding by your rules and conditions period, and God knows what he was doing when he wasn’t where he was supposed to be,” Kahan said.
According to court documents, Maldonado failed to comply with any of his bond conditions for eight months.
According to his GPS monitor, he left his curfew zone 847 times, was called 453 times about his whereabouts, and had more than 1,000 GPS monitor violations.
A suspect arrested and charged in a recent brutal “jugging” robbery in Houston that left a woman paralyzed was out on a $100 bond for a weapons-related charge.
On the morning of February 13, Nung Truong, 44, withdrew money from a bank ATM but was followed for approximately 24 miles by two suspects. Surveillance video released by the Houston Police Department shows a black male bumping into Truong and causing her to drop her belongings. The suspect initially fled with an envelope but returned seconds later to body-slam Truong to the ground before taking $4,300 in cash.
A mother to three children aged 13, 15, and 20, Truong is now paralyzed and unable to walk or care for herself.
Last Friday, Houston Police arrested Joseph Harrell, 17, and Zy’Nika Ayesha Woods, 19, for the attack and charged both suspects with Aggravated Robbery with Serious Bodily Injury.
According to court records, on January 26, 2023, Harrell had been granted a General Order bond of $100 for Unlawful Possession of a Weapon. He also faces charges of Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon related to an incident in February in which he threatened another victim with a gun. Harrell is currently being held in the Harris County jail on bonds totaling $240,000.
Snip.
Although Harrell’s Unlawful Possession of a Weapon charge was assigned to Harris County Court 2 under Judge Paula Goodhart, his bond was signed by Judge David Singer.
Elected to Harris County Criminal Court 14 in 2018, Singer lost in the March 2022 Democratic primary election and his term ended December 31, 2022. As a one-term judge, Singer is not eligible under state code to serve as a visiting judge.
The 11th Administrative Judicial Region confirmed to The Texan that Singer is not listed as a visiting judge.
The Harris County Office of Court Management emailed the following statements to The Texan:
“David Singer was appointed as associate judge pursuant to Section 54A.002 of the Texas Government Code and the Local Rules for Harris County Criminal Courts at Law. His start date was Jan. 1, 2023.”
Finland gets the green light to join NATO, with Turkey and Hungary approving their membership. Sweden’s application is still under negotiation. As I noted previously, tangling with the Finns has not been a source of happiness for Russia.
Poor priorities. “European Ammo Maker’s Growth Stymied By TikTok Data Center Sucking Up Electricity.”
LA City Council member Mark Ridley-Thomas convicted of taking bribes. “He was convicted of one count of bribery, one of conspiracy, one count of honest services mail fraud, and four counts of honest services wire fraud. The jury acquitted him on 12 other counts.”
Veterans Affairs assistant secretary Kurt DelBene is married to Rep. Suzan DelBene (Wash.), chairwoman of the DCCC. It’s a big club, and you’re not in it. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Federal prosecutors announced a 58-year-old Plainview man is facing 102 years in prison after pleading guilty to stealing $4 million in federal relief funds passed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Friday, Andrew Johnson pleaded guilty in the Northern District of Texas to three counts of bank fraud, one count of aggravated identity theft, and one count of engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from unlawful activity, according to a news release published by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
Johnson swindled millions from the Paycheck Protection Program passed in the early weeks of the pandemic to help stave off the economic effects of business closures, government restrictions, and shelter-in-place mandates. As part of the fraud, Johnson applied for and received forgiveness for 27 bogus loans.
He spent more than $3.5 million of the stolen funds on “home renovations, vacations, clothing, cosmetic surgery, college tuition, cars, wedding expenses, and equipment for an unrelated business venture,” according to the DOJ.
After an investigation that took longer than a year, the Office of the City Auditor in Austin said it found Central Texas Allied Health Institute (CTAHI), a nonprofit City of Austin contractor, committed fraud against Austin Public Health and falsified health records.
According to the investigative report, CTAHI misrepresented over $1.1 million in financial transactions across three contracts with Austin Public Health and was incorrectly paid roughly $417,000 between December 2020 and September 2021 because of fraudulent contract claims. The report also claimed CTAHI falsified its COVID-19 vaccine contract performance by overstating vaccination totals and fabricating patient data.
“This is up there with some of the biggest cases we’ve investigated on my team,” said Brian Molloy, chief of investigations at the Chief of the City Auditor.
CTAHI, President Todd Hamilton, and Dr. Jereka Thomas-Hockaday — both of whom were named in the report — denied the claims made in the report in a statement Thursday.
Snip.
CTAHI’s three contracts with Austin Public Health were for COVID-19 testing, workforce development, and COVID-19 vaccines, according to the city. Between December 2020 and September 2021, the city said CTAHI submitted 23 claims for reimbursement to APH under the workforce development and COVID-19 vaccine contracts.
Flu Manchu is the fraud fount that just keeps giving… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
NHL might stop pushing gay pride after backlash from players and fans. “Philadelphia Flyer’s player Ivan Provorov didn’t want to participate in a ‘Pride’ event during warmups…Soon, other players also refused to participate after Povorov showed it could be done, and some entire team organizations dropped their planned LGBT pride events. And thanks to this one man’s stand, the NHL is considering dropping the whole ‘Pride’ push.”
Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel and coiner of Moore’s Law, is dead at age 94. Semiconductors have radically changed just about every facet of the world.
In addition to getting over a cold, I spent most of the non-work day trying to assemble a pressure washer so I could attach a water-jetting attachment so I can clean out a blocked exterior line so I can run my dishwasher without it overflowing my sink.
The result of all this labor is that I still need to call a plumber. So enjoy yet another abbreviated LinkSwarm.
Hmmmmmm! “Hunter Biden Business Partner Flips, Now ‘Cooperating’ With GOP Investigators.”
Eric Schwerin, a close business associate of Hunter Biden who also dealt with Joe Biden’s business and tax affairs, is now working with House GOP investigators looking into Biden family dealings – particularly in Ukraine and China, where the family collected millions of dollars, Just the News reports.
Eric Schwerin, a close business associate of Hunter Biden who also dealt with Joe Biden’s business and tax affairs, is now working with House GOP investigators looking into Biden family dealings – particularly in Ukraine and China, where the family collected millions of dollars, Just the News reports.
“He is cooperating with us,” House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) told the outlet.
“His attorneys and my counsel are communicating on a regular basis. Now, I feel confident that he’s going to work with us, and provide us with the information that we have requested,” Comer continued. “I think that Schwerwin is going to be a very valuable witness for us in this investigation.”
Of note, Schwerin, the former president of Hunter Biden’s now-dissolved investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners, visited the White House at least 19 times from 2009 to 2015, according to White House visitor log records reviewed by The Epoch Times and first reported by the New York Post.
Patrick L. Wojahn, the Democratic mayor of College Park, MD, resigns over child porn charges. Name that party: His political affiliation only shows up in the 19th paragraph of the piece. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Illnesses to Democratic senators Dianne Feinstein and John Fetterman mean that Democrats have temporarily lost their senate majority. That will teach you to rely to Octagenerians and visibly impaired stroke victims to carry your water. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta submits $5.5 billion bid for NFL’s Commanders.” He should move them to Austin and change the name back to the Redskins, just to spite them.
Did MacKay get Tulipmania wrong? It turns out he was also an enthusiast for the far more destructive “Railway Bubbles” that struck England in the 19th century.
Governor Ron DeSantis said in his victory speech that, not only did he win the Florida gubernatorial race, but he has also “rewritten the political map.” It is difficult to argue with that assessment. He beat Democrat Charlie Crist by 20 percentage points and flipped Democratic strongholds such as Miami-Dade County.
A particularly potent force in his campaign has been culture-war issues — battles DeSantis won by going on the offensive. “We fight the woke in the legislature,” he said in his speech. “We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.”
As with Trump, DeSantis’s political aggressiveness wins him admirers. The tactics that some conservatives consider morally or philosophically dubious appear only to intensify his popularity.
In March, the Republican Florida legislature passed the Parental Rights in Education Act, preventing teachers from instructing kindergarten through third-grade students in gender identity and sexuality. “I would say when you oppose a parent’s rights and education bill, which prevents six-, seven-, eight-year-olds from having sexuality, gender ideology injected in their curriculum, you are the one that’s waging the culture war,” DeSantis said in defense of the bill. DeSantis also signed the Stop W.O.K.E. (Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act, preventing critical race theory from being promoted or advanced in schools and corporations.
When Walt Disney executives criticized the education law as a “Don’t Say Gay” bill, DeSantis retaliated by questioning whether the corporation’s 50-year-old “independent special district” status should go under “review” to ensure that it is “appropriately serving the public interest.” Charles C. W. Cooke warned about the dangers of this move. Yet, however short-sighted, it was undoubtedly effective culture-war politics. DeSantis’s enemies fell into the trap: Democrats revealed their hypocrisy by rushing to the defense of big business.
DeSantis has also won the PR fight on immigration. His morally dubious decision to fly asylum seekers to Martha’s Vineyard revealed Democrats’ hypocrisy. His hard line on immigration does not dampen support among Hispanics. According to a Telemundo/LX News poll, DeSantis had a 51 percent to 44 percent lead over Crist among Hispanic voters. A bilingual pollster who conducted the survey explained: “There are lots of Hispanic voters in this state who really like the governor’s style, this strongman who won’t back down.”
On transgenderism, DeSantis has been utterly fearless. He stated that, in children, most “dysphoria resolves itself by the time they become adults” and “it’s inappropriate to be doing basically what’s genital mutilation.” While other Republican states have tried to use legislation to stop gender experiments, DeSantis appointed a state medical board that banned doctors from prescribing puberty blockers, hormones, and gender-transition surgeries. This way, his enemies can’t claim that politicians are interfering in the medical profession. Rather, it’s medical professionals keeping politics out of health care.
FTX’s new CEO and liquidator, John Ray III, who also oversaw the unwinding and liquidation of Enron, admits that “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.”
And just in case his shock at FTX’s fraud of epic proportions was not quite clear enough, he adds that “from compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented.”
Snip.
Below we excerpt some of the most notable highlights from the affidavit, which we embed at the bottom of the post and which everyone should read to get a sense of just how massive Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud was.
I have over 40 years of legal and restructuring experience. I have been the Chief Restructuring Officer or Chief Executive Officer in several of the largest corporate failures in history. I have supervised situations involving allegations of criminal activity and malfeasance (Enron). I have supervised situations involving novel financial structures (Enron and Residential Capital) and cross-border asset recovery and maximization (Nortel and Overseas Shipholding). Nearly every situation in which I have been involved has been characterized by defects of some sort in internal controls, regulatory compliance, human resources and systems integrity.
Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here. From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented.
For purposes of managing the Debtors’ affairs, I have identified four groups of businesses, which I refer to as “Silos.” These Silos include:
(a) a group composed of Debtor West Realm Shires Inc. and its Debtor and non-Debtor subsidiaries (the “WRS Silo”), which includes the businesses known as “FTX US,” “LedgerX,” “FTX US Derivatives,” “FTX US Capital Markets,” and “Embed Clearing,” among other businesses;
(b) a group composed of Debtor Alameda Research LLC and its Debtor subsidiaries (the “Alameda Silo”);
(c) a group composed of Debtor Clifton Bay Investments LLC, Debtor Clifton Bay Investments Ltd., Debtor Island Bay Ventures Inc. and Debtor FTX Ventures Ltd. (the “Ventures Silo”);
(d) a group composed of Debtor FTX Trading Ltd. and its Debtor and non-Debtor subsidiaries (the “Dotcom Silo”), including the exchanges doing business as “FTX.com” and similar exchanges in non-U.S. jurisdictions. These Silos together are referred to by me as the “FTX Group.
Each of the Silos was controlled by Mr. Bankman-Fried. Minority equity interests in the Silos were held by Zixiao “Gary” Wang and Nishad Singh, the co-founders of the business along with Mr. Bankman-Fried. The WRS Silo and Dotcom Silo also have third party equity investors, including investment funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds and families. To my knowledge, no single investor other than the co-founders owns more than 2% of the equity of any Silo.
Much, much more at the link, including an eye-dropping, deeply incriminating Twitter thread by founder Sam Bankman-Fried about the step-by-step decisions they made that weren’t really illegal because they had such good intentions.
BlackRock’s energetic focus on ESG investing is affecting its bottom line. The index fund’s performance is deteriorating, and risks are accumulating. In the face of this situation, UBS Wealth Management recently downgraded ratings for BlackRock (NYSE: BLK) by now listing it as a “Neutral” recommendation rather than a “Buy.” The bank also cut the target stock price to $585 from $700.
The new recommendations were made based entirely on BlackRock’s reckless ESG positioning. UBS says that stubborn insistence on this course could also trigger increased regulatory inspections and investor withdrawals.
Thus, the company pressuring countless firms to adopt more “woke” positions has suddenly found a boomerang coming in its direction. Investors and analysts are now telling BlackRock that ESG shenanigans are bad business and want it stopped.
Another one of those things that makes you go “Hmmmm“: “The Funeral Business Is Booming (And Not Because Of COVID)…We’re having to do at one point of time 20 percent more funerals which is unheard of…the third quarter of this year, we did 15% more calls than we did in the third quarter of 2019.”
Jay Leno is expected to make a full recovery after getting seriously burned in a gasoline fire from one of his many cars. Conan O’Brien should call him up and go “Jay, when I said ‘die in a fire,’ I meant it figuratively, not literally!”
“This was a close call,” said one Republican leader in Washington. “We were worried that we would achieve massive victories tonight, but we thankfully snatched defeat from the jaws of victory to achieve a much more proper and sensible red trickle, like the proper gentlemen we are.”
Right now Republicans in 2022 are looking like a Kickstarter that hit their initial funding ask, but didn’t hit any of their stretch goals…
Republican John Kennedy avoids a runoff in Louisiana. NY Post/RCP: “Republicans were expected to pick up three Senate seats from Democrats, gaining a 53-47 majority after two years out of power, according to the latest projection by RealClearPolitics. The same outlet predicts the GOP will regain their House majority by winning at least 227 seats.”
“Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria has lost her bid for re-election in Virginia’s 2nd congressional district to Republican State Sen. Jen Kiggans. Luria, a veteran naval officer, was elected to the House of Representatives as part of a Democratic wave in 2018. In the past year, she has risen in prominence as a member of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.”
Yeah, you can see how important voters found the January 6 farce.
Going off to walk my dogs. Republicans had a good night, and will likely take the House and Senate, but not any better than you might expect in a regular midterm, and not nearly as much as you might expect with a president as unpopular as Biden.
Beto concedes. So long, and thanks for the $160 million!
Cahill, U.S. Marshall. Must be George Kennedy Night.
Paxton back up over Garza.
Beto O’Rourke’s livecam is running on a 56K modem.
Abbott giving a victory speech.
J. D. Vance projected winner in Ohio, and flip from the way-to-early returns.
Republicans behind in those south Texas US congressional seats.
Walker leading Warnock in GA. According to Telemundo. Because with mute, it isn’t any less informative.
The ABC network dude looks like he has a haircut from Frank Gehry.
Ha! DeSantis is WALLOPING Charlie Crist, 60%-40%
So far not a good night for Republicans in Arizona.
Eric Scmitt wins in Missouri.
Chris Sununu looks like football pundit Peter King.
Honestly, I’m seeing a red wave, but not the red tsunami some were predicting in the last week.
Williamson County judge too close to call. Possibly headed to a runoff.
Dan Patrick now up much more substantially in TXLT GOV race.
Kemp wins in Georgia. Barring any 3 AM pipe breaks.
Unfortunately, the Social Justice Warrior slate is up in RRISD races.
Six years later, and we’re still laughing at the Jeb! meme.
Pause while I get the doggies some food.
OMG! Ron Paul is up 3 points!
Now Patrick is leading Collier.
KVUE is talking as though Beto might win. Nah, he’s toast.
Austin commie twerp Greg Cesar is headed to the U.S. House. On behalf of Texas, we apologize in advance.
Garza up just slightly over Paxton. Still early.
KVUE’s team is sortof crap, but still better than anything else on.
Abbott only wolloping Bobby Francis by 8 points right now.
Collier/Patrick tied for Texas Lt. Gov. right now. Early votes tend to favor Dems, though.
Looking like an Israel-Watson runoff in Austin mayor’s race.
Democratic incumbent Bennet, he of the Presidential flameout, up big in Colorado.
Election coverage, or the car wash scene from Cool Hand Luke? Circle, verily you tempt me!
The people of News 24 are really blathering.
Back. Had to lightly punch someone up request.
Guam goes Republican!
Sununu, DeSantis and Rubio all winning headily.
Scury County recording ZERO votes for Dan Patrick? I call Shenanigans.
Greetings, and welcome to a special Election Eve Monday LinkSwarm! My Internet is back up, and tomorrow night I will be liveblogging the election returns starting around 7 PM.
For the past week or so, my back-of-the-envelope math envisioned a GOP House majority somewhere between 229 and 241, and I’m sticking to that. Give the Republicans the 212 seats in Cook Political Report, with two-thirds of the 35 races in the toss-up category, and you end up with 235 Republicans and 200 Democrats, so put those down as my final prediction numbers.
Snip.
With Bolduc, Laxalt, and Johnson winning, I come out to a 51–48 GOP advantage by the end of the week, with Walker and Warnock headed to a runoff. It wouldn’t shock me if Oz or Masters or both won, giving Republicans a 53- or 54-seat majority.
On Sunday, Hilary Rosen, a longtime Democratic strategist, predicted on CNN’s “State of the Union” that her party will have a bad night on Tuesday because they did not listen to voters.
“I’m a loyal Democrat, but I am not happy. I just think we did not listen to voters in this election, and I think we are going to have a bad night,” she said.
She faulted the Democratic Party for ignoring voters’ concerns about the economy, and implored them to “stop talking about democracy being at stake.”
“When voters tell you over and over and over again that they care mostly about the economy, listen to them,” she said. “Stop talking about democracy being at stake. Democracy is at stake because people are fighting so much about what elections mean. Voters have told us what they wanted to hear. I don’t think Democrats have delivered this cycle.”
Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson gave the federal prosecutor probing Hunter Biden a little nudge Wednesday — sending him more than 200 pages of bank records showing millions in transactions between the first son’s companies and Communist Chinese-tied entities.
Snip.
The senators’ analysis of banking records, first reported by Fox News, finds that between August 2017 and October 2018, $6 million was transferred to a company allegedly set up by Hunter Biden called Hudson West III, $5 million came from Northern International Capital, a [Chinese energy compan] CEFC affiliate, and $1 million was transferred from CEFC itself.
From the pool of cash, $4.8 million was transferred from Hudson West III to other Biden companies, such as Owasco P.C. and Owasco LLC, and to a company associated with President Biden’s brother James, the Lion Hall Group.
The bank records also show that Hunter Biden and his aunt and uncle, Sara and James Biden, went on a “spending spree,” in the senators words, after Hudson West III received the millions in payments from CEFC, through a line of credit that was opened.
“We are also providing bank records showing that credit cards were collateralized by a $99,000 preauthorized withdrawal from Hudson West III,” Grassley and Johnson write, noting that the money was spent for airfare, at Apple stores, hotels, and restaurants, as they detailed back in 2020.
Grassley and Johnson also mention two $3 million wire transfers sent to Robinson Walker LLC, another Hunter Biden-associated company; and by State Energy HK Limited, another CEFC affiliate, saying the purpose of those transfers “is unclear.” The Post reported on those mysterious transactions back in 2020.
The senators also make reference to JiaQi Bao, Hunter Biden’s Chinese secretary, who reportedly pushed for “Uncle Joe” Biden to run for president and has been linked to the Chinese government. The bank transactions included in Grassley and Johnson’s letter show that Hunter Biden made payments to Bao totaling $29,795.84 after Hudson West III received the $6 million from the Chinese firms.
Some names and entities will be familiar to BattleSwarm readers, but other bits are new.
Ballot harvesting, according to the California Democrats who’d like to take it national, is an innocent practice where union members and activists, some of them illegally present in the country, do voters the favor, see, of helping voters fill out their ballots and then collecting those ballots for them so that they need never go to the polls. They call it “a new service.” It’s part of their “make every vote count” agenda, and who could be against that?
But out in Florida, where there’s still some semblance of objectivity, investigators found another story.
According to the Washington Times:
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Florida’s newly created Office of Election Crimes and Security is requesting a criminal investigation into charges of ballot harvesting in Orlando, a Democratic stronghold in the critical swing state.
Cynthia Harris, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for District 6 commissioner in Orange County, which includes Orlando, provided a sworn complaint to the election crimes office, alleging left-leaning organizations have been perpetrating a scheme to encourage residents in black neighborhoods to apply for mail-in ballots and to fill out those ballots, which she said have been collected by paid canvassers, and sometimes altered, all in violation of state law.
In an interview with The Washington Times, Ms. Harris said she has video evidence of paid ballot harvesters operating in Orlando neighborhoods in both 2014 and 2017, and that the scheme has been going on for decades, continuing through the 2020 election and the 2022 primary.
If voting fraud is this massive in Florida, how widespread and massive is it in states controlled by Democrats? (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
Two members of Congress from Texas and one former Trump administration official who now serves in the Texas House of Representatives are asking for answers from the Biden administration after discovering that an open borders group funded by George Soros received millions of dollars in federal grant money last year.
Alianza Americas, a nonprofit that says it is “committed to a human rights agenda for all people, with an emphasis on the inclusion and support of Latin American immigrant communities, and people on the move in Latin America,” received $7.5 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in February 2021, according to the Washington Examiner, and then another $1 million from the Health Resources and Services administration in July.
Both organizations fall under President Joe Biden’s Health and Human Services organization, and both grants were to fund COVID relief and vaccination efforts.
The group has also received nearly $1.4 million from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation from 2016 through 2020.
Federal law prohibits government grant money from being spent on lobbying, but Alianza Americas may have violated that prohibition in its activities as a “political advocacy group,” according to a letter from former HHS Chief of Staff Brian Harrison.
Chicago teacher’s unions want to pass an Illinois state constitutional amendment that would basically let them run the state.
If approved by Illinois voters in November, Amendment 1 will give government teachers’ unions an unfettered constitutional right to demand not just anything in their interests, but in what they see as the interests of every Illinoisan. The amendment is not limited to employee matters at the workplace.
Don’t take my word for that. Look at the first sentence of the argument in favor of it as written in the official summary as published by the Illinois Secretary of State: “This amendment will protect workers’ and others’ safety.” [Emphasis added.]
hat particular sentence is just about safety, but it shows the broad interpretation of the amendment beyond the workplace that government unions will assert. The language of the amendment itself supports that broad interpretation, and will extend to anybody’s “economic welfare,” which is pretty much everything.
What will government unions, especially radical teachers’ unions, demand with that new constitutional right?
The Chicago Teachers Union has long been quite open about its purpose. It sees itself as the vanguard of a national movement, led by unions like itself, that is textbook Marxism.
That purpose is well documented. It goes beyond the radical curriculum they teach in schools and encompasses an entire rearrangement of how America works.
Among the first things we wrote about on this site, ten years ago, was the role of the CTU and other teachers’ unions at a Marxism conference held that year:
The event was teeming with teachers who spoke about the new found bond” between Socialism and teachers’ unions according to reports, and Chicago teachers were on the stage. Chicago Teachers Union [then] VP Jesse Sharkey spoke at one breakout session. Becca Barnes, a Chicago Teachers Union teacher and organizer with Chicago Socialists, proclaimed at the beginning of the conference that “the struggle here in the United States has entered a new phase. Nowhere have we pointed the way forward more clearly than here in Chicago with the teachers union strike….”
Since then, militant radicalism has become still more firmly embedded in the CTU. That history is well documented – quite proudly by radicals themselves. The International Socialist Review, for example, lays out a good history of the CTU, saying the CTU “transcended a simple labor dispute and was transformed into a social movement, with the teachers fusing their struggle with that of the community they serve…joining in the Occupy Chicago movement that pointed out the root of societal problems—social and economic inequality.”
A poll that shows ridiculously low support from black voters for defunding the police should be the final nail in the coffin for Democrats’ anti-law and order campaign of the last seven years.
TheGrio.com commissioned a poll, along with the Kaiser Family Foundation, which found that 82% of black respondents want police funding either to be kept about the same (48%) or increased (34%). Only 17% wanted it decreased.
It’s just like Kari Lake said in a recent confrontation with a reporter. If you go into most black neighborhoods and talk about defunding the police, they’ll look at you “like you’re the craziest person on the planet.” But it’s one thing for a white, conservative Republican to say it — it’s far more important to hear black respondents in a poll confirm it overwhelmingly.
Things that make you go “hmmmm“: “San Francisco DA Won’t Release Police Bodycam Video, 911 Calls From Paul Pelosi Attack.”
Great line in the middle of this Ben Shapiro election roundup video: “Andrew Cuomo came to kill all the old people and grab ass, and he ran out of old people.”
Remember all those stories of how bad it sucked for workers in Foxconn’s iPhone factory? It’s worse now.
Hundreds and perhaps thousands of workers fled a Chinese manufacturing complex that accounts for 85% of iPhone assembly capacity. The mass migration, which began this weekend, called into question that country’s COVID-control measures and, more broadly, its reliability as a part of global supply chains.
“Something snapped over the weekend,” Bloomberg News reports. Employees suddenly fled the Zhengzhou plant of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd., better known as Foxconn. Videos show, in what is now called the “Foxconn Great Escape” or the “iPhone Long March,” workers scrambling over high chain fences at the plant, known as “iPhone City.”
To avoid detection, workers traveled through cropland by day. At night, they took to the roads. “Some people were walking amid wheat fields with their luggage, blankets, and quilts,” said a poster on WeChat, the popular Chinese social media platform. “I couldn’t help but feel sad.”
Residents of neighboring areas rallied, for instance leaving water and provisions in the open on roadsides. Social media postings reported signs such as “For Foxconn workers returning home.”
Truckers also pitched in. Risking criminal prosecution, they took workers in pick-up, dump, and flatbed trucks. One video shows a woman standing on the back of a big tank truck speeding down a highway in the rain.
Workers fled Foxconn’s “closed loop” system, which isolated the plant from the rest of society. Inside the loop, the company went to great lengths to stop COVID. As a disease-control measure, it had ended canteen service on October 19, forcing workers to eat boxed food in dormitory-style sleeping quarters. Food was reportedly scarce, and conditions in the dorms rapidly deteriorated. On Sunday, Foxconn announced it would resume cafeteria dining.
The political establishment—left and right—want desperately to move on, to pretend the last 30 months didn’t happen. With very few exceptions (Ron DeSantis, Kirsti Noem, Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, Ron Johnson, and a few others, later), they betrayed their core values. Many Republicans and so-called Libertarians quickly capitulated the primacy and importance of individual liberties. Whereas supposedly equality-loving democrats embraced policies that in no uncertain terms screwed women, children and the poor. The 2020 democrat campaign slogan might as well have been “protect the rich, infect the poor.” Or “only the rich need to learn.” They’d all very much like that you forget about that. They’d like to go back to the fights they know how to fight, the golden oldies that turn the bases out, and turn us against each other. But COVID policies turned the whole thing on its side, jumbling us all up and resulting in all sorts of hitherto unheard of alliances. And when your business is maintaining the status quo, that is very dangerous.
Which is why Emily Oster is pleading for an amnesty.
First, let’s be clear to whom Emily Oster is speaking. She’s speaking to the furious well-educated suburban women who are swinging towards Republicans in this cycle, even in the bluest of states. Because it was the bluest of states that were hit hardest by these policies. It was in blue states that the schools were closed longest, that the economic devastation was worst, that crime spiked the most, where masks were required longest. The damage done by these policies is at its beginning, not its end. Dr. Oster, would like women to believe that it was all just a mistake, a mis-understanding, and remember that it is the Republicans who are looking to limit the freedoms that really count. That while democrats had no problem sacrificing the well-being of our living children for three years in support political power, it is Republicans that pose the real threat.
Blue city blues: “Nearly 20% Of Seattle Shootings Happened Near Homeless Encampments.”
Man who used to get all his information on conservatives from the mainstream media realizes he’d been lied to.
When I left the mainstream liberal media bubble & started listening to right-wing media to understand what they want, I became more aware of the world around me than ever before. Without the filter, I got to hear what conservatives actually believe & it's not what I was told.
— Adam B. Coleman, President of Aintblackistan (@wrong_speak) October 21, 2022
For a couple of days, I was at this conservative conference, everyone I spoke with was courteous and supportive and I felt completely comfortable. I didn't have people stare at me or give me the feeling that I wasn't welcome. Actually, quite the opposite.
— Adam B. Coleman, President of Aintblackistan (@wrong_speak) October 21, 2022
However, when I would go on Twitter, they would show clips from the event and reframed this benign conservative conference as being a "KKK rally". If Americafest was a KKK rally, then it was the lamest KKK rally ever.
— Adam B. Coleman, President of Aintblackistan (@wrong_speak) October 21, 2022
Wendell Perez received a call from the elementary school that would alarm any parent. School officials told him that his 12-year-old daughter had attempted suicide in the school’s bathroom. He was told it was because she wanted to be a boy, with a male name and pronouns.
Wendell couldn’t believe it. At home, his daughter hadn’t shown any signs of gender dysphoria or discomfort in being a girl. The Perez family is Catholic, and they raised their children with a biblical and scientific understanding of biological sex.
But when Wendell and his wife Maria arrived at the school, they found out that school officials had been having confidential meetings with their daughter and discussing her discomfort with her gender. Wendell and Maria found out that teachers and staff at school had begun treating their daughter as a boy at school without their consent or knowledge. Wendell was told by staff that they didn’t share information about his daughter’s “transition” with him or his wife because of “confidentiality issues.”
Whatever happened to in loco parentis? Or does that just not apply when there are radical transexual activists to mollify?
When the school called his 14-year-old son to the principal’s office for refusing to say a female student was a boy, Matthew Duncan decided he’d had enough.
When the school called his 14-year-old son to the principal’s office for refusing to say a female student was a boy, Matthew Duncan decided he’d had enough.
“There was never a push towards dominance and control like it is now,” said Duncan. “You can’t voice your opinion.”
In response, many families in Grants Pass have withdrawn their children from public school, enrolling them in private school or starting to homeschool, Grants Pass teachers, school administrators and parents told The Epoch Times.
Meanwhile, in a civilized state: “Florida Bans Puberty Blockers and Transgender Surgery for Minors.”
Also, an O’Rourke rally too close to a voting location violated Texas law.
Still more Beto: “New poll shows Abbott gaining six points in eight weeks, 53/40.”
“More California companies moving headquarters out-of-state than ever before.” Texas once again tops the list of destination states, followed by Tennessee, Nevada, Florida and Arizona.
“Democrat Nominee In Arkansas Arrested For Felony Terroristic Threatening. Law enforcement officials in the state of Arkansas arrested Diamond Arnold-Johnson, the Democrat nominee for Arkansas auditor, on Friday for first-degree terroristic threats.” Bonus:
Arnold-Johnson’s husband was on trial in August for allegedly posting terroristic threats on Facebook, police said. During the trial, Arnold-Johnson, 32, admitted that she, not her husband, posted the threatening messages on Facebook that led to the criminal charges, KATV reported.
A warrant was served for Arnold-Johnson’s arrest on October 13, but she refused to comply and a SWAT team was dispatched to resolve the matter.
However, police made the decision to cancel using the SWAT team to force compliance from Arnold-Johnson in an apparent attempt to not risk an explosive situation happening right before an election.
I cannot believe democracy is about to die in America, again.
After years of living under a dictatorship, America rose from the ashes. Democrats took control of the Presidency, the House, the Senate, the university system, Big Tech, the entertainment industry, and major corporations – and thereby defeated fascism by seizing every major lever of power in the nation. With one-party rule established, and all of our critics silenced, democracy was once again free to flourish.
Now, our dear democracy is under attack – by America holding a so-called “election” and allowing idiots to vote. Let us be clear about what the stakes are: if a single person I disagree with is elected in a free and fair election, democracy will be DEAD. If citizens have the power to simply vote the ruling party out of power – when I really like the current ruling party – all is lost.
