More evidence of the Biden Recession, California’s welfare state goes extra crazy, Chicago has to spend mad money to produce illiterate children, an Assistant DA resigns, a cyberattack hits car dealers nationwide, a Brazilian thief gets ventilated, and God unites the entire world in hatred of the New York Yankees. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Taxpayers are funding a new high-rise building in Los Angeles where homeless people will enjoy skyline views, a cafe, a gym, and an art studio, not to mention the free rent.
The fancy new building is 19 stories high and has 278 units, each costing about $600,000. The total cost was $165 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. It is the first of three new high-rise buildings that will soon house homeless people.
Snip.
This modern tower for the homeless includes a TV in each apartment, a gym, an art room, a soundproofed music room, a computer room with a library, a TV lounge, a courtyard, and a cafe that will host movie nights. There are also six common balconies, four of which have dog runs.
Where are politicians getting all the money for this project? The buildings are funded by the city’s supportive housing loan program, Proposition HHH, which was approved by city voters in 2016, as well as state housing funds and $56 million in state tax credits.
The three apartment buildings will be located around the headquarters of the Weingart Center, a nonprofit that assists homeless people. Kevin Murray, a former California state senator, is the man behind the project. He serves as the chief executive of the nonprofit.
I’m sure all the Homeless Industrial Complex members involved got generously paid for their efforts. Once again, the message of the Democratic Party is: You’re suckers for working for a living.
Illinois Policy just issued a report showing that while CPS has doubled spending per student since 2012, grades are down by 60-80%, depending on the subject. “Just 1-in-4 CPS students can read or perform math at grade level,” the report says. “The percent of students enrolling in college after high school graduation is decreasing. And for those who do enroll, another study found many are struggling to finish college in four years – just 30% get their bachelor’s in four years compared to 47% nationally.”
By every other measure… there’s no other way to put this… CPS is falling apart.
In 2023, 26% of students in grades 3 through 8 across all of CPS could read at grade level and about 18% could do math proficiently. For 11th grade CPS students, only 22% could read at grade level and 19% do math proficiently.
CPS’ failure to engage students shows in the chronic absenteeism rate. Chronic absenteeism has skyrocketed.
According to ISBE data, 86.3% of teachers in CPS were rated as proficient or excellent in 2023, down from 91.4% in 2019. Yet many students in CPS are struggling to reach proficiency in core subjects.
There’s much more at the link, all of it tragic. An entire generation of Chicago students is failing — and being failed by their schools and, let’s be brutally honest, by their families.
If you’re thinking that CPS must be seriously underfunded to achieve such dismal results, you must have been living in a cave for the last 40 or 50 years. CPS will spend a jaw-dropping $29,028 per student this year. My family lives in a lovely exurb of Colorado Springs and our district spends roughly one-third of what CPS does — $10,214 per student — and we get much better results. It isn’t about the money. It rarely is.
The case began in November 2022, when Loper Bright Enterprises, a fishery based out of Cape May, New Jersey, appealed a district court opinion to the Supreme Court. The conflict between Loper Bright and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) started after the agency decided to require private fisheries like Loper Bright to pay their regulatory inspectors for their time observing fishery practices.
While the law doesn’t explicitly allow this practice, the Fishery Service cites the Chevron Deference, a precedent set by a 1984 Supreme Court case, which states that an ambiguous law can be interpreted by government agencies as they see fit. In short, the Fishery Service wants private companies to pay their salaries and found a legal loophole to justify it.
While this may seem like an isolated incident, it is just one example of a long history of government agencies infringing on individual liberty. The outcome of this case holds supreme importance for the future of our republic and the preservation of our financial and civil freedoms.
Since 1950, the federal government has steadily grown in size. Today, it has over 2.9 million civilian employees, more than Walmart has worldwide. This growth has paved the way for the creation of a governmental pseudo-branch denoted the “administrative state.” The administrative state contains government employees who have a significant impact on people’s everyday lives but yet aren’t held accountable to citizens in the form of elections. These unelected bureaucrats undermine the central ethos of a republic, where elected officials are supposed to seek the good of their constituents or risk not being re-elected.
The problem with this system was made evident during the pandemic. During the COVID shutdown, hundreds of millions of Americans were sentenced to lockdowns, impacting their schools, churches, and families. Many of the people behind this policy were members of the CDC, one of the government agencies that comprise the administrative state. The decisions they made were not subject to the traditional checks and balances which typically constrain the US government. Instead, America found itself under a tyranny of the unelected.
This overreach extends beyond individual liberty into private business. When businesses can be encroached upon at a whim by unelected authorities, long-term investment becomes a much riskier endeavor. When the COVID shutdown occurred, many small businesses, with their small profit margins and high overhead, were unable to weather the storm. For the companies that survived, the blatant government intervention and the severe consequences that followed left a sour taste in their mouth for future capital investments. You’re not going to build a new business if a bureaucrat can shut it down the next day. All of these factors contribute to government agencies having a negative impact on financial markets and investor portfolios.
The Chevron Deference precedent, which is at the center of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, gives even more power to these governmental agencies. When ambiguity exists, this precedent allows courts to simply defer to agencies’ interpretations, even if those interpretations favor the agencies’ own interests. It also allows courts to seek out ambiguity in order to give near-unbridled power to these agencies.
If the Supreme Court upholds Chevron, it will further entrench the power of unelected bureaucrats and make it increasingly difficult for individuals and businesses to challenge agency overreach. However, if the Court rules against Chevron, it would represent a shift toward increased restraint of the administrative state, leading to a reevaluation of the scope and authority of federal agencies.
Israeli arms exports hit record sales. Funny how having products that actually work stimulates sales. I’m betting Russia is enjoying the opposite right now…
Baseball game announcer: We will not be singing the national anthem. Crowd: The hell we won’t! Patriotism ensues.
Speaking of DA’s behaving badly, a followup: Assistant Travis County DA Joseph Frederick, who was charged with aggravated assault, has resigned before he could be fired, his lawyer saying this was to maintain his health benefits, because he has Parkinson’s. Which is strange, because COBRA covers involuntary termination as well.
Argentine President Javier Milei has a glorious rant about how you can’t negotiate with leftists.
This week’s California restaurant chain closing due to the minimum wage hike: Arby’s. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
“CDK Global, a major software provider to auto dealerships in the U.S., has been hacked, forcing the company to shut down most of its systems temporarily. This cyberattack effectively halted sales operations at approximately 15,000 car dealerships, including those under General Motors, Group 1 Automotive, and Holman.” Without this software, there’s essential dead in the water. (More details.)
Speaking of money-losing MSM outlets, the incoming editor of the Washington Post says thanks but no thanks after the staff there preemptively published a hit piece on him. How’s that letting the inmates run the asylum working out for you, Jeff Bezos?
George R. Nethercutt Jr., the Republican who ousted Democratic Speaker Thomas S. Foley in the Newt Gingrich Contract with America wave of 1994, dead at 79 (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Is olive oil good for your brain? I hope so, since it’s an Atkins-compliant dressing for my salad, so I generally get more than the recommended teaspoon a day.
The Democratic challenger for Fort Bend County Precinct 3 commissioner is facing charges for allegedly creating a fake social media account to post racist comments directed at himself after the Republican incumbent requested an investigation last year.
According to arrest warrant documents, Pct. 3 Commissioner Andy Meyers requested the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office begin an investigation in October regarding the source behind several social media posts directed at his opponent, Taral Patel.
This came after Patel, 30, issued a statement on his social media accounts with a collage of racist posts that he claimed were directed at him. Although many of the usernames were concealed, Meyers told investigators he recognized an account that went by the name “Antonio Scalywag” as someone who had attacked him before.
Investigators found that the fake account used a profile photo that belonged to someone else. The DA’s office issued a subpoena to Facebook and Google, which allowed them to obtain account data that matched Patel’s address, phone number, Texas driver’s license number, bank card number, and other personal information.
On Wednesday, the Texas Rangers arrested Patel on a third-degree felony charge for online impersonation and a Class A misdemeanor charge for misrepresentation of identity, which is found under the Texas Election Code. A spokesperson with the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office said this is the first time their agency has charged someone with an election-related misdemeanor
The only novelty here is that the person faking the hate crime is of Indian subcontinent ancestry rather than black.
Greetings, and welcome to a LinkSwarm so large I had to start working on it Wednesday! Unemployment rises too much to rig it away, home sales crash to Carter levels, Europe’s voters rise up to throw out the left, Hunter is guilty guilty guilty, another blow to the Biden Administration’s tranny Title IX rewrite, Israel rescues some hostages and smokes a Hezbolli terror master, and California continues to do California things.
Every so-called “strong” jobs report has been a disaster if one puts in even a little work to dig below the pristine, if fake, surface. And while we expected this charade to continue indefinitely, and certainly at least until the November election, at which point suddenly all the truth about the ugly labor market would be revealed to usher in the new president amid an economic crisis, we were shocked when none other than the Fed chair admitted today that the Biden admin was rigging jobs data.
In response to a question from a Bloomberg journalist during the post-FOMC presser, asking the Fed chair to comment on the state of the labor market, the Fed Chair said that two years ago the labor market was “overheated” and has since gotten back to “normal”, largely thanks to “supply from to immigration” – translation: illegal aliens have been the main reasons for the increase in employment and the drop in wages and thus, overall inflation, which as we discussed recently, is the narrative that is being pushed out to mitigate demands by most Americans to halt illegal immigration.
Where things got very interesting, however, is when Powell was discussing the demand-side of the labor market: here, he addressed the dropping quits level, the decline in job openings and wages, but more importantly, the rising unemployment rate – from 3.4% to 4.0% which clearly goes against the narrative of red hot payrolls – all of which the Fed chair summarized as strong job creation, yet caveated by saying that “there is an argument that [payrolls] may be a bit overstated.”
Note: he didn’t say “understated” because the “-stating” always goes in just one direction: the one that makes the resident of the White House look good.
In other words, the jobs – like so many things about this Potemkin economy – are a lie, and while Powell immediately realized what he had said, and tried to couch it by adding that payrolls are “still strong”, suddenly the entire narrative of a strong labor market imploded in front of our eyes, because if the Biden admin will lie about a “bit” of the jobs report, it will lie about any part of it.
And, as we have shown above and every month this year, lie is precisely what the Biden administration has been doing, month after month, year after year.
And the biggest stunner, as Edward Snowden put it so eloquently, is that he’s “not sure I’ve ever seen the chairman of the Federal Reserve publicly accuse the White House of cooking the books on employment numbers, but here we are.”
Speaking of which: “Initial Claims Surge To 10-Month Highs As California Joblessness Soars.” “Did we suddenly get a peek at economic reality? The number of Americans applying for jobless benefits for the first time surged last week to 242k (up from 229k and well above the 225k exp). That is the highest since August 2023.” And California, which just happened to implement a minimum wage hike, led far and away with the most claims…
Home sales have dropped so far during the Biden Recession that they’re now back to 1978 levels.
The recession in the U.S. existing home sales market has been so deep that we’re back to late ‘70s levels—despite us now living in a much bigger country:
April 1978: 4.09 million U.S. existing home sales print
April 2024: 4.14 million U.S. existing home sales print*
1978: 223 million U.S. population
2024: 341 million U.S. population
The reason, of course, is that housing affordability has deteriorated so much that many buyers and sellers alike have pulled back from the market. Many homeowners who would otherwise like to sell and buy something else are staying put rather than trading in their 3% mortgage rate for a 7% mortgage rate.
The bad news?
According to a forecast published this week by Goldman Sachs, the recovery for existing home sales could be a slog.
1978: Jimmy Carter was still President, the Bee Gees dominated the music charts thanks to Saturday Night Fever, and a brand new comic strip about a lasagna-loving cat named Garfield debuted. And the average price of a home was somewhere around $56,000. (Yet, somehow, home sales were still stronger during the 1981-82 interest rate hikes than under Carter in 1978…)
A jury of Hunter Biden’s peers found him guilty on all three felony charges on Tuesday after a six-day trial that demonstrated that the first son lied on a federal gun-purchase background-check form when he claimed not to be a drug addict.
The verdict was reached after the jury deliberated for three hours, beginning Monday afternoon with the conclusion of closing arguments. Hunter was surrounded by family members, including wife Melissa Cohen Biden and his uncle James Biden, as the verdict was read. First lady Jill Biden missed the verdict announcement and rushed to greet Hunter afterward.
Hunter was found guilty on two charges for lying about his crack-cocaine addiction on federal gun paperwork when he bought a Colt Cobra revolver at a sporting-goods store in Wilmington in October 2018. He was also found guilty on a third charge for possessing the firearm while he was using crack cocaine.
The first son faces up to 25 years in prison, though he’ll likely receive a lighter sentence as a first-time, nonviolent offender. Judge Noreika, who presided over the trial, said that a sentencing hearing will be held in September.
Though Hunter Biden still has a pending tax trial, don’t hold your breath about him going to trial for his role as the Biden crime family’s bagman…
I’ve pointed out time and again (including yesterday) that Biden Justice Department AG Merrick Garland’s “special counsel” appointment of Biden Justice Department Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss in the Hunter Biden case is a fraud on the public.
In a pretrial ruling denying the younger Biden’s motion to dismiss the case, Judge Maryellen Noreika has confirmed that Garland’s appointment of Weiss did not comply with federal regulations for appointing special counsels. That, however, was not a basis to dismiss the case — particularly with Garland and Weiss quietly citing the last special-counsel regulation, §600.10 (of Title 28, Code of Federal Regulations), which provides that no one may hold the Justice Department accountable for flouting its own regulations.
To be clear, I have never contended that Garland lacked the authority to assign Weiss, or whoever he wanted to assign, to investigate the Biden case. As Judge Noreika correctly explained, federal statutory law — in particular, §§509, 510, 515, and 533 — vest attorneys general with sweeping power to run the Justice Department as they see fit, including power to designate any DOJ lawyers they choose to run investigations anywhere in the country.
Weiss, for example, is now prosecuting Hunter Biden in Los Angeles, on the tax case scheduled to begin trial on September 5, in addition to the gun case in Weiss’s own Delaware district. That’s because Garland doubled-down in assigning the investigation of the president’s son to the same prosecutor — Weiss — who had just schemed with defense lawyers on a failed sweetheart plea deal that was designed to make all conceivable cases against said son disappear (and only after Weiss had consciously dithered as the statute of limitations steadily eviscerated serious criminal offenses).
Garland is the attorney general, and he has that power. It is power he wields with no fear that Congress will slash the DOJ’s budget, censure him, impeach him, or do anything else but caterwaul over how he abuses it. My point is that Garland has been engaged in a nearly four-year fraud — trying to con the country into believing the Justice Department is neither protecting its boss nor trying, to the extent politically feasible, to protect the president’s son.
The AG refused to appoint a special counsel for the Biden investigation, despite the president’s (and other Biden family members’) being implicated in Hunter’s malfeasance, particularly crimes arising out of his peddling of his father’s political influence for huge pay days from agents of corrupt and anti-American regimes.
Europe’s ruling center left just got smashed in European elections.
Early projections of the EU-election results show that the continent’s right-wing parties have made significant advances as voters signal their dissatisfaction with illegal immigration and inflation. Formerly powerful left-wing parties seem to have been routed, while centrists stayed the course.
This antiestablishment sentiment was expressed most strongly in Germany and France, two of the European bloc’s most powerful countries.
The French results prompted President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve the French parliament in preparation for snap elections on June 30 and July 7, as his party lost badly to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which is part of the Identity and Democracy coalition in the European Parliament.
Before crowds in Paris, Le Pen responded to Macron’s announcement: “This historic vote shows that when people vote, people win. . . . We are ready to exercise power, to end mass migration, to prioritize purchasing power, ready to make France live again.”
In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his Social Democrats were trounced by a combination of support for the right-wing CDU/CSU and Alternative for Germany (AfD). The left-wing Social Democratic Party (14.6 percent) and the Greens (12 percent) underperformed. Katarina Barley, speaking for the Social Democrats, called it “a bitter evening.” “I am very disappointed.” The AfD, having won 14 percent as of this reporting, is intent on carrying its EU wins to the national elections in October 2025.
Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni was the only leader of a European power to see success, with the right-wing politician’s allied faction, European Conservatives and Reformists, placing first in Italy.
In Spain, the conservative People’s Party took 34.2 percent of the vote, a rejection of socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez and his Socialist Workers’ Party, which received 30.2 percent. Two other right-wing parties, Vox and Se Acabó La Fiesta (The Party’s Over), received another 14.2 percent between them.
The Greens ceded more ground than any other party in the EU, losing more than a quarter of their seats.
For decades, the ruling Euroelite have insisted that there is no alternative to their high tax, high spending, high debt, high regulation, high immigration, environmental leftist EU superstate. Voters seem to have finally grown tired enough of it that they’re willing to embrace Marine Le Pen if that’s what it takes to make their voices heard.
In his opinion, Thomas wrote that, though a bump stock does increase a rifle’s rate of fire, it does not turn it into an automatic weapon.
“A bump stock does not convert a semiautomatic rifle into a machinegun any more than a shooter with a lightning-fast trigger finger does,” Thomas wrote. “Even with a bump stock, a semiautomatic rifle will only fire one shot for every ‘function of the trigger.’”
Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his concurrence that, while the ATF’s interpretation of the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act was an incorrect reading of the statute, there are legislative remedies for the issue of bump stocks.
“The horrible shooting spree in Las Vegas in 2017 did not change the statutory text or its meaning,” Alito wrote. “That event demonstrated that a semiautomatic rifle with a bump stock can have the same lethal effect as a machinegun, and it thus strengthened the case for amending §5845(b). But an event that highlights the need to amend a law does not itself change the law’s meaning.”
“The Lies and Fall of Ibram X. Kendi.” “This man gave America the simplest, most easily applicable binary solution to all of our racial problems. It didn’t matter that it was stupid, at least not from the perspective of his personal enrichment. For a while, it sold…What we lived through in 2020, during the Floyd meltdown and its aftermath, was a onetime necrotic bloom during which the first carrion-feeders on the scene were able to fatten themselves up to spectacular proportions on the collapsed body of American progressive racial and political angst.”
The US has broadened its sanctions on Russia, including a fresh crackdown on banks dealing with sanctioned entities.
It expands a December programme to target foreign banks deemed to be aiding Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.
The US also placed sanctions on the Moscow stock exchange, leading to it halting trading in dollars and euros.
It also moved to try to restrict Russia’s use of technology, including chips and software.
US President Joe Biden signed an executive order in December that imposed sanctions on banks dealing with about 1,200 individuals and companies deemed to be helping Russia’s war machine.
Those measures, which expose banks to the risk of being cut off from the US financial system, have now been expanded to about 4,500 entities.
The US will also target gold-laundering.
Peter Harrell, a former White House senior director for international economics, told the Reuters news agency that the US “is shifting towards something that begins to look like an effort to set up a global financial embargo on Russia”.
As part of this effort, the US Treasury announced that it would impose sanctions on parts of Russia’s financial system, including the Moscow Exchange, which is one of Russia’s main stock exchanges.
The stock exchange, which is Russia’s largest foreign exchange market, said the sanctions had forced it to stop trading in dollars and euros.
The US also focused on technology. Chips and other technology made in the US have been found in downed Russian equipment on Ukraine battlefields, including drones, radios, missiles and armoured vehicles.
The sanctions aim to make it more difficult for companies to supply that tech.
The US will target shell firms in Hong Kong selling chips to Russia.
There are YouTubers saying “Russian economy is crippled” etc., but I remain skeptical. The chips going into Russian drones aren’t anything special, they’re COTS stuff and EPROMs you can get almost anywhere.
“Israeli Military Rescues Four Hostages from Gaza.” Naturally this is good news for decent human beings everywhere and a tragedy for the radical left.
“Lebanon: Israeli Airstrike Kills One Of Hezbollah’s Most Senior Terror Commanders. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Tuesday night eliminated one of Hezbollah’s senior-most terror commanders operating in Lebanon. Sami Taleb Abdullah, who headed Hezbollah’s Nasr terrorist force, and three other Hezbollah commanders were killed in an Israeli airstrikes on a terrorist base located in southern Lebanon.” Good. Remember how commentators have repeatedly opined on the possibility of Hezbollah opening up a “second front” while Israel settles Hamas’ hash? They seem to have done very little but the usual pinprick terror attacks. With all the terror money Iran is sloshing around to Hamas and the Houthi’s, one wonders if they’re stretched to thin to send much Hezbollah’s way…
Western District of Louisiana Chief Judge Terry Doughty in an order Thursday declared that Title IX, a federal education law that bars sex-based discrimination, “was written and intended to protect biological women from discrimination.”
“Such purpose makes it difficult to sincerely argue that, at the time of enactment, ‘discrimination on the basis of sex’ included gender identity, sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, or sex characteristics,” Doughty, a Trump appointee, wrote. “Enacting the changes in the Final Rule would subvert the original purpose of Title IX.”
Of course the U.S. Women’s basketball has left Caitlyn Clark off the team. Because we all know queer identity trumps winning a medal for your country…
On the upside, also not competing: “Lia” Thomas. Turns out the Olympics don’t want men competing in women’s swimming. Who could have possibly seen that coming?
“In Hindsight Fans Realize They Were Too Quick To Call The Holiday Special The Worst Star Wars Project Ever…After watching the latest Disney Star Wars offering The Acolyte, however, many fans admit they might have been too harsh to call the holiday show the worst thing to come out of the franchise.”
Attorney General Ken Paxton announced today that a federal court has vacated the controversial Title IX guidance nationwide.
The ruling included a permanent injunction against its enforcement against Texas and its schools.
The Biden administration’s 1,500-page rewrite of Title IX added “gender identity” as a protected class and would force K-12 schools to allow boys into girls’ facilities and activities. Schools that refused were threatened with loss of federal education funds.
In response to the rewrite, Gov. Greg Abbott instructed the Texas Education Agency to ignore the new Title IX rule. He later directed all public universities to also ignore the rewrite.
Meanwhile, Paxton sued to stop enforcement of the new rule.
“Joe Biden’s unlawful effort to weaponize Title IX for his extremist agenda has been stopped in its tracks,” said Attorney General Paxton Tuesday. “Threatening to withhold education funding by forcing states to accept ‘transgender’ policies that put women in danger was plainly illegal. Texas has prevailed on behalf of the entire Nation.”
According to the court order, “Rather than promote the equal opportunity, dignity, and respect that Title IX demands for both biological sexes, [the DOE’s] Guidance Documents do the opposite in an effort to advance an agenda wholly divorced from the text, structure, and contemporary context of Title IX. Not to mention, recipients of Title IX funding—including Texas schools—will face an impossible choice: revise policies in compliance with the Guidance Documents but in contravention of state law or face the loss of substantial funding.”
Not to mention being divorced from basic biological reality. If the cells in a person’s body contain XX chromosomes, that person is female. If those cells contain XY chromosomes, then that person is male. No amount of legislation or regulation will ever change that basic reality, no matter how hard the party insists that you must affirm that 2+2=5.
“Thus, to allow [the Biden Administration’s] unlawful action to stand would be to functionally rewrite Title IX in a way that shockingly transforms American education and usurps a major question from Congress,” wrote U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor. “That is not how our democratic system functions.”
Multiple Texas laws and school policies implicate the concept of sex in the educational context. The Texas Education Code prohibits school districts from allowing “a student to compete in an interscholastic athletic competition sponsored or authorized by the district or school that is designated for the biological sex opposite to the student’s biological sex.” TEX. EDUC. CODE § 33.0834. The Board of Trustees for independent school districts “have the exclusive power and duty to govern and oversee the management of the public schools of the district.” Id. § 11.151(b). Pursuant to that oversight power, Texas school districts promulgate additional policies on related issues that mirror § 33.0834. These school districts receive federal funds.
These additional district-specific policies take various forms. For example, some Texas school districts—such as Frisco ISD, Grapevine–Colleyville ISD, and Carroll ISD—mandate that schools within their respective districts maintain separate bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers based on biological sex. These school districts also prohibit the assignment of bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers based on subjective gender identity. Consistent with the biological reality of sex, Carroll ISD precludes district employees from “requir[ing] the use of pronouns that are inconsistent with a student’s or other person’s biological sex.
“The biological reality of sex” is precisely what the left has declared war on.
As part of the radical left’s war against Christianity and the nuclear family, the social justice-infected Democratic party has decided to make pandering to confused and mentally ill men a higher priority than protecting actual women. Despite how deeply unpopular this anti-reality position with the American public, conservatives were initially slow to take up the fight against it, either cowed by histrionic emotional arguments (“If you deny transexualism, you’re literally forcing them to kill themselves!”) or an inability to believe that the something so brazenly absurd is real and not some sort of elaborate joke. But when the Biden Administration tries to rewrite Title IX, a law written to protect women, by executive fiat to mean the exact opposite of the statutory language in order to protect men pretending to be woman at the expense of actual women, then we have to assume that they are very serious indeed.
Texas is fortunate to have a governor and attorney general who are not afraid to fight against the Biden Administration’s war on reality.
Since I didn’t do a separate post on the 80th anniversary of D-Day, here’s a Mark Felton video that covers ships from Operatune Neptune, the naval portion of D-Day, that have survived.
Operation Neptune was “under British control, commanded by Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey, the man who had been responsible for the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940.”
“Can you imagine the size of the force of ships required to land over 150,000 British, Canadian, American and French troops on five different beaches? It was almost 7,000, from huge battleships to tiny landing craft.”
“Britain supplied 892 warships out of the 1,213 involved, and 3,261 landing craft out of a total of 4,126.
Brits crewed many landing craft carrying American soldiers to the beach.
“112,113 Royal Navy personnel served on D-Day, plus 25,000 British members of the Merchant Navy, with the United States Navy providing the second biggest contingent: 52,889.”
The invasion fleet was split into the Western Naval Task Force under U.S. Admiral Alan G. Kirk, supporting Omaha and Utah beaches, and the Eastern Naval Task Force, under British Admiral Sir Philip Vian, covering Gold, Juno and Sword beaches.
Minesweeping operations began even earlier than the landings.
The landing was originally scheduled on June 5, but had to be delayed due to bad weather.
HMS Medusa arrived at the beach 12 hours before the US Landings began to “act as a marker to show the entrance to a narrow channel to be swept by mine sweepers.” “HMS Medusa still looks exactly the same as she did during World War II, having been extensively restored and carefully looked after, and she could be found today at Haslar Marina in Crossport in Hampshire.”
“Today only one D-Day veteran minesweeper still exists, USS Threat, and incredibly she is still serving in her original role, though no longer with the United States.” She was sold to Mexico, and currently serves as to Mexico where she currently serves as the ARM Francisco Zarco.
The destroyer USS Laffey screened for German ships on D-Day, and performed some shore bombardment on June 8-9. She’s preserved as a museum ship in South Carolina.
The bombarding forces flagship of Omaha Beach still survives: The battleship USS Texas. An old ship in 1944, Texas dated from around 1912, a dreadnaught battleship of the old school. In World War II she had been pressed into convoy escort duties in the Atlantic, and shore bombardment during the Operation Torch landings in North Africa in 1942. She had been modified over the years, and her systems upgraded, and her ten 14 inch guns gave her a formidable hitting power, able to pulverize targets over 20 miles away. On D-Day, Texas was assigned to provide fire support to the Western half of Omaha Beach, where the US 29th Infantry Division was landing, and Pointe du Hoc, in support of the 2nd Ranger Battalion.
The Royal Navy light Cruiser HMS Belfast also carried out shore bombardment, and survives as a museum ship on the Themes.
A surviving Liberty Ship, SS Jeremiah O’Brien, was not only preserved, it carried American veterans across the Atlantic to participate in the 50th Anniversary commemoration, and today she remains fully seaworthy.
Various other, smaller ships (tank landing craft, light ships, and a German patrol boat) have survived in various roles and in museums.
As the largest conflict in human history passes out of living memory, so much of what was common knowledge of that conflict fades into obscurity. People still know Omaha Beach from Saving Private Ryan, but if you were to ask today’s college students “What is the significance of the names Gold, Juno and Sword?”, I venture that most wouldn’t know the answer.
All those “new jobs” created in the Biden Recession have gone to illegal aliens, two Trump court cases appear to be in the process of derailment, more Hunter Biden shenanigans come to light, a whole lot of anniversaries this week, and a chance to own the Ark of the Covenant! It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The first Wall Street analyst daring to point out that the employment emperor is naked, is Standard Chartered’s global head of macro, Steve Englander who in a note titled simply enough “Immigration leading to labor-market surge” [writes] that according to his estimates “undocumented immigrants account for half of job growth in FY24 so far” (the actual number is far higher but we understand his initial conservatism), and adds that “asylum seekers and humanitarian parolees explain the surge in undocumented immigrants” before concluding that the continued rise in EAD approvals likely will extend strong employment growth in 2024. In other words, “strong employment growth” for American citizens, always was and remains a fabulation, and the only job growth in the US is for illegals, who will work for below minimum wage, which also explains why inflation hasn’t spiked in the past year as millions of illegals were hired.
How is this not the biggest political talking point right now: since October 2019, native-born US workers have lost 1.4 million jobs; over the same period foreign-born workers have gained 3 million jobs. pic.twitter.com/Z5HVWmQ24C
Does a mistrial loom in the Trump kangaroo court case? Seems like a juror celebrating a guilty verdict before the trial was over on Facebook is yet another reason to throw out the conviction…
Speaking kangaroo Trump prosecutions, the Georgia Court of Appeals has ordered that case halted until the Fani Willis conflict of interest issue is resolved.
In other court news, in Hunter Biden’s defense just blew up.
Hunter’s defense, carefully crafted by attorney Abbe Lowell during his opening statement on Tuesday, was blown up by the testimony of an ex-girlfriend and ex-wife who described the extent of Hunter’s crack-cocaine usage around the time he purchased a firearm in October 2018 — and by the salesman who sold Hunter the gun he allegedly lied in order to purchase.
Hunter is facing two federal charges related to his allegedly lying about his drug addiction on a gun-purchase background-check form and he faces a third charge for allegedly possessing the firearm while addicted to crack cocaine. Hunter pleaded not guilty to the charges last year and faces up to 25 years in prison.
Most of the day was taken up by testimony from Hunter Biden’s ex-girlfriend Zoe Kestan, a woman who dated Biden from roughly December 2017 to November 2018, despite being half his age at the time.
Prosector Leo Wise conducted a lengthy direct examination of Kestan accompanied by pictures from her cellphone to corroborate her recollection of events.
Wise and Kestan seemed to get into a rhythm throughout the direct examination, as Kestan recalled large events and small details from her time with Hunter Biden. Kestan remembered exact dates and named the various hotels they stayed at during their time together.
Each time Kestan described an experience with Hunter Biden, Wise asked her if Hunter Biden smoked crack at their hotel or Airbnb, and Kestan always replied affirmatively.
“Every 20 minutes or so,” Kestan said of Hunter Biden’s crack habit during one of the hotel stays. She noted that he smoked crack less frequently in public, and she never noticed a change in his demeanor when he smoked.
Wise shared photos from Kestan’s cellphone showing drug paraphernalia scatted around the bathrooms and tables of their lodgings. One of the images appeared to show Biden in a hotel bathtub holding a crack pipe in the wee hours of the morning. When Wise showed the images, Kestan easily pointed out the drug paraphernalia and explained to the courtroom how the various materials were used to cook and consume crack.
Biden allowed Kestan to withdraw cash from his account when he needed to spend it on drugs, she recounted. Kestan stated the names of drug dealers and described the drug transactions she saw at the hotels and other locations.
Kestan’s testimony and the images allowed Wise to establish that Hunter was smoking crack in September 2018, following his late August rehab stint in Malibu, Calif. She said Biden smoked crack every 20 minutes at a Malibu house he rented, and she did not remember Biden discussing his rehab stint during her time at the house in September 2018.
Wise closed the direct examination by introducing a lengthy text message Biden sent her in December 2018 lamenting how he would always be a drug addict and his attempts to get sober failed.
And this is “the smartest guy” Joe Biden knows…
Also from Hunter’s weapons case, he was caught on tape bragging about how he could score crack in Timbuktu. Which is a neat trick, since it’s an Islamic majority city in Mali, Africa, and is currently under siege by Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin, a jihadist organization which has incorporated elements formally loyal to both al Qaeda and the Islamic State. To be fair to the crackhead, he apparently said this before the siege was imposed last year…
Also, I would like to apologize to readers for not knowing about the siege and doing at least a LinkSwarm post to it. So much news, so little time..
On Friday, Mayor John Whitmire and outgoing Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced seven people have been indicted for 14 public corruption felonies ranging from abuse of official capacity to tampering with evidence. The charges are related to a scheme surrounding the City of Houston’s water repair contracts.
Patrece Lee, the lead defendant, and a former city employee, had access to $80 million of city funds for emergency waterline repair.
In the Summer and Fall of 2022, Lee was in a position to recommend vendors for contracts with the City of Houston public works department to repair the water lines. Lee allegedly made agreements with companies to have them hire her as a “consultant” to receive a kickback in exchange for expedited payments and bigger contracts. She also targeted less experienced companies and offered her services to help them “get paid faster, or to get bigger and better contracts in the future” as well.
Lee allegedly received roughly $320,000 in payments from that scheme and then steered contracts to a company owned by her brother, allowing them to be paid more than $400,000 of which she immediately transferred $380,000 to her own company. The total amount she stole from the city was $700,000.
“The cooperation that we’ve received from this administration stands in stark contrast to the last seven years,” said Ogg.
The issue was uncovered during Mayor Sylvester Turner’s administration. However, he planned to have it handled as an internal civil or administrative matter rather than refer it to the district attorney for criminal prosecution.
If Kim Ogg would actually go after government corruption (and real criminals) while she’s a lame duck DA, that would be a nice silver lining to the clouds of Houston/Harris County’s soft on crime Democratic leadership.
The Houston conman who pretended to be a rabbi. “The man accused of spending $15,000 on a dead woman’s credit card has a long history of fraud, according to police, court records and his family. Police say Dustin Mitchell, who goes by Dustin Cohen, posed as a Rabbi, lawyer and possibly a cop to defraud people. They also say they think he spray-painted anti-semitic vandalism on his own truck.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
…and the 20th anniversary of Killdozer. The event, not the great Theodore Sturgeon short story or the medicore TV movie made from it.
Speaking of D-Day, Biden just plagiarized Reagan’s speech.
Joe Biden essentially plagiarized Ronald Reagan’s famous 1984 speech at Pointe du Hoc today in Normandy. Watch these clips side by side. Wow: pic.twitter.com/jeGgTS2Nnm
A new stock exchange headquartered in Dallas will launch next year aimed at competing with New York City’s exchanges, whose rules and regulations some companies have found onerous.
TXSE Group Inc. is founded and operated by James Lee, who says the company has already raised $120 million for the project — the largest backers of which are BlackRock and Citadel Securities.
BlackRock is a surprising name to be investing in a major initiative in Texas. After all, BlackRock’s previous headlines have been about various Texas retirement funds divesting from BlackRock over the company’s leftwing “Environmental Social Governance (ESG)” investing policies and their hostility to the oil and gas industry. Indeed, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink was a poster boy for ESG, but seems to have had at least a partial change of heart over ESG, saying he’s “ashamed” to use the term anymore, instead being less hostile to fossil fuels and supporting a strategy of “transition investing” in decarbonization technologies. (Maybe getting their stock downgraded over ESG had something to do with that.) Stefan Padfield says “Fink has apparently simply replaced ESG with ‘conscious capitalism,’ which suggests nothing much has really changed given that ‘ESG is conscientious capitalism in practice.’ He also notes that BlackRock’s stock price has under-performed the S&P 500 over the last 12 months.
The last time we looked into Citadel Securities was because they had apparently been caught with their hands in the GameStop naked shorts cookie jar at the same time they were telling trading platform (and investment recipient) Robinhood to stop allowing retail customers to buy GameStop.
The plan was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. TXSE Group intends to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) later this year. It will operate virtually but also eventually establish a physical presence in Dallas.
“Changes in equities trading markets are driving more volume to exchanges and more choices for issuers and sponsors,” Lee said in a press release.
“TXSE will ultimately create more competition around quote activity, liquidity and transparency, resulting in more consistent and reliable markets that benefit investors, global issuers and liquidity providers alike.”
Lee added, “Texas and the other states in the southeast quadrant have become economic powerhouses. Combined with the demand we are seeing from investors and corporations for expanded alternatives to trade and list equities, this is an opportune time to build a major, national stock exchange in Texas.”
TXSE sees Nasdaq’s and NYSE’s approaches to compliance and non-financial regulations, such as diversity targets, as heavy-handed and onerous.
“BlackRock is proud to be a founding investor in the Texas Stock Exchange to increase liquidity and improve market efficiency for BlackRock’s clients and other investors in the U.S. capital markets,” BlackRock Vice Chairman Mark McCombe told The Texan in a statement.
“TXSE is well positioned to capitalize on the Texas economy and strength of the state’s business environment. We look forward to engaging with the other investors on the benefits of the TXSE’s unique value proposition.”
This follows other similarly aimed projects that BlackRock and others have partaken in over the last decade — a list that includes things like Members Exchange, RFQ Hub, and Luminex Trading. Given the state’s growth and regulatory posture, those backing this new project see a unique investment opportunity.
This states the obvious: Texas has a pro-business, pro-growth regulatory environment, while New York (city and state) has a hostile, anti-growth regulatory environment.
No points for guessing which political parties control which state.
Not mentioned, but a distinct possibility, is that many big business owners see the Trump kangaroo court conviction as a potential threat to themselves. If Democrats are willing to use a weaponized judiciary to go after their political enemies, the law be damned, then who might be next? A presence in New York, even only a listing on the New York stock exchange, may now be perceived as a much bigger potential liability than it was. With companies moving their physical presence from failing blue states like New York and California to Texas, it make a great deal of sense to do the same in as many legal venues as possible.
Attorney General Ken Paxton announced today the launch of a new major initiative to protect citizens’ sensitive data from unauthorized exploitation by tech companies and artificial intelligence.
The initiative was launched under the umbrella of the Attorney General Office Consumer Protection Division and established a team for “aggressive enforcement” of state privacy laws. It will also “ensure companies respect Texans’ privacy rights and safeguard their personal data.”
According to a press release from Paxton’s office, the data protection team is set to be one of the largest privacy law enforcement teams in the entire United States.
“Any entity abusing or exploiting Texans’ sensitive data will be met with the full force of the law,” said Paxton. “Companies that collect and sell data in an unauthorized manner, harm consumers financially, or use artificial intelligence irresponsibly present risks to our citizens that we take very seriously.
“As many companies seek more and more ways to exploit data they collect about consumers, I am doubling down to protect privacy rights,” he continued. “With companies able to collect, aggregate, and use sensitive data on an unprecedented scale, we are strengthening our enforcement of privacy laws to protect our citizens.”
Specifically, the new team will focus on enforcing the Data Privacy and Security Act, the Identify Theft Enforcement and Protection Act, the Data Broker Law, the Biometric Identifier Act, the Deceptive Trade Practices Act, and federal laws such as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
“Texas has been a national leader in advancing conservative technology policy, and this initiative is the perfect complement to legislative wins in recent sessions as it will ensure Texas has the expertise and firepower to enforce laws that protect consumers and hold Big Tech accountable,” said David Dunmoyer—the Texas Public Policy Foundation Better Tech for Tomorrow campaign director.
“Big Tech companies have gleefully flouted laws like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act for years, and in the absence of meaningful federal action, this initiative demonstrates Texas’ willingness to once again step into the breach and fight on behalf of Texans,” he continued. “This initiative will only further cement Texas’ national leadership in this space.”
This is the latest development in Texas’ efforts to crack down on data privacy infringement. In mid-summer of last year, Gov. Greg Abbott signed the Texas Data Privacy & Security Act into law.
The law applies to primarily businesses and entities who conduct business in the state of Texas or produce a product consumed by Texans, process or engage with the sale of personal data, and who are not considered “small businesses” unless the business has its hand in transactions of personal data.
That enforcement effort sounds both needed and deserved, but the question is how you enforce those laws when they cows have not only left the barn, but have been sucked down and sliced up into thousands of vast international data farms far beyond the regulatory reach of the state of Texas.
Big data lives and breathes on personal data that you’ve agreed to give up in variegated clauses scattered throughout the sprawling text swamps of terms and conditions for online sites you use for free.
Have a Facebook account? Congratulations! Every bit of information you’ve shared with Facebook (your friends network, your interests, the sports teams you follow, the foods you favor, etc.) is now available to every partner of Facebook. And everyone partners with Facebook. If they have your email address or your phone number, they have your data.
Ditto Google, with the additional proviso that Google has sucked up and cataloged pretty much every public database in the world, plus every single search query you’ve launched, ever, and every web page you’ve ever viewed through Chrome.
Ditto Microsoft, for LinkedIn (yes, Microsoft bought LinkedIn), Windows, Explorer, Edge, Bing, etc.
Ditto Twitter for everything you’ve ever tweeted or liked there.
Ditto Sony, whose PlayStation Network data got hacked.
Ditto Apple, though they seem to have better privacy protection provisions than most, mainly because they make their money off hardware. This doesn’t make them the good guys, just the least bad buys.
And don’t forget state, location and federal government entities, whose data security is probably several orders of magnitude worse than the tech giants.
Given that there’s so much personal data out there, so much legally acquired, how do you go about putting the genie back in the bottle? It’s a near impossible task, given that the tech giants not only hire armies of lawyers to defend themselves from lawsuits, but also lobbyists to write laws protecting them from said lawsuits.
One place to start: Joining in a lawsuit where Facebook’s parent company Meta actually used stolen data to train AI, namely using a giant database of pirated books without paying authors. Paxton’s office could join one of the lawsuits against Meta, or file a new one on behalf of Texas authors whose work was used without compensation.
Catching a tech giant with their pants down while actually breaking the law may give Paxton leverage to address other privacy concerns, and possibly the chance to do some eye-opening discovery…
Both Texas Scorecard and The Texan have done good work highlighting a disturbing reality: Numerous public school teachers of all grade levels have been arrested for sex offenses, many involving children.
I’ve been running several of these in LinkSwarms, but Texas Scorecard has featured a number over the last week:
A former Texas teacher received the maximum sentence of 30 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to producing child pornography—specifically videos showing her performing sexual acts on a prepubescent child.
Sonya Conchita Murillo, 33, was a substitute teacher for the Marfa Independent School District in West Texas.
Murillo was arrested in June 2023 on federal sexual exploitation of children charges, a month after her boyfriend was arrested on similar charges. She has been held in federal custody without bond ever since.
The former teacher pleaded guilty in January to one count of production of child pornography; four additional counts were dropped.
“The fact that the judge delivered the maximum allowed 30-year imprisonment to this defendant for producing child pornography, is indicative of the utterly horrendous predatory acts Murillo committed,” said U.S. Attorney Jaime Esparza in a Justice Department statement.
Murrillo’s one-time boyfriend Patricio Javier “PJ” Serrano, a youth softball coach in Marfa, was arrested in May 2023 for possessing child sexual abuse materials featuring images and videos of prepubescent boys.
While investigating Serrano, authorities found at least eight Snapchat videos of Murillo performing sexual acts on a boy who was 3 to 5 years old, according to an affidavit filed in the case.
If you had done this on a 3-5 year old 40 years ago in west Texas, I strongly suspect you’d get a bullet in the back of your head and a shallow grave, no law enforcement involvement required.
A federal judge has rejected an immunity claim by a Central Texas school administrator accused of facilitating a male teacher’s molestation of a 5-year-old female student in 2020-21.
The judge found that Lorena Primary School Principal April Jewell’s lack of action to protect pre-K children from a teacher’s sexual abuse “shocks the conscience.”
According to a lawsuit filed last year by the victim’s parents, Jewell ignored months of warnings from multiple school employees about inappropriate behavior by the teacher, Nicolas Scot Crenshaw, toward two of his female students.
Crenshaw eventually pleaded guilty to multiple counts of aggravated sexual assault of a young child and other sex crimes against the students and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Jewell kept her job as the school’s principal, shocking many parents who say the ordeal has shattered their trust in the local school system.
In a May 20 report to U.S. District Judge Alan Albright, Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Manske rejected Jewell’s claim to qualified immunity and recommended that her motion to dismiss the parents’ case against her be denied.
Parents of the victim, identified as Jane Doe, are suing April Jewell and Lorena Independent School District for failing to protect their then 5-year-old daughter from months of sexual abuse by pre-K teacher Nicolas Scot Crenshaw during the 2020-21 academic year.
Crenshaw was a long-term substitute teacher at Lorena Primary School, where Jewell was—and still is—the principal.
At the beginning of the school year, Crenshaw shared a class with another teacher.
According to court documents, in January 2021 teachers and other school staff began reporting to Jewell about Crenshaw’s inappropriate behavior with Jane, which included him lying under a blanket with Jane during nap time and frequently placing her on his lap or having her straddle him.
An aide even gave Jewell photos of Crenshaw’s suspicious behavior, but she was reprimanded by Jewell for taking the pictures.
What principled principal would receive repeated reports of a teacher creeping on young children and go “Nah, it’s fine?”
A Texas charter school teacher is in jail after being accused of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old student. The visiting international teacher had been reprimanded and then fired for placing his hands on students, but the school later rehired him.
International Leadership of Texas teacher Jose Adrian Hernandez Grimaldo, 46, was arrested last month and charged with one count of aggravated sexual assault of a child, a first-degree felony punishable by 5 to 99 years in prison.
At the time of the alleged assault, Hernandez Grimaldo taught at the ILTexas K-8 school in College Station. He later transferred to the school’s Lancaster K-8 campus where he worked at the time of his arrest.
According to an arrest report from the College Station Police Department, the female victim alleges the teacher attacked her in a bathroom in February 2023. She told police he threatened to kill her if she told anyone about the attack.
Hernandez Grimaldo denied the allegations, but according to a report by KBTX, he failed a polygraph test.
ILTexas Superintendent Eddie Conger confirmed in a statement Friday that, as a result of the arrest, Hernandez Grimaldo was terminated from ILTexas on May 24.
The ILTexas statement included a timeline of Hernandez Grimaldo’s employment with the school system.
Hernandez Grimaldo, who is in the U.S. on a teaching visa, was hired in August 2022 to teach Spanish at ILTexas’ College Station K-8 campus. According to the timeline, he cleared a standard background check and additional security clearance from the Department of Homeland Security.
I hardly think we need to be importing child molesters from other countries. We seem to have quite enough trouble with the home-grown variety.
He was placed on administrative leave and reprimanded in October 2022 for putting his hands on a student.
In March 2023, Hernandez Grimaldo was terminated from ILTexas following more complaints about him touching students.
He then filed a grievance and the district overturned his termination in May 2023.
“We can’t hire this guy! He had multiple complaints that he was molesting students!” “But wait! He filed a grievance! We have to hire him back so he can molest more children!”
Sounds like the person in charge of managing the grievance process also needs to be fired.
The teacher was offered a transfer and began working at ILTexas Lancaster K-8 in August 2023.
In September 2023, a parent reported to the ILTexas College Station principal that inappropriate sexual interactions took place between their then-6th-grade student and Hernandez Grimaldo.
He was again placed on administrative leave in October 2023.
Superintendent Conger said ILTexas investigated but was unable to substantiate the sexual assault claims. Hernandez Grimaldo was reinstated as a teacher at ILTexas Lancaster K-8 in January 2024.
The superintendent said ILTexas filed “required reports with the local police department, Department of Family and Protective Services within 48 hours of initial notice, and the State Board of Education as appropriate.”
Just how many sexual assault claims are needed until a charge is considered “substantiated?” People were willing to give Bill Cosby the benefit of the doubt when it was one or two women accusing him, but the scale tipped well before the 60 or so who eventually came forward. Grimaldo should never have been put back into a position to molest children after the initial charges.
A Houston-area elementary school teacher filmed sexually explicit videos of herself while on campus, and community leaders are demanding that her teaching certificate be revoked.
Adrienne Harborth was a music teacher at Gray Elementary in Lamar Consolidated Independent School District in Fort Bend County near Houston.
Harborth can be seen in two videos shaking her bare breasts and buttocks while in a classroom and a bathroom at the school. Harborth’s school ID badge with her name printed on it is also visible.
[Blinks] This is not exactly what people think of when discussing the perfect crime. I think the Babylon Bee would reject the ID badge detail in one of their stories. “Nah, too heavy handed.”
Censored versions of the videos, first posted by Grizzy’s Hood News under the title “Teacher Gone Wild,” have gone viral on the internet.
My cousin told me about Grizzy’s Hood News a while back. Basically a Houston woman went “OK, I’m gonna start my own news web page,” and now she breaks a lot of news that seems too spicy for mainstream Houston media. That “Teacher Gone Wild” video is no longer up, but, having watched a bit of it, I can assure you that you didn’t miss anything…
Harborth has since told Texas Scorecard she filmed the videos on the weekend, not during school hours, and that an ex-boyfriend released the videos as revenge porn.
“I want to shoot a nude video of myself. I know! I’ll go down to my school and wear my name tag! That can’t possibly backfire on me!”
Shooting a nude video of yourself is a pretty stupid thing to do, especially if you’re not a porn star. While people may be inclined to forgive such a thing if it was a mistake made in youth (say, drunk college girls on spring break), doing it at your place of work is going to be a firing offense pretty much everywhere, but especially at a public school.
Texas Scorecard has a Bad Apples tag for such incidents, and an interactive map of incidents at the bottom of the relevant news stories that I don’t see a way to embed or link to directly.
I am not so naive as to believe we’ve never had sex offenders as teachers before the 21st century, but when one seems to pop up every week in Texas, there’s a problem. (I’m also willing to bet that the problem is actually worse per capita in blue states.) Something has certainly changed in society, and new “pedo friendly” element seems to have entered political discourse in western society, from Jeffrey Epstein to Salon to Germany decriminalizing child pornography, today’s leftwing elites can’t seem to help being soft on child rape.
Texas citizens need to demand better screening by schools, and swifter action when sex offenders are discovered.
A kangaroo trial reaches its kangaroo conclusion, Biden’s ludicrous Gaza pier floats away and sinks, ESG lawsuits get the green light, the Libertarians nominate a hard left social justice warrior, and the NRA picks up a Supreme Court win. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The kangaroo trial where they tried Trump on supposed violation of a federal offense in a state courtroom and the judge decreed that the jury didn’t need to come to a unanimous opinion to find Trump guilty found Trump guilty. I expect this to result in expedited appeal and equally expedited overturning.
Result? “Today, the Trump campaign announced a record-shattering small-dollar fundraising haul following the sham Biden Trial verdict totaling $34.8 million – nearly double the biggest day ever recorded for the Trump campaign on the WinRed platform.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
While the CIA is strictly prohibited from spying on or running clandestine operations against American citizens on US soil, a bombshell new “Twitter Files” report reveals that a member of the Board of Trustees of InQtel – the CIA’s mission-driving venture capital firm, along with “former” intelligence community (IC) and CIA analysts, were involved in a massive effort in 2021-2022 to take over Twitter’s content management system, as Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag report over at Shellenberger’s Public (subscribers can check out the extensive 6,800 word report here).
According to “thousands of pages of Twitter Files and documents,” these efforts were part of a broader strategy to manage how information is disseminated and consumed on social media under the guise of combating ‘misinformation’ and foreign propaganda efforts – as this complex of government-linked individuals and organizations has gone to great lengths to suggest that narrative control is a national security issue.
According to the report, the effort also involved;
a long-time IC contractor and senior Department of Defense R&D official who spent years developing technologies to detect whistleblowers (“insider threats”) like Edward Snowden and Wikileaks’ leakers;
the proposed head of the DHS’ aborted Disinformation Governance Board, Nina Jankowicz, who aided US military and NATO “hybrid war” operations in Europe;
Jim Baker, who, as FBI General Counsel, helped start the Russiagate hoax, and, as Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, urged Twitter executives to censor The New York Post story about Hunter Biden.
Jankowicz (aka ‘Scary Poppins’), previously tipped to lead the DHS’s now-aborted Disinformation Governance Board, has been a vocal advocate for more stringent regulation of online speech to counteract ‘rampant disinformation.’ Jim Baker, in his capacity as FBI General Counsel and later as Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, advocated for and implemented policies that would restrict certain types of speech on the platform, including decisions that affected the visibility of politically sensitive content.
Furthermore, companies like PayPal, Amazon Web Services, and GoDaddy were mentioned as part of a concerted effort to de-platform and financially de-incentivize individuals and organizations deemed threats by the IC. This approach represents a significant escalation in the use of corporate cooperation to achieve what might essentially be considered censorship under the guise of national security.
Nina Jankowicz And The Alethea Group
Remember Nina? A huge fan of Christopher Steele – architect of the infamous Clinton-funded Dossier which underpinned the Trump-Russia hoax, and who joined the chorus of disinformation agents that downplayed the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell, Jankowicz previously served as a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, and advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as part of the Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship. She also oversaw the Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute.
Jankowicz compares the lack of regulation of speech on social media to the lack of government regulation of automobiles in the 1960s. She calls for a “cross-platform” and public-private approach, so whatever actions are taken are taken by Google, Facebook, and Twitter, simultaneously.
Jankowicz points to Europe as the model for regulating speech. “Germany’s NetzDG law requires social media companies and other content hosts to remove ‘obviously illegal’ speech within twenty-four hours,” she says, “or face a fine of up to $50 million.”
By contrast, in the US, she laments, “Congress has yet to pass a bill imposing even the most basic of regulations related to social media and election advertising.” -Public
In a 2020 book, How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict, Jankowicz praises a NATO cyber security expert for having created a “Center of Excellence,” a concept promoted by Renée Diresta of the Stanford Internet Observatory, in which she made the case for the (now failed) Disinformation Governance Board that Jankowicz would briefly head up.
One year later, Jankowicz began working with ‘anti-disinformation’ consulting firm, Althea Group, staffed by “former” IC analysts.
Lots more at the link.
Remember when fast food was cheap food you bought to treat kids or didn’t feel like cooking? Now 78% of Americans surveyed think it’s a luxury good they can’t afford. Thanks, Joe Biden!
Also, one of Putin’s dachas burned down, though it’s so far from the theater of operations that it may be unrelated.
“Biden’s Gaza ‘Pier to Nowhere’ a Disaster and National Embarrassment, Breaks Apart.” Evidently the pier can only work in seas with waves smaller than three feet, and 4.5′ chop and 20 MPH gusts KO’d it. Also, no less than four U.S. vessels have run aground in the process of trying to build and move this thing. That’s some mighty fine pier-building, Lou.
The Supreme Court unanimously handed the National Rifle Association a win Thursday in the gun rights group’s effort to revive a 2018 First Amendment lawsuit accusing a New York official of causing damage to the NRA’s relationships with banks and insurers.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a unanimous opinion that found the NRA “plausibly alleged” that Maria Vullo, a former superintendent of New York‘s Department of Financial Services, illegally retaliated against the pro-Second Amendment group after the Parkland, Florida, high school mass shooting that left 17 people dead.
The question before the justices was whether Vullo used her regulatory power to force state financial institutions to cut off ties with the NRA in violation of constitutional First Amendment protections.
Vullo, who worked in former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration, said her regulations targeted an insurance product that is illegal in New York, which is dubbed by critics as “murder insurance.” In essence, such insurances are third-party policies sold via the NRA that cover personal injury and criminal defense costs after the use of a firearm.
“Here, the NRA plausibly alleged that Vullo violated the First Amendment by coercing DFS-regulated entities into disassociating with the NRA in order to punish or suppress gun-promotion advocacy,” Sotomayor, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, wrote in her decision.
A mysterious shooting in North Carolina north of Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg, not far from where some of America’s most elite U.S. Special Operations forces live and train is under investigation by the Army Criminal Investigation Division as well as local police. The shooting in Carthage, North Carolina occurred May 3 at 8:15 p.m. following a phone call about a suspected trespasser near a Special Forces soldier’s property.
Two Chechen men who spoke broken English were found near the soldier’s home. The family alleges the suspected intruder, 35-year-old Ramzan Daraev of Chicago was taking photos of their children. When confronted near a power line in a wooded part of the property, an altercation ensued and Daraev was shot several times at close range. A second man, Dzhankutov Adsalan, was in a vehicle some distance from the incident and was questioned by authorities and then released. The Moore County Sheriff’s office is leading the investigation.
The FBI told Fox News, “Our law enforcement partners at the Moore County Sheriff’s Office contacted the FBI after a shooting death in Carthage. A special agent met with investigators and provided a linguist to assist with a language barrier for interviews.”
A district judge has granted a pilot’s request for a class-action lawsuit against American Airlines for allegedly investing pension funds into environmental, social, and governance (ESG) funds.
The case revolves around the allegation that American Airlines—headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas—violated its fiduciary obligation to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) “by investing millions of dollars of American Airlines employees’ retirement savings with investment managers and investment funds that pursue political agendas” through ESG initiatives.
“By pursuing ESG goals, Defendants gave Plan assets to fund managers, such as BlackRock, who allegedly ignored financial returns as the exclusive purpose and lowered the value of Plan participants’ investments,” the order states.
In addition to being disloyal to the employees, the plaintiff, Bryan Spence, argues that American Airlines’ investments were “imprudent because it is well known that ESG funds are associated with poor performance given the detrimental effects of such activism on stock prices.”
“To remedy these alleged ERISA violations, Plaintiff filed this lawsuit individually and on behalf of a proposed class of Plan participants and beneficiaries,” the order says. “ERISA authorized participants in a qualifying plan to bring an action on behalf of other participants to enforce the statute’s fiduciary obligations and remedial provisions, as well as recover all losses to a plan caused by a breach of a fiduciary duty.”
Two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, a large, mysterious new Internet hosting firm called Stark Industries Solutions materialized and quickly became the epicenter of massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on government and commercial targets in Ukraine and Europe. An investigation into Stark Industries reveals it is being used as a global proxy network that conceals the true source of cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns against enemies of Russia.
At least a dozen patriotic Russian hacking groups have been launching DDoS attacks since the start of the war at a variety of targets seen as opposed to Moscow. But by all accounts, few attacks from those gangs have come close to the amount of firepower wielded by a pro-Russia group calling itself “NoName057(16).”
As detailed by researchers at Radware, NoName has effectively gamified DDoS attacks, recruiting hacktivists via its Telegram channel and offering to pay people who agree to install a piece of software called DDoSia. That program allows NoName to commandeer the host computers and their Internet connections in coordinated DDoS campaigns, and DDoSia users with the most attacks can win cash prizes.
Microsoft’s announcement of the new AI-powered Windows 11 Recall feature has sparked a lot of concern, with many thinking that it has created massive privacy risks and a new attack vector that threat actors can exploit to steal data.
Revealed during a Monday AI event, the feature is designed to help “recall” information you have looked at in the past, making it easily accessible via a simple search.
While it’s currently only available on Copilot+ PCs running Snapdragon X ARM processors, Microsoft says they are working with Intel and AMD to create compatible CPUs.
Recall works by taking a screenshot of your active window every few seconds, recording everything you do in Windows for up to three months by default.
These snapshots will be analyzed by the on-device Neural Processing Unit (NPU) and an AI model to extract data from the screenshot. The data will be saved in a semantic index, allowing Windows users to browse through the snapshot history or search using human language queries.
Who wouldn’t want AI recording and monitoring their every move? Yet another reason never to turn on Windows Copilot+…or use a Windows machine at all.
Time for an update to this old classic
Though Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan survived by the skin of his teeth, a majority of Republican Texas House members say they won’t vote for him for speaker.
A majority of the 2025 Republican House caucus opposes Democratic committee chairs, and effectively will not support another term for Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont), the group said in a letter released on Friday.
“In a collective effort to respond to Republican voters and reform the Texas House, we will only vote for a candidate for speaker pursuant to the Platform and the Caucus By-Laws who will only appoint Republicans as committee chairs,” the brief letter and joint statement reads.
It adds, “The absence of a member’s or nominee’s name from this statement does not necessarily mean the individual is opposed to this statement. All members and nominees are invited to sign on to this statement.”
Forty six current or presumptive members signed the letter, including 23 members who voted for Phelan’s speakership last year.
One of those signatories, GOP nominee in House District 70 Steve Kinard, has a difficult general election fight against state Rep. Mihaela Plesa (D-Dallas) in a D-52% district.
The letter includes signatures from each of the 21 “Contract with Texas” signatories, most of whom campaigned specifically against Phelan’s speakership. That contract also includes a ban on Democratic committee chairs, though has 11 other planks to its demands as well.
Last session, a parliamentary maneuver precluded a vote on the question of banning Democratic chair appointments, though the idea had gained steam among GOP House members and was included in the party’s list of legislative priorities. It is likely to be featured again.
In a March interview after being pushed to a runoff and state Rep. Tom Oliverson (R-Cypress) announcing his challenge for the gavel, Phelan said he would not back down on the appointment of Democrats as committee chairs.
Snip.
This release makes Phelan’s path toward a third term as speaker much more difficult. Should this group hold, ostensibly opposed to Phelan, it will be impossible for him to win the Texas House Republican Caucus endorsement. However, the speaker could give in on some concessions, such as Democratic chair appointments, and win back this group’s support.
GOP caucus rules require members to vote for the body’s nominee, presumably enforced by the bylaws, though no section exists in that portion of the document laying out penalties for voting differently than the caucus has chosen. It’s happened before, for example last year when three members — state Reps. Tony Tinderholt (R-Arlington) and Nate Schatzline (R-Fort Worth), and now-former member Bryan Slaton (R-Royse City) — voted against the caucus nominee, Phelan, and for Tinderholt.
Article IX of the Texas Republican House Caucus bylaws lays out the procedure for selecting a speaker candidate. It requires the selection process to be conducted by secret ballot until a member receives two-thirds support from the body, currently 58 votes; if no candidate reaches that line, the last-placed candidate will be eliminated from the contest and that will be repeated until one candidate reaches 58.
Should the vote reach a third round, the threshold needed will drop to three-fifths support — currently at 52 votes. Should nobody reach that line, after a fourth round of voting, all nominations will be withdrawn and the floor reopened.
Depending on what happens in November with potential flips, those 58- and 52-lines may shift.
This intra-caucus vote will occur in early December, per the rules.
Libertarians nominate a social justice warrior Chase Oliver for their Presidential candidate. A fair number of Libertarians are saying they’ll vote for Trump now…
“I believe this is one of the most important elections of my lifetime, and I’m supporting Trump. I know that I’ll lose friends for this. Some will refuse to do business with me. The media will probably demonize me, as they have so many others before me. But despite this, I still believe it’s the right thing to do.”
The physics PhD said that he refuses to live in a society where people are afraid to speak their minds.
Red Lobster followup: Turns out Red Lobster is privately owned by seafood supplier Thai Union. And just who did Red Lobster buy all that “endless shrimp” from? No prizes for guessing…
“George Miller’s Furiosa is projected to take in only $31 million at the box office. When adjusted for inflation, that’s the worst Memorial Day box-office haul in 43 years.”
Will wokeness and the Biden recession kill off comic shops? Also, is Disney looking to outsource comics from Marvel?
World’s largest Buc-ee’s to open. “The new center is located in Luling, Texas, and will open its doors to the public the morning of June 10, according to a news release from the company. The new 75,000-square-foot center is symbolic for the Luling community, as it will replace the city’s current Buc-ee’s store, which was the first Buc-ee’s travel center built in 2003.” (Hat tip: Dave.)
“Donald Trump Found Guilty Of Being Donald Trump.” “‘It was an open and shut case,’ said prosecutor Joshua Steinglass. ‘There wasn’t any way he could sit there being Donald Trump and just get away with it. We were given strict orders to hold him accountable for being Donald Trump, and that’s what we’ve done.'”
