Several previous LinkSwarms have reported on the burgeoning Harris County corruption scandals (many reported by Holly Hansen) involving corrupt no-bid contracts and FBI raids. Now the scandal has finally resulted in indictments.
Three employees of Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo have been indicted by a grand jury on charges related to how they helped award a contract for COVID-19 vaccine outreach last year.
The Harris County district clerk lists two felony counts each for chief of staff Alex Triantaphyllis, policy director Wallis Nader and policy aide Aaron Dunn. The charges are misuse of official information and tampering with a government record.
The charges add weight to a scandal Hidalgo has attempted to dismiss as politically motivated, and they threaten to tarnish her image as an ethically minded public servant as she seeks reelection this year. Hidalgo is widely seen as a rising star in the Texas Democratic Party and a future statewide candidate.
The three employees were part of a selection committee to choose a vendor for a COVID-19 vaccine outreach campaign Hidalgo wanted. The committee, which also included members of the county health department, unanimously awarded an $11 million contract to Elevate Strategies, a small political consulting firm owned by Felicity Pereyra, who has previously worked on Democratic campaigns.
Republicans have seized on this as evidence of corruption, alleging without evidence [Ahem – LP] that Hidalgo was funneling money to help the Democratic Party build relationships with voters. Hidalgo accused Republican county commissioners of spreading conspiracy theories, though she agreed to cancel the contract in September because she said it had become too politicized.
Court records filed by the Texas Rangers, who are assisting prosecutors, suggest the inquiry focuses on whether Hidalgo’s office inappropriately involved Pereyra in designing the bid proposal she would later win.
My working assumption is that any time you see smoke like this, the fire is almost invariably channeling taxpayer money to the pockets hard-left Democratic Party cronies.
When Holly has a piece up on the story I’ll link it here.
Edited to Add: Holly’s piece is now up, and provides important context left out of other stories.
The affidavits also allege that in April 2021, after the University of Texas (UT) Health Science Center earned a higher score at a lower cost than Elevate Strategies, Triantaphyllis texted Nader that they needed to “slam the door shut on UT.” The selection committee later instructed purchasing agent Dwight Dosplauf to disqualify UT for underperforming on another project.
In August of 2021, The Texan first reported that Harris County had awarded an $11 million vaccine outreach contract to Pereyra’s Elevate Strategies. Prior to founding the company in 2019, Pereyra had previously served as the deputy campaign manager for county Commissioner Adrian Garcia (D-Pct. 2). Pereyra had also been with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and worked with the Democratic National Committee.
During the August 26, 2021 meeting of the commissioners court, Hidalgo accused Commissioner Jack Cagle (R-Pct. 4) of telling a “bold-faced lie” after he posed questions about the “one-woman firm” handling the contract.
Following Monday’s indictments, Cagle said on social media that he “took no pleasure in being right about this.”
“This is a major black eye for Harris County. Now it’s time for the courts to sort it out.”
Last September, emails obtained by The Texan showed that Dunn, Nader, and Triantaphyllis had instructed Dopslauf to revise vendor experience requirements for the vaccine outreach project. Documents obtained by FOX 26 Houston also showed that UT had earned a score of 240 and bid $7.5 million compared to Elevate Strategies’ score of 204 with a cost estimate of $19 million. Some time before the project award, Elevate Strategies lowered the cost to $10.9 million.
Even before the scoring of proposals, however, on January 14, 2021, Hidalgo had texted about the scope of a project mentioning “Felicity,” and Triantaphyllis later clarified to Nader, saying, “She was trying to add to Felicity’s scope relating to engaging community groups and stuff.”
You would think that by now, even the more dandified blue bloods of Conservative Inc. would have learned something from the Trump uprising about the power of populist and culture war issues. But increasingly it seems like even some of those that didn’t develop full-blown Trump Derangement Syndrome objected not only to Trump’s style, but his actual substance. They seem more afraid of alienating liberal MSM and Hollywood friends over culture war issues than paying attention to outrage among actual voters.
That’s why this Twitter thread is fire.
There are different reasons why some conservatives gravitate to this way of thinking. Some are paid grifters. Some live deep inside the left-wing information sphere and inherit its prejudices, such as the notion cultural combat is toxic for conservatives but OK for lefties.
Some believe they can win ideological struggles without sullying themselves with filthy politics. If they just hold their principles high and visibly disdain effective political strategy, people will someday realize the Right has been right all along, and rally to its banner.
I’m not sure that’s the case. I think a number of them are worried that they’ll be blocked from obtaining cushy corporate-funded sinecures at colleges and think-tanks if they ruffle too many feathers. They want their bread to stay well-buttered, and are willing to keep quiet in order to stay on as some sort of pet opposition as long as the left is willing to throw them occasional “strange new respect” bones and rub their furry bellies.
For these timid elements of conservatism, the worst offense of the Right is questioning the motives of the Left. Nothing makes them spring into action against other conservatives faster than insinuations of bad faith or sinister motives against the Left.
This attitude holds among timid conservatives even as the Left wages all-out war and loudly asserts there are no honest, sincere, good-faith arguments against its agenda. Is there a political argument on the Left that doesn't begin with denying the good intentions of opponents?
They'll tell you it's paranoia and slander to talk about the destructive agenda of the Left even as hyperventilating lefties are busy laying out their agenda with hundreds of social media videos and vowing to destroy anyone who gets in their way.
You don't want to fight an ugly culture war? Well, guess what? EVERYTHING is culture. Everything either feeds into culture, or is shaped by it. The Left gets that, and deployed legions of paid shock troops to capture institutions and corporations while you kept your hands clean.
Now we've arrived at the final destination, the fatal terrain, the fabled Hill to Die On: political and sexual indoctrination of goddamn FIVE YEAR OLDS using public money and state institutions – and it's STILL not time to take the gloves off, huh? Still time for tone policing?
It's as if some conservatives fear the Left's true agenda is so hideous – as carefully laid out by lefties themselves – that if we expose it and speak honestly about it, the public will turn against US for putting such ugliness into their Twitter feeds and Facebook pages.
What that grassroots army of parents needs right now is REPRESENTATION. They're looking for candidates to support at every level. And they need intellectual firepower, ideological support, a movement that understands their concerns and offers a philosophy to illuminate them.
That's where you're supposed to come in, conservatives – from activists to professional pundits. Or do we get another Tea Party debacle where the grassroots gets trashed by the establishment and left to the mercy of grifters because they threatened to rock the boat too hard? /end
The Social Justice Warrior-infected Democratic Party has moved so far, so fast, to such radical extremes, that it’s even woken up the normies. When a school board revolt breaks out in San Francisco, you would think that even the dullest blades in the Conservative Inc. silverware closet would sense the once-in-a-generation realignment opportunities, but no. They seem to be off daydreaming of their next Ahoy cruise or a Jeb! restoration rather than detecting the smell of blood.
The Biden Administration is all-in on slicing off your daughter’s breasts and cutting off your son’s dick. pic.twitter.com/lWrgwSUQeJ
The “moderate” Biden Administration is declaring that it may mutilate your children in the name of transgenderism without telling you. And that’s not a hill to die on? Is there any hill they’ll die on that doesn’t involve marginal tax rates?
These is a giant red wave building to sweep left-wing crazies from power almost everywhere that cuts across all previous demographic, geographic and class lines. Conservative Inc. can ride that wave, or be drowned by it.
Now that the Hunter Biden dam has finally burst for the MSM, we’re finally getting the “Hey, the Biden family sure seems to be involved in a lot of shady business deals” stories we should have gotten well before the 2020 election if the media weren’t so in the tank for Democrats.
While conservative heat has for three years focused on the past business activities of President Biden’s son Hunter, a key Senate Republican told CBS News this week that newly obtained banking records raise similar concerns about first brother James Biden.
“We have people with the Biden name, dealing with Chinese business people that have a relationship to the Communist Party,” Senator Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, told CBS News senior investigative correspondent Catherine Herridge. “I think James Biden was very much a part of this.”
Bank records released by Republican senators this week indicate James Biden’s company, the Lion Hall Group, received payments from a Chinese-financed consulting group in 2018, before his brother Joe announced he was running for president. Grassley says that same year James Biden and the president’s son, Hunter, received monthly retainers totaling $165,000 — $100,000 to Hunter and $65,000 to James.
Grassley said his team obtained the records directly from the bank where the consulting group did business. He has spent three years investigating and described James and Hunter Biden’s business dealings as “very concerning.”
Really, who of us hasn’t received $65,000 in monthly consulting fees from a communist Chinese company?
In a September 2020 report with Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, Grassley alleged Hunter, James, and James’s wife Sara tapped into a line of credit Hunter set up with a Chinese business executive to purchase more than $100,000 in airline tickets, hotels and restaurants.
Newly released records from Republican investigators show what appears to be the 2017 application for that $99,000 line of credit bearing the signatures of Hunter Biden and the Chinese executive.
Hunter gets a $99,000 expense account. Meanwhile, HR rejects your expense report for spending $26 on lunch.
“Joe Biden’s Released Tax Returns Don’t Explain Millions In Income. Where Did It Come From?”
In the week prior to the presidential election, I wrote a piece that asked the question, “Where Is Hunter Biden’s Money?” It was an important question then, even more so now. Given the legacy media’s recent validation of Hunter’s laptop that discussed a slice of equity planned for the “Big Guy” in a deal that involved an entity controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), we should know if any money from it (or other foreign sources) ended up in Joe Biden’s pocket, but we don’t.
Recall that despite then-presidential candidate Biden having bragged that he had released his tax returns with what his team called “a historic level of transparency,” the truth is that he only released his individual returns. Those returns provided no detail regarding the source of most of his income, dollars that flowed to him and his wife Jill by way of S-corporations they set up shortly after his departure from the office of vice president. Those entities, CelticCapri Corp (his) and Giacoppa Corp (hers), contained more than $13 million of the $17 million the couple had reported in income after Biden left office, most of it in the first year (2017).
The same media that ignored Hunter’s laptop has shown a complete incuriosity about these entities, accepting the premise that Joe and Jill raked in $13 million from their book deal to generate their huge increase in income. We simply don’t know if that’s true, though. What we do know is that their book sales were dismal.
Perhaps sensing smoke starting to build just before the election, USA Today published a “fact check” piece that attempted to support that the Bidens earned “$15.6 million … from speaking fees and book deals” in the years 2017 through 2019 and that “more than $10 million of that total income was profits from Biden’s memoir ‘Promise Me, Dad’ and $3 million in profits from Jill Biden’s book.”
Follow the source link provided to that $10 million number, though, and you’ll end up at Joe Biden’s campaign website with financial disclosure links to only their individual returns — no S-corporation tax returns. So, in reality, readers were left with a smokescreen. (Now the financial disclosure links for 2016, 2017, and 2018 have even been changed to connect to a Democratic National Committee fundraising site via ActBlue rather than the tax documents.)
I noted back in 2020 that, “While (Joe Biden’s) financial disclosures reasonably support the $2.7 million of net income reported by CelticCapri in 2018, a notable $8.7 million gap exists between its $9.5 million net income in 2017 and the $809,709 of disclosed income in that year from book tour and related speaking events. Since his disclosure covers only part of 2017, we lack the insight into other income that may explain it.”
Enter (yet again) Hunter and China.
Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., recently showed proof of payments from what they said were CCP-controlled firms “that prove just how connected the Bidens were and how compromised President Biden probably is.” An August 2017 wire receipt showed $100,000 sent from CEFC Infrastructure Investment to Owasco, and a copy of a November 2017 check from CEFC Limited revealed $1 million paid to Hudson West III, LLC. Both recipient entities were tied to the president’s son.
Did any of that money, or other overseas income, go to Joe or Jill? We would know if the president provided a copy of their S-Corp. tax returns with all partner K-1’s that flowed through them. But the only detail we have is aggregate numbers reported on the couple’s individual returns.
President Biden, in 2017, wrote a college recommendation letter for the son of a Chinese executive who did business with Hunter Biden, according to emails reviewed by Fox News Digital.
The president has repeatedly denied discussing Hunter’s business ventures with his son.
Fox News Digital obtained emails between Hunter Biden and his business associates involved in his firm Rosemont Seneca’s joint venture with Chinese investment firms Bohai Capital and BHR.
Hunter held a 10% stake in BHR as recently as last year, the White House previously acknowledged. Hunter’s attorney told the New York Times in November that he had since divested.
In an email dated Jan. 3, 2017, and sent to Hunter Biden and his business associates Devon Archer and Jim Bulger, CEO of BHR Jonathan Li writes:
“Gentlmen[sic], please find the attached resume of my son, Chris Li. He is applying the following colleges for this year,” Li writes, listing Brown University, Cornell University, and New York University.
Remember how Biden swore up and down he never interacted with Hunter’s business partners?
In confirming that federal prosecutors are treating as “authenticated” the Biden emails, the Times story applies the final dollop of clown makeup to Wolf Blitzer, Lesley Stahl, Christiane Amanpour, Brian Stelter, and countless other hapless media stooges, many starring in Matt Orfalea’s damning montage above (the Hunter half-laugh is classic, by the way). All cooperated with intelligence officials to dismiss a damaging story about Biden’s abandoned laptop and his dealings with the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma as “Russian disinformation.” They tossed in terms thought up for them by spooks as if they were their own thoughts, using words like “obviously” and “classic” and “textbook” to describe “the playbook of Russian disinformation,” in what itself was and still is a wildly successful disinformation campaign, one begun well before the much-derided (and initially censored) New York Post exposé on the topic from October of 2020.
Not to be petty, but — well, yes, let’s be petty, just a little, and point out that many of the people who were the most pompous about this story turned out to be the most wrong, including the conga line of Intercept editors and staffers who essentially knocked Glenn Greenwald all the way to Substack over the issue. There are more important things going on in the world, but for sheer bootlicking conformist excess and depraved journalist-on-journalist venom the “Russian disinformation” fiasco has no equal, and probably needs recording for posterity before it’s memory-holed via some creepy homage to Severance, or a next-gen algorithmic witch-hunt, or whatever other federally contracted monstrosities are being readied for deployment somewhere far up the anus of Silicon Valley. For comic relief, start with the Intercept.
Much blow-by-blow analysis of Bursima and Ukrainian investigations snipped.
Note all this took place before the New York Post ran its October, 2020 piece about the trove of Biden emails culled from the laptop, which included an ominous email from Pozharsky ostensibly thanking him for the “opportunity to meet your father.” It’s never been verified that this meeting actually took place, but what has absolutely been verified by now — not just by the Times but via the extensive digging done by Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger in his book The Bidens — is that the laptop is, in fact, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and the emails they contain are real.
In a just world this would be career-altering news for the parade of media figures who spent months loudly insisting the opposite, cheered the unprecedented decisions by Facebook and Twitter to restrict access to the story, and repeated the Langley-driven fiction that it was a Russian smear. The fact that none of them are bothering to comment on any of this shows that the line between the intelligence community and commercial media has blurred to the point of meaninglessness. They know everyone knows they screwed this up and are long past pretending to care. This is like someone committed to a life in sweats who eats another piece of pie at night, because what difference will it ever make? That weight is never coming off anyway.
I long thought the decision by Facebook and Twitter to block the Post just before an election was a bigger deal than the actual story, which to me was mislabeled “smoking gun” evidence of major corruption because almost none of the information in those emails had been confirmed then. After reading this latest Times piece, which among other things confirms that Joe Biden (if not the Burisma official) was present at the infamous “meeting” referenced in the original Pozharsky email, I’m not sure so sure.
Russian forces have retreated from a Ukrainian airfield that was key to their original plan of overthrowing Volodymyr Zelensky’s government.
Hostomel airport, just oustide Kyiv, was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the Ukraine war, as Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, sought to establish an air bridge to the capital.
Control of the airport, 20km from Kyiv, changed hands several times, as Ukrainians at first defended fiercely and then attacked the Russian occupiers.
Five weeks on, the Russians have moved out having failed in their mission, according to a senior US defence official, as it abandons plans to take the capital and shift forces to the east.
This is a huge win for Ukraine, but it also means that surviving Russian forces can shift over to east Ukraine where the war is still hot.
Also: “Ukraine forces pulled off a rare attack on Russian soil Friday when two military helicopters destroyed a fuel depot in the city of Belgorod, situated roughly 40 miles north of the border with Ukraine.”
A key inflation metric monitored by the Federal Reserve soared 6.4 percent in February compared to a a [sic] year ago, reaching a new 40-year high.
The latest price surge, which affected the price of fuel, groceries and other consumer essentials, represents the largest year-over-year increase since January 1982, according to data released by the Commerce Department on Thursday.
Not taking into account food and energy fluctuations, which tend to be more erratic and can overemphasize inflation, the personal consumption expenditures price index, the preferred inflation gauge of the Federal Reserve, jumped 5.4 percent in February from a year prior. Including gas and groceries, PCE surged 6.4 percent.
It’s gonna get worse…
The Biden Administration is evidently all-in on tranny madness and grooming your children:
The Biden Administration has now determined that "gender affirming care" – including puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries – is a right of trans youth and "appropriate" and "necessary" for their health.
The Biden Justice Department will come after states that disagree.
Speaking of DeSantis, he has some pretty sweet talent lined up for this:
Johnny & Ronnie Van Zant, brother of original Lynyrd Skynyrd lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, made DeSantis’s new campaign video, “Sweet Florida,” replete with shots at the press, a dig at Fauci and loads of beach and flag-waving b-roll pic.twitter.com/Wd3F7u466Q
Through brand names like “comprehensive sex education” and one of its parent programs, “Social-Emotional Learning (SEL),” our government schools have been turned into Groomer Schools, and parents are beginning to notice. What many will not understand, however, is that this isn’t just a fluke of our weird and increasingly degenerate times. It is, in fact, a long-purposed Marxist project reaching back into the early 20th century. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, join James Lindsay as he explains the long history of the sexual grooming that has come into our schools through Critical Gender Theory and Queer Theory as they have crept into educational programs.
There’s an hour long video there I haven’t watched all of yet…
Speaking of groomers:
An Oregon elementary school teacher has been arrested near Seattle for two charges of attempted child rape & more. Andrew Bert Hammond, a fourth-grade teacher at Newby Elementary School, allegedly proposed to meet at a hotel & had handcuffs & duct tape. https://t.co/o2aJnzmZpX
Just how bad is the graft, waste and fraud in that $1.5 trillion porkulus bill? This bad. Look over that vast list of special subsidies and ask yourself “How many of these programs are designed to channel taxpayer money into the pockets of Democratic activists.” The answer seems to be “Most of them.”
“8 Joe Biden Scandals Inside Hunter Biden’s MacBook That Corporate Media Just Admitted Is Legit.” China, Ukraine, Russia, etc.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki is leaving for MSNBC. So many angles: A.) Rats, sinking ship. B.) That revolving door between Democratic staffers and the MSM continues apace. C.) I hear she has an offer to star in Chairman of the Board 2.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the supply chain: “22,000 Union Workers At 29 West Coast Ports May Strike…West Coast union dockworkers may strike if they don’t come to an agreement to replace their existing contract with marine terminals. The contract is set to expire at the end of June.” Labor strikes are yet another part of the classic winter of discontent formula the Biden Administration is using to bring back the worst of the 1970s.
Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner has presided over a surge in violent crime, and his new policy promises more of it. Krasner recently announced plans to de-prosecute crimes for offenders aged 18 to 25, ignoring how this age group tends to contain the most violent of criminal defendants.
Krasner’s office has established a new unit that will move some 18-to-25-year-old defendants into “rehabilitative programming” instead of seeking criminal punishments. As Krasner’s data dashboard demonstrates, “rehabilitative programming” is just a euphemism for dismissing charges. Krasner promises that the program will be limited to nonviolent offenses, including drug trafficking and other offenses. (The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that gun crimes will not be included, but Krasner has previously stated that prosecutions for illegal gun possession are “not only ineffective but unjust and racially discriminatory.” The link in the district attorney’s office data dashboard about Philadelphia’s Gun Violence Task Force takes the reader to a page that states “Article Not Found.”)
This new program reflects Krasner’s determination not to think like a prosecutor, but instead to think like the criminal defense lawyer he was. The program was developed by Sangeeta Prasad, a fellow with the district attorney’s office who previously served as a public defender in New York, New Mexico, and Philadelphia. Before assuming her current post, she had no prior experience as a prosecutor, just like Krasner. The chief public defender for Philadelphia has called the new unit “an incredible initiative,” but Philadelphia courts were not invited to the press conference announcing the plan and stated that they were not aware of the experiment.
The new initiative comes at an awkward time. In 2021, Philadelphia experienced the highest number of homicides in its history, and the violence is continuing in 2022. Indeed, Philadelphia homicides have risen every year that Krasner has been in office, as carjackings, shootings, and drug overdoses soar. What makes the policy more bizarre is that it runs counter to decades of criminological research. One of the iron laws of criminal conduct is the so-called age-crime curve, which demonstrates that the majority of serious crimes are committed by defendants between the ages of 15 and 25. This finding obtains around the world and has been replicated time and again.
Speaking of repeat offenders, Millen, Georgia police Officer Larry “Ben” Thompson quit after being caught on tape having public sex while on-duty. Fair enough, but his lengthy record of misdeeds makes you wonder why he wasn’t fired long ago, since he managed to shoot another officer in the arm (“negligent discharge”) and killed a guy in a traffic accident in route to a call. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Nevada/Utah Ponzi scheme leads to FBI shootout. “The alleged $300 million scheme, run by a lawyer named Matthew Beasley, came to a head when FBI agents went to his home earlier this month and Beasley drew a gun on himself, before pointing it at agents, prompting them to shoot him.”
“[Fort Worth Superintendent] Kent Scribner will leave the district this August instead of in 2024, when his contract ends. In response to recent outcry from parents regarding Superintendent Kent Scribner’s support of CRT-based policies, Fort Worth ISD’s school board voted 7-0 to move up Scribner’s last day as superintendent to August 31, 2022.”
Ouch! Texas “Taxpayers’ Property Appraisals Rising 20% to 50% as Supply Chain Disruptions Meet Population Growth.” Austin-Round Rock is slated for the biggest increase, some 35.4%.
Don’t look now, but there’s another big Zero Day Internet infrastructure exploit out in the wild. “Spring4Shell is a remote code execution vulnerability in Spring Framework that can be exploited for remote code execution without authentication.” Spring is a Java framework that’s almost 20 years old, so the issue could potential be lurking in a lot of places…
Speaking of false accusations of racism, Gibson’s Bakery win over Oberlin in court yet again. “A three-judge panel on the Ninth District Court of Appeals issued a unanimous decision to uphold a 2019 ruling by Lorain County Judge John Miraldi, who initially awarded the bakery more than $40 million in punitive and compensatory damages, Cleveland.com reported. However, the sum was later reduced to $25 million, though the bakery was awarded more than $6 million for lawyers’ fees.”
We were driving on the PA Turnpike when a warning came across about sudden snow squalls and possible dangerous highway conditions. We got snow but nothing like THIS! Prayers for all involved. 🙏🏻 pic.twitter.com/IrNX6inRQi
But the fact that the mainstream media is now reporting on them is new. We take it as a given the MSM ignored them in 2020 because they wanted to drag Joe Biden’s ambulatory corpse over the finish line. By why are they reporting on them now?
After our story was censored by Big Tech and dismissed as “Russian disinformation” by Democratic prevaricator Adam Schiff, and 51 former spooks led by former CIA Director John Brennan, apparently it’s safe to admit the laptop is real and the emails we published can be easily authenticated.
Of course, they all avoid the inevitable conclusion to be drawn from evidence contained on the laptop that the president’s drug-addled son Hunter abandoned at a MacBook repair shop in Delaware in April 2019: that Joe Biden, when he was vice president, was aware of, and intimately involved in, a corrupt, multimillion-dollar, international influence-peddling scheme run by Hunter, and Joe’s brother Jim Biden, in the countries for which Joe was point man in the Obama administration, such as Russia, Ukraine and China.
Hunter’s laptop is a large piece of the jigsaw puzzle that leads to such a shocking conclusion.
But despite acknowledging that the material on the laptop showed that Hunter was “trading on his father’s name to make a lot of money,” as CNN White House correspondent John Harwood put it, both the Washington Post and CNN were at pains to absolve Joe Biden of any involvement in the scheme.
“There is zero evidence that Vice President Biden, or President Biden, has done anything wrong in connection with what Hunter Biden has done,” Harwood said.
Right. Pull the other one.
No doubt these august media organs that treated our story with sneering disregard for a year and a half have their reasons for jumping on board. For one thing, their original goal of removing President Donald Trump from office was achieved long ago, and Joe Biden is now so unpopular that his Praetorian Guard is melting away and reporting on his family is less hazardous to Beltway dinner party invitations.
For another thing, they can’t have their audiences blindsided when the US attorney in Delaware completes his investigation of Hunter. God forbid that their readers and viewers wake up to the fact they have been misled and kept in the dark by their media outlets of choice.
Read on for how the MSM is still omitting tons of important information (like Tony Bobulinski) from their reporting.
Sen. Grassley: 'There’s no middle man in this transaction. This is $100,000 from what is effectively an arm of the communist Chinese government direct to Hunter Biden. To the liberal media and my Democratic colleagues: is this official bank document Russian disinformation?' pic.twitter.com/g3QvLzLHkh
Now that the NYT and WP have belatedly reported that the emails on Hunter’s laptop are (and always have been) legitimate, when will we see stories about “10% to the Big Guy”? Will the press ask the WH if Joe Biden is the Big Guy. This story is not over. It’s just beginning.
One thing that is coming down the pike after Hunter Biden: a tax probe.
A federal tax investigation into Hunter Biden is gaining momentum as prosecutors gather information from several of his associates about the sources of his foreign income, including from Ukraine, and examine President Biden’s son’s relationship with a company that handled some of his finances, according to people familiar with the matter.
In recent weeks, prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware have sought information and grand-jury testimony about the money Mr. Biden received several years ago from Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma Holdings Ltd., and how he used that money to pay some obligations, one of those people said.
Last month, prosecutors also extensively questioned at least one other associate of Hunter Biden about Mr. Biden’s drug and alcohol use, spending habits and state of mind in 2018, another person said, suggesting prosecutors are exploring whether such activity would present a defense against a potential criminal tax case.
Prosecutors often seek to get such testimony on the record to secure it before the defense gets a chance to present it more favorably at trial.
All in all, it looks like someone in D.C. is aware of some heavy revelations about to drop down on Hunter Biden, and they’re trying to get ahead of it.
Guys, the mainstream media suddenly deciding to go after Hunter Biden isn't an accident. Something big is coming, and they are looking to get out in front of it.
The big scandal in the Hunter Biden Laptop story isn’t Hunter’s deplorable actions, it’s Joe Biden’s corruption.
Investigative reporter Peter Schweizer reiterated what he’s said about Hunter being close to criminal indictment. He said The New York Times “got a lot of cooperation from Team Biden” before they ran the story on Hunter that included their admission that the laptop was, indeed, real. He says Biden’s team was “trying to position themselves.” Of course, this case isn’t really about Hunter but the President of the United States, and a criminal indictment would open up “that whole can of worms” concerning dad’s connections to dirty money and the associated tax issues and huge national security concerns.
Snip.
George Soros, probably the most influential man in Ukraine, is a big part of this story, too. He gave $1 million to the humorously named Democratic Integrity Project, headed by Daniel J. Jones, a former FBI analyst and staffer for California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Jones had started the nonprofit (seems pretty profitable to me) after Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS approached him with the idea of forming the organization. Then, after filling its coffers to the tune of $7 million, Jones turned around and wrote a check to Fusion GPS for $3.3 million. I am not making this up. The same players keep turning up again and again.
Fusion GPS’s task: to research how Russian intelligence operations were affecting elections around the world. And they brought in Hillary’s campaign chairman John Podesta to help. Still not making it up, my friends. This was after Podesta’s and the DNC’s emails had been purloined (the narrative became that they were hacked by Russia) and published by WikiLeaks, to the DNC’s embarrassment.
(Incidentally, John’s lobbyist brother Tony was under investigation at that time for “cashing in” in Ukraine. He was paid $1.2 million to promote a plan conceived, ironically, by Manfort and Gates.)
Then there’s the story you know, the investigation of Burisma by prosecutor Viktor Shokin until then-Vice President Biden got him fired by threatening to withhold a $1 billion loan guarantee. By now everyone has seen the video of Biden bragging about it before a live audience — without mentioning Hunter was on the Burisma board.
There’s much more, involving Soros and an investigation by Shokin’s replacement into a Soros-funded organization, the ironically named Anti-Corruption Action Center (AntAC). This was when the new U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch (remember her from Trump’s impeachment?) gave the prosecutor a list of people not to prosecute, including a founder of AntAC. Second-in-command George Kent had already tried to discourage the prosecutor from investigating. According to reporter John Solomon, their message to Ukrainian officials was this: “Don’t target AntAC in the middle of an American presidential election in which Soros was backing Hillary Clinton to succeed another Soros favorite, Barack Obama.”
There are others in Ukraine tied to both the Russia hoax and Trump’s impeachment. California Rep. Adam Schiff, running the impeachment, trotted out our diplomatic “experts” from Ukraine to talk about Trump and his “impeachable” phone call to President Zelenskyy. Those were Americans, our diplomatic corps, who’d been telling Ukrainian prosecutors who they could and could not prosecute and treating a Soros-funded organization like some sort of sacred cow. Soros supported Hillary and was Trump’s political enemy. He funded an organization conceived by Glenn Simpson. Something smells like bad borscht.
Questions asked: “Did The New York Times Admit Joe Biden Is Corrupt So Democrats Can Get Rid Of Him?” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Will Rogers once famously said he did not belong to an organised political party because he was a Democrat. Yet today the traditional factiousness of the Democratic coalition has been engulfed by an almost Stalinist attitude that brooks no dissent on its most treasured policies – even though these do not resonate well with the bulk of the electorate.
To recover, Democrats need to find a way back to their historic base of working-class and minority voters, who now seem to be heading to the GOP. Franklin D Roosevelt’s alliance between big cities, small towns, labour unions and farmers was often awkward, but it still achieved remarkable success in restoring US confidence and winning the war. In contrast, President Biden’s boneheaded embrace of a progressive agenda that is widely detested across most of the population may prove to be one of the greatest political blunders of recent American history.
Given the probability of a significant loss in this November’s Midterms, we should expect – and hope for – a full-scale brawl over the party’s trajectory. There needs to be something equivalent to the New Democrats who, under Bill Clinton, revived the party after the devastating defeats of George McGovern and Michael Dukakis in the 1970s and 80s by moving the party to the centre and connecting it to the country’s diverse regions. ‘Too many Americans’, wrote New Democrats Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck in 1989, ‘have come to see the party as inattentive to their economic interests, indifferent if not hostile to their moral sentiments, and ineffective in defence of their national security’.
Snip.
The economic metrics are awful. Despite nominal GDP gains and higher wages, inflation, largely driven by energy prices, has been particularly cruel to minority and working-class voters. Overall, when asked if they are better off now than a year ago, twice as many Americans said ‘worse’ than better in a recent poll.
The cave-in to the greens has increased the Democrats’ economic vulnerability, particularly in the wake of Russian aggression and the continued role of China as the world’s dominant greenhouse-gas emitter. The well-funded American environmental elite lack the grudging sense of realism of their German counterparts, who have been forced to reconsider some of their energy policies in light of the invasion. But in resource-rich America, the green grandees still oppose boosting fossil-fuel energy supplies, despite 80 per cent of voters, and an equal percentage of Democrats, favouring the use of both fossil fuels and renewables. Public support for Net Zero / the Green New Deal hovers around 20 per cent.
Essentially the Democrats’ Net Zero obsession could result in a political disaster. In February, according to Gallup, only two per cent of voters named climate or the environment as their biggest concern, one-fifth the number who named inflation and barely one-tenth the number who cited poor government leadership. Relentless climate scaremongering has not moved the needle among voters. ‘Climate catastrophism’, notes political strategist Ruy Teixeira, is a political ‘loser’, particularly among working-class voters of all races.
Cultural issues represent another fault line between the bulk of the electorate and the tin-eared elites of the party. Democrats’ have embraced what former Bill Clinton strategist James Carville scathingly labels ‘the politics of the faculty lounge’, such as support for the increasingly discredited Black Lives Matter movement and its calls to ‘defund the police’. This idea may be beloved at places like Harvard, but among the less elevated mortals it is widely unpopular, even among minorities, including two of the nation’s Democratic African-American mayors, Houston mayor Sylvester Turner and New York City’s Eric Adams.
Voters view crime as the second-most pressing issue, after the economy and inflation. Here again the survey results are equally distressing for the progressive agenda. Voters, according to one recent survey, blame the Democrats for the current crime wave by a margin of two to one. Moderate Democrats, like retiring Florida congresswoman Stephanie Murphy, herself a refugee from Vietnam, found her support for legislation that would penalise undocumented criminals got her labeled as ‘anti-immigrant’ by the party’s dominant progressive mob.
“Hispanic Texans Overwhelmingly Believe There Is a Border Crisis and Support Security Measures.” “Almost three-quarters of respondents agreed that there is a crisis at the U.S. border with Mexico with only 23 percent disagreeing with that characterization.”
Turns out even Democratic primary voters don’t think you should be talking to kindergartners about sex:
“U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela will resign early from Congress. The South Texas Democrat announced last year that he wouldn’t seek reelection. He’s leaving early to take a job at a law firm.” Yeah, people don’t leave the United States Congress early for a law firm job. There’s something else going on there. (Hat tip: Push Junction, who noted Republicans have a good chance to flip the seat.)
“Hidalgo Staff Allegedly Plotted to Steer $11 Million Contract, ‘Slam the Door’ on Competing Bid, per Warrants. A grand jury investigation found probable cause of tampering with governmental documents and misuse of official information related to a contract awarded to a woman with ties to local and national Democrats.” My working theory is that whenever you see something like this going on, kickbacks, graft and illegal donations to hard left groups and individuals are all but a certainty.
Also: “Hidalgo Says Communications About $11 Million Vaccine Outreach Contract Were Private, Taken Out of Context.” When you’re talking about a public official discussing a public contract using taxpayer money with her public staff, also paid using taxpayer money, there is no such thing as “private.”
Nicholas Moran cautions to avoid drawing too many conclusions from the limited video information coming out of the Russo-Ukranian War. “That tanks unsupported by the other arms are easy prey is tanking 101, and what we are seeing in Ukraine isn’t revolutionary, it’s exactly what you would expect to happen if you send vehicles in unsupported into areas infested with infantry and not denied to enemy air.” Also: We’re only seeing the Ukrainian side because they’re the ones uploading cell phone footage, and an important reminder that an anti-tank hit is not an anti-tank kill. (Previously.)
Borepatch is not impressed with the level of security in the latest online voting scheme.
Heh:
I was robbed at a gas station in NJ last night. After my hands stopped trembling..I managed to call the cops and they were quick to respond and calmed me down….. My money is gone.. the police asked me if I knew who did it..I said yes.. it was pump number 9…
This seems disturbing: “Seven hospitalized ‘including four juveniles’ in mass fentanyl poisoning after deadly drug is released through air vents.” This was in Ohio. So add “aerosolized Fentanyl” to the list of things to worry about…
“United Airlines Rolls Back Vaccine Requirements for Employees. United Airlines announced that it would be changing its policy and that unvaccinated workers would be allowed to return to their normal positions by March 28.” Personally, I’d try to get them to pay through the nose for my return…
Another week, another high-profile staffer quitting Kamala Harris’ office. “On Monday, in the wake of Vice President Kamala Harris’ disastrous visit to Poland, it was reported that her National Security Adviser Nancy McEldowney, will become the latest staffer to leave Harris’ office.”
“Investors at BuzzFeed are reportedly pressuring CEO Jonah Peretti to close down its entire money-losing news operation as senior journalists announced their resignations on Tuesday.” See, the problem here is that they used “Buzzfeed,” “journalists” and “news” all in the same sentence…
Speaking of failing leftwing outlets, the Texas Observer is circling the drain.
In September, the Observer’s editorial staff comprised 13 journalists. As of this month, after a rash of resignations — and one firing — only four of them remain. The five-person business team dwindled to zero in February. This mass exodus, former staffers said, can be traced to a series of board decisions — from the handling of a complaint by former Editor-in-Chief Tristan Ahtone, which led to his resignation; to promising Executive Editor Megan Kimble the top job in the interim, only to pass her over for an outside hire; to unilaterally halting publication of the magazine just days before it went to print.
Read on for the blow-by-blow, but evidently the staff got too uppity for the board of directors and we’re shown the door, with some side orders of “diversity” and “a web-first publication.” I would say this was all good schadenfreude, but I doubt I’ve even thought of the Observer since George W. Bush was governor…
Louis Rossmann finds the same problems plaguing New York City also plague D.C., namely high retail vacancies and general disorder. “It’s literally like somebody just picked up all the problems of New York City, control-C, and control-V them somewhere else.”
Speaking of New York City, Democratic Mayor Eric Adams wants you to know that athletes and actors are simply better than you common peasants, so vaccine mandates don’t apply to them. “The exemption for athletes and entertainers comes ahead of the upcoming baseball season, opening the field for unvaccinated Mets and Yankees to play home games too. Roughly two-thirds of Yankees players and at least ten Mets remain unvaccinated and will now be able to participate, Jon Heyman of the MLB Network noted.” Plus Kyrie Irving on the Brooklyn Nets.
Hunter Biden’s laptop takes another turn in the news cycle, Democrat-connected sex offenders are popping up everywhere, a killer camel, and the return of Florida Man. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
And virtual no Russo-Ukrainian War news, since I did that yesterday.
I would say that everyone outside of the Democratic Media Complex knew that two years ago, but of course, more than half the Democratic Media Complex knew that as well and simply lied about it to get Biden elected.
Got to say this treat aged pretty well.
1. The Hunter Biden laptop story was true. 2. The story implicated Joe Biden in global pay-for-play graft from countries like Russia, China and Ukraine. 3. The #DemocraticMediaComplex suppressed the story because they wanted Biden to win.
The Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo has been transformed into a warzone after the arrest of a top cartel boss. Burning vehicles littered the streets, and heavy gunfighting was reported causing the U.S. consulate to go on lockdown and the U.S. border crossing to be temporarily shut down on Monday.
The chaos erupted late Sunday when Juan Gerardo Trevino, or “El Huevo,” the leader of one faction of the Northeast Cartel, the successor group to the Zetas Cartel, was arrested. He is also a U.S. citizen, a Mexican government official told Reuters. Trevino is on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) list of most wanted cartel members.
Trevino faces a U.S. extradition order for drug trafficking and money laundering.
In response to the arrest, cartel members hijacked and burned vehicles and attacked law enforcement and military personnel.
“During the night of Sunday, there were shootings, burning of trucks, and a grenade attack on the U.S. consulate,” Mexican newspaper El Occidental said.
On Monday, Nuevo Laredo Mayor Carmen Lilia Canturosas warned citizens in the border town to take cover.
The woke want to destroy science. “The giant plan to track diversity in research journals. Efforts to chart and reduce bias in scholarly publishing will ask authors, reviewers and editors to disclose their race or ethnicity.” Translation: Science is not sufficiently biased in favor of our political goals.
According to the latest Winston Group poll, voters still believe Democrats want to defund the police by a 48%-34% margin.
“In terms of what is the position of the Democratic Party, voters tend to believe that Democrats want to defund the police, ” pollsters David Winston and Myra Miller explain. “Among groups outside the Democratic Party, Hispanics believe this is what Democrats want (49%-32%), as do suburban voters (45%-36%). Independents believe this slightly at 41%-33%, but especially conservative independents (61%-20%).”
Despite the efforts to distance themselves from the movement, some in the Democratic Party still openly support defunding the police, which means that the public will continue to believe Democrats still embrace the radical Black Lives Matter. movement, not police.
Federal Reserve raises interest rates .25%, bringing it to .5%. Remember, in order to kill the last bout of inflation, Paul Volker hiked rates up to 20%. There’s a lot more pain ahead…and given the huge amount of quantitative easing centrals banks have done, and the extensive budget deficits most of the governments in the developed world are running, 20% may not be enough.
Researcher Kyle Becker produced in-depth, acclaimed portrait of just how much money Anthony Fauci was making. Result: Forbes fired him. (Hat tip: 357 Magnum.)
The electorate is increasingly pessimistic about the direction in which President Biden and Democrats are steering the country and feel that the party’s priorities do not align with their own.”
What’s the solution?
The pollsters advise that if Democrats want to have “a fighting chance in the midterms – as well as a shot at holding on to the presidency in 2024,” that they need to embark on a “broader course correction back to the center,” and show voters that they are focused on solving quality-of-life issues.
In short, Democrats need to reject their progressive wing and its embrace of big government spending and identity politics.
Indeed, a majority of voters (54 percent) — including 56 percent of independents — explicitly say that they want Biden and Democrats to move closer to the center and embrace more moderate policies versus embracing more liberal policies (18 percent) or staying where they are politically (13 percent).
Most voters (61 percent) also agree that Biden and Democrats are “out of touch with hardworking Americans” and “have been so focused on catering to the far-left wing of the party that they’re ignoring Americans’ day to day concerns” such as “rising prices” and “combatting violent crime.” -The Hill
The top issue for voters is inflation – which sits at its highest level in 40 years – according to 51% of respondents, followed by the economy and job creation (32%). Yet, just 16% of voters believe the economy is Biden’s main focus, and trust Republicans over Democrats to manage it (47% vs. 41%) and control inflation (48% vs. 36%).
Voters also see Biden and Democrats as weak on crime (56%) – perhaps due to four years of Democrats pushing ‘defund the police’ under Trump, while our sitting Vice President raised bail money for BLM rioters.
Speaking of groomers: “Clinton-Connected Haiti Pastor Indicted For Child Sexual Abuse & Assault…The United States is charging pastor Corrigan Clay with child sex abuse after “engaging in illicit sexual conduct” with a Haitian orphan he adopted…Corrigan is the co-founder of the non-profit charity “Apparent Project”, which is a Clinton-connected group selling jewelry, clothing and art made by Haitian orphans.”
Speaking of Democrats being soft on sex offenders, Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley uncovers why Biden Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson deserves to be rejected:
Judge Jackson has a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes, both as a judge and as a policymaker. She’s been advocating for it since law school. This goes beyond “soft on crime.” I’m concerned that this a record that endangers our children
With the Nickel market shuttered after a Chinese stainless steel tycoon was caught with a historic, potentially fatal $8 billion margin call hanging over its head, today the London Metal Exchange announced that it will reopen its nickel market on Wednesday, more than a week after it was closed last Monday, after the Chinese company at the center of the epic short squeeze was bailed out by a consortium of banks led by JPMorgan which is also the largest counterparty to the short (for a detailed breakdown read “The 18 Minutes of Trading Chaos That Broke the Nickel Market”) .
Trading in nickel will resume after Xiang Guangda, whose massive short position equivalent to approximately 150,000 tons of nickel, sent shockwaves across the commodity market last week, announced a standstill with his banks to avoid further margin calls as Bloomberg first reported earlier. Xiang’s Tsingshan Group had been in discussions with banks led by JPMorgan about a loan facility to backstop his short position and said Monday that talks on the funding would continue during the standstill period. As a reminder, Xiang is JPMorgan’s largest counterparty, and owes Jamie Dimon several billion, money which the largest US bank would not receive unless it bailed out the Chinese firm.
If you owe the bank $100,000, you have a problem. If you owe the bank $8 billion, the bank has a problem…
Category: Extremely unexpected horrifying headlines: Petting zoo camel kills two. Not in the zoo, fortunately, as Humpy had busted out of the joint and was on the lam… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
A prominent Black Lives Matter leader in Boston and her husband have been charged with using a $6,000 grant to take at-risk youth to a Philadelphia retreat on themselves – for a getaway to Maryland, restaurants and shopping sprees, among other things.
Monica Cannon-Grant, 41, founder of the nonprofit Violence in Boston, and her husband Clark Grant, 38, were charged Tuesday in an 18-count federal indictment, including charges for wire fraud and making false statements to a mortgage lending business.
In June 2019, she was given a check for $6,000 for a trip to Philly “to give these young men exposure to communities outside of the violence riddled neighborhoods that they navigate daily,” the Boston Globe reported.
Instead, the couple used the money to take a vacation to Maryland, eat at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., Shake Shack and other eateries, and pay for car rentals, Walmart purchases and visits to a nail salon, the feds allege.
The indictment charges them in connection with three separate schemes — defrauding donors, lying on a mortgage application and illegally collecting about $100,000 in pandemic unemployment benefits, according to the Globe.
Clark Grant had already been charged by the feds for allegedly engaging in pandemic-assistance fraud after a raid at the couple’s Taunton home last year.
It seems that a single scam is never enough for these people. They always seem to be working multiple scams, all of which rake off money to their own pockets in the name of Social Justice. Heaven forfend that any of them are ever required to actually work for a living.
One marvels at their failure to do any sort of risk/reward analysis on the potential fallout from getting caught in their scams. Is it really worth years in the federal big house to visit Bubba Gump Shrimp?
As the titular protagonist of a famous novel before it was turned into a hit movie once put it, “Being an idiot is no box of chocolates.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine grinds on, justice for Juicy, Italy’s truck drivers go Galt, giant spiders invade, and musicians are being screwed yet again. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The Russian invasion of Ukraine had two goals. The first was to take control of Ukraine, intending to complete the task begun in Belarus – the task of rebuilding Russia’s strategic buffers and securing Russia from attack. The second goal was to demonstrate the capabilities and professionalism of the Russian military and to further deter hypothetical acts and increase Russia’s regional influence. The two goals were interlocked.
The occupation of Ukraine has not been achieved, but it is not a lost cause. Perceptions of the strength of Russia’s military, however, have been badly damaged. There is no question but that Russian planners did not want to fight the war Russia has been fighting. Rather than a rapid and decisive defeat of Ukraine, Russia is engaged in a slow, grinding war unlikely to impress the world with its return to the first ranks of military power. At this point, even a final victory in its first objective will not redeem the second. It is important to start identifying the Russian weaknesses.
The first problem was a loss of surprise. Carl von Clausewitz placed surprise at the top of warfare. Surprise contracts the time an enemy has to prepare for war. It also imposes a psychological shock that takes time to overcome, making it more difficult to implement existing plans. And it increases the perceived power of the enemy. In Ukraine, however, extended diplomacy gave Kyiv time to adjust psychologically to the possibility of war.
Moscow failed to understand its enemy. Russia clearly expected Ukrainian resistance to collapse rapidly in the face of the massive armored force it had gathered. It did not expect the Ukrainian populace to fight back to an extent that would at least delay completion of the war.
Snip.
Russian war plans centered on three armored groups based in the east, south and north…The three Russian armored battle groups were widely separated. They did not support each other. Instead of a single coordinated war, the Kremlin opted for at least three separate wars, making a single decisive stroke impossible. A single integrated command, essential for warfighting, seemed to be lacking.
The use of armor vastly increased the pressure on Russian logistics. Instead of focusing supplies on a single thrust, it had to focus on three, plus other operations. Logistics for the major armored forces seemed to have broken down, making war termination impossible and further extending the war.
In recent days, Russia has adapted and turned toward taking cities. This is generating an effective counterforce among fighters who understand the streets and alleys and use them to delay Russia’s progress. Fighting in cities is among the costliest and most time-consuming actions in war. Capturing cities takes resources and is not the key to victory. Cities take on importance only after the enemy force has been defeated and demoralizing the nation is essential. The city is the prize of war, not the military goal. Russia turned the conflict from a counter-military to a counter-population war, which increased resistance by sowing desperation in the cities.
The foolish ease with which Russia expected to win this war reminds me of the Southern dandies at the beginning of Gone With The Wind proclaiming how the Civil War would be over in weeks since the Yankees would “turn and run, every time.” Didn’t turn out that way. (Hat tip: Al Fin Next Level.)
Speaking of which, this seems like poor tactics and situational awareness:
The Biden administration’s bumbling on the matter of sending MiG-29 fighter jets from Poland to Ukraine is the result of both nations’ fears that the action would drag them directly into the war in Ukraine. Poland wanted to send the jets to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and Washington shied away from the prospect of having fighter jets fly out of a U.S. base in a NATO country into the war zone in Ukraine. The thinking was that this would look too much like the United States and NATO carrying out a military operation against Russian forces in Ukraine.
In practical terms, the U.S. (and U.K.) prohibition of Russian oil imports probably will not have much of an economic effect — certainly not in comparison to the other measures that have been taken — but even largely symbolic gestures can have a powerful effect, and the Kremlin seems to be very much agitated by the boycott.
The Biden administration’s bumbling on the matter of sending MiG-29 fighter jets from Poland to Ukraine is the result of both nations’ fears that the action would drag them directly into the war in Ukraine. Poland wanted to send the jets to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and Washington shied away from the prospect of having fighter jets fly out of a U.S. base in a NATO country into the war zone in Ukraine. The thinking was that this would look too much like the United States and NATO carrying out a military operation against Russian forces in Ukraine.
In truth, the United States is a belligerent if Vladimir Putin says the United States is a belligerent. He is perfectly capable of making up a pretext, however absurd, to justify whatever action he wants to take — that is why Russians are in Ukraine in the first place. His subjects in Russia are largely pliant and inclined to accept the propaganda they are fed, and those who aren’t can be jailed, terrorized into silence, or murdered. Putin can do what he chooses — it is not like he is worried about an upcoming election.
The MiG fiasco underlined the Biden administration’s predictable fecklessness and disorganization — America needed a Keystone pipeline but we got the Keystone Cops — and if there is any serious thinking going on in the White House about what Putin’s response to our “declaration of economic war” is likely to be, there isn’t any obvious evidence of it. The posture of the Biden administration by all appearances is one of wishful thinking: that while the United States and the world have rightly taken a side in this conflict, the fighting is going to stay in Ukraine.
What if it doesn’t?
A direct military attack by Russian forces on the United States is, of course, unlikely. But a Russian attack on Moldova is far from unthinkable. It is entirely possible that Putin will attack a NATO member such as Lithuania, Latvia, or even Poland, whose people have gone to such extraordinary lengths to assist the Ukrainians. There are already Americans fighting in Ukraine, as private volunteers rather than as part of our armed forces. If Putin is looking for a pretext, he will have no trouble finding one.
The United States is keenly interested in keeping the fighting in Ukraine. But the fighting will stay in Ukraine for only as long as Putin believes it is in his interest to keep it there. That may not be much longer. Putin already has failed to achieve his main political objective in Ukraine and will not achieve it no matter how long the conflict drags on; what was intended as a show of awesome military might has instead been a display of weakness and incompetence. A wider war — a glorious crusade — might soon suit Putin’s purposes better than does a quagmire in Ukraine, where the Russian army has been reduced to trying to substitute atrocities for victories.
President Joe Biden has said that U.S. forces will defend “every inch” of NATO territory. But Biden was there when the Obama administration offered a lot of big talk about “red lines” in Syria and then did nothing. Biden’s people right now are engaging in counterproductive (to say the least) negotiations with Tehran that serve no obvious U.S. interest, and going through Moscow to do so. Vladimir Putin calculates and, as he has just demonstrated, he sometimes miscalculates. Putin might be inclined to take an inch and put Biden to the test.
This seems unlikely, but the actual invasion of Ukraine seemed unlikely until it happened.
“Putin flirts with economic suicide.” “When a government declares that it will confiscate the assets of foreign companies and foreign investors and that it won’t pay its debts, severe and lasting economic calamity follows.”
“Special Counsel Finds Mark Zuckerberg’s Election Money Violated Wisconsin Bribery Laws.” “Nearly $9 million in Zuckerberg grant funds directed solely to five Democratic strongholds in Wisconsin violated the state’s election code’s prohibition on bribery. That conclusion represents but one of the many troubling findings detailed in the report submitted today by a state-appointed special counsel to the Wisconsin Assembly.”
“Manhattan merchant banker, 61, is charged with being a spy in the US: Dual US-Russia citizen ‘ran a propaganda center in NYC and communicated directly with Vladimir Putin…Elena Branson, or Chernykh, has been charged with six counts of failing to register as a foreign agent, among other crimes.” Also helped Russians obtain visas under false pretenses. (Hat tip: ColorMeRed.)
As voting for the Texas primaries has wrapped up, the eyes of the nation at large are on the Rio Grande Valley. Many observers expect 2022 to be a big year for Republicans and the GOP, predicting to see the party build on its 2020 inroads with Hispanic voters and believing it will have success in what has previously been Democrat stronghold. To that end, the GOP fielded a wide slate of candidates, and the party has data that suggests it may be successful.
The numbers suggest two trends that portend well for the GOP: enthusiasm and historic numbers among Republican voters, and depressed turnout for Democrats. Compared to the 2018 and 2020 primary elections, Republicans had significantly higher turnout. That trend is present across all four counties in the RGV, but especially in Starr County. In 2018, a total of 15 people voted in the Republican primary; in 2020, that number increased to 46. This year, a whopping 1,773 people in Starr County voted in the Republican primary.
Conversely, Democrats had generally lower turnout in the RGV Democrat primaries compared to 2018, and about a 7.83 percent lower turnout compared to 2020.
The Florida state Senate on Tuesday passed a parents rights bill, a media-maligned piece of legislation that will prohibit primary school teachers from talking about sexual orientation with children in pre-K through third grade.
Senate passage of the Parental Rights in Education bill by a vote of 21-17 marks a milestone in parents’ efforts across the nation to fight back against the radical left in the classroom. The legislation also represents a model for other states to use as they push back the woke tides.
The Florida House of Representatives passed the legislation last month, 69-47. It now goes to Gov. Ron DeSantis for his signature.
Opposition to the Parental Rights in Education bill has been fierce, with many on the left attempting to reframe the law as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The left has attempted for years to indoctrinate children with LGBT ideology in public schools, and now activists are furious at attempts by conservatives to push back.
To be clear, the Florida legislation is not an “anti-gay” bill. It is instead a bill aimed at protecting children—and preventing educators with an agenda from infecting young kids with radical ideology.
By all means, make Democrats defend lecturing kindergartners on transsexualism and anal sex in November. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Rapper Tom MacDonald complains about “The Biggest Music Industry Screw Job Ever!” No, given it’s the music industry, not even close. There are hundreds of artists who have been screwed worse. But the lengths to which Billboard and their data recording company go to in order to avoid certifying the sales of independent musicians is certainly eye-opening.
“Our gas prices are now higher than in zombie apocalypse films.” That would be the Will Smith I Am Legend (the classic Richard Matheson novel it was based on featured vampires, not zombies).
Following a week of public outcry and multiple lawsuits over primary election issues in the state’s largest county, Harris County Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria submitted her resignation on Tuesday.
“Today I am submitting my resignation effective July 1. I think this date ensures that there’s a presiding officer during the major elections and allows the election commission the time they need to find a replacement,” Longoria said. “I remain committed to the office and its mission and hope to aid in defeating harmful radical rhetoric to ensure successful elections in the future.”
During a Wednesday morning press conference, however, Harris County Republican Party (HCRP) Chair Cindy Siegel announced that the party would continue to pursue its lawsuit over the election, noting that Longoria is slated to preside over the upcoming primary runoff and municipal elections in May.
HCRP attorney Steve Mitby said he would be going into an emergency hearing to request the court order an independent administrator to oversee the next Harris County election, and for the county to turn back on cameras live streaming the ballot counting process.
“We know there are 10,000 ballots that Harris County just found, that apparently had been lost, and they shut the cameras off when all this was going on,” said Mitby. “Under Texas law, Harris County is required to have a livestream and camera footage of all vote counting that’s going on.”
“The only reason why they would have been shut off is because somebody in Lina Hidalgo’s office had something to hide.”
Following an emergency hearing Wednesday morning, district court Judge Fredericka Phillips ruled that the court would supervise the counting of votes and ordered Longoria to report again to the court at 7:00 p.m.
Longoria said that cameras were not turned off but that the livestream was moved from the YouTube channel to another location on the Harris County website. Mitby told The Texan Longoria had not notified residents or observers of the change midway through the counting process.
He also refuted Hidalgo’s attempt to blame Senate Bill (SB) 1, the Texas GOP-backed election reform bill passed by the legislature in 2021.
“SB 1 did not cause the county to fail to deliver equipment, provide incorrect ballots, or supply the wrong sized paper. SB 1 did not delay the counting process or cause the county to lose ballots.”
Alan Vera, HCRP ballot security chair, added that another 175 uncounted ballots had been discovered Tuesday night.
On primary election day, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office announced that Longoria had informed them she would not be able to comply with a 1986 state law requiring reporting of a full early vote and election day count within 24 hours of polls closing.
The Harris County Republican Party waited until within one hour of the deadline, but on observing the slow posting of returns, filed a lawsuit requesting a district court impound materials and oversee the remaining count. After Longoria’s office completed the count at approximately 1:00 a.m. Thursday, the party agreed to dismiss the case.
By Friday, however, due to new reconciliation requirements in state law approved in 2021, the secretary of state’s office discovered that Harris County officials had neglected to include more than 10,000 ballots in the reported counts.
On Saturday night, Longoria posted a statement about the issue on social media without informing the local Democratic and Republican parties, which contract with Harris County elections department to conduct the primaries.
Turning off cameras during ballot counting should receive the same penalty that turning off a police camera does for officers: automatic termination for cause.
Again, the question is: Are Harris County Democrats committing fraud, or are they just massively incompetent?
