News broke on Tuesday that A&M’s football team had not practiced since last Saturday as a number of athletes had tested positive prior to the Aggies hitting the practice field on Sunday and then again during the next two days. The team was supposed to be released to go home on Tuesday until Dec. 26 when players were to make their way to Jacksonville for final bowl preparations. People both within the program and the highest levels of the administration were pessimistic as early as Tuesday night due to practical considerations arising from numbers via NCAA protocols that the game would take place.
The Aggies were already down quite a few players going into bowl game workouts last week given their status due to injuries and opt outs even before news of possible problems with COVID tests had emerged. There are as many as ten upperclassmen who are draft eligible who could or already have opted out of the game. In addition, two more (Zach Calzada and Dreyden Norwood) have entered the NCAA transfer portal since the regular season ended. Finally, by our count, there are as many as 12 players who are done for the season and won’t play in the game due to injury. Those items push the Aggies down towards approximately 60 scholarship players being available for the game including just one quarterback in Haynes King (who missed most of the season himself due to a broken ankle and has just returned to workouts).
Wait, 60 players? That’s seven more than an NFL roster. You need 11 players each side, for a total of 22. (And prior to 1941, the same players played both offense and defense.) You’ve got enough to play, even if a few players have to learn new positions in a hurry. It’s the postseason, the only postseason your team gets this year, and you’re wimping out.
Also note: “Scholarship” players. Whatever happened to the much-vaunted “12th Man” tradition at A&M, about to turn a century old? One of the features of the 12th Man was a willingness to play walk-ons. A bet dozens (if not hundreds) of ex-high school football playing Aggies would be happy to volunteer to join the football team in their hour of need. And I bet the NCAA would approve it.
But no, we can’t have that. Better to cancel it because someone might get an ouchie.
Evidently the Aggies of 2021 just aren’t made of the stern stuff of the Aggies of 1922. Or even 1983.
Not a polling choice: A roundup of evidence that a lot of The Holy Covid Narrative is wrong, including that Joe Rogan interview with Dr. Peter McCullough. I’m working on that, but it may take me a few days.
You may have heard that the America added an anemic 210,000 jobs in November, which was (as has become standard in the Biden era) much less than “experts” predicted.
Employment in Texas has reached nearly 13 million non-agricultural jobs, eclipsing the pre-pandemic high set in February of 2020.
From October, the unemployment rate dropped 0.2 percent with the addition of 75,100 jobs. Since November of last year, 698,700 jobs have been added to the rolls.
“By reaching nearly 13 million jobs last month, Texas has surpassed our pre-pandemic employment levels — a remarkable achievement and testament to our welcoming business climate and strong workforce,” Governor Greg Abbott said in a release.
According to the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC), Amarillo continues to post the lowest unemployment rate in the state at 3.1 percent. Austin-Round Rock follows closely behind at 3.2 percent.
Also crowing about adding jobs: Florida governor Ron DeSantis, whose state added 50,000 jobs:
Florida added over 50,000 new jobs in the month of November, a much faster rate than the nation, which added 210,000 jobs in November. pic.twitter.com/7LOG5ZipAY
75,100 + 50,000 = 125,100. So just shy 60% of jobs added in November came from two states known for low taxes, light regulation and general economic freedom.
(If you dig further into the statistics, the lesson is a bit less clear cut, with California (45,700), New Jersey (25,800) and New York (23,600) ranking 3-5 for most jobs added.)
According to census data, Texas and California have a combined population of 50,683,692, while the U.S. has a census-estimated population of 328,239,523. (Both those numbers have undoubtedly gone up a bit since census data was released in July.) Which means that two states with less than 1/6th the total population of the U.S. accounted for more than 60% of job growth.
Why, it’s almost as if red states run by Republican governors are better at creating jobs than blue states run by Democratic governors…
Another mandate injunction, Democrats continue their popularity freefall, China seals more dirty deals, and Turkey melts down. It’s another Friday LinkSwarm!
A federal judge in Texas has issued a preliminary injunction, stopping a new rule from the Biden administration requiring healthcare workers to receive the COVID vaccine as the case moves through the courts.
The injunction came from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Amarillo. The case was filed by Attorney General Ken Paxton on behalf of the State of Texas against Xavier Becerra, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services secretary.
The injunction was sought against a federal rule that would have required employers that receive Medicaid and Medicare funds—namely hospitals and other healthcare providers—to require their employees to receive a COVID vaccine as a condition of employment.
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ordered that the federal government provide notice to all Medicaid and Medicare providers in Texas that the mandate “will not be implemented or enforced.”
“Healthcare facilities covered by the [Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services] Mandate have a tremendous reliance interest in Medicare and Medicaid funds. Therefore, Defendants unconstitutionally use Congress’s spending powers to ‘commandeer a State’s . . . administrative apparatus for federal purposes’ by conditioning Medicare and Medicaid funds on state surveyor compliance with the mandate,” wrote Kacsmaryk. “As a result, not only would the CMS Mandate prohibit Plaintiffs from enforcing its duly enacted COVID-19 vaccination regulations, but it would likely force Plaintiffs to administer a federal mandate that has a dubious statutory basis.”
“It is a ‘gun to the head’ and an unconstitutional use of Congress’s spending powers to compel Plaintiffs through ‘financial inducement’ to forgo exercising their police powers to enforce a federal statute.”
Democrat support from independent voters has fallen near the crucial 40% line, while almost half of all independent voters tell Gallup that they’re leaning Republican.
“If you’re a Democrat and you’re not terrified,” says The Dispatch’s Avi Woolf, “you should be.”
Well, I’m neither a Democrat nor terrified, but I am conservative and — at least for now — quite giddy.
Gallup recently updated its long-term party affiliation poll, which asks American voters one or two simple questions:
In politics, as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat or an independent?
(If they ID as independents) As of today, do you lean more to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party?
Currently, 31% say they’re Republicans, up slightly from the usual mid-20s to 30%. 41% told Gallup that they’re independent voters, in line with the average swing. Only 27% self-ID as Democrats, which is down from the more typical 29-32%.
As recently as May, Democrats were at 32% and the GOP at a dismal 25%.
But that’s before Presidentish Joe Biden had had a chance to do much other than send out FREE! MONEY! (handouts that helped cause our present inflation) and smile for the glowing press coverage. Since then, important parts of his agenda have taken hold and the malign incompetence of his cabinet has been fully revealed.
Apparently, Americans don’t think much of either.
But it’s the second question that should have Washington Democrats changing their shorts.
Indies, asked whether they lean towards the Democrats or the GOP, broke for the GOP 47% to 41%.
At this time in Barack Obama’s first term, the breakdown was a much more Dem-friendly 25R/41I/32D. And the Indy swing was exactly reversed, 41R/47D.
Yet the Democrats still lost a whopping 63 seats in the House and seven more in the Senate in the following midterm election.
Obama enjoyed immensely more personal popularity than Biden does — I know, I don’t get it, either — but couldn’t stop a GOP tsunami when his agenda proved unpopular.
Biden has both an unpopular agenda and a high unfavorable rating draped around his neck like a lead life preserver. And now voters are leaving his party in droves.
The woke are coming for all that sweet, sweet Medicare money.
Buried in the Department of Health and Human Services’s fiscal planning for next year is a proposal to establish bonuses for physicians who “create and implement an anti-racism plan.”
“The plan should include a clinic-wide review of existing tools and policies, such as value statements or clinical practice guidelines, to ensure that they include and are aligned with a commitment to anti-racism and an understanding of race as a political and social construct, not a physiological one,” the HHS writes . “The plan should also identify ways in which issues and gaps identified in the review can be addressed and should include target goals and milestones for addressing prioritized issues and gaps. This may also include an assessment and drafting of an organization’s plan to prevent and address racism and/or improve language access and accessibility to ensure services are accessible and understandable for those seeking care.”
I’m sure this will go over great with Medicare patients. “Mam, I can’t check on your osteoporosis until you check your privilege!” (Hat tip: Mickey Kaus.)
After Democrats abandoned trying to pass Biden’s giant leftwing “Build Back Better” porkfest this year, is the bill actually dead forever? South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham thinks so.
The South Carolina Republican said that the Congressional Budget Office score, which found the $1.75 trillion bill would add $3 trillion to the deficit, is what led to its demise.
‘I think Build Back Better is dead forever and let me tell you why: Because Joe Manchin has said he’s not going to vote for a bill that will add to the deficit,’ he said on Fox News’ Hannity Wednesday night.
‘Well, if you do away with the budget gimmicks, Build Back Better, according to the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] adds $3 trillion to the deficit.’
‘This is b******t. You’re b******t,’ the West Virginia senator yelled at Arthur Delaney, a reporter for HuffPost Politics, who asked him about reports that the child tax credit has become a major sticking point in his talks with the White House.
‘I’m done, I’m done,’ Manchin fumed as the questions continued.
‘Guys, I’m not negotiating with any of you all. You can ask all the questions you want. Guys, let me go,’ he told the press as he walked through the basement of the Capitol, muttering ‘God almighty’ as he walked away.
What is behind recent pessimistic appraisals of democracy’s future, from Hillary Clinton, Adam Schiff, Brian Williams, and other elite intellectuals, media personalities, and politicians on the left? Some are warning about its possible erosion in 2024. Others predict democracy’s downturn as early 2022, with scary scenarios of “autocracy” and former President Donald Trump “coups.”
To answer that question, understand first what is not behind these shrill forecasts.
They are not worried about 2 million foreign nationals crashing the border in a single year, without vaccinations during a pandemic. Yet it seems insurrectionary for a government simply to nullify its own immigration laws.
They are not worried that some 800,000 foreign nationals, some residing illegally, will now vote in New York City elections.
They are not worried that there are formal efforts underway to dismantle the U.S. Constitution by junking the 233-year-old Electoral College or the preeminence of the states in establishing ballot laws in national elections.
They are not worried that we are witnessing an unprecedented left-wing effort to scrap the 180-year-old filibuster, the 150-year-old nine-person Supreme Court, and the 60-year tradition of 50 states, for naked political advantage.
They are not worried that the Senate this year put on trial an impeached ex-president and private citizen, without the chief justice in attendance, without a special prosecutor or witnesses, and without a formal commission report of presidential high crimes and misdemeanors.
They are not worried that the FBI, Justice Department, CIA, Hillary Clinton, and members of the Obama Administration systematically sought to use U.S. government agencies to sabotage a presidential campaign, transition, and presidency, via the use of a foreign national and ex-spy Christopher Steele and his coterie of discredited Russian sources.
They are not worried that the Pentagon suddenly has lost the majority support of the American people. Top current and retired officers have flagrantly violated the chain-of-command, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and without data or evidence have announced a hunt in the ranks for anyone suspected of “white rage” or “white supremacy.”
They are not worried that in 2020, a record 64% of the electorate did not cast their ballots on Election Day.
Nor are they worried that the usual rejection rate in most states of non-Election Day ballots plunged—even as an unprecedented 101 million ballots were cast by mail or early voting.
And they are certainly not worried that partisan billionaires of Silicon Valley poured well over $400 million into selected precincts in swing states to “help” public agencies conduct the election.
What then is behind this new left-wing hysteria about the supposed looming end of democracy?
It is quite simple. The left expects to lose power over the next two years—both because of the way it gained and used it, and because of its radical, top-down agendas that never had any public support.
After gaining control of both houses of Congress and the presidency – with an obsequious media and the support of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, higher education, popular culture, entertainment and professional sports – the left has managed in just 11 months to alienate a majority of voters.
The nation has been wracked by unprecedented crime and nonenforcement of the borders. Leftist district attorneys either won’t indict criminals; they let them out of jails or both.
Illegal immigration and inflation are soaring. Deliberate cuts in gas and oil production helped spike fuel prices.
All this bad news is on top of the Afghanistan disaster, worsening racial relations, and an enfeebled president.
Democrats are running 10 points behind the Republicans in generic polls, with the midterms less than a year away.
President Joe Biden’s negatives run between 50% and 57%—in Trump’s own former underwater territory.
Less than a third of the country wants Biden to run for reelection. In many head-to-head polls, Trump now defeats Biden.
In other words, leftist elites are terrified that democracy will work too robustly.
After the Russian collusion hoax, two impeachments, the Hunter Biden laptop stories, the staged melodramas of the Kavanaugh hearings, the Jussie Smollett con, the Covington kids smear, and the Rittenhouse trial race frenzy, the people are not just worn out by leftist hysterias, but they also weary of how the left gains power and administers it.
Hey, remember all the way back to two weeks ago when I said that Turkey’s collapsing currency was something we should keep an eye on? Well, guess what? “Turkey Halts All Stock Trading As Currency Disintegrates, Central Bank Powerless To Halt Collapse.” ZeroHedge suggests that the collapse is engineered to disguise how much graft Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his cronies have stolen from the country.
The Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies has long brushed off questions about its role in China’s state surveillance, saying it just sells general-purpose networking gear.
A review by The Washington Post of more than 100 Huawei PowerPoint presentations, many marked “confidential,” suggests that the company has had a broader role in tracking China’s populace than it has acknowledged.
These marketing presentations, posted to a public-facing Huawei website before the company removed them late last year, show Huawei pitching how its technologies can help government authorities identify individuals by voice, monitor political individuals of interest, manage ideological reeducation and labor schedules for prisoners, and help retailers track shoppers using facial recognition.
Citing both interviews and direct access to internal Apple documents about repeated visits by Cook to China in the mid-2010s, the report describes a $275 billion deal whereby Apple committed to investing heavily in technology infrastructure and training in the country.
The non-binding five-year deal was signed by Cook during a 2016 visit, and it was made partially to mitigate or prevent regulatory action by the Chinese government that would have had significant negative effects on Apple’s operations and business in the country.
The Information details the nature of the Chinese government priorities included in the 1,250-word deal:
They included a pledge to help Chinese manufacturers develop “the most advanced manufacturing technologies” and “support the training of high-quality Chinese talents.”
In addition, Apple promised to use more components from Chinese suppliers in its devices, sign deals with Chinese software firms, collaborate on technology with Chinese universities and directly invest in Chinese tech companies… Apple promised to invest “many billions of dollars more” than what the company was already spending annually in China. Some of that money would go toward building new retail stores, research and development centers and renewable energy projects, the agreement said.
“Disgrace: Biden abandoned over 60,000 Afghan interpreters, support personnel — along with 14,000 Americans.”
“Trump’s Social Media Platform Gets $1 Billion Investment Boost, Dems Get Nervous.” It will be interesting to see how quickly TRUTH Social can get off the ground.
In yesterday’s post, I forgot to link to these Log4J memes. Enjoy!
Why New York City lags the rest of the nation in unemployment. Thank lockdowns, shutdowns, and insane government. “The economy is not a light switch. The supply chain is not a light switch.” The money quote “New York City is just not that amazing!”
Popular Mexican singer Vincente Fernandez died, and the woke couldn’t wait to crap on his grave:
If you had to tell the story of why Hispanics are abandoning the Democrats in droves using a single image, it would look something like this.
Did you know that an Israeli airstrike hit a Syrian port last week? Did you see anything about that in the news? Seems like the sort of thing the media would cover before they decided that a bunch of lunatics shouting at J.K. Rowling is more important.
Texas House Speaker Dade Phalen attends fundraiser for quorum-busting Democrats in the Rio Grande Valley (including State Reps. Terry Canales, Sergio Munoz Jr., Oscar Longoria, Armando Martinez, and Bobby Guerra, and State Sen. Chuy Hinojosa) while skipping a Republican event a mile away. Remind me again why Phalen is speaker?
“Pasadena Mechanic Sues City Over Parking Space Regulation Prohibiting His Business from Operating.”
There’s nothing this Austin City Council can’t seem to ruin, including the Trail of Lights.
Speaking of science experiments: What happens when you hit a gong with a baseball traveling at Mach 1.5? And you know there’s super-slow motion involved…
Whoa:
A Hutchinson, KS business just West of the Airport destroyed during 80+ mph gusts around 4:30pm.#kswxpic.twitter.com/Yd6ul9EeBo
A few weeks ago there was Texas gubernatorial poll showing Beto O’Rourke running neck and neck with Greg Abbott. I took a deeper look to see how skewed the crosstabs were, but they don’t appear to have an actual numerical breakdown of Republican vs. Democratic voters. (The MSM loves oversampling Democrats for polls.)
Start at the top: The chairman is former Republican State Rep. Jason Villalba, who for a long time was a strong contender for “Least Conservative Republican in the House.” You may remember him from such hits as I Hate Photographers and Lawful Gun Owners and Lisa Luby Ryan Retired My Ass.
Regina Montoya was chairman of the board of the Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund (MALDEF), a hard left Social justice group waging lawfare.
None of these people fill me with confidence. Some of those involved (former Rick Perry-appointed Secretary of State Hope Andrade, and Greg Abbott-appointed Secretary of State Carlos Cascos) appear to be more ostensibly Republican, but their personal political views are unclear.
Gates believes that climate change is a major threat to humanity, and has focused major Foundation attention and money to the issue. He wrote a book which is set for publication in 2021 about climate change. He supports Common Core education standards and opposed the Trump administration’s Mexico City Policy, which prohibits federal funds from supporting organizations that advocate for abortions.
Snip.
Gates also criticized the Trump administration’s withdrawal of money from the World Health Organization after the international organization used misleading Chinese government data about the COVID-19 pandemic. He and Melinda wrote in 2018 that they support same-sex relationships and self-described gender definitions. Gates has held meetings with President Donald Trump, including one in 2018 to urge the president to support greater U.S. foreign aid. He also discussed vaccines, innovation, education, and other issues with Trump in another meeting.
Gates is also supportive of the idea that Earth is overpopulated. He and Melinda responded in 2018 to the idea that by saving children’s lives in poor nations they are contributing to overpopulation. Gates’ father led a chapter of Planned Parenthood, and he has spoken well of the abortion group in addition to providing contraceptive and abortifacient funds to abortion groups internationally.
In February 2021, during an interview on “60 Minutes,” Gates told Anderson Cooper that the world should reduce its carbon emissions to zero, saying it would be “the most amazing thing mankind has ever done.” Just a month earlier, Gates joined a bidding war to buy the world’s largest private jet company, despite private jets being some of the world’s greatest carbon emitters.
More recently, Gates has been an outspoken Flu Manchu vaccine advocate. And, what do you know, two of THPF’s most recent press releases deal with vaccine policy polling.
Restoration and protection of plant and wildlife habitats
Public support for protecting environmental resources
Engagement of underrepresented populations in experiencing and protecting natural resources
Clean water and sound management strategies
Current and future climate change mitigation
In other words: Global warming, environmentalism and social justice. If I had to guess, the entire point of the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation is using polling metrics to find better ways to sell Texas Hispanics on the sort of anti-conservative priorities favored by the Gates and Meadows foundations.
While the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation claims to be “nonpartisan,” the funding behind it, and the people involved, don’t inspire a lot of confidence along those lines…
We’ve covered George Soros’ baleful effect on American law and order many times before, and will no doubt again. But the Daily Mail has published this handy piece about how Soros-backed DAs have led to spiraling crime rates in deep blue cities:
Billionaire Democrat donor George Soros has bankrolled District Attorneys in America’s most crime ravaged cities, where criminals are being allowed to walk out of jail on low cash bonds or aren’t even being charged.
Soros, the most prolific Democratic donor, is most known for giving to Presidents Clinton and Obama but he has also been pumping money into a far-left effort to overhaul the criminal justice system by giving millions to a network of woke prosecutors in Democratic races.
Among them is Kim Foxx, the State’s Attorney for Cook County, Chicago, where murder is at its highest in nearly 30 years.
In 2020, Soros donated $2 million to a PAC that backed Foxx in her re-election campaign. She won the race and has since offered deferred prosecutions and softball deals to criminals.
In 2021, there were more murders in Chicago than in any other year since 1994.
There have been more than 1,000 murders in Cook County, Foxx’s district, this year.
Soros bolstered her re-election campaign by donating to the Illinois Justice and Public Safety PAC.
Attorney Buta Biberaj is refusing to recuse herself from the case to remove School Board Chair Brenda Sheridan, despite what district parents say is an apparent conflict of interest.
Fight for Schools, the parent organization that filed to remove Sheridan, has now also filed a petition to remove Biberaj – who received a $861,039 contribution from the George Soros-funded Justice and Public Safety PAC during her 2019 election – from the case.
Ian Prior, executive director of the group, claimed Biberaj was ‘very involved in two of the very serious incidents’ that were catalysts for the push for Sheridan’s recall.
He said Loudoun County residents need to know the case will be handled fairly and that Biberaj’s involvement makes that nearly impossible.
‘It is necessary to have faith that the prosecutor in this removal proceeding has no actual or perceived conflicts, that she will go where the evidence takes her, and litigate this case with appropriate prosecutorial zeal,’ Prior told Fox News.
‘In this case, Commonwealth Attorney Biberaj was very involved in two of the very serious incidents that gave rise to the recall. There is simply no way that the people of Loudoun County can be confident in a fair process for the removal of Brenda Sheridan unless Ms. Biberaj either recuses herself, or is disqualified based on her conflicts of interest, and an independent prosecutor is appointed by the Court.’
The PAC spent over $500,000 on materials to damage one of her challengers. It’s a pattern that can be seen in other parts of the country.
He has also donated to PACs that support Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón, who is being widely condemned for not cracking down on shoplifters and violent criminals.
Soros has also donated to the campaign of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner.
He donated $1.7 million to Krasner’s campaign, according to The New York Post.
Soros also donated to Super PACS that prop up Democratic prosecutors and politicians across Republican states.
Republican pundits say he has blood on his hands now for the deaths of innocent people like those killed at the Waukesha Christmas Parade by Darrell Brooks, a career criminal who had been bonded out of jail days earlier for other crimes.
In 2016, Soros pumped $3million into seven local district-attorney campaigns including races in Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas.
Larry Krasner, a 60-year-old longtime civil rights and defense attorney who sued the Philadelphia Police Department 75 times, won election in 2017 against a crowded field by billing himself as the outsider candidate capable of making radical change.
Krasner’s campaign benefitted from the largesse of controversial Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros, who poured an eye-popping $1,7million into the race to support the Democratic candidate’s criminal justice reform agenda.
Under Krasner, the future years of incarceration have been cut by half, and the length of parole in probation supervision have been slashed by nearly two-thirds compared to the previous DA.
Krasner, who previously defended Black Lives Matter and Occupy Philadelphia protesters as a lawyer, has clashed with the city’s top cops over his reluctance to prosecute non-violent gun and drug possession crimes, despite a surge in gun violence and rising homicide rates in the City of Brotherly Love.
As of November 21, 2021, there have been 491 homicide victims, a 14 per cent increase from last year’s number of 436, and 283 in 2019.
The Philadelphia Police Department and Krasner have been at loggerheads over a steep drop in convictions related to gun offenses.
This year, police in Philadelphia have made a record number of arrests for illegal gun possession, but the suspects’ chances of getting convicted have dropped from 63 per cent in 2017 down to 49 per cent in 2021, according to an analysis by the Philadelphia Inquirer published in March.
Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw was previously quoted as saying that Philadelphia’s criminal justice system has become a ‘revolving door’ for repeat gun offenders since Krasner was sworn into office in January 2018.
Krasner has blamed the decrease on police submitting weaker evidence in cases, or on witnesses failing to show up in court to testify.
The progressive Democrat DA has contended that his main focus is on convicting people who use guns to kill or hurt others, not those who are caught being in possession of the weapons.
Krasner’s office has argued that there is little evidence that suspects accused of being in possession of guns are responsible for the uptick in gun violence.
Compared to the previous DA term, Krasner’s has imposed 24,000 fewer years of incarceration and 102,000 fewer years of supervised probation or parole since 2018.
Last week on Thanksgiving vacation, I had to put my Mac through a reboot cycle and lost the zillions of open Firefox Windows. So you may find this week’s LinkSwarm relatively (some might say “mercifully”) brief.
Hunter Biden was pulling down a hefty $10 million a year to spread Chinese influence:
A damning new report claims that Hunter Biden helped expand Chinese influence in America in a $10 million a year agreement and an $80,000 diamond.
In her new book, Laptop from Hell, New York Post columnist Miranda Devine, describes Hunter Biden’s business dealings with a Chinese-linked energy consortium, called CEFC.
Based on hundreds of emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop which he left in a Delaware repair shop in April 2019, and transcripts of messages from WhatsApp, she claims that the Biden family offered their services to CEFC to help expand its business around the world.
In exchange, Devine writes, Hunter Biden received $10 million a year for three years, and a diamond worth at least $80,000.
And, by an amazing coincidence, the Biden Administration is super soft on China.
Administration sources confirmed that in an October call between Deputy Secretary of State Wendy R. Sherman and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the other co-sponsor, Sherman made it clear that the administration prefers a more targeted and deliberative approach to determining which [Chinese] goods are the products of forced labor. She also told Merkley that getting allied buy-in was critical and more effective than unilateral action.
“To be clear, the Department of State is not opposing this amendment,” a State Department spokesman told me. “We share the Congress’ concerns about forced labor in Xinjiang.”
In other words, while the administration supports the legislation in public, they are asking Democrats to essentially water it down in private. Sherman’s specific criticism relates to a part of the bill that would require a presumption that all products coming from Xinjiang are tainted by forced labor unless the importer can prove otherwise. This happens to be the exact provision corporations are also objecting to. Maybe it’s a coincidence.
“It isn’t partisan or in any way controversial for the U.S. to be unequivocally, resoundingly opposed to genocide and slave labor,” Merkley told me. “The Senate passed this legislation in July, and it’s time to get it over the finish line.”
Watering down congressional efforts to punish China for the Uyghur genocide is not what Joe Biden promised when he was running for office, or when he took office. Through most of 2020, Biden insisted that he was the tough one on China and that the Trump administration only offered “a colossal gap between tough talk and weak action.”
Biden, at a Democratic debate on February 25, 2020, said: “I had spent more time with Xi Jinping than any other world leader by the time we left office. This is a guy who doesn’t have a democratic bone in his body. This is a guy who is a thug who in fact, has a million Uyghurs in reconstruction camps, meaning concentration camps.”
Biden, writing in Foreign Affairs last spring, said: “Companies must act to ensure that their tools and platforms are not empowering the surveillance state, gutting privacy, facilitating repression in China and elsewhere. . . . The United States does need to get tough with China.”
Biden, speaking at the U.S. State Department on February 4, said: “We’ll also take on directly the challenges posed by our prosperity, security, and democratic values by our most serious competitor, China. We’ll confront China’s economic abuses; counter its aggressive, coercive action; to push back on China’s attack on human rights, intellectual property, and global governance.”
And yet, month by month, the Biden administration is proving more and more reticent to confront the Chinese government in substantive and consequential ways. The investigation into the origins of COVID-19 is effectively dropped, and Biden didn’t mention China’s refusal to cooperate with the WHO’s separate investigation in his teleconference summit with Xi Jinping.
Biden did not mention China, the Uyghurs, Hong Kong, or the origins of COVID-19 in his address to the United Nations.
Commerce secretary Gina Raimondo told the Wall Street Journal in September that she thinks “robust commercial engagement will help to mitigate any potential tensions” with China. Biden rescinded Trump’s executive orders targeting TikTok, the popular app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.
Snip.
Biden nominated Reta Jo Lewis to run the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Senator Marco Rubio contends that, “Reta Jo Lewis is currently a strategic advisor for the U.S.-China Heartland Association, which is a conduit for the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) United Front Work Department (UFWD), which aims to influence key Americans at the subnational level and ultimately undermine America’s national interests.”
As I noted yesterday, even the proposed diplomatic boycott of the Olympics is moot, because the Chinese government announced that U.S. politicians were not invited before Biden could even officially announce the decision.
It’s not that the Biden administration is doing nothing — an upcoming “democracy summit” invited Taiwan but not China, there have been prohibitions on U.S. investment in particular Chinese companies, and a dozen Chinese companies have been blacklisted for helping the Chinese army with quantum computing.
But these are small-ball gestures while the Chinese government sends 18 fighter jets plus five nuclear-capable H-6 bombers into Taiwanese air-defense zone at one time, Beijing wipes out the last of Hong Kong’s opposition, and the Genocide Games go on with full U.S. corporate sponsorship. We’re attempting minor and symbolic moves while Xi Jinping is attempting big and consequential ones to maximize his leverage over the rest of the world.
In my new book, San Fransicko, I describe why progressives create and defend what European researchers call “open drug scenes,” which are places in cities where drug dealers and buyers meet, and many addicts live in tents. Progressives call these scenes “homeless encampments,” and not only defend them but have encouraged their growth, which is why the homeless population in California grew 31 percent since 2000. This was mostly a West Coast phenomenon until recently. But now, the newly elected progressive mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu, has decided to keep open a drug scene at Mass and Cass avenues, even though it has resulted in several deaths from drug overdoses and homicides.
Progressives defend their approach as compassionate. Not everybody who is homeless is an addict, they say. Many are just down on their luck. Others turn to drugs after living on the street. What they need is our help. We should not ask people living in homeless encampments to go somewhere else. Homeless shelters are often more dangerous than living on the street. We should provide the people living in tents with money, food, clean needles, and whatever else they need to stay alive and comfortable. And we should provide everyone with their own apartment unit if that’s what they want.
But this “harm reduction” approach is obviously failing. Cities already do a good job taking care of temporarily homeless people not addicted to drugs. Drug dealers stab and sometimes murder addicts who don’t pay. Women forced into prostitution to support their addictions are raped. Addicts are dying from overdose and poisoning. The addicts living in the open drug scenes commit many crimes including open drug use, sleeping on sidewalks, and defecating in public. Many steal to maintain their habits. The hands-off approach has meant that addicts do not spend any amount of time in jail or hospital where they can be off of drugs, and seek recovery.
More:
The main progressive approach for addressing homelessness, not just in San Francisco but in progressive cities around the nation, is “Housing First,” which is the notion that taxpayers should give, no questions asked, apartment units to anyone who says they are homeless, and asks for one. What actually works to reduce the addiction that forces many people onto the streets is making housing contingent on abstinence. But Housing First advocates oppose “contingency management,” as it’s called, because, they say, “Housing is a right,” and it should not be conditioned upon behavior change.
But such a policy is absurdly unrealistic, said the San Francisco homeless expert. “To pretend that this city could build enough permanent supportive housing for every homeless person who needs it is ludicrous,” the person said. “I wish it weren’t. I wish I lived in a land where there was plenty of housing. But now people are dying on our streets and it feels like we’re not doing very much about it.”
The underlying problem with Housing First is that it enables addiction. “The National Academies of Sciences review [which showed that giving people apartments did not improve health or other life outcomes] you cited shows that. San Francisco has more permanent supportive housing units per capita than any other city, and we doubled spending on homelessness, but the homeless population rose 13%, even as it went down in the US. And so we doubled our spending and the problem got worse. But if you say that, you get attacked.”
How did progressives, who claim to be evidence-based, ever get so committed to Housing First? “Malcolm Gladwell’s [2006 New Yorker article] “Million Dollar Murray,” really helped popularize this idea,” the person said. “But it was based on an anecdote of one person. It works for who it works for but is not scalable. [Governor] Gavin [Newsom] made a mistake [as San Francisco’s Mayor 2004-2011] which was that we stopped investing in shelter. But that’s because all the best minds were saying, ‘This is what’s going to work.’”
One of the claims made by defenders of the open drug scenes is that people who live in them are mostly locals who were priced out of their homes and apartments and decided to pitch a tent on the street. In San Fransicko, I cite a significant body of evidence to show that this is false, and that many people come to San Francisco from around the U.S. for the city’s unusually high cash welfare benefits, free housing, and tolerance of open drug scenes.
The insider agreed. “People come here because they think they can. It’s bullshit that ‘Only 30 percent [of homeless] are from out of town.’ At least 20,000 homeless people come through town every year. Talk to the people on the street. There’s no way 70 percent of the homeless are from here. I would guess it’s fewer than 50 percent. Ask them the name of their high school and they guess, ‘Washington? The one around the corner?’ But you can’t even talk about that without being called a fascist.”
A top adviser and chief spokeswoman for Harris, Symone Sanders, is set to resign from her position by the end of the year, a White House official said Wednesday. It’s one of several high-level departures in the vice president’s office since she was sworn in earlier this year.
Peter Velz, the vice president’s director of press operations, is leaving the office in the coming weeks, along with Vincent Evans, deputy director of public engagement and intergovernmental affairs, according to reports. Ashley Etienne, Harris’s communications director, is also stepping down. Advance staffers departed over the summer, soon after a trip to Guatemala where Harris drew criticism for a biting response to a question over when she intended to visit the southern U.S. border.
A source familiar with Harris’s office woes quipped that the defections must be “completely unrelated to reading stories where they are blamed for everything.”
“This is the same story that gets played out again and again — it’s always the vague ‘staffing,’” this person said. “I don’t think there are a ton of staff, present and former, that would rush to defend the way the office is run.”
What percentage of requested water are California farms getting next year? Try 0%.
Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw brings the wood to Ron Klain:
Let’s follow up that kudo for Crenshaw with some serious criticism: He was one of 80 Republicans (along with Rep. John Carter, my own representative) to vote in favor of a federal vaccine database. He can swear up and down it’s not going to be used for vaccine passports, but we’ve seen worldwide governments use coercive tools with even less legal justification.
When it comes to arguments on the new Supreme Court abortion case, you can smell the panic.
Real life frequently has symbolism more heavy-handed than fiction. “Barack and Michelle Obama Elementary will close at the end of the 2022-2023.” (Hat tip: Holly Hansen.)
Just got back from Texas and sad to report that the entire state is suffering from the Freedom Variant. Symptoms may include: enjoying your life, breathing fresh air, and not being a paranoid, righteous douchebag.
Smollett wasn’t engaging in a hoax. He was perpetuating a scam and that scam has a name. It’s called “social justice.” (Or, in the Biden administration’s parlance, “equity.”)
It’s not like Smollett is a demonstrable sociopath who told an aimless lie about being attacked by Trump supporters in 2019 for the sake of it. According to a very solid case built by an exhaustive Chicago police investigation, Smollett pretended to be the victim of a violent racist and anti-gay assault because he wanted more fame and thus more money.
What better way to achieve that goal than to feed into the enduring myth that minorities in America are suppressed at every turn, even targeted for violence by whites? White men in particular, and, as of 2016, even better if they’re Trump supporters.
Police charged that Smollett offered to pay two brothers he was acquainted with about $2,000 each to act out an attack on the actor in the dead of a Chicago winter night. The siblings, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, told investigators that Smollett had given them $100 to buy masks, a red hat, and a rope that would be fashioned into a kind of noose for the staged attack. The Osundairos were instructed to confront Smollett on a sidewalk, slightly rough him up, and then disappear.
The setup preceeded a previous stunt, wherein Smollett mailed himself a threatening letter that said, “You will d[ie] black fag,” accompanied by an illustration of a hangman. Police said Smollett’s failure to garner any significant national attention from the letter is what led him to fake the assault.
“…This announcement today recognizes that ‘Empire’ actor Jussie Smollett took advantage of the pain and anger of racism to promote his career,” then-police superintendent Eddie Johnson said in late February, after his department probed the events from the night of the incident. He said Smollett was mostly motivated by seeking a salary increase for his role on “Empire.”
That was the conclusion of law enforcement after spending more than $100,000 taxpayer dollars on an investigation to piece together surveillance video, eye-witness testimony, and data gathering that led them to believe Smollett had lied about everything.
But in all fairness, who could blame him? This is what our entire culture is teaching now— that the quickest way to advance is to claim victimhood on account of race, sex, or sexual identity — ideally, some combination of all three.
Lucrative opportunities present themselves quickly for those who sell themselves as oppressed and aggrieved. And for Smollett, it worked! Nobody knew who he was before he claimed to have been physically confronted and called the n-word and the f-word by white male Trump supporters. Thereafter, everyone knew who he was.
He was written about in The New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today. A-list celebrities, TV hosts and political leaders expressed their solidarity.
Celebrities (especially those as famous as McConnaughey) tend to be formidable candidates, but there was no guarantee he would even win a primary. His hetrodox views might prevent him from winning the Democratic primary over Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, and a run against incumbent Greg Abbott (and his giant warchest) in the increasingly crowded Republican primary was no sure thing either.
I recently received my first flyer in the race, from the Don Huffines campaign. As you can see from the scans below, the issues he’s emphasizing are controlling the border, ending property taxes and election integrity. Good as far as it goes, but he may have missed a bet by not supporting a special session for outlawing vaccine mandates.
Is it a bit early to be dropping direct mail flyers? A bit, but: A.) As a longshot challenger, Huffines has to raise his profile to have any chance at all, and direct mail probably offers a much bigger bag for the buck than broadcast media advertising. (There may be lots of online advertising as well, but I have so many online ads blocked that I almost never see them on my Mac.) And: B.) It’s not that early, as we’re roughly six months out from the May 1st primary date.
I haven’t received any campaign mailers from Team Abbott, but lord, have I received a lot of fundraising emails. Over 60 in November alone, some of which go out of their way to insult my intelligence. Like the one that claims to be from “Greg Abbott (iPhone).” Is there anyone stupid enough to believe that Abbott is personally emailing fundraising solicitations from his personal iPhone? Also annoying: “Your Order Confirmation” and “YOUR EXCLUSIVE OFFER.” Just stop…
It’s always intriguing when a well-known figure whom everyone understands has no chance of winning decides to run for office.
I doubt even Beto’s under illusions about his chances. He’ll be running in a red state facing a massive red midterm wave against a Republican who’s more popular than the one he ran against in 2018 and who’s raised more money than any governor in U.S. history. Why bother?
Some blather about the “hardness” of Abbott’s stand on vaccine mandates snipped, as Texas conservative activists have been all over Abbott for refusing to call a fourth special session to outlaw vaccine mandates by statute, not just decree.
A poll published last week found him rocking a 27/57 approval rating among independents in Texas. If the 2022 midterm environment was as favorable to Democrats as 2018 was, I’d give them an outside chance of pulling an upset.
More erroneous analysis snipped.
But 2022 isn’t 2018. And a candidate as far left as Beto O’Rourke isn’t the man to dethrone a longtime governor.
Team Abbott posted this ad featuring some of Beto’s greatest hits a few weeks ago. They’re going to attack him as too liberal for Texas, which he is:
O’Rourke’s defining issues when he ran for president two years ago were liberalizing America’s border and grabbing guns. Given the crush of migrants seeking asylum that the U.S. has seen this year, though, open borders is an especially toxic position to hold in Texas of all places. And gun-control is a perennial loser in a state with as robust a gun culture as Texas had. You would think today’s announcement would be an occasion for O’Rourke to say he’s rethought his previous positions on firearms. Instead, incredibly, he’s doubling down:
Abbott has already been campaigning against O’Rourke as too liberal for Texas, branding him “Wrong Way O’Rourke” and seizing on multiple positions he has taken since last running statewide. At the top of the list is O’Rourke’s proposal to require buybacks of assault weapons during his presidential campaign. That led to a memorable moment on the debate stage in which O’Rourke proclaimed that, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”
O’Rourke said he was not backing away from that proposal in his latest campaign.
“I think most Texans can agree — maybe all Texans can agree — that we should not see our friends, our family members, our neighbors, shot up with weapons that were originally designed for use on a battlefield,” said O’Rourke, whose hometown of El Paso was the site of an anti-Latino mass shooting in 2019 by a gunman who killed 23 people.
His progressive views during his 2020 presidential run appear to have stuck to him in Texas as he’s polled poorly there over the past few months. Last month a UT survey found his favorable rating at 35/50, including 22/48 among indies. O’Rourke trailed Abbott 46/37 in that same poll, a pitiful showing against a governor whose popularity had waned lately. Another poll taken a month earlier also put O’Rourke at 37 percent against Abbott. A third recent survey from Quinnipiac had a mere 33 percent willing to say they thought Beto would make a good governor.
I’ll give you a few possibilities. One, simply, is time. If O’Rourke had waited to challenge Ted Cruz for Senate again in 2024, he would have risked being perceived as old news, especially having failed in his two previous statewide runs. The 2024 Senate primary could be a competitive one for Democrats, with no guarantee of Beto winning. This year’s primary is easier for him since no one else wants to to face Abbott in a Republican-friendly cycle. Simply put, his political capital was depreciating. He could either use what was left of it for one more campaign or go bankrupt.
Two is fundraising. I’m skeptical that we’ll see the return of the “Betomania” money juggernaut in full force in Texas but it probably remains true that O’Rourke can raise cash more easily than the average Dem, if only by dint of name recognition. He’ll be at less of a money disadvantage against Abbott than any other prospective nominee would be. Of course, if Betomania does run wild among Democratic donors nationally, that’ll backfire on the party by drawing cash into Texas in a likely losing effort that could have gone to more competitive races elsewhere. Double-edged sword for Dems.
Three is enthusiasm. Between Biden’s troubles and the likelihood of a red wave, Democrats will have a hard time getting Texas liberals excited to vote in 2022. Having a charismatic well-known liberal at the top of the ticket who captivated them once before might boost turnout at the margins. And while that won’t be enough to make Beto governor, it might help Dems win a few state races downballot that they otherwise would have lost. His candidacy is a favor to the state party, in other words. He might even be able to steer some Latino voters who defected to Trump and the GOP last year back into the Democratic column.
Realistically, the best-case scenario for O’Rourke is that he raises a ton of money again, loses by a respectable margin, and is then targeted by Biden for some sort of national job either in the cabinet or at the DNC. Beto’s long-term challenge is staying politically relevant and another run for office advances the ball — albeit at the risk that he’s well and truly done politically if he gets blown out.
Actually, O’Rourke is already starting to tack right on border security, saying that Biden hasn’t done enough to secure the border.
O’Rourke has some Democratic Primary competitors (Larry Baggett, Michael Cooper, and Deirdre Dickson-Gilbert), but I can’t even find working websites for the first two.
Likewise, Chad Prather‘s campaign has been essentially invisible, and Allen West‘s all but invisible.
There’s also someone named Danny Harrison, who seems to be running on a “legalized gambling and weed” platform, an interesting choice for the Republican primary. Harrison actually has a bit of polish, so the guy is punching above his weight class (Gadfly). Like Prather, I get the impression he could actually make some noise in a lower-level race (State Rep., County Commissioner, etc.).
ou know, a few more rampages by inept alleged “white supremacists” like Kyle Rittenhouse – he only managed to shoot white criminals! – and everybody is going to be thoroughly awakened to the reality of the leftist scam. The trial that followed the Kenosha Kid’s act of social hygiene constituted only one tab in the big bottle of scarlet pills America’s been force-fed lately. Others include being confronted at work with mandates for vaxes that don’t act as advertised, as well as being inundated with racist CRT garbage, and having one’s kids come home from school with creepy porno crap that makes you wonder if they hit up the Lincoln Project lending library.
There are more pills going on than in Hunter’s medicine cabinet.
Why the festival of figurative pharmaceuticals? Because the left got out over its skis. It went too far, too fast, and now normal folks who just want to live their lives and usually show no interest in political/cultural controversies are showing up at school board meetings asking why the hell their kids are accusing them of slavery. Combined with a crusty old pervert in the White House who is causing economic inflation and international humiliation, and the left is in trouble. Deep trouble. See, the truth is getting out despite the media’s lies. Its pet political party is looking at being demolished next November. But instead of slowing down and taking stock, the Marxists are doubling down on failure knowing they only have their micro-majorities for a year. This genius strategy got them Glenn Youngkin and will get them many more based pols who are many times more hardcore.
It is only going to get worse for them, which means it is only going to get better for America.
Remember, leftism only succeeds when surrounded by a fog of lies. When the fog lifts, people reject it. And the media pumped out all the fog it could. There were people who literally did not know the collection of criminals and/or perverts Kyle exorcised were as white as Mitt Romney at a Cure concert. Really. That was the media’s doing, lying that the only reason Kyle didn’t want to have his brains bashed in by these scumbags was his pallor and reporting that nonsense accordingly. But when people watched the trial, they saw something entirely different from what they had been fed by the Enemy of the People, and it stuck. People were shocked – not people like us who are fully woke to the fact the media is nothing more than a collection of semi-literate, poorly-paid hack transcriptionists for the liberal elite – to see that they were being lied to, and hard. Not little lies. Not careless errors. No, these were calculated, intentional lies designed to push the party line. And their lies were revealed to all in that Kenosha courtroom.
The liberal champions were Binger and Lunchbox, the Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dumbass of assistant DAs who were incompetent when they weren’t straight-up lying. And people saw it all. Normal people, the kind who used to have some faith in the people in charge of the system.
Now they are like us. They got woke.
Everyone pushing the Russian Collusion hoax should be fired:
As the Democratic National Convention descended into chaos in July 2016, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, co-founders of Fusion GPS, high-tailed it from Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia to stanch the political bleeding following the release of damning internal emails that showed party honchos had rigged the process in favor of Hillary Clinton.
Simpson and Fritsch, serving multiple paymasters at the time including Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, had a plan to divert media attention away from the crisis: spin a dark tale of collusion between the Kremlin and Donald Trump to stop Hillary Clinton from winning the White House.
Russian hackers were already blamed, without evidence, for infiltrating the DNC email system and giving the correspondence to WikiLeaks. Expanding on that accusation by revealing the secretive work of Christopher Steele, portrayed as a “former Western intelligence officer,” to friendly journalists successfully changed the subject.
“They wanted to have some discreet conversations with a few reporters to let them know they might be able to help with stories about Trump, particularly on Russia,” Simpson and Fritsch wrote about themselves.
Snip.
This unfolding scandal is not only about how inaccurately the media covered Sergei Millian or the bogus Steele dossier. There was no collusion between the Trump presidential campaign and the Russians. Period.
And everyone knew it at the time. Tom Hamburger knew it, Rosalind Helderman, everyone at MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and more knew it was fabricated garbage peddled by a well-known paid smear merchant who was disguising another paid political operative as a “western intelligence officer.”
It was intentional, not “one of the most egregious journalistic errors in modern history,” as Axios’ Sara Fischer described it in a roundup of other news organizations that still refuse to acknowledge misleading reporting and editorializing on the Steele dossier—again, a red herring since coverage of phony election collusion exceeded beyond allegations contained in the dossier.
“CNN and MSNBC did not respond to requests for comment about whether they planned to revisit or correct any of their coverage around the dossier,” Fischer reported. “The Wall Street Journal told Axios, ‘We’re aware of the serious questions raised by the allegations and continue to report and to follow the investigation closely.’” Mark Maremont, a Journal reporter, first disclosed Millian’s name in a January 2017 article, suggesting he was responsible for a “compromising video” on Donald Trump.
David Corn, author of an October 31, 2016 article for Mother Jones titled, “A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump,” that was sourced directly by Steele and Simpson right before the election, told Erik Wemple, the Post’s media critic who commendably called out high-profile dossier propagandists in a lengthy series last year, that he has no plans to retract his previous reporting. “My priority has been to deal with the much larger topic of Russia’s undisputed attack and Trump’s undisputed collaboration with Moscow’s cover-up.”
Fischer claims a “reckoning” is hitting newsrooms across the country. With the exception of a cowardly response by the Post’s editor, that’s about as accurate as the dossier itself. A true reckoning would involve more than a few editor’s notes or burying collusion coverage down the media’s deep memory hole.
In any other honorable profession, one that still takes itself seriously and is capable of self-policing to preserve the tattered shreds of integrity and accountability that remain, mass firings, not faux “reckonings,” would empty newsrooms. Reporters, columnists, cable news hosts, and paid contributors would be shown walking papers. Editors would step down in humiliation. Public apologies, not mealymouthed caveats and explainers buried in the entertainment guide, would be plastered on the front page of every newspaper and website; talking heads would make amends to the victims—including Donald Trump—for this reckless, destructive hoax and also to their audience for intentionally misleading them for years and then announce their early retirement.
Collusion between Donald Trump and the Kremlin to influence the outcome of the 2016 election never happened—but every news organization, big and small, contributed to spreading this lie. It’s breathtaking malfeasance on a scale unrivaled in American history. The media should not be permitted to proceed with business as usual.
Fire them all.
Remember: The reason why accused Waukesha Christmas Parade Murderer Darrell Brooks Jr. was out on the streets to kill was because Soros-backed DA John Chisholm wanted him there.
Waukesha massacre suspect Darrell Edward Brooks was released from Milwaukee County jail on $1,000 bail earlier this week.
Here is Soros affiliated Milwaukee district attorney John Chisholm bragging about abolishing bail and congratulating other Soros DAs. pic.twitter.com/SrStcNpoVT
In depth meta-analysis of the use of Ivermectin to treat Flu Manchu. Maybe it only really helps in countries that have notable body parasites? (Hat tip: Maybe Borepatch? After so much turkey, everything blur together in the mind…)
Despite whatever anger President Joe Biden might express about the jury’s verdict, the 12 jurors in this trial focused on the facts and the law, and chose justice, even after threats were made against them, against the city, and corrupt media narratives continued to circulate with the aid of social media giants which were still banning accounts who spoke in Rittenhouse’s defense. Together, these 12 jurors bravely chose justice over the mob.
In doing so, these 12 displayed more courage than nearly all of our politicians and every single one of our media elite. Once again, we are reminded that the best of America resides not in our coastal power centers, our ivory towers, or even here in our nation’s capital. The best of America resides in the inherent fairness, righteousness, and bravery of her citizens.
But it’s worth focusing on where the left goes next. Because they don’t intend to let this jury verdict be the last word. Hours after the verdict was handed down, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) was calling it “a miscarriage of justice” and calling for federal review of the verdict by Merrick Garland’s heavily politicized Department of Justice.
The media narrative, meanwhile, has turned toward decrying “gun laws” and the ability of a 17-year-old to carry an “assault rifle,” and is openly conflating the right to self-defense with “vigilantism.” In other words, they’re saying it out loud: they’re coming for your guns, for your right to defend your family, and ultimately, for your sovereignty.
In early November, the Supreme Court heard arguments in New York Rifle & Pistol Association Inc v. Bruen. The question before the court is whether New York’s concealed carry permit regime, which requires the petitioner to show a “genuine, specific need” to concealed carry a firearm for self-defense and vests the ability to judge that need in a state bureaucrat, violates the Second Amendment.
During the argument, it became abundantly clear how the left views the Second Amendment — that is, a constitutional entitlement that grants each of us an unambiguous right to carry by virtue of our citizenship.
A leaked audio recording revealed California teachers mocking parents over concerns about homosexual and transgender indoctrination at school, said a source who attended a recent teachers union conference in Palm Springs.
The recording, obtained by The Epoch Times, captured two seventh-grade teachers, Kelly Baraki and Lori Caldeira from Buena Vista Middle School in Salinas, Calif., telling other teachers how to recruit students into LGBTQ clubs, also known as “Gay-Straight Alliance” (GSA) clubs, at school.
“It was horrifying to listen to not just one teacher but really all of the teachers in all of these seminars, excoriating parents,” said the source, who goes by the pseudonym Rebecca Murphy.
Murphy attended the California Teachers Association (CTA) conference in late October. She told The Epoch Times the teachers “mocked” parents for their concerns, and suggested they know better than parents about what’s best for their children.
Times Up for Time’s Up. “The vast majority of Time’s Up’s remaining staffers were laid off Friday.” #MeToo was never meant to take out powerful Democrats like Andrew Cuomo.
It’s funny. She resigned in protest because parliament voted down her budget and went with the budget proposed and promoted by the hard right anti-open borders Swedish majority.
Sanity prevailed in Sweden.
— Ian Miles Cheong @ stillgray.substack.com (@stillgray) November 24, 2021
The Social Justice Warrior behind the effort to cancel Dave Chapelle resigns. “You come at the king, you best not miss.”
Things that make you go “Hmmm”:
.@joerogan Discussing The Curious Case Of Ray Epps & January 6th
"He did it pre-January 6th, he did it during the January 6th thing, and that this guy has faced no legal charges whatsoever, and people are like well wtf is going on here?"https://t.co/6bbWmMWKxXpic.twitter.com/IRZnXUO2yq
In recent days, Williamson County and the city of Taylor had seemed to emerge as the frontrunner to land a $17 billion chipmaking plant planned by Samsung.
Now, it seems the technology giant has indeed picked the small Central Texas city as the site for its next major operation, according to media reports.
Citing unnamed sources with knowledge of the decision, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday night that Samsung has picked Taylor over sites in Austin, Arizona and New York.
Samsung has not formally confirmed the decision, and a company spokesperson did not immediately respond to messages left by the American-Statesman on Monday evening. However, the announcement is expected to be made in a news conference with Gov. Greg Abbott at the Texas Capitol on Tuesday afternoon.
If Samsung does, in fact, build the facility at the Taylor site, it will be the latest in a stunning run of economic development wins for the Austin area, and for its technology sector in particular.
Tesla announced Oct. 7 that the automaker will move its corporate headquarters from California to Austin. That news came 15 months after Tesla chose an Austin-area site as the home for its $1.1 billion manufacturing facility. Software giant Oracle announced last December that it was moving its corporate headquarters from California to Austin, and a number of other technology giants — including Apple, Facebook, Google and Amazon — have recently expanded their operations in Central Texas.
Samsung recently overtook Intel as the largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world, and along with TSMC, those three are also the only real players in cutting-edge under-10nm processes. As I’ve mentioned before, new cutting edge fabs are hideously expensive to build. TSMC is a foundry (which means they fab other people’s chip designs), while both Samsung and Intel are integrated device manufacturers (IDMs), meaning they fab their own designs, though I think both dabble in foundry work as a sideline. (Samsung is also one of the largest flat panel screen manufacturers in the world; flat panel manufacturing uses semiconductor manufacturing techniques, but is fundamentally a different industry, and just about all flat panels are produced in Asia these days.)
The decision to eliminate New York from the list was probably quite easy. Back when IBM was running it’s state-of-the-art fabs in East Fishkill, there was considerable technological infrastructure in the state. Back In The Day IBM had some of the most respected process technology knowledge in the industry. But then they got out of the manufacturing business, and the East Fishkill fab got sold to Global Foundries, who later sold it to ON Semiconductor. But today New York constantly ranks among the worst states in the nation for business environment, due to high taxes, excessive regulation, and the gradual decay of infrastructure and institutions that comes with one-party Democrat control.
Arizona is a much stronger candidate. Intel has a huge complex of modern fabs in Chandler and TSMC is building a state of the art fab in Phoenix proper, which means there’s a lot of local talent and infrastructure to draw on. A purple state, Arizona usually ranks in the top ten for a business-friendly climate, but they do have a personal income tax.
Texas, by contrast, is constantly rated as the top or second best business climate the the country (occasionally losing to Florida), and has no state income tax. Samsung already has a fab in Austin, along with older legacy fabs from NxP (ex-Motorola) and Infineon, along with significant presence by the major semiconductor equipment manufacturing giants (Applied Materials, Tokyo Electron, etc.). Taylor is close enough to Austin to draw on the technical talent and infrastructure there, without having to worry about the crazy left-wing politics, as Williamson County, while having turned a bit more purple lately, is still safe Republican territory.
Another solid reason to locate in Taylor: ERCOT is headquartered there, which means the area will never be power-cycled in an emergency. The winter storm evidently cost Samsung $268 million in lost revenue from the outage, which I can well believe. When the power goes off, all the equipment needs to be requaled, which is a long, painful process for a single machine, much less the some 200+ needed in a modern fab.
America has lots of tech hubs: Silicon Valley, Seattle, the North Carolina triangle, greater Boston, etc. But nobody is building cutting edge fabs in those areas. Central Texas has rapidly expanding software, hardware and silicon industries.
Austin is primed to be one of the greatest global tech hubs of the 21st century, assuming Austin political leadership doesn’t screw it up…
