This is a developing story, and I’m running ahead of the publishing schedule of the main sources I would usually rely on (such as The Texan, which doesn’t usually publish on weekends), but it appears that leftwing pro-CRT/pro-groomer school board incumbents who were on the ballot in several ISDs got wiped out by conservative-backed parents running against them:
School board candidates opposed to CRT and mask mandates swept elections across Texas last night.
Wins in Frisco, Clear Creek [League City in Harris County], Grapevine, Southlake, Keller, Carroll, Spring Branch, Richardson, and even in Dripping Springs (Austin, TX), where conservatives flipped the board. pic.twitter.com/K2eBLeZEcP
— Election Wizard đşđ¸ (@ElectionWiz) May 8, 2022
Given we don’t have reliable sources to go to, let’s read between the lines for this piece in the lefty-funded Texas Tribune.
All but one of the 11 Tarrant County conservative school board candidates, who were backed this year by several high-profile donors and big-money PACs, defeated their opponents during Saturdayâs statewide election, according to unofficial election results. The one candidate backed by the groups who didnât win outright advances to a runoff election in June.
The 10 candidates won the school board races for the Grapevine-Colleyville, Keller, Mansfield and Carroll school districts.
The candidates’ sweep shows a large swath of voters across the county responded to their calls to eradicate so-called critical race theory…
“So-called.”
…from classrooms and remove books discussing LGBTQ issues, which concerned parents have described as âpornographic.â
The victories also show that the staggering amounts of money that were poured into the once low-profile and nonpartisan…
By “low-profile and nonpartisan” he means “the radical lefties we approve of could sneak in by stealth when normal people weren’t paying attention.” Well guess what? We’re paying attention now.
…local races are producing their intended effect. PACs organized by parents, as well as a newly-formed PAC from a self-proclaimed Christian cell phone company, collectively raised over half a million dollars for the local races this year. They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on top political consulting firms that bolstered an anti-CRT platform with flyers saying the candidates were âsaving America.â
This yearâs school board races across Texas, and notably in Tarrant County, have been hyper politicized as school board meetings have become the center of culture war debates over COVID safety policies, library book bans and critical race theory. The races drew intense scrutiny from conservative parents and deep-pocketed donors. Even State GOP chair Matt Rinaldi weighed in.
Patriot Mobile, a Texas-based cell phone company that donates a portion of its customersâ phone bills to conservative, âChristianâ causes…
Don’t you love the scare quotes around “Christian?” “Remember, comrade, your beliefs are just heathen, backwoods superstition without the official imprimatur of liberal media elite opinion!”
…gave $500,000 to its own PAC, Patriot Mobile Action. The PAC spent about $390,000 on campaigns in the four Tarrant County districts, campaign reports filed in April show. The same filings showed the PAC had about $125,000 cash on hand as the May 7 election approached.
Patriot Mobile Action spent at least $38,500 in advertising and canvassing for each candidate from Mansfield, Grapevine-Colleyville and Keller school districts. All of those candidates were victorious Saturday night.
In Mansfield, the PAC backed the now-victorious candidates Bianca Benavides Anderson, Keziah Valdes Farrar and Courtney Lackey Wilson. In Grapevine-Collevyille, Tammy Nakamura and Kathy Florence-Spradley, whom the PAC supported, won their respective races. In the Keller races, Patriot Mobile Action backed Micah Young, Joni Shaw Smith and Sandi Walker. Each won Saturday night.
In Carroll ISD, which covers the city of Southlake, Patriot Mobile Action supported candidates Andrew Yeager and Alex Sexton, who also secured seats on the board.
The only candidates supported by the PAC that didnât win was Craig Tipping. He heads to a June 18 runoff with Benita C. Reed.
For decades, hard left social justice democrats managed to continue their stealth march through American institutions, but they’ve now gotten so far out over their skis that they’ve managed to wake the normies. (Just think: If teacher’s unions hadn’t insisted on year-long Flu Manchu vacations, pro-groomer/pro-CRT factions would still be working below threshold of public attention.) Normally apolitical parents are increasingly infuriated with pro-pedophile groomers and radical social justice warriors propagandizing their children, and they’re not going to take it any more.
Newly elected board members need to follow-through. Every administrator and teacher pushing CRT needs to be laid off or fired. Have a gay pride or BLM flag in their classroom? Gone. You can teach students what they need to know to succeed, or you can teach them radical leftwing garbage theories that cripple them for life. You can’t do both.
Russia eyes Moldova, Ron DeSantis and Florida republicans strip Disney of it’s special privileges in record time, CNN+ dies quicker than Sean Bean, and Florida Man scores a trifecta! It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
A Russian General announced plans to occupy the Transnistria region of Moldova on Friday.
Speaking at a defense industry meeting, Brigadier General Rustam Minnekayev, acting commander of Russiaâs Central Military District, stated that the Russian Armed Forces plan to âmake passageâ into the region â in Moldovaâs East, bordering Ukraine and less than 30 miles from the port city of Odessa â to create a âland corridor to Crimea,â Russian media reported. Such a corridor would also purport to connect the Russian mainland to Transnistria.
Minnekayev stated that the measure was part of Russiaâs second phase in its war in Ukraine, which involves establishing full control over the Donbas Region and Ukraineâs coast along the Black Sea. No timeline was provided for the maneuver to begin, however.
Rather seems like overweening hubris to think about invading another country when they haven’t managed to defeat Ukraine despite pouring huge resources into the attempt.
Speaking of Russia walking on rakes:
Giant fire engulfs Russia’s biggest chemical plant right after a fire broke out at “a sensitive Russian Defense Ministry research facility in the city of Tver.”
Huge plumes of smoke were seen enveloping the Dmitrievsky Chemical Plant late this afternoon. The cause of the fire remains unknown. Almost 150 plant workers were reportedly evacuated.
The facility in Kineshma, east of Moscow produces more industrial solvents than any other in Russia. It is less than 1,000km from the border with Ukraine.
“Less than 600 miles” does not strike me as super close, even for Russia.
Naturally, observers are starting to ask in connection to Russia’s war in neighboring Ukraine: coincidence? sabotage operation?
Anti-Putin racecar driver Igor Sushko in tweeting the above video of the Dmitrievsky Chemical Plant going up in flames commented: “We are beginning to see a pattern develop.”
Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation Friday that strips Disney of its 50-year-old âindependent special districtâ status in retaliation for lobbying against Floridaâs Parental Rights in Education law.
The law dissolves the Reedy Creek Improvement District, an autonomous area created in 1967 to accommodate the massive Disney World complex near Orlando. The independent status has shielded Disney from significant tax burden.
The governor fast-tracked the initiative to a special session Tuesday, after which the state Senate voted 23-16 on Wednesday to advance it.
The parental rights measure keeps gender identity and sexual orientation instruction out of K-3 elementary school classrooms and enjoys majority support among Floridians.
To quote The Wire: “You wanted to be in the game, right? Now you’re in the game.” For years, The Mouse was considered an unstoppable juggernaut that always got what it wanted. Then Disney decided to to throw it’s corporate weight behind the pro-grooming faction opposing a bill banning discussion of sex in elementary schools, and DeSantis knee-capped them in a week.
Though the losses from special tax breaks and privileges is going to hurt the bottom line, Disney has done far, far more damage to its brand for stepping into the cultural wars to embrace forcing radical transexism on a resisting American public. That’s going to be destroying shareholder value for years (if not decades) to come.
DeSantis Bonus: Christopher Rufo spoke at the signing ceremony:
At the end of my speech, I gave a direct warning to Disney CEO Bob Chapek: he must immediately terminate the company's critical race theory training program, "Reimagine Tomorrow," which is now illegal under Florida law. No more racism in corporate America.https://t.co/bIu0Rt0kRapic.twitter.com/S1dJAFe3XS
— Christopher F. Rufo âď¸ (@realchrisrufo) April 22, 2022
Am I and are others supposed to feel bad because the most opportune time to end Disneyâs corporate welfare exploits the momentum that Disney created against themselves?
Because I donât.
Disney vociferously and hatefully opposed parents who didnât want ideological activist teachers lecturing their K-5th grade kids about how they bang their significant others after hours â Disney accused parents of opposing this as literally killing gay people because teachers with fantasy pronouns canât talk about genitals when kids should be learning math.
The left hated corporations influencing issues because of Citizens United v. FEC until they realized they could push Disney to lobby for them and now they LOVE corporations again! Party! Iâm confused â are corporations still evil? They canât influence issues or push for candidates that arenât Democrat and they have more rights to a child than the parents raising said child? We really need some consistency from the left here.
When corporations act as agents of the state all bets are off. When a corporationâs actual heir, the CEO, and executives say on camera and on their own social media accounts (as Disneyâs did) that parental rights erase gay people (I know, what?) and people who support parental rights in the classroom are murderers, all bets are off.
Who is âgaslightingâ whom, here? Where was the opposition to the heinous manner in which parents were smeared? Was that not Disneyâs ârevengeâ for opposition?
Disney chose the boss fight against taxpaying parents and they lost.
Losing their corporate welfare isnât revenge, itâs a reckoning.
Relevant tweets:
Why is Disney throwing its weight behind the FL "say gay" controversy?
Same reason Home Depot inserted itself in the GA voter bill last year… Proxy advisory firms. Specifically Glass Lewis & ISS pic.twitter.com/WaKWlbMoA1
DeSantis and Florida Republicans: Go woke… **blows viking battle horn** and we shall burn your entire village to the ground and sing a song of victory so that any potential enemies in our future shall learn from your folly.
I find it mesmerizing that, after the last few years of corporate America bending over backwards to appease every tenet of progressive philosophy, itâs now a national scandal when Republicans decide to âdissolve Walt Disney Worldâs private governmentâhttps://t.co/KI2eL9itcq
John Nolte: “Yes, Democrats Really Do Want to Groom Your Children.”
The debate weâre having right nowâŚ
THE LEFT: We donât want to sexualize little kids behind the backs of parents. Stop saying that. Itâs a lie!
FLORIDA: Weâre going to outlaw sexualizing little kids behind the backs of parents.
THE LEFT: NOOOOooooooo!
What kind of country are we living in where we even have to pass a bill that outlaws sexualizing kids aged four to eight in the classroom?
What kind of country are we living in where Florida teachers are angry that they canât discuss their personal lives with your little kids, much less discuss sex?
What kind of country are we living in where the Walt Disney Co., a company built on the idea of preserving the innocence of children and teaching them lessons about honesty, hard work, and true love, is now openly bragging about feeding the little kids sexual propaganda?
Of course, this is grooming.
What else would you call it?
What is the rationale for telling innocent little boys that they might be girls or gay or bisexual? What other rationale could there be for that other than to destroy their innocence, to turn them into sexual creatures, and warp their sexuality into something that can later be exploited?
Behind the backs of parents!
For the life of me, except for my second-grade teacher talking about the day John Kennedy was assassinated, I cannot remember a single teacher who ever discussed their personal life. A couple of times, I remember seeing a teacher outside of school, at the store or something, and how odd it was to realize they existed outside the classroom.
The thing to keep in mind here is that this is not a âgayâ thing.
Itâs not gay people looking to groom little kids.
Plenty of gay people are as disgusted by this as anyone. In fact, this sick movement is a terrible disservice to gays. What you have here is the LEFT working overtime to bring to life the very worst stereotypes about homosexuals looking to recruit among the innocent.
What you have here is Disney bringing to life these terrible stereotypes.
But that doesnât change the fact that the left is desperate to groom your kids, to sexualize them behind your back.
Why?
Well, a whole lot of leftists want to have sex with your kids, and want to normalize sex between kids and adults. The evidence of that is everywhere. Democrats know opening the southern border will mean the import of child sex slaves. And yet, Democrats still open the border. Democrats continue to release child predators and suspected predators. Weâre about to be saddled with a Supreme Court Justice who shrugs at child porn. More than one left-wing publication has asked us to better understand and sympathize with child molesters. The left embraced Jeffrey Epstein for decades. The left-wing Lincoln Project shielded a suspected predator.
The other reason for the grooming is political.
Democrats are losing key parts of their coalition: the working class, Hispanics, and chunks of the black population. One way they see of making up those numbers is to create a lot of damaged and broken young people obsessed with their sexuality. Itâs just a fact that neurotic, unhappy lunatics and narcissists who define themselves by what they do with their sex organs vote Democrat. So⌠Democrats want to damage your kids to create a whole lot more of them.
“EIGHT news stories about teachers committing sex crimes upon children. ALL TODAY.”
From Powerline comes two tales of endemic corruption. The first was Yale University employee Jamie Petrone admitting to stealing over $40 million in computer equipment. “So for years, 90 percent of the equipment (sub-$10,000) that Yaleâs emergency medicine department paid forâmore than $40 million worthânever showed up. It didnât exist. And no one noticed.”
That’s the smaller of the two scandals. The bigger:
A second instance of corruption is the Feeding Our Future scandal in Minnesota. The scandal actually involves entities in addition to FOF, and altogether $460 million or more has been funneled through these agencies by the federal free food programs Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) and the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP). The whole thing turned out to be a criminal enterprise. Various crooks pretended to be feeding many thousands of non-existent Minnesota children. The fraud should have been obvious since, if you added up the numbers, a ridiculous percentage of all of the children in the state were supposedly getting free food through these newly-founded charities.
The corruption occurred primarily, although not entirely, within Minnesotaâs Somali community. Apparently spread sheets have been circulating among fraudsters showing the names and addresses of many thousands of Somali immigrants who can be listed as phantom beneficiaries of government programs. Here, like the Yale criminal, those who were in on the fraud have lived lavishly, with federal taxpayer money administered by the State of Minnesota paying for luxury cars, expensive homes, exotic vacations, and so on. Scott wrote here about a young Somali bride who was given a tray of gold worth $100,000 as a wedding gift by persons involved in the Feeding Our Future fraud.
Such criminality is not subtle. Little care is taken to hide it. How can a handful of fly-by-night fraudsters steal hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. government and the State of Minnesota, and no one notices? As in Yaleâs case, the answer is partly gross incompetence in Minnesotaâs Tim Walz administration. But in the larger picture, government at all levels is rolling in so much dough that they donât know what to do with it. A few hundred million is hardly worth checking up on.
This goes toward proving my “Working Thesis,” that all new welfare state programs are designed to channel money into the pockets of crooks and left wing activists (to the extent that it’s possible to distinguish the two).
But the government not only attempted to manufacture âterroristsâ in the Whitmer kidnapping hoaxâthe same FBI operation also tried to coax a man in Virginia to participate in the same sort of plot against Virginia Governor Ralph Northam. That scheme didnât fully materialize, but the FBIâs attempt to pull off a similar stunt in Virginia reveals just how far agents were willing to go to bolster FBI Director Christopher Wrayâs false warning that domestic extremists planned to âkill and assassinateâ public officials.
In summer 2020, Dan Chappel, the main informant in the Whitmer fednapping who was compensated at least $60,000 by the FBI for his services, targeted a man named Frank Butler, a disabled veteran in his late 60s and an alleged militia member. Taking instructions from Jayson Chambers, one of his FBI handling agents, Chappel used the same playbook in Virginia.
âDan suggests to Frank that he engage in acts of domestic terror,â defense attorneys wrote in a joint motion filed last year in the Whitmer case. âLike the defendants in this case, Dan suggested to Frank that he attack the governor of Virginia.â
Screenshots submitted into evidence show a jaw dropping exchange between Chappel and Chambers in August 2020. âGoin [sic] to call frank butler today,â Chappel texted Chambers, asking for direction on what he should say to his target.
âMission is to kill the governor specifically,â Chambers replied.
Just as in the Whitmer plot, Chappel lured Frank Butler into attempting to build an explosive device. Another text exchange in September 2020 shows Chappel and Chambers discussing a ârecipeâ for a bomb that Chappel can provide to Butler. After passing along the information to Butler, Chappel texted Chambers to tell him Frank planned on purchasing bomb-making supplies. âAwesome. Excellent work,â Chambers told Chappel.
Chappel also invited Butler to a field training exercise in Wisconsin during the last weekend in October, an excursion attended by some defendants in the Whitmer caper.
âThis event, like all the others,â defense attorneys wrote, âwas conceived, planned, and conducted by the federal investigative team of agents and undercover informants working together to provide a stage upon which to manipulate their targets into acting out ostensibly incriminating behavior the government hoped to elicit in its bid to develop and then âinterruptâ the operation of a âdomestic terrorist organization.ââ
Butler, who cannot drive due to disabilities, did not participate. And to date, he has not been charged with any crime.
“Seattleâs transit system struggles as riders refuse to pay. So few riders are paying, fares are currently covering just 5% of the systemâs operating costs, a fraction of the 40% mark Sound Transit set as a requirement.” (Hat Tip: Dwight.)
While most reporting on Harris Countyâs problems revolve around Democrat County Judge Lina Hidalgo, this citizenâs research suggests ties exist between Democrat County Commissioner Rodney Ellis (a former state senator) and certain organizations receiving taxpayer monies.
Ellisâ influence, and the influence of at least one of these organizations, appears to reach all the way to Hidalgoâs office.
Snip.
To counteract shuttering the economy in 2020, Congress broke open a dam and flooded federal taxpayer monies nationwide. These monies flowed to state and then local governments for eventual distribution. Harris Countyâs cut from the 2020 CARES Act was $426 million.
One organization the county commissioners gave some of these funds to was the Coalition for the Homeless. Ties were verified between Commissioner Ellis and this organization.
Licia Green-Ellis, Ellisâ wife, is a partner of the Waterman Steele Real Estate Consulting Group. Another partner is Lance Gilliam, who is chairman of the Coalition for the Homeless. Gilliam donated to Ellisâ campaign in 2015, and he also donated to Hidalgo in 2018, 2019, and March and June of 2021.
Hidalgoâs chief of staff, Alexander Triantaphyllis, is also on the coalitionâs board.
In April 2021, the coalition recommended commissioners allocate taxpayer monies toward âthe rapid expansion of housingâ for the homeless. This resulted in agreements between the county and multiple organizations, including a more than $1.2 million agreement with BakerRipley Community Developers. Weâll come back to them in a minute.
The following month, commissioners ballooned funding for the housing program to more than $7 million, of which more than $3.6 million went to BakerRipley for the countyâs âRapid Rehousingâ program.
New York City: Now that the pandemics over, everyone’s going to come back to our high-tax hellhole, right? People who used to work in NYC: LOL. Get Rekt!
A high-tax, highly regulated city, New York has relied for the past 25 years on a growth formula of low crime, a stable social order, and an emphasis on high-value jobs at profitable companies for whom being in the city brought advantages that outweighed the costs. The result was a prosperous but hollow economy that featured well-paid jobs in finance, law, and technology alongside low-paid service-industry jobs necessary to support those workers, but lacked many of the middle-class jobs in manufacturing or financial back offices that the city once boasted.
The pandemic has changed that calculus. The work-from-home movement has hit New York Cityâs office marketâthe backbone of its economyâright in the pocketbook. More than two years after the initial lockdowns that brought much of the economy to a standstill, only 38 percent of office workers have returned to their city jobs, which is below average for major cities. Employers have tried to get workers back to their Manhattan offices, only to be thwarted by Covid surges and resistance from employees who donât want to return to working in person five days a week. A rise in violent crime and disorder hasnât helped. Both the cityâs current mayor, Eric Adams, and his predecessor, Bill de Blasio, as well as former governor Andrew Cuomo and successor Kathy Hochul, have at various times urged workers to return, but to little avail.
The more that workers and companies discover they can accomplish through remote work, the greater the dangerâbecause New York is by far the most expensive place to locate a worker in the country. Its overall cost of occupancy, including labor, utilities, and taxes, is 50 percent higher than the next most expensive American city, San Francisco, and three times as high as Dallas, Chicago, and Seattle. The gap is even larger with many smaller metro areas that seem poised for growth. One big component of these costs is taxes: the city and state together out-tax other competitors, taking as much as 45 percent more taxable income than the average of U.S. big cities and their states. No surprise, then, that even in the pandemicâs early stages, experts rated New York one of the places that might struggle the most to recover its jobs and residents.
What are the Democrats who run New York (city and state) going to do to bring down high taxes? Jack and Squat.
In case you missed it, Pakistan’s Prime Minister was ousted two weeks ago. “Pakistanâs political opposition toppled Prime Minister Imran Khan in a no-confidence vote in Parliament early Sunday after several political allies and a key party in his ruling coalition deserted him.” He wasn’t the worst person to run Pakistan, but high inflation (even worse than ours) brought him down.
California’s corporate diversity law ruled unconstitutional. California’s law mandated that corporations stock their executive boards with members from various victimhood identity politics groups.
The trifecta! “Florida man arrested after cops find him in possession of drugs, guns and alligator.” Click through to see what a hard 31 looks like. (Hat Tip: Dwight.)
“Downtown Greek Restaurant Owner Escapes the Country, Leaving Workers and Rent Unpaid. That’s Simi Estiatorio, and the manager partner who fled the country is George Theodosiou. Read the link for the details. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Heh:
Reward Offered: any information that can lead to finding the person or persons responsible for putting this flag behind our council dais. #SpaceForce
Ps my DMs are open and as far as I can tell it has shown up in the last week or two. I want to know the story. pic.twitter.com/RmDcOtidi1
Worst thing about Austin this time of year? All this pollen in the air. Really triggers the allergies…
Good morning Twitter and Happy Thursday So special! Every kid needs a dog. It's an unbreakable bond!đđđđâ¤đ¤đđđđâ¤đ pic.twitter.com/N3sjjX48Q4
In Houston, the Galleria (located centrally just outside the 610 loop at Westheimer) has long been the ne plus ultra of retail shopping, filled with high-end shops for designer clothing, jewelry, etc. While other malls built out, the Galleria built up, with four floors around a large open atrium and an ice rink. The Galleria was where rich people shopped.
My most vivid memory of the Galleria was my family taking us there to see Star Wars, where it was playing in one of only 50 theaters nationwide, right after a rave write-up in Time magazine.
A long time ago in a decade far away, Time magazine, Star Wars and the Galleria were all important.
We got there in the early afternoon, and not only was the next showing sold out, the line for tickets stretched all the way around the ice rink and halfway up the other side. It turned out that all showings until midnight were already sold out.
Needless to say, we didn’t see Star Wars that day.
Instead, we saw it a month or two later at the movie theater in Greenspoint Mall. Greenspoint was still pretty new at that point, built out on north IH-45 at Gears (later Greens) road just the year before, at a time when north Houston was experiencing rapid growth but there were still miles and miles of green fields interspersed with tracts of tall pine forests. It was a mall anchored by large department stores Sears and Foley’s (a Houston-area department store chain that Macy’s would purchase and largely ruin), which would later be expanded to include Joske’s (a Dallas department store later bought by Dillard’s), JCPenney, Montgomery Ward and Lord & Taylor. Greenspoint was a good mall where middle class Houstonians shopped.
As Houston grew, new malls opened in the northwest (Willowbrook) and northeast (Deerbrook). That, age and changing demographics changed the character of Greenspoint over the years. It went from being a mall where middle class Houstonians shopped to one where gangbangers shot at each other and your hubcaps got stolen. (Word was that if you reported getting your hubcaps stolen to the HPD, they didn’t even ask how many if it happened at Greenpoint; they just assumed it was all four.) Thus Greenpoint became know as “Gunspoint,” and stores started closing. Macy’s was the last anchor tenant, and closed in 2017. After that it was mainly known for the carnival in the parking lot. It’s actually unclear to me whether Greenspoint is still alive or not; I sort of assumed Flu Manchu killed it off, but there are tweets from people this year that talk about visiting, so maybe not.
What brought back all these mall memories was the fact that there was a shooting outside the Galleria yesterday. Video below. (Language warning of the “black people talking about other black people” variety.)
Donât ask me why donât I go to the galleriaâŚ.. CUZ NIGGAS DO NOT KNOW HOW TO ACT. pic.twitter.com/U9TTs7Zkgi
— Freckled Face Fuck Around and find out Doc (@DrKeezyWagz) April 17, 2022
They shut down Sharpstown Mall and all people who drink codeine out a coffee cup and breed Pittbulls with chains around their neck been invading the Galleria
Decline is a choice. Democrats activists have decided that getting their hands on the money and putting felons back on the streets in the name of “racial justice” is a far more important goal that keeping law-abiding citizens safe from crime.
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 Hidalgoâs 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 âslam the door shut on UT.â 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 Pereyraâs 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 Clintonâs 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 âbold-faced lieâ after he posed questions about the âone-woman firmâ handling the contract.
Following Mondayâs indictments, Cagle said on social media that he âtook no pleasure in being right about this.â
âThis is a major black eye for Harris County. Now itâs time for the courts to sort it out.â
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 Strategiesâ 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 âFelicity,â and Triantaphyllis later clarified to Nader, saying, âShe was trying to add to Felicityâs scope relating to engaging community groups and stuff.â
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 heâs said about Hunter being close to criminal indictment. He said The New York Times âgot a lot of cooperation from Team Bidenâ before they ran the story on Hunter that included their admission that the laptop was, indeed, real. He says Bidenâs team was âtrying to position themselves.â Of course, this case isnât really about Hunter but the President of the United States, and a criminal indictment would open up âthat whole can of wormsâ concerning dadâs 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 GPSâs task: to research how Russian intelligence operations were affecting elections around the world. And they brought in Hillaryâs campaign chairman John Podesta to help. Still not making it up, my friends. This was after Podestaâs and the DNCâs emails had been purloined (the narrative became that they were hacked by Russia) and published by WikiLeaks, to the DNCâs embarrassment.
(Incidentally, Johnâs lobbyist brother Tony was under investigation at that time for âcashing inâ in Ukraine. He was paid $1.2 million to promote a plan conceived, ironically, by Manfort and Gates.)
Then thereâs 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 â without mentioning Hunter was on the Burisma board.
Thereâs much more, involving Soros and an investigation by Shokinâs 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 Trumpâs 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: âDonât target AntAC in the middle of an American presidential election in which Soros was backing Hillary Clinton to succeed another Soros favorite, Barack Obama.â
There are others in Ukraine tied to both the Russia hoax and Trumpâs impeachment. California Rep. Adam Schiff, running the impeachment, trotted out our diplomatic âexpertsâ from Ukraine to talk about Trump and his âimpeachableâ phone call to President Zelenskyy. Those were Americans, our diplomatic corps, whoâd 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 Trumpâs 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 â 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 Rooseveltâs 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 Bidenâs 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 Novemberâs Midterms, we should expect â and hope for â a full-scale brawl over the partyâs 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 countryâs diverse regions. âToo many Americansâ, wrote New Democrats Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck in 1989, âhave 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 securityâ.
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 âworseâ than better in a recent poll.
The cave-in to the greens has increased the Democratsâ economic vulnerability, particularly in the wake of Russian aggression and the continued role of China as the worldâs 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 Democratsâ 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. âClimate catastrophismâ, notes political strategist Ruy Teixeira, is a political âloserâ, 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. Democratsâ have embraced what former Bill Clinton strategist James Carville scathingly labels âthe politics of the faculty loungeâ, such as support for the increasingly discredited Black Lives Matter movement and its calls to âdefund the policeâ. 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 nationâs Democratic African-American mayors, Houston mayor Sylvester Turner and New York Cityâs 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 âanti-immigrantâ by the partyâs 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 wouldnât seek reelection. Heâs 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, âSlam the Doorâ 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 9âŚ
This seems disturbing: “Seven hospitalized âincluding four juvenilesâ 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 Harrisâ disastrous visit to Poland, it was reported that her National Security Adviser Nancy McEldowney, will become the latest staffer to leave Harrisâ 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 Observerâs editorial staff comprised 13 journalists. As of this month, after a rash of resignations â and one firing â 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 â 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.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine grinds on, Hunter Biden’s bestie’s going to the big house, a massive voting problem (and possible fraud) winds up in court in Harris County, and a tiny bits on both Amazon and anime.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Not in this LinkSwarm: links on the Zaporizhzhia Ukrainian nuclear reactor, since I’m not sure I can trust any of the information sent out by either side.
It is not foreordained that Russia wins and Ukraine loses. Winning a war is not merely an exercise in numbers or technology. As General George S. Patton observed, âWars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory.â
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to quickly topple the Ukrainian government and kill President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the war has widened into a contest involving almost the entire border region shared by the combatants along with the stretch of border between Belarus and Kyiv some 80 miles to the north of Ukraineâs capital city.
Much media attention has been given to Russiaâs advances along the Sea of Azov in the south and on the approach to Ukraineâs third-largest city, Odessa, on the shores of the Black Sea as well as the remarkable attack that captured Europeâs largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia. These Russian successes are discouraging for Ukrainian defenders but, in the grand contest, they matter far less than the battle for Kyiv.
Snip.
There are fascinating signs coming out of what may be a decisive battle to the northwest of Kyiv on the long, winding, secondary road from Chernobyl. This is the road where a 40-mile-long column of Russian vehicles was spotted by satellite. Most of the vehicles are supply trucks. They would be carrying fuel, ammunition, and food for the Russian forces that have advanced to the very outskirts of Kyiv itself but have seemingly been stalled for several days.
Snip.
Out of this come three reports that, if true, suggest the beginnings of a devastating reversal for Russian forces operating northwest of Kyiv.
First, reports today in multiple outlets that Russian Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky was killed in combat by a sniper. Sukhovetsky, 47, was an elite Russian Spetsnaz commando and veteran of Russiaâs war in Syria. The commander of the Russian 7th Airborne Division, he was assigned the mission of leading the Russian thrust from Belarus to Kyiv. Men like Sukhovetsky have an outsized presence on the battlefield. Theyâre inspirational. Their personal leadership at the point of the spear often means the difference between victory and defeat during the fast-paced controlled violence of war. His loss would be devastating to his men and to the organizational momentum of the forces he commanded.
That Sukhovetsky was killed by a sniper suggests that he was personally trying to regain the initiative against Ukrainian forces who had fought him to a standstill.
The second report of merit is the heavy damage sustained in the town of Irpin on the northwest border of Kyivâs city limits. The damage to this city suggests a major battle â an effort by the Russians to breakthrough. They didnât.
The final piece of the puzzle is the Battle of Bucha. Ukrainian forces claimed the recapture of Bucha hours after the devastation visited on Irpin. The timing is important here. The Russians tried and failed to take Irpin and then the Ukrainians retook Bucha two miles to the northwest of Irpin.
The roughly 80-mile route from the Belarus-Ukraine border from the Chernobyl salient to Kyiv on the western side of the Dnieper River runs over a secondary asphalt road. This road frequently crosses rivers, runs through small villages, or is bordered on both sides by the eastern extent of the mighty Pripyat Marsh â the geographical feature which defines the border between Ukraine and Belarus.
The road is not able to support a large military force, even if unopposed in an exercise, especially during the spring and fall months during a time the locals call âRasputitsaâ â the mud season. Unfortunately for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his military commanders, Ukrainian soil never froze solid this winter, so the fall Rasputitsa is still a factor.
This is why there have been so many photos coming out from the conflict that show all manner of Russian military vehicles bogged down in the mud. As soon as a vehicle on a narrow road becomes disabled or is destroyed in combat, or as the vehicles maneuver off-road in response to combat, they risk becoming mired. Even if they donât get stuck in the mud, they end up consuming far more fuel that must be delivered to them than they would were the ground frozen solid.
Thus, that 40-mile-long column of âtanksâ is more likely mostly trucks carrying fuel, ammunition, and food to the advanced forces of the Russian 20th Combined Arms Army on the outskirts of Kyiv. That this column hasnât apparently moved much may mean that the Russian forces just north of Kyiv are running low on basic supplies.
This greatly increases the importance for the Russian army to achieve success to the east of Kyiv where the road network is far more developed and, if the terrain is captured and secured, capable of bringing in the volume of supplies needed to properly surround Kyiv and place it under siege.
In the meantime, the forces near Kyiv may be vulnerable to a Ukrainian counterattack. While some of the Russian conscript soldiers and even the veteran contract troops may be more likely to surrender due to low morale exacerbated by a lack of food and fuel.
In about three weeks, weâve seen a Vladimir who was âoffâ go from chess to raising on a busted flush in something that is well beyond âoff.â The nuclear escalation is not exactly unexpected, at least if you know a bit about the Soviet playbook for such things. What matters is if he still has full control, and/or the extent to which Dead Hand has been brought online. All I will say is that if his ability to give certain orders has been unofficially curtailed, it would not be the first time. If it hasnât, it is not a good idea to poke the crazy man with the button via official actions.
And there are a lot of official actions out there that are not going to help in regards the deteriorating man. Among others is Switzerland deciding that they are neutral, but not that neutral. Add to it firm allies who have told him no, even after he just helped them out literally a few weeks ago⌠Even Xi has said no on some fronts. None of this is likely to slow down the deterioration. Or provide enough of a reality check to get through to him as he rages in his bunker with his captive oligarchs.
And while we are at it, letâs look at the attack itself and the absolute fuck up that it, and subsequent actions by STAVKA (call it what it is), truly are. It was billed as a demonstration of the new Russian way of war, their version of âShock and Awe.â Problem is, S&A or any other form of blitz is heavily dependent upon superior logistics, something the Soviets nor the Russians have ever had. You need massive amounts of ammo, fuel, parts, and replacement troops to pull it off. Replacement troops not only because of losses, but the need to detail out troops to hold key points as you go. It also requires highly trained troops who know land nav inside and out.
From what I am learning, the order went out to make this happen. The actual order, however, may not have even approached what would be given for a small-unit special ops strike. Contingency plans? Decap. No? Then try for decap again. Decap. Decap. Try it again damnit! There are differing reports on the number of Wagner troops killed or captured, but a good number were sent in on assassination missions. They were not alone. Problem was, they were all alone as the original push down got bogged down; the efforts to do airmobile and airborne ops were shot down (literally in some cases); and, the public is now on high alert to the saboteurs and assassins roaming major cities trying to mark targets, etc. Donât expect rules of war for those caught marking civilian buildings for strikes. For now, expect a return to grinding Soviet bombardment, civilian casualties be damned.
The fact is, Vladimir has already lost simply because he didnât win. He is committed, and is committing Russia and all its people, to a long, grinding, bloody slog that is going to have severe economic impacts. Just replacing ammunition, gear, people, is going to have a severe impact. Add to it the growing official and unofficial sanctions? The Russian people are going to feel this one, in ways they never have before. Current Vladimir does not care. Heâs lost to that. He has no way to go in and control the country, or even the parts heâs tried so desperately to annex. Even those are likely to slip from him given the current state of âuppitinessâ on the part of the Ukrainians.
The Ukrainians have not won. At best they have pushed things into a long grind with some chance of a stalemate. Yet, by doing this they have won. They have prevented the cheap and easy victory on which Vladimir counted. They have forced him into committing military and economic resources he does not have over the long term. Heck, even the short term. Russiaâs economy was already teetering, current operations and responses are going to crater it unless something major happens. Iâve lived through a couple of power struggles in the Kremlin; under these circumstances, I hope we all do live through what is to come. A quick clean change of leadership seems unlikely given the Keystone gang weâve seen so far, but it may be our best hope.
All we can do is wait and see what happens. While current circumstances are not new or unique on many levels, I will note that in my lifetime Iâve never seen a situation like this where key leadership was this insecure. Xi is in some ways hanging by a thread, and knows his enemies in the CCP are looking for any excuse to bring him down. Vladimir weâve discussed. The Europeans, particularly the Germans? They are not secure either, especially since the Green policies have caused them to firmly place their mouth around Putinâs, er, finger, in regards energy. To see them decide to fund their own military, back off on the idiocy of green (maybe), and truly support the Ukraine strikes more as a desperation move than a rational push. Johnson is a non-entity right now, and not to be taken seriously. Our own dementia patient? Hell, heâs just waiting for his ice cream and to be allowed to go back upstairs to watch Matlock. Those behind him, however, are desperate beyond belief. Not one major stable leader anywhere in the world. Thatâs a new one and I thought I had about seen it all after watching the Soviets/Russians for more than 40 years now.
No NATO no-fly zone. Good. I very much want to see Putin defeated, but clearly NATO can’t be expected to respond to an attack on a non-member country, and that would be a dangerous escalation.
“More than a year” for $60 million in fraud? Seems a little lite.
The defendant, Devon Archer, was sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison by Manhattan Judge Ronnie Abrams, who said the crime was âtoo seriousâ to let him just walk.
âThereâs no dispute about the harm caused to real people,â Abrams said, noting that the defrauded tribe, the Oglala Sioux, is one of the poorest in the nation.
Archer will also have to pay more than $15 million in forfeiture by himself and more than $43 million in restitution with his co-defendants in the case.
The convicted fraudster has maintained his innocence and intends to appeal the conviction and sentence, his attorney, Matthew Schwartz, said in court Monday.
In brief statements to Abrams just before Archer was sentenced, he and Schwartz claimed he was taken advantage of by corrupt businessmen who wanted to use him in the scheme.
âHe came under the influence of a person he trusted too much and didnât ask enough questions,â Schwartz said.
“Trusted too much.” Yeah, he trusted he wouldn’t get caught because of his powerful friends.
What are the odds this was the only crooked deal Archer had his fingers into? I’d say pretty close to zero.
The Democrats will suffer historic losses in the November midterms.
This disaster for their party will come about not just because of the Afghanistan debacle, an appeased Vladimir Putinâs invasion of Ukraine, the destruction of the southern border, the supply chain mess, or their support for critical race theory demagoguery.
The culprit for the political wipeout will be out-of-control inflationâand for several reasons.
First, the Biden Administration is in such denial of inflation that it sounds to Americans simply callous and indifferent to the misery it has unleashed.
Biden officials have scoffed at price spikes as âtransitory.â Or they have preposterously claimed spiraling costs are a concern only to the elite. They blame the Ukraine crisis. Or they fault the out-of-office bogeyman, Donald Trump.
The administration assures us that consumer prices are only rising at an annualized rate of 7.5 percentâas if the steepest increase in 40 years actually is not all that bad.
Yet the middle class knows that inflation is far worse when it comes to the stuff of life: buying a house, car, gas, meat, or lumber.
Second, inflation is an equal opportunity destroyer of dreams. It undermines rich and poor, Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals. It unites all tribes, all ideologies, all politics against those who are perceived to have birthed the monstrous octopus that squeezes everything and everyone it touches.
The conservative passbook holder sees his meager life savings eaten away. The liberal teacherâs car payments stretch from six to 10 years.
The prospective Republican home buyer sees his hard-earned potential down payment eaten away each month. The Democratic carpenter feels his new higher wages buy even less.
Third, inflation is ubiquitous, inescapable, omnipotentâand humiliating. It destroys personal dignity. And its toxicity is insidious, sort of like seeping, odorless, colorless, but nevertheless lethal carbon monoxide.
Unlike now-unpopular critical race theory, it cannot be avoided for a day. You cannot tune it out like one does the mess in Afghanistan or the now nonexistent southern border. Inflation attacks everyone in 24/7, 360-degree fashion.
It belittles you at the gas station. It downsizes you at the food market. It humiliates you in the obscene real estate market. It makes you look stupid when you are paying for a new car. It ridicules you when you buy lumber. Suddenly you apologize that you really cannot afford your childâs braces.
Fourth, inflation undermines a civil and ordered society. It unleashes a selfish âevery man for himselfâ mentality, the Hobbesian cruelty of a âwar of all against all.â
Inflation is the economic and emotional equivalent of smash-and-grab or carjacking. It is a brazen robber in broad daylight that so infuriates Americans by its boldness. It convinces them their very civilization is dying.
“Federal Court Declares Diversity Initiative At Thomas Jefferson High School To Be Unconstitutional.” “Judge Claude Hilton ruled that the county unconstitutionally engineered the reduction of Asian-American students to achieve greater racial diversity.”
Did you know that one of the biggest freight management companies in America was temporarily locked down by a cyberattack? “Expeditors International, a top-five freight management company by revenue, disclosed Wednesday that last monthâs cyberattack will have a âmaterial adverse impactâ on finances and that it will be late filing its 2021 annual report because of difficulty accessing information on its accounting systems.”
Once again Harris County has drawn scrutiny over a slew of election day problems and may need a court order to continue counting votes beyond a state proscribed deadline.
Issues with elections procedures began days before March 1 as election judges found that supplies were not available for pickup at the appointed time on Friday, February 25. Even after the delayed distribution of supplies on Saturday, election workers complained that many kits were lacking essential equipment.
The situation worsened by Tuesday, and during a conference call with the Texas Secretary of Stateâs Office (SOS) and representatives from the local Democratic and Republican parties, Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria notified the state that her department may not be able to count all early and election day ballots by the statutory deadline of 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 2.
According to a statement from Secretary of State John Scott, the counting delay was âdue only to damaged ballot sheets that must be duplicated before they can be scanned by ballot tabulators at the central count location.â
âOur office stands ready to assist Harris County election officials, and all county election officials throughout the state, in complying with Texas Election Code requirements for accurately tabulating and reporting Primary Election results. We want to ensure that all Texans who have cast a ballot in this yearâs Primary Elections can have confidence in the accuracy of results.â
According to the state election code, however, any votes counted after the statutory deadline may not count unless the county obtains a court order. Furthermore, under laws in effect since 1986, failure to deliver precinct election returns by the deadline is a Class B misdemeanor.
Calling the countyâs elections problems the âworst in 40 years,â Harris County Republican Party (HCRP) Chair Cindy Siegel told KPRC news, âThis has been a complete mess. Weâve had equipment delays, weâve had equipment problems, equipment wasnât delivered, we had polls that were unable to be set up.â
In a statement to The Texan, HCRP said that after consulting with the SOS, âif the count does not appear to be near completion in all races by [Wednesday] afternoon, the parties have tentatively agreed to seek a court order to require the Harris County Election Administrator to continue counting beyond the 24-hour deadline required by law, and to enjoin the law to allow the count to continue.â
Responsibility for conducting primary elections falls to the two main political parties, but they have contracted with the Harris County elections division to administer the elections.
Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston) who formerly served as the Harris County voter registrar, called for immediate changes to the elections division.
â[Harris County Judge] Lina Hidalgo must fire her hand-picked election administrator,â Bettencourt told The Texan. âBecause if she doesnât, I donât think weâre going to have an election in November.â
In 2020, the three Democrats on the Harris County Commissioners Court overruled objections from two Republican commissioners and the Democrat elected voter registrar Ann Harris Bennet to create the new office of elections administrator. Prior to the revamp, the elected county clerk and elected voter registrar managed elections in the stateâs largest county.
The commissioners court then appointed Longoria, a former staffer for state Sen. Sylvia Garcia (D-Houston) who had previously run unsuccessfully for Houston City Council, with an annual salary of $190,000.
Under Longoriaâs guidance, the county approved $54 million for the elections division last summer which included $14 million to purchase new voting equipment.
Earlier this year, Longoria told commissioners the March primary would cost more than $8.8 million.
In 2020, Harris County received nearly $10 million in grants from Mark Zuckerbergâs Center for Tech and Civic Life and another $1 million in 2021 just before the Texas Legislature restricted such private grants.
According to sources familiar with the equipment, the second page of the paper ballot has been jamming machines and now requires entry by hand. Allegedly, although the early voting period ended Friday,
The question, of course, is whether this is a sign of manifest incompetence, or a sign of widespread attempted vote fraud?
If it was a fraud attempt, we should be grateful that it was bungled so badly in the primary that a lot more attention will be paid.
And the judge didn’t sound pleased:
Update: the "court finds it is required…to impound the precinct election materials in the possession of Ms. Longoria and her staff and for the court to supervise the activities necessary to complete the count…" https://t.co/h1FL7F5XTn
Iowa Republican Governor Kim Reynolds signs bill banning men from women’s sports. I’ll take “Headlines no one would understand 20 years ago” for $400, Alex.
Democratic Party Gaslighting: The Continuing Journeys:
The party that painted this now wants you to believe they support Law Enforcement. Americans wonât forget this â especially not on Election Day. pic.twitter.com/nCBkDmI6yf
— Kari Lake for AZ Governor (@KariLake) March 3, 2022
The Carter-era “misery index” (inflation + unemployment) is rising, Canada’s truckers are still honking, more Democratic sleazebag activity, the far left is coming for your kids, China continues to misbehave, and a tragic cheese display collapse shocks onlookers. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Biden continues to work his magic on the economy. Expected job numbers: +200,000. Actual job numbers: -300,000.
Why the BLS is applying such a grotesque seasonal adjustment to it, is unclear (actually, if one assumes that the Biden admin tapped the BLS secretary on the shoulder, then it is very clear).
It’s not just outside analysts who reach this conclusion: in Table C to its report, the BLS showed “December 2021-January 2022 changes in selected labor force measures, with adjustments for population control effects” and confirmed that if one had used an apples-to-apples basis for the January numbers, the number of Employed workers (from the Household Survey) would be down -272K. Instead, thanks to the population control effect adjustment of 1.471 million, the final number was 1.199 million!
In summary, while the markets had been trading for months on fake data when the BLS failed to catch up to covid reality, and was applying stale seasonal adjustments, they are doing so again today, only in the opposite direction with the BLS now overextending itself in the opposite direction, with a January seasonal adjustment that has never been greater!
Inflation hit 5.8% in 2021, the most in 39 years. Pretty sure this year is going to be a lot worse.
How bad is inflation? Dwight sent over this link on an Austin restaurant shutting down that includes an eye-opening inflation tidbit. “He pointed out that a container of fryer oil that a year ago cost about $17 had risen to about $50.”
Canada’s freedom truckers seem to be making headway with regional governments, some of whom have promised to lift vaccine mandates, but asshole authoritarian Justin Trudeau is refusing to budge.
There are two naturally occurring viruses that are parÂticularly similar to SARS-CoV-2. The first is RaTG13, which shares 96.2 percent of its genome with SARS-CoV-2, according to a paper released by the Wuhan Institute of Virologyâs Shi Zhengli. This virus was collected from bat feces in a copper-mine shaft in Tongguan, Mojiang, Yunnan Province, China, that was the site of a small-scale deadly viral infection with some curious similarities to Covid.
In April 2012, six miners were assigned to clean bat guano from the mine shaft. Four miners had been working at the site for two weeks, and two had been working there for four days when they all grew ill with a cough and fever and experienced difficulty breathing, aching limbs, heavy and bloody mucus and saliva, and headaches â symptoms of a viral respiratory infection that are similar to the effects of Covid. All six miners were admitted to a Kunming hospital in late April and early May, and three died â one after two weeks, one after a month and a half, and one after three months. The other three survived.
Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a prominent Chinese pulmonoloÂgist whose high-profile role has been compared to that of Dr. Anthony Fauci in the United States, consulted on the cases of the miners. Recognizing that the virus afflicting the miners could be comparable to SARS, researchers sent blood samples to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for antibody testing.
In 2012 and 2013, teams of researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology conducted a study of coronaviruses in bats in that abandoned mine shaft â and one of the samples they collected was RaTG13.
The second virus that is particularly similar to SARS-CoV-2 is really a cluster of three similar viruses discovered in Laos in autumn 2021. A team led by Marc Eliot, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, collected saliva, feces, and urine samples from 645 bats in caves in northern Laos and found three new viruses that were each more than 95 percent identical to SARS-CoV-2, which they named BANAL-52, BANAL-103, and BANAL-236.
Some skeptics of the lab-leak theory contend that the BANAL viruses proved that SARS-CoV-2 is likely a naturally occurring virus, and because Laos was roughly 1,000 miles from Wuhan, this pointed away from the notion that the Covid pandemic could be traced back to a leak from Wuhan Institute of Virology or any other labs in the city. But there is ample reason to believe that viruses from Laos â perhaps not the BANAL trio, but similar ones â were also shipped from Laos to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
In 2010, Wildlife Trust, a nonprofit international conservation organization dedicated to protecting wildlife, announced it was rebranding itself under the name EcoHealth Alliance. The organizationâs president, Peter Daszak, declared that his group had become âthe central organization defining the intersection of local conservation and global healthâ and touted itself as being âon the forefront of informing the public, businesses, and the scientific community about emerging diseases, including potential pandemics.â It is safe to say that EcoHealth Alliance is one of the largest, best funded, and best connected nonprofits, focusing upon âfield research and develop[ing] tools to save ecosystems and predict and prevent pandemics.â
EcoHealth Alliance/illegal gain of function section snipped.
We know for a fact that the people collecting samples do not always follow the necessary safety procedures. And the risk of accidental infection does not disappear once the viruses and bats are brought back to the laboratories.
Lab accidents happen. The first argument against the lab-leak theory that can be safely dismissed is the notion that Chinese scientists were simply too careful or too diligent to ever let a virus escape their lab. Accidents occur even in the most well-trained and highly regarded research facilities in the world. In June 2014, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined that they had unintentionally exposed personnel to potentially viable anthrax. A month later, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found samples of smallpox, dengue, and spotted fever just sitting in a storage room. A decade earlier, the Chinese CDCâs National Institute of Virology in southern Beijing had accidentally released SARS. Twice.
In February 2019, Lynn Klotz, a senior science fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, laid out a report in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists detailing that from 2009 to 2015, a federal program âreceived a total of 749 incident reports from select-agent research facilities,â including â1) needle sticks and other through the skin exposures from sharp objects, 2) dropped containers or spills/splashes of liquids containing pathogens, and 3) bites or scratches from infected animals.â
China obviously places the same importance on lab safety as it puts into quality control. Lets pick it up where more CCP perfidy kicks in:
Finally, there is the undeniably suspicious behavior of the Chinese government since the first cases were reported in Wuhan in December 2019. Until January 21, 2020, the Wuhan Regional Health Commission insisted that âno clear evidence of human-to-human transmission has been found.â On January 4, 2020, former CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield was incredulous during a phone call with his Chinese counterpart, George Gao. Redfield described asking his old friend Gao, âGeorge, you donât really believe that mother and father and daughter all got it from an animal at the same time, do ya?â Gao insisted there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission. But Redfield recounted that two days later, Gao broke down during a call, âaudibly and tearfully distraught after finding âa lot of casesâ in the community who had never visited the wet market.â
In late January and early February, the Chinese government ordered all labs processing samples of the strange new virus to destroy them. On January 3, Chinaâs National Health Commission ordered institutions not to publish any information related to the unknown disease and ordered labs to transfer any samples they had to designated testing institutions, or to destroy them. The justification for this order was public safety, although it is hard to see the public-safety benefit in suppressing information about the disease.
It took a year to get a World Health Organization investigative team into Wuhan, and when that team arrived, it encountered angry refusals to turn over raw data about the earliest cases. According to the New York Times, âdisagreements over patient records and other issues were so tense that they sometimes erupted into shouts among the typically mild-mannered scientists on both sides.â The Chinese government has refused to allow another team of investigators to enter Wuhan or the labs in the city. The Chinese government does not care if it looks guilty.
A much-hyped U.S. intelligence-community investigation completed in August offered almost nothing useful, declaring, âAll agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident.â Ninety days of effort, with all the resources of the U.S. government, generated nothing new.
To paraphrase Ebright, in the autumn of 2019, there were three institutions in the entire world that were doing gain-of-function research on novel coronaviruses found in bats. One was in Galveston, Texas, one was in Chapel Hill, N.C., and the third was in Wuhan, China.
In theory, the pandemic could have started with some random Chinese person who didnât have any connection to the bat coronavirus research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology or the Wuhan CDC. This person would have a spectacularly unlucky run-in with a bat or other animal, and that random Chinese person caught the exceptionally rare naturally occurring animal virus that infects, sickens, and spreads among human beings like wildfire. This same hyper-contagious bat virus would have the exceptionally unusual trait of being exÂtremely difficult to find in bats.
This extraordinarily unlucky person would then travel to the metaphorical doorstep of one of the three labs in the world doing gain-of-function research on novel coronaviruses found in bats and start infecting other people in the city of Wuhan. Under the natural-origin theory, the Wuhan laboratories just happen to be mind-bogglingly unlucky that events played out in a way that so closely mimics the consequences of a lab accident.
That would be a remarkable series of coincidences.
Read the whole thing.
Data point. “Younger, working-age people began dying in greater numbers as vaccine mandates hit.”
More data:
Been seeing a lot of governors crediting their mask mandates for "defeating" the Omicron wave. Thought I'd plot COVID cases in states with mask mandates vs. states without them, and, well⌠pic.twitter.com/WdhsyCINjp
Glenn Youngkin is governing Virginia according to the implicit campaign slogan that powered his victory: stop messing with our kids, you freaks! Thatâs the polite version, anyway. Other Republican officials should follow his lead and solidify the GOP as the party of parents.
Youngkin ran as a conservative champion of normalcy, especially in schools. His campaign was assisted when his opponent declared parents should not have a say in what their children are taught, thereby confirming everything Youngkin was running on.
Since being sworn in, Youngkin has banned school mask mandates, banned teaching racist ideas from sources such as critical race theory, and requested the new state attorney general, Jason Miyares, to investigate the apparent coverup by Loudoun County officials of a rape committed by a skirt-wearing boy in a girlsâ bathroom. He has also started cleaning house in the bureaucracy.
These measures have provoked pushback from the usual suspects. Left-wing teachers are now worried theyâll get in trouble for teaching the race essentialism derived from critical race theory. Some counties have defied the governor over school mask mandates, and are punishing students who choose not to wear them. But Youngkin is holding firm, knowing this is what he was elected to do.
Across the nation, parents are in revolt against the Democrat-led educational establishment, and Republicans should eagerly join the fray. After all, it was the Democrat-loving teachers unions that fought to keep schools shut down long after we knew that children were at almost no risk from Covid-19. Likewise, it has mostly been Democrats and their allies forcing children to wear masks when school is open, even though (as a few on the left are finally admitting) masks are particularly harmful for children, while offering no real benefits.
There are other indignities and cruelties, of course, from shutting down outdoor playgrounds to forcing schoolchildren to study or eat lunch outdoors in freezing temperatures. And these miseries have been inflicted long after any plausible ability to defend them as emergency measures, or to plead ignorance of the consequences. Under pressure from the teachers unions and education bureaucracy, Democrats have chosen to sacrifice the well-being of children. Even many liberals now want an alternative to the endless school shutdowns, masks, and other pandemic security theater.
Students across the country as young as kindergarten-age are learning that âeverybody gets to choose their own genderâ and are receiving kid-friendly lessons on disrupting âWestern nuclear family dynamicsâ as part of this weekâs national Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action.
The activist-driven curriculum for the Week of Action, which kicked off Monday, is based off the 13 âBlack Lives Matter Guiding Principles.â Those principles include a commitment to restorative justice, being transgender affirming and queer affirming, creating space for black families that is âfree from patriarchal practices,â and âthe disruption of Western nuclear family dynamics and a return to the âcollective villageâ that takes care of each other.â
Black Lives Matter at School offers kid-friendly versions of the 13 principles designed for elementary and middle-school students.
The Week of Action also includes a list of four national demands: end zero-tolerance discipline policies; mandate black history and ethnic studies; hire more black teachers; and fund counselors, not cops, according to a âstarter kitâ on the Black Lives Matter at School website.
In the starter kit, New York City kindergarten teacher LaleĂąa Garcia, author of a childrenâs book about BLM principles, writes that while âdiscussing big ideas with little peopleâ it is necessary to âconsider age-appropriate language so that our students or children can grasp the concepts.â For example, she suggests not talking about police violence with âour youngest children.â
When discussing BLMâs principle of being transgender affirming, Garcia offers the following kid-friendly language: âEverybody has the right to choose their own gender by listening to their own heart and mind. Everyone gets to choose if they are a girl or a boy or both or neither or something else, and no one else gets to choose for them.â
When discussing the BLM principle of a âBlack Village,â which includes the goal of disrupting the Western nuclear family structure, Garcia suggests teaching kids that âthere are lots of different kinds of families; what makes a family is that itâs people who take care of each other; those people might be related, or maybe they choose to be a family together and to take care of each other. Sometimes, when itâs a lot of families together, it can be called a village.â
Speaking of Democratic policies endangering kids: Repeat child sex offender illegal alien arrested at the border.
Even in San Francisco, the backlash against the Soros-backed-Democrat-DA crime wave has begun: “S.F. police will no longer cooperate with DA Boudin over police shooting investigations.”
San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said he intends to sever an agreement with the San Francisco District Attorneyâs Office spelling out the D.A.âs lead role in investigating police use-of-force incidents, in-custody deaths and police shootings.
The agreement was originally struck in 2019 following intense debate in San Francisco over the role the cityâs police department should play in investigating its own officers following a rash of police shootings. Police and the District Attorneyâs Office renewed the agreement last year.
The more we learn about the Jenny Thornley affair, the more it appears that senior members of the Pritzker administration, including potentially the governor and his wife, may have facilitated a fraud on the state by a now-indicted former campaign aide to enrich her and then obstructed efforts to bring her to justice.
This is a tangled web, so stay with me as I set forth a timeline of events and characters, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The former executive director of the Illinois State Police Merit Board, Jack Garcia, discovered evidence that one of the employees under his direction, Jenny Thornley, was stealing money from the people of the state
Garcia is a well-known, skilled investigator who previously supervised the divisions of internal investigations and forensic services, before becoming the first deputy director of the Illinois State Police. Thornley was a campaign aide for Gov. J.B. Pritzker (her husband, Jared, was also a senior political appointee at the Illinois comptrollerâs office) and close enough to Pritzker and his wife, M.K., that she had their personal telephone numbers.
After assembling the evidence and building the case, Garcia scheduled meetings to fire Thornley and refer her for prosecution on the morning of Feb. 3, 2020. However, on the eve of that day, Thornley contacted (at least) the governor’s wife (pictured, at left) and asked her to intervene, alleging that Garcia had assaulted her sexually a week or so earlier.
The governorâs chief counsel promptly called the merit board (which is an independent agency created âto remove political influenceâ from State Police hiring, promotion and discipline) to âadviseâ it to: (a) cancel her firing and the referral for prosecution, (b) suspend Garcia (the experienced investigator who uncovered the Thornley fraud) and (c) retain an outside counsel proposed by the governorâs office. The merit board went along, but also suspended Thornley, and Garcia voluntarily took and passed a lie detector test.
Then Thornley sued to stop the investigation of her own claim of sexual harassment.
The outside counsel, Christina Egan, nonetheless completed an investigation by July 2020 (at the cost of $500,000 paid by the people of Illinois), confirming the evidence Garcia assembled that Thornley had stolen money and committed forgery, and finding no evidence of Thornleyâs sexual assault allegation. The State Police Merit Board then reinstated Garcia, fired Thornley, referred her for prosecution. She has now been indicted for theft and forgery.
However, after Thornley was fired, someone with clout in the Pritzker administration somehow granted her disability payments reserved for people that are actually state employees. These payments (amounting to some $71,000) went on for more than a year, ending days before she was indicted for theft and fraud. These extensive payments were for âinjuries” sustained from an âassaultâ that Egan determined had not occurred.
Speaking of Democratic family corruption: “Smoking gun documents tie Nancy Pelosi’s son to fraud and bribery scheme to remove permit violations against squalid San Francisco flop house owned by his ex-girlfriend and probed by the FBI.”
The criminal justice system in Harris County is broken,â said Aimee Castillo, sister of murder victim Josh Sandoval.
Suspect Devan Kristopher Jordon was out on three felony bonds when he allegedly shot Sandoval during a home invasion robbery last May. Jordon had also missed a court date the week prior to the murder, but authorities did not issue an arrest warrant.
âI think the criminal justice system is just a revolving door. They murder, they go in, and they come out, and they go in,â said Glenda Martin, Sandovalâs mother. âI think itâs a horrible thing.â
Commissioner Tom Ramsey (R-Pct. 3) presented a resolution honoring Sandovalâs life and noted that the suspect was also affiliated with the same crime ring allegedly responsible for the murder in Houston of an off-duty New Orleans police officer last August.
âThere are people who are hurting people who are being allowed to walk around and they should not be period. That is the point,â intoned Commissioner Jack Cagle (R-Pct. 4).
The fieriest moments of the meeting, however, came later from Steve Radack, former constable and former commissioner who said Democrats on the commissioners court had âblood on their hands.â
âI never dreamed that after serving 32 years on this court that there would be three members of this court â Hidalgo, Garcia, and Ellis â who would kiss the rears of hardened criminals, who victimize law-abiding citizens, including law enforcement officers,â said Radack. âIâm calling on you three to resign from office so the healing can begin.â
This is the worst cheese display collapse since Cheeses of Nazareth suffered a collapse of their famed "A Whey In A Manger" display the day before Christmas in 2019.
More Democrats accepting foreign payola, Russia sabre-rattles over Ukraine, a Supreme Court justice retires, Canada revolts, Harris County’s soft-on-crime policies are getting cops killed, and the war over tranny madness spreads. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm.
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Long time Democratic power broker Tony Podesta has earned $1 million over the past half year lobbying the Biden White House at the behest of a blacklisted Chinese tech giant, recent federal disclosures show. Huawei, which was placed under trade sanctions during the Trump administration, paid Podesta $500,000 in the fourth quarter of 2021 in an attempt to shake off the trade impact of the restrictions, according to the disclosure form filed on the evening of Jan. 20.
With the $500,000 Podesta made from the previous three months lobbying the White House, he has been compensated $1 million over a six-month period for the lobbying effort.
Podestaâs latest lobbying campaign targeted the Executive Office of the President and centered around âtelecommunications services and impacted trade issues,â the disclosure said.
Huawei, once the worldâs largest telecom makers, has been facing international scrutiny in recent years. U.S. authorities have flagged the China-based company as a national security threat, saying the companyâs close ties with Chinaâs ruling communist regime, as well as Chinese law, could make it a potential espionage tool for Beijing.
A stream of U.S. sanctions since 2019âwhich have barred Huawei from using U.S. technology and software, and shut out its gears from critical U.S. infrastructureâhave slashed the companyâs annual revenue by a third. In November, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill that further tightened restrictions on Huawei by restricting it from receiving new equipment licenses from U.S regulators.
Battered by the restrictions, Huawei has ramped up its U.S. influence operation in recent months. Podesta is one of half a dozen lobbyists the firm has engaged since July, which includes a former congressman and one former congressional aide, according to disclosure filings….
Tony Podestaâs brother, John Podesta, served as White House chief of staff to former U.S. President Bill Clinton and the chairman of Hillary Clintonâs 2016 presidential campaign. He was also a former counselor to President Barack Obama, overseeing climate and energy policies.
There’s your swampy Democratic Party corruption and graft, right there out in the open for all to see.
Affiliates of two European companies that fund Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline contributed to the campaign of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), who Republicans say has blocked sanctions on the Kremlin-backed project.
ENGIE North America and BASF Corporation each gave $2,500 to Schumer in September through their corporate political action committees, according to newly disclosed Federal Election Commission records. ENGIE North America’s parent company and a BASF subsidiary are part of a consortium of five companies that finance Nord Stream 2, which will transport natural gas from Russia to Germany. While President Joe Biden has called the pipeline a geopolitical threat to Europe that helps Russian president Vladimir Putin, last year he waived sanctions on the project.
Republicans have pushed for legislation to enforce sanctions only to be met with resistance from Senate Democrats and the White House. Schumer for months blocked Republican requests to vote on a sanctions bill. He approved a vote on sanctions legislation proposed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) earlier this month in exchange for Cruz lifting holds on several State Department nominees. The bill received bipartisan support by a 55-44 vote, but Senate Democrats used filibuster rules to block its passage. Democrats say they want to use sanctions against the pipeline as a last resort should Russia invade Ukraine.
Convicted pedophile, UAE adviser and central witness in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, George Nader, has pleaded guilty to his role in helping the UAE funnel millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions into US campaigns during the 2016 presidential election, according to The Intercept, citing federal court documents filed last month.
In a December sentencing memo, federal prosecutors disclosed that Nader had agreed months early to plead guilty to a single count of felony conspiracy to defraud the US government by pumping millions in donations to Hillary Clinton’s campaign – concealing the foreign origin of the funds.
Snip.
Nader is accused of taking instructions from UAE Crown Prince [Mohammed bin Zayed], and gave regular updates on his efforts to get close to Clinton.
In total, Nader transferred nearly $5 million from his UAE business to [Los Angeles businessperson Ahmad âAndyâ] Khawaja – CEO of a Los Angeles-based payment processing company. According to prosecutors, the funds were disguised as a routine business contract between the two men. Of the total transferred, more than $3.5 million came from the UAE government and was given to pro-Clinton Democratic political committees. Prosecutors have yet to publicly identify what happened to the remaining $1.4 million Nader transferred to Khawaja.
Khawaja’s money laundering for Democrats was previously mentioned in this LinkSwarm. How many of the travails of the last five years boil down to Democrats trying to avoid going to jail for their corruption?
Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer announced he’s retiring. Biden, pandering as always, announces he’s going to nominate a black woman.
— đđĄđ đđđ đđ¨đ§đŹđđŤđŻđđđ˘đŻđ đ¨đŚ (@The420Cdn) January 27, 2022
How massive would the protest have to be to make Justin Trudeau change course? Leftists hate giving up government control of people’s lives, no matter how unpopular….
Tracy Compton, a mother of two in Fairfax, Virginia, had voted for Democrats for as long as she can remember, until the COVID-related school closures.
‘I tried and went to apply to work with the Democratic Party. I was told I was not allowed to become a member of the Democratic Party [in Fairfax].’
A recording of a reorganization meeting showed fellow Democrats deeming Compton too ‘anti-school’ to be part of their political efforts.
What made Compton anti-school?
She wanted the public schools to fully reopen.
When Compton worked to collect signatures for a recall petition for the local school board, she was welcomed out of the rain by a Republican party tent, even after telling them she was a Biden voter.
In contrast, when Compton offered the petition to those inside the Democrat party tent, she was yelled at.
Now? Given a hypothetical matchup between Kamala Harris or President Joe Biden vs. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, she said she’d vote for the Republican in a heartbeat.
All Florida trends are coming up sunshine for continued freedom from Covidstan. Recently Republican registrations surpassed Democrats in the state for the first time. Net domestic migration to the state also increased during COVID. Many commentators attribute both to Governor Ron DeSantisâs pandemic management policies. Just how bad does 2022 look for Democrats in the state? According to the Miami Herald:
Evidence is piling up that Democrats in Florida have no clear bench of candidates willing to challenge Republican incumbents in South Florida, in whatâs expected to be a daunting and expensive 2022 cycle for their party.
Two first-time candidates who made early announcements they would run for South Florida House seats have both since dropped their bids to pursue runs for state office. A rumored likely candidate for federal office, former state Sen. JosĂŠ Javier RodrĂguez, was recently nominated by President Joe Biden to serve as an assistant secretary at the Department of Labor.
The three Florida seats in question represent districts in Miami, including Reps. Carlos GimĂŠnez, Maria Elvira Salazar, and Mario Diaz-Balart. GimĂŠnez is the former mayor of Miami-Dade County and an immigrant from Cuba. Salazar defeated Clinton ally Donna Shalala in 2020, and Diaz-Balart has represented his district since 2002. The Herald called these districts competitive and said redistricting provided Democrats an opportunity.
However, the only potential candidates are a few retreads who lost in 2020. Reportedly, Shalala, who is knee-deep in Clinton ick, may be considering a rematch with Salazar. She served as Bill Clintonâs Secretary of Health and Human Services and as President of the Clinton Foundation from June 2015 to March 2017. Former representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who lost to GimĂŠnez in 2020, may also jump in the race. To date, neither woman has announced their intentions.
Unless you owe someone favors, why run an almost certainly losing campaign in a red wave year?
Masks don’t work:
Update from the Fargo, North Dakota masking study: Two neighboring K-12 districts (same community) both with around 12,000 students đľ Mask mandate đĄ Masks optional (<5% masking) Y axis= % of students positive for covid Green vertical line: whenđľ went masks optional pic.twitter.com/OoU9vmsbiz
Unvaccinated people in Austria have been locked down for two-and-a-half months. I wonder if people will stop pretending they are to blame for infection rates. pic.twitter.com/AjVpp7IvNI
“During the last year’s attempts to defund the police and reduce the number of violent encounters on the street, Baltimore kicked off what they call the Safe Streets Project.” Surprise! A Safe Streets worker was one of three people killed in a shootout. Dwight would be disappointed if I didn’t include this:
In addition to looting, murder and arson, the primary accomplishment of #BlackLivesMatter seems to be making donations disappear.
No one appears to have been in charge at Black Lives Matter for months. The address it lists on tax forms is wrong, and the charity’s two board members won’t say who controls its $60 million bankroll, a Washington Examiner investigation has found.
BLM’s shocking lack of transparency surrounding its finances and operations raises major legal and ethical red flags, multiple charity experts told the Washington Examiner.
“Like a giant ghost ship full of treasure drifting in the night with no captain, no discernible crew, and no clear direction,” CharityWatch Executive Director Laurie Styron said of BLM.
BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors appointed two activists to serve as the group’s senior directors following her resignation in May amid scrutiny over her personal finances. But both quietly announced in September that they never took the jobs due to disagreements with BLM. They told the Washington Examiner they don’t know who now leads the nation’s most influential social justice organization.
Paul Kamenar, counsel for conservative watchdog group the National Legal and Policy Center, said a full audit and investigation into Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, the legal entity that represents the national BLM movement, is warranted.
“This is grossly irregular and improper for a nonprofit with $60 million in its coffers,” Kamenar said.
Sundown Joe unwittingly greenlights a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Right now there’s a lot more jaw-jaw than war-war. I’ve avoid penning a thumbsucker on the situation because I’ve been too busy.
Virginia Republican Delegate Nick Freitas is done with having Critical Race Theory advocates calling all who oppose them racist:
Enough. I have had it, my constituents have had it, and I am no longer going to sit here while a member of this body accuses us of being bigots simply because we disagree on policy. pic.twitter.com/dx0uMyFmnB
Today’s unexpected ally in the war on transgender madness: actor Sean Penn.
Sean Penn is doubling down on his defense of traditional gender roles.
In two separate interviews this month, the two-time Academy Award-winner and ex of Madonna made comments bemoaning his perception that men are becoming more feminine.
âI am in the club that believes that men in American culture have become wildly feminized,â the 61-year-old told the UK-based publication The i in an interview ahead of the UK release of his new film âFlag Day.â
âI donât think that being a brute or having insensitivity or disrespect for women is anything to do with masculinity, or ever did. But I donât think that [in order] to be fair to women, we should become them.â
In a subsequent interview the âMilkâ star did with The Independent this week, he dug his heels into the polarizing opinion, going even further in his critique of men who challenge gender norms.
âThere are a lot of, I think, cowardly genes that lead to people surrendering their jeans and putting on a skirt,â he told the publication. Furthermore, he noted that the women in his life donât seem bothered by the patriarchy.
âI have these very strong women in my life who do not take masculinity as a sign of oppression toward them,â he said.
Penn is wrong about an awful lot, but he’s right about this.
Intel to build $20 billion chip manufacturing facility near New Albany, Ohio (near Columbus), starting with two fabs. Intel had already announced a big investment initiative, and announced their were building two new fabs in Arizona last year. The Ohio location is a surprise, since there’s no fab infrastructure there, but evidently Ohio is throwing lots of money at them.
Vegetarian “meat” company Impossible Foods just laid off a bunch of people. “Technocratic elites have decided in the so-called ‘Great Reset’ in a post-COVID world that peasants should eat plant-based meat instead of the real thing as a way for ‘sustainable nutrition.'”
Yikes!
You may need to get a prescription of beta blockers after watching this video.pic.twitter.com/6GKk09DmjG
The new Superman is a “bisexual climate warrior.” Those comic book issues aren’t exactly flying off the shelf.
Speaking of comics: This comic page just sold for $3.3 million. A wee bit rich for my blood. And is possibly more than the artist made over his entire career working at Marvel…
Heh.
Yoko Ono has threatened to have her music added to Spotify unless Joe Rogan is removed
— State Line Crosser Dennis (LGB) (@Buzzsaws1990) January 28, 2022
Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Chaos at the border and buying American military tech to oppose China are two of the themes this week:
8,000 illegal aliens await processing underneath the Del Rio bridge on the U.S./Mexican border.
Here’s a drone shot:
BREAKING: Our drone is back over the international bridge in Del Rio, TX. Per source, the number of migrants waiting to be processed has now swelled to approx 8,200. It was 4,000 yesterday AM. Doubled in one day. BP overwhelmed, & Iâm told situation is âout of controlâ @FoxNewspic.twitter.com/ThJJJ0JWCT
Those illegal aliens are there because Democrats and the Biden Administration want them there, so they can turn those illegal aliens into Democratic Party voters via amnesty.
So damaging is that drone footage that the FAA has closed airspace over the bridge to prevent it:
NEW: Weâve learned that the FAA just implemented a two week TFR (Temporary Flight Restrictions) over the international bridge in Del Rio, TX, meaning we can no longer fly our FOX drone over it to show images of the thousands of migrants. FAA says âspecial security reasonâ. pic.twitter.com/aJrjAPO2Pz
This effort is just one part of a new partnership between the three countries, dubbed AUKUS, which is short for Australia-United Kingdom-United States, that also includes cooperation in other areas, including long-range strike capabilities, cyber warfare, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. President Biden said AUKUS would help all three countries work more closely together to help ensure peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region in the long-term.
On the whole, this is probably a good move to counter China, and I hear that Canberra was the driving force behind the agreement. All that said, the United States was already in formal alliances with the UK and Australia through other treaties, so it’s not anything like a tectonic shift.
Another sign of the new alliance: The UK is going to station new vessels in the Indo-Pacific. [Senior Royal Navy admiral Tony Radakin] “said that the Taiwan Strait is clearly ‘part of the free and open Indo-Pacific.'”
Naturally France pitched a snit fit over the deal because Australia cancelled a contract with French shipbuilder Naval Group. “This brutal, unilateral and unpredictable decision reminds me a lot of what Mr Trump used to do,” Le Drian told franceinfo radio. “I am angry and bitter. This isn’t done between allies.” Cry some more, Jean-Claude. But it isn’t like France was ever going to come to Australia’s aid in a dust-up with China, so the deal makes sense as drawing Australia closer to the regions remaining nuclear naval powers. (Russia can barely keep its own navy running these days.)
Speaking of possible China opponents buying American technology, Japan is buying more F-35s.
John Durham finally files an indictment over the Russian collusion hoax investigation. “Special counsel John Durham reportedly seeks a grand jury indictment against Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer at a Democratic-allied law firm closely linked to British ex-spy Christopher Steeleâs discredited dossier.” That firm, of course, would be Perkins Coie, who you may remember from regular appearances in the Clinton corruption updates.
The Democrats of Texas have long, as in 30 years or more, believed that the Hispanic vote would eventually hand them total control of Texas forever. They believe they need not adjust their policies on faith, family, life, the Second Amendment, taxes â anything â because the party brand itself was enough. If it wasnât, then they would resort to bullying. They could go all the way left to Wendy Davis and Karl Marx if they wanted to â and they have â and the Hispanic vote would save them.
But a funny thing happened along the way. People like state Rep. Aaron PeĂąa switched parties on principle and others followed them. And more are following them. His daughter, Adrienne PeĂąa-Garza, is quoted in this Texas Monthly story regarding how the Democrats operate when it comes to independent-minded folks like her father and herself.
PeĂąa-Garza, the Hidalgo County Republican chair, said Hispanic South Texans, who have long been conservative, âhave become liberatedâ to vote on their long-held beliefs. âPeople have been bullied into voting Democrat. If you got involved [in conservative politics], people said, âIâm not going to give you this contract; Iâm not going to give you this job.â But I think the bullying has backfired. People are more empowered and courageous.â
When I was reporting on border issues in Hidalgo County during my first stint with PJ Media, Iâd hear about the bullying she mentions but it wasnât provable. Rampant and endemic, but hidden with no paper trails. Tejanos and Tejanas started standing up to it a decade ago, some by running for office, others by working courageously together underground and actually going after some of the political criminality. People noticed. Groups like Hispanic Republicans of Texas and the Conservative Hispanic Society rose up to answer the call outside any party structure. One of the most popular and successful talk radio hosts in the Lone Star State is my friend Chris Salcedo, the âliberty-loving Latino.â The conservative juggernaut is heard expounding on the joys of freedom and how Democrats would take it away on the air every day in Houston and Dallas and nationally on NewsmaxTV.
People are noticing how embarrassingly paternalistic and out-of-touch the Democrats are when it comes to South Texas. They really donât know Texas at all and havenât bothered to understand.
Snip.
Thatâs because theyâre not immigrants. Treating them as immigrants cancels their ancestors and their heritage. Tejanos have been in Texas for generations, from the time when it was part of the Spanish Empire. Badly misunderstood and under-reported is the fact that Tejanos are and have been part of the culture of Texas long before we Anglos showed up. By the time my ancestors arrived in Texas in the 1850s and 1860s, Tejanos had been building Texas for more than a century. Theyâre not immigrants in any sense of the word. Theyâre Texans and American citizens. They resisted elitist dictator Santa Anna, fought at the Alamo and San Jacinto, theyâve served in every major war defending the United States, theyâve won Medals of Honor and have state veterans homes named after them â and their communities are the most directly affected by the chaos that out-of-state Democrats tend to unleash on the border. They serve in the Border Patrol and the Coast Guard, and they work in the oil fields and own thriving businesses. Coyotes, cartels, drugs, and trafficking all affect Tejano communities first, while the rich Democrats who party at the Met are unaffected personally and weaponize the border as a racial cudgel. RGV citizens are not happy about that and they know whom to blame.
Gov. Greg Abbott visited Houston on Monday to sign new legislation he said would directly address lenient bail practices and rising crime in Harris County.
âLives are being lost because the criminal justice system in Harris County is not working the way it should,â said Abbott.
Known as the Damon Allen Act, Senate Bill (SB) 6 is named after a state trooper who was shot and killed during a routine traffic stop on Thanksgiving Day 2017. Despite having a history of assaulting a law enforcement officer, the shooter was out on a $15,000 felony bond at the time of the murder.
Allenâs widow, Casey Allen, who has become an advocate for the reforms implemented by SB 6, joined Abbott at the Safer Houston Emergency Summit held by a coalition of ministry groups.
Noting that her husband had been killed by a âviolent, repeat offender,â Mrs. Allen added, âThe murderer still went to jail, and my life and my kidsâ lives were forever changed by actions that canât be taken back.â
The new law will create an online public safety report for judges and magistrates to access more complete information about a suspectâs criminal history before setting bail. In addition, SB 6 requires additional training for judges and magistrates, and prohibits the release of certain violent suspects or repeat suspects on personal recognizance (PR) bonds.
“Same FBI That Chased Russia Collusion Hoax for Years Covered Up Sexual Abuse of USA Gymnasts.” Why did James Comey’s FBI fail to investigate charges against Larry Nassar?
Now that the Biden EPA has rolled back the conflict-of-interest standards imposed by the Trump EPA on the agencyâs outside scientific peer review panels, it has gone back to its old practice of stocking its peer review boards with agency research grant-recipient cronies who can be counted on to rubber-stamp whatever EPA wants to do. The Biden EPA most recently announced the particulate matter (PM) subpanel for the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC). As per below, 17 of the 22 members are current and/or former EPA grantees. The amounts associated with them as principal investigators are shown. Note the largest grantee (Lianne Sheppard, recipient of $60,032,782 in EPA grants) is, naturally, the chairman. Sheppard is also the chairman of the main CASAC panel as well as a member of EPAâs Science Advisory Board (SAB), a separate outside review panel. The Biden EPA needs a reliable multi-purpose rubber-stamper and that is Sheppard, an activist who sued the Trump EPA because it instituted conflict of interest rules under which she was ineligible to rubber-stamp agency wishes.
Here’s a UK funeral director who claims all the Flu Manchu deaths he’s seeing now are from vaccinations:
Take this with a grain of salt and in the interest of gathering data points.
What. The. Hell. “Apple threatened to kick Facebook off its App Store after a 2019 BBC report detailed how human traffickers were using Facebook to sell victims.” What’s a little sexual slavery compared to all those likes?
Busted!
It appears as though @LanceNBCSD, the assignment editor for the San Diego NBC affiliate, forgot to switch to his anti-Trump burner account… pic.twitter.com/XfAAQX31Ex
Investigators call into hospital asking for the name of the people featured in a news broadcast only to find out they weren't admitted to the hospital!
Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! I’m going to coral all the Afghan Debacle news for separate post, probably next week. In the meantime: Texans are winning political battles, and Australians are losing their damn minds.
Texas finally passes the election integrity bill. Now on to the governor’s signature. Hopefully this will prevent the mass vote-harvesting and manufacturing shenanigans Democrats are so fond of…
Speaking of Democrats, they seem to be waking up to the fact that Biden and Harris suck and will drag them down:
We hear an enormous amount these days about the problem of âFlight 93-ismâ on the American right, but a great deal less about the concomitant panic that has led the Democratic Party to behave as if last yearâs election represented its last gasp. Since Joe Biden took office in January, his party has been busy cramming everything it has ever wanted to do into a series of multi-trillion-dollar, must-pass bills; hawking a patently unconstitutional elections-supervision bill that would hand it full control of Americaâs democratic infrastructure; and engaging in a frenzied attempt to pack the Supreme Court, discredit the Senate, abolish the filibuster, and add new states to the union by simple majority vote. If you ask for an explanation of this preposterous behavior, you will be told that it is the product of the Republican Partyâs dastardly scheme to implement Jim Eagle. If you look more closely, however, youâll sense something else: fear â that, in a desperate attempt to remove President Trump from office, the Democrats tailored themselves a straitjacket from which they will struggle mightily to escape.
This fear is well-founded. Joe Biden is an aging, incompetent mediocrity whose main claim to fame, like the Delta Tau Chi fraternity from Animal House, is his long tradition of existence. Kamala Harris, his vice president, is a widely disliked authoritarian whose last run for the White House was stymied by her inability to garner support from more than 3 percent of the Democratic-primary electorate. If, prior to the disaster that was the last fortnight, the Democrats hadnât sensed that theyâd tied their party to a pair of losers, they sure as hell must have now.
Explanation of why the 25th Amendment won’t saved them snipped.
And why should it, given that getting rid of President Biden would not actually fix the Democratsâ problems? Joe Bidenâs approval rating is currently around 46 percent in national poll averages â not great for a president in his seventh month in office, but dramatically better than Kamala Harrisâs rating, which stands at just 37 percent. Per NBC, Harris inspires âvery positiveâ feelings in just 19 percent of the population while prompting âvery negative feelingsâ among 36 percent â a feat that makes her the most strongly disliked VP since records began. If, today, the Democratic Party decided to cut its losses and replace Biden with Harris, it would be selecting a new president who was nearly ten points less popular than the old one. This would be absurd.
Which means that if the Democratic Party is destined for a reckoning with its ticket â as now seems increasingly likely â it will have to come during the next set of presidential primaries.
Like many, I’ve wondered who’s actually pulling the strings in the Biden White House. (It’s clearly not Sundown Joe.) I’ve seen various people suggest it’s actually Ron Klain, Valerie Jarrett or Jill Biden. Former Trump intelligence director Richard Grenell ďťżsays it’s Susan Rice:
Rice, who served as national security adviser under President Obama, was tapped last December by President Biden to take charge of the White House Domestic Policy Council. It is in that role that Grenell believes she is exerting her influence.
“Biden is too weak to stop the progressive left from taking over⌠[Vice President] Kamala [Harris] does not understand whatâs going onâŚWe have a shadow president in Susan Rice and no one is paying attention,” he said.
Rice is one of the many officials from the Obama administration that landed jobs in the Biden White House. There was speculation that she would be his running mate and when that never materialized, secretary of state.
She is among the wealthiest individuals in the Biden White House, with a net worth estimated to be at least $37.9 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. She resigned last December from her role as a member of the board of directors at Netflix.
For all the (justifiable) heat the 87h Legislature has taken over its failure to deliver on conservative priorities, it seems to have written the Texas Heartbeat Act in a way that makes it difficult to challenge in court:
[Supreme Court Justices] denied the request by Texas abortion providers for emergency relief against the Texas Heartbeat Act. The compelling procedural grounds on which five justices â Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett â ruled have no direct bearing on the substantive question whether the Court will overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in next termâs blockbuster abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Womenâs Health Organization. But the clarity, courage, and commitment to the rule of law that the five justices demonstrated in the midst of intense fury from the Left â and in the face of an exasperating cop-out by Chief Justice Roberts â are heartening indeed.
Enacted in May, the Texas Heartbeat Act, also known as S.B. No. 8, prohibits a physician from performing an abortion (other than in a medical emergency) âif the physician detected a fetal heartbeat for the unborn child.â The fetal heartbeat is usually detectable at six weeks of gestation. The Act specifies an effective date of September 1.
In an ingenious effort to prevent abortion providers from blocking the Act from taking effect, the Act prohibits state officials from enforcing the Act in any way. It instead authorizes any private person to bring a civil action in state court against anyone who performs a post-heartbeat abortion or who knowingly aids or abets a post-heartbeat abortion. (Federal restrictions on standing â on who can sue â in federal court do not apply in state court.) It entitles successful plaintiffs to at least $10,000 in damages for each violation as well as to injunctive relief and attorneyâs fees.
Because state officials are barred from enforcing the Act, the usual path that abortion providers would take to prevent the Act from becoming effective â suing those officials to prevent them from enforcing the Act â is a dead end. Instead, abortion providers would be able to challenge the constitutionality of the Act only if and when private individuals pursued civil actions against them. (And theyâd have to confront the widely overlooked fact that the Act itself explicitly confers on abortion providers an âaffirmative defense to liabilityâ in the event they demonstrate that a lawsuit brought under the Act âimpose[s] an undue burden.â)
In mid July, nearly two months after enactment of the Act, various abortion providers sued eight defendants in federal court: the Texas attorney general and four other state officials, a state district-court judge and a district-court clerk from Smith County (one of 254 counties in Texas), and a pro-life activist. But their lawsuit faced overwhelming jurisdictional hurdles. Among other things, none of the defendants was threatening to enforce the Act against them (so how was there even a live controversy?), and all seven of the governmental defendants had strong claims to sovereign immunity.
To make a long story short, when federal district judge Robert L. Pitman last week ruled against the governmental defendantsâ sovereign-immunity claims, the governmental defendants exercised their right to immediately appeal the ruling against them to the Fifth Circuit. Pitman then realized that he had lost authority to proceed against the government defendants and had to cancel the preliminary-injunction hearing against them. (The Left viciously faults a Fifth Circuit panel of conservative judges for the cancellation that Obama appointee Pitman had ordered.) The abortion providers suddenly found that they had dug themselves into a deep ditch: The September 1 effective date was fast approaching, and they had indefinitely sidetracked their own effort to obtain a preliminary injunction.
On August 30, the abortion providers made a desperate request to the Supreme Court to block the Act from taking effect. Set aside that they had waited two-and-a-half months to file their preliminary-injunction motion with Pitman. Set aside that they were asking the Court to rule on a set of issues that neither Pitman nor the Fifth Circuit panel had yet addressed. Whatâs even more remarkable is that because Pitman had never ruled on their request to certify statewide defendant classes of judges and clerks, injunctive relief against the only eight defendants in the case wouldnât remotely prevent the injury the abortion providers allege they faced.
The Supreme Court majority saw clearly through the huge holes in the emergency application. There was no reason to address the substantive question whether the Act is consistent with Roe and Casey because the abortion providers had failed to meet their burden on the âcomplex and antecedent procedural questionsâ that their request presented. The Court has the power to âenjoin individuals tasked with enforcing laws, not the laws themselves,â and the abortion providers hadnât shown that any of the defendants should be enjoined from doing anything.
Things that make you go “Hmmmm”: “Harris County $11 Million Vaccine Outreach Contract to One-Woman Firm Draws Scrutiny. Newly released documents show a $7 million bid was scored more highly, but Hidalgoâs office intervened to instead give nearly $11 million to a politically connected firm at a higher cost.”
Last month tempers flared at Harris County Commissioners Court after County Judge Lina Hidalgo (D) accused Commissioner Jack Cagle (R-Pct. 4) of telling a âbold-faced lieâ when he referred to a vendor as a âone-woman company.â
Although the expenditure had been approved months earlier in a 4 to 1 vote, little information had been provided to commissioners about Elevate Strategies, LLC, the winner of a $10.9 million contract to conduct vaccine outreach.
It was not until August that commissioners learned that the company was only founded in 2019, listed a Montrose apartment as its business address, and only consisted of one person: Felicity Pereyra, a former deputy campaign manager for Commissioner Adrian Garcia (D-Pct. 2) and former employee of both the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
It almost like the entire purpose of the welfare state is to channel money from the wallets of taxpayers to the pockets of leftwing cronies…
In a bid to keep the coronavirus out of the country, Australiaâs federal and state governments imposed draconian restrictions on its citizens. Prime Minister Scott Morrison knows that the burden is too heavy. âThis is not a sustainable way to live in this country,â he recently declared. One prominent civil libertarian summed up the rules by lamenting, âWeâve never seen anything like this in our lifetimes.â
Up to now one of Earthâs freest societies, Australia has become a hermit continent. How long can a country maintain emergency restrictions on its citizensâ lives while still calling itself a liberal democracy?
Australia has been testing the limits.
Before 2020, the idea of Australia all but forbidding its citizens from leaving the country, a restriction associated with Communist regimes, was unthinkable. Today, it is a widely accepted policy. âAustraliaâs borders are currently closed and international travel from Australia remains strictly controlled to help prevent the spread of COVID-19,â a government website declares. âInternational travel from Australia is only available if you are exempt or you have been granted an individual exemption.â The rule is enforced despite assurances on another government website, dedicated to setting forth Australiaâs human-rights-treaty obligations, that the freedom to leave a country âcannot be made dependent on establishing a purpose or reason for leaving.â
Intrastate travel within Australia is also severely restricted. And the government of South Australia, one of the countryâs six states, developed and is now testing an app as Orwellian as any in the free world to enforce its quarantine rules. People in South Australia will be forced to download an app that combines facial recognition and geolocation. The state will text them at random times, and thereafter they will have 15 minutes to take a picture of their face in the location where they are supposed to be. Should they fail, the local police department will be sent to follow up in person. âWe donât tell them how often or when, on a random basis they have to reply within 15 minutes,â Premier Steven Marshall explained. âI think every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app.â
Other states also curtailed their citizensâ liberty in the name of safety. The state of Victoria announced a curfew and suspended its Parliament for key parts of the pandemic. âTo put this in context, federal and state parliaments sat during both world wars and the Spanish Flu, and curfews have never been imposed,â the scholar John Lee observed in an article for the Brookings Institution. âIn responding to a question about whether he had gone too far with respect to imposing a curfew (avoiding the question of why a curfew was needed when no other state had one), Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews replied: âit is not about human rights. It is about human life.ââ
In New South Wales, Police Minister David Elliott defended the deployment of the Australian military to enforce lockdowns, telling the BBC that some residents of the state thought âthe rules didnât apply to them.â In Sydney, where more than 5 million people have been in lockdown for more than two months, and Melbourne, the countryâs second-biggest city, anti-lockdown protests were banned, and when dissenters gathered anyway, hundreds were arrested and fined, Reuters reported.
Australia is undoubtedly a democracy, with multiple political parties, regular elections, and the peaceful transfer of power. But if a country indefinitely forbids its own citizens from leaving its borders, strands tens of thousands of its citizens abroad, puts strict rules on intrastate travel, prohibits citizens from leaving home without an excuse from an official government list, mandates masks even when people are outdoors and socially distanced, deploys the military to enforce those rules, bans protest, and arrests and fines dissenters, is that country still a liberal democracy?
The idea of owning a beauty clinic in an iconic downtown Melbourne retail centre once seemed like a promising business opportunity. So promising, in fact, that I opened a second store nearby, and expanded my total payroll to 20 employees.
Capital costs across the two stores came to $1.6 million; while monthly expenses included $11,000 in loan interest, equipment leases totalling around $30,000, and rent at almost $40,000 (all figures in Australian dollars). Itâs a substantial commitment, but this was a vibrant locale. And our market research indicated that demand would be high enough to sustain the necessary investment. Fortunately, the customers showed upâenough to meet wages, pay the bills, and allow me to put money away for a rainy day.
That day arrived last year, in the form of COVID. And not just the disease itself, but also the draconian, one-dimensional response from government officials: throughout the state of Victoria, 600,000 small business owners like meâmen and women who collectively employ millions of people and generate a substantial share of the regionâs economic outputâhave been marginalized in the name of public health and safety.
Small-business entrepreneurs are, by nature, both aspirational and pragmatic. We pay our taxes like everyone else, and understand the role government must play in managing national emergenciesâincluding pandemics. But we also expect leaders to avoid imposing unnecessary and unreasonable regulatory burdens and operating prohibitions.
One of the lessons learned over the last year and a half by small business owners is that Australiaâs flawed, multi-layered government structure can easily enmesh an owner in overlapping forms of red tape. This has forced us to reflect on what type of society we are becoming, and whether, in Victoria at least, it is still worth setting up businesses here.
Plus police specifically targeting vocal lockdown critics for fines.
“Fauci strongly endorses COVID treatment that the media tried to criticize Ron DeSantis for supporting…Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Dr. Anthony Fauci seem to agree when it comes to the use of monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID-19.”
Joe Rogan contracts Flu Manchu, takes everything the MSM says you shouldn’t take…and throws off the disease in three days:
“All kinds of meds: monoclonal antibodies, Ivermectin, Z-pack, Prednisone, everything. I also got an NAD drip and a vitamin drip.”
NAD evidently stands for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotid, and the drip combines some other common vitamins in a intravenous cocktail that seems really frigging expensive ($750-1,000), which is fine if you make Joe Rogan money, but ordinary people may want to stick to a multivitamin (which you should be taking daily anyway).
Commie Antifa teacher boasting of indoctrinating his students is on the run:
the heroes at Project Veritas released an undercover video showing a proud antifa communist teacher bragging about how he has 180 days to indoctrinate his students and make them Marxists. How does he do it? He âscares the f*** out of them.â
Now the proud commie peacock is running scared. He refused to defend himself to another Project Veritas reporter. He claims he fears for his safety, and is worried about his brainwashing teaching gig, which means he KNOWS what he was doing is wrong.
Even his fellow Antifa clowns arenât happy with him.
In the tweet below, fellow antifa stains bemoan [Gabriel] Gipeâs willingness to spill his commie guts to an undercover Project Veritas reporter. They also question his over-zealous approach to indoctrinating young high school kids and turning them into fellow Marxist comrades.
Some highlights from the undercover video:
Gipe gives extra credit points to students who attend far-left extremist rallies
He has an antifa flag and a Mao poster hanging on his classroom wall
Gipe believes taking up arms against the âstateâ is a good thing, though it always fails
He shamed a student who claimed the antifa flag made him uncomfortable
Gipe isnât the only pinko recruiter at the school
The local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) just noticed that antifa is a violent bunch of thugs after black bloc-clad attackers beat yet another reporter and tossed her into a busy Portland street for daring to do her job.
After years of similar attacks on reporters, SPJ was finally jostled from its slumber by an attack on reporter Maranie Staab, from a lefty news organization called âNews2Share,â for disobeying her Leftist compatriots and doing some reporting.
Antifa responded in the same way they accuse police of doing: They sprayed her with chemicals and threw her into the street.
Shocking video from yesterdayâs Portland riot shows antifa robbing female photographer @MaranieRae & hitting her to the ground. She goes to retrieve her equipment & is hit w/pepper spray. Video by @JLeeQuinn: pic.twitter.com/rCkaybcfUR
However, with building news about the number of withdrawn vendors, itâs possible that the costs of the other events would surpass what they would expect to make from a crowd that was already predicted to be less than half of normal. I was seeing 35,000 as a predicted attendance batted around the interwebz, and that assumed full exhibit hall, no restrictions, and a full weekend of activities. If word of mouth about reduced exhibitors managed to knock another 10,000 off of that prediction, I donât know enough about their financial obligations & forecasting to know if that would drive it into the territory of losing money or not.
Snip.
The Board & Wayne LaPierre are desperate to look like NRA members stand by them, so visibly empty halls with far fewer attendees in already wide aisles would make for press photos they may believe they canât afford.
Add to this that the ILA Leadership Forum, at least anytime I checked the pages, never had more than the big Texas politicians (Abbott, Cruz, Cornyn, and Crenshaw) along with Mark Robinson from North Carolina listed. It appeared that they couldnât get commitments from big national names to attend which would have, again, signaled a loss of influence and interest that NRA canât really afford to be a story.
LaPierre and his cronies seem desperate desperate to cling to power, no matter how far down they drag the NRA with them.
