Dwight sent over the text of a firearms case decision in “ESTADOS UNIDOS MEXICANOS, Plaintiff, v. SMITH & WESSON BRANDS, INC.” etc., or Mexico v Smith & Wesson et. al. (“Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, Inc.; Beretta USA Corp.; Century International Arms, Inc.; Colt’s Manufacturing Company, LLC; Glock, Inc.; Sturm, Ruger & Co., Inc.; and Witmer Public Safety Group, Inc. d/b/a Interstate Arms.”)
The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for Massachusetts (because venue shopping) and the decision was handed down by Chief Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV.
A U.S. federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Mexican government against U.S. gun manufacturers arguing their commercial practices has led to bloodshed in Mexico.
Judge F. Dennis Saylor in Boston ruled Mexico’s claims did not overcome the broad protection provided to gun manufacturers by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act passed in 2005.
The law shields gun manufacturers from damages “resulting from the criminal or unlawful misuse” of a firearm.
Quoting the text of the decision itself (which does not yet appear to be online anywhere):
Unfortunately for the government of Mexico, all of its claims are either barred by federal law or fail for other reasons. The PLCAA unequivocally bars lawsuits seeking to hold gun manufacturers responsible for the acts of individuals using guns for their intended purpose. And while the statute contains several narrow exceptions, none are applicable here.
This Court does not have the authority to ignore an act of Congress. Nor is its proper role to devise stratagems to avoid statutory commands, even where the allegations of the complaint may evoke a sympathetic response. And while the Court has considerable sympathy for the people of Mexico, and none whatsoever for those who traffic guns to Mexican criminal organizations, it is duty-bound to follow the law.
Accordingly, and for the reasons set forth below, the motions
to dismiss will be granted.
Not a picture of Judge Saylor.
This, of course, is the proper outcome. Lawful American gun manufacturers can’t be held accountable for the misuse of their products, nor should they be made scapegoats for Mexico’s inability to control their own criminal cartels.
More Democrats convicted for committing voting fraud, Russian forces are driven out of Lyman, and the Eurocrats freak out of Italy’s voters daring to disobey their wishes. Plus advice on what not to invest in.
In February, 2021, the Biden administration-run Centers for Disease Control (CDC) awarded a Soros-backed pro-migrant nonprofit $7.5 million under the guise of pandemic-related support for “LATINX ESSENTIAL WORKERS AS HEALTH PROMOTERS,” and aimed “to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and mitigate impacts among Latinx and Latin American immigrants,” according to an analysis by the Daily Caller.
The group, Alianza Americas, is currently suing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and other Florida officials over migrant flights to Martha’s Vineyard earlier this month.
The group has also received nearly $1.4 million from George Soros’ Open Society Network.
Alianza Americas is “focused on improving the quality of life of all people in the U.S.-Mexico-Central America migration corridor.” The membership-based group, which Soros’ Open Society Foundations network (OSF) sent almost $1.4 million to between 2016 and 2020, was awarded a $7.5 million CDC grant in February 2021, according to a grant listing reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. -Daily Caller
The CDC funds were distributed under a program called “Protecting and Improving Health Globally: Building and Strengthening Public Health Impact, Systems, Capacity and Security.”
Add this to the many, many things Republicans should investigate if they gain a congressional majority.
Former U.S. Rep. Michael “Ozzie” Myers, a Pennsylvania Democrat, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to deprive voters of civil rights, bribery, obstruction of justice, falsification of voting records, conspiring to illegally vote in a federal election, and orchestrating schemes to fraudulently stuff ballot boxes for specific Democrat candidates in Pennsylvania elections held from 2014 to 2018. Myers was sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond to 30 months in prison, three years supervised release, and ordered to pay $100,000 in fines, with $10,000 of that due immediately, according to a statement from U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero.
“A right-wing alliance led by Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party” won Italy’s election and will form a new majority government.
Naturally, the Eurocratic elite are far from thrilled that Italians exercised unapproved voting preferences. “EU Commission President Threatens Italy On Eve Of Election, Says Brussels Has ‘Tools’ If Wrong Parties Win.”
Funny how they mention that some fascists were involved in founding Meloni’s party, but never mention how the Partito Democratico, the leftist and second largest party in Italy, were formerly commies.
“This Ohio School District Is Promoting an ‘LGBTQ+ Resource Guide’ With Instructions on Sex Work, Abortions. Hilliard City School District guide also encourages students to transition gender without parental consent.” All this encouraged by the National Education Association, which evidently thinks it is perfectly fine to literally instruct your children on how to be whores. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
A double-dose of Glenn Greenwald:
I can't stress this enough: at its core, Democratic politics is about criminalizing opposition to their party and ideology.
Dissenting ideas are "disinformation" and must be censored by Big Tech. Trump voters are inherently criminal ("insurrectionists") and should be imprisoned.
This is the face of authoritarianism – even though it looks different than you were taught to expect. And it's the mindset of tyrants everywhere:
This is someone so inebriated by her sense of righteousness and superiority that she views dissent as an evil too dangerous to allow: https://t.co/kmG4zTgPwh
Important investing tip: A single deli in rural New Jersey is not, in fact, worth $100 million. Which explains the fraud charges.
Speaking of bad investments, remember how growing hemp was going to make farmers rich? Yeah, not so much.
Since I post a lot of Peter Zeihan videos, I thought it only fair that I post this critique of Zeihan by Yaron Brook. He opines that, while Zeihan has important things to say about geography and demographics, he ignores the central role of ideas in shaping the world.
Ukraine fights back, Biden isn’t going to do jack about it, Kyle Rittenhouse is going to sue everyone, inflation soars, the Canadian “emergency” is ended, disaster looms for Democrats, and Ilhan Omar gets an unusual challenger. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
While reports of the battle are confused and preliminary, it appears that Ukrainian forces counterattacked, shot down some Russian helicopters, and have so far been able to prevent the Russians from landing reinforcements. Initial claims that the Russian force at the airfield had been “destroyed” were later clarified; it now seems that the battle at Gostomel is continuing. It’s easy to understand how crucial this battle is, simply by looking at a map. If the Russians could gain control of the Gostomel airfield, they could score a quick knock-out of the Ukrainian capital as part of what is being called their “decapitation” strategy.
Russian news services are claiming they’ve taken the airfield, but that may be stale news or propaganda.
Ukrainian forces take up positions in Kiev. Also: “Reports that the Ukrainian military has delivered a strike on a Russian airfield in Millerovo, Rostov Oblast have now been confirmed.”
The invasion of Ukraine by the armed forces of Russia at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s orders marks the first time since 1945 that Russia has engaged in a conventional war with a near-peer nation.
Ukraine isn’t restive Warsaw Pact nations, it isn’t Afghanistan, it isn’t Chechnya, it isn’t Georgia, and it isn’t Crimea.
The conflict launched by Putin is on a far grander scale than the invasion of Crimea in 2014, launched as Ukraine’s last pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych, was driven from office in a popular uprising.
Putin, by choosing to reach beyond the ethnic-Russian majority separatist provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas Basin, has decided to end the independent, Western-looking Ukrainian government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and install a pro-Putin quisling.
And while the fog of war, some deliberate mis-and disinformation operations by the combatants, and the far-from-perfect filter of Western media leaves much unknown at this time, what is known is that Zelenskyy is still in power a day after the Russian offensive. Further, the Ukrainian military appears to be taking a toll on the Russians invading from three sides: south across the Pripyat Marshes from Russian satellite Belarus; west from Russia, including Donbas; and north from the Black Sea in the region of Odessa and Transnistria, a Russian client breakaway state in Moldavia.
Modern conventional war is extremely difficult to do well. Imagine being a conductor of an orchestra, all while the audience was lobbing soccer balls at you and your musicians as you perform J.S. Bach’s Chaconne in D — that’s modern warfare. Putin is attempting a highly complicated operation over large distances in the face of a determined foe. Further, he’s doing so with an army largely composed of conscripts serving for only one year.
Since Putin has decided to oust the Ukrainian government, this means that every day Zelenskyy remains in office is another day that adds to Ukrainian national confidence to resist — and another day that Putin looks to have miscalculated.
A Russian Military Ship telling 13 Ukrainian troops on Snake Island to surrender. They were met with a response of " Russian military Ship, go fuck yourself."
Both the EU and the Biden Administration offer sanctions they admit will not do Jack Squat.
FULL DOCUMENT: This is the general license that US Treasury has issued exempting any "energy" related dealings from the sanctions imposed on some of the biggest Russian banks. It's so wide ranging that even includes "wood" as a form of energy exempted | #Ukraine#OOTTpic.twitter.com/3X5t0LFi3W
WATCH: AP reporter roasts Biden's State Department spokesman over the "frankly huge" list of exemptions in Biden's sanctions on Russia.pic.twitter.com/gzAWB4LwMg
Taiwan joins sanctions against Russia, including their semiconductor industry. I don’t know if any fabless Russian chip design company gets their chips fabbed at TSMC, so I’m not sure how badly this hurts their economy in the long run.
It is the West’s wacko environmentalists who handed Russian President Vladimir Putin the leverage and money to invade Crimea in 2014 and Ukraine this week.
Without these wackos, Putin would be just another gangster in charge of a crumbling country, and maybe one on the verge of a revolution to depose him.
But the facts are the facts are the facts, and the facts are these… Thanks to the West’s environmentalists, those smug greenies who are more concerned with carbon output than world peace, this gangster controls much of the energy going to the European Union (E.U.).
Thanks a lot, Greta…
A great mystery:
Under Carter, Russia invaded Afghanistan. Under Obama, Russia took over Crimea. Under Biden, Russia is invading the rest of Ukraine. Russians do land grabs when Democrats control the White House. Democrats get pissed when you point it out. But it is still true.
Biden is demonstrably more hostile to American oil and gas companies than he is to Russian companies, having frozen oil and gas leasesdespite a court order otherwise.
Thanks to Biden’s inflation, the cost of everything is going up. “70 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.”
Fellow former finance reporter Chrystia Freeland — someone I’ve known since we were both expat journalists in Russia in the nineties — announced last week that her native Canada would be making Sorkin’s vision a reality. Freeland arouses strong feelings among old Russia hands. Before the Yeltsin era collapsed, she had consistent, remarkable access to gangster-oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky, who appeared in her Financial Times articles described as aw-shucks humans just doing their best to make sure “big capital” maintained its “necessary role” in Russia’s political life. “Berezovsky was one of several financiers who came together in a last-ditch attempt to keep the Communists out of the Kremlin” was typical Freeland fare in, say, 1998.
Then the Yeltsin era collapsed in corrupt ignominy and Freeland immediately wrote a book called Sale of the Century that identified Yeltsin’s embrace of her former top sources as the “original sin” of Russian capitalism, a “Faustian bargain” that crippled Russia’s chance at true progress. This is Freeland on Yeltsin’s successor in 2000. Note the “Yes, Putin has a reputation for beating the press, but his economic rep is solid!” passage at the end:
It looks as if we’re about to fall in love with Russia all over again…
Compared to the ailing, drink-addled figure Boris Yeltsin cut in his later years, his successor, Vladimir Putin, in the eyes of many western observers, seems refreshingly direct, decisive and energetic… Tony Blair, who has already paid Putin the compliment of a visit to Russia and received the newly installed president in Downing Street in return, has praised him as a strong leader with a reformist vision. Bill Clinton, who recently hot-footed it to Russia, offered the equally sunny appraisal that “when we look at Russia today . . . we see an economy that is growing . . . we see a Russia that has just completed a democratic transfer of power for the first time in a thousand years.”
To be sure, some critics have lamented Putin’s support for the bloody second war in Chechnya, accused him of eroding freedom of the press…and worried aloud that his KGB background and unrepenting loyalty to the honor of that institution could jeopardize Russia’s fragile democratic institutions. But many of even Putin’s fiercest prosecutors seem inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the economy…
Years later, she is somehow Canada’s Finance Minister, and what another friend from our Russia days laughingly describes as “the Nurse Ratched of the New World Order.” At the end of last week, Minister Freeland explained that in expanding its Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) program, her government was “directing Canadian financial institutions to review their relationships with anyone involved in the illegal blockades.”
The Emergencies Act contains language beyond the inventive powers of the best sci-fi writers. It defines a “designated person” — a person eligible for cutoff of financial services — as someone “directly or indirectly” participating in a “public assembly that may reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace.” Directly or indirectly?
She went on to describe the invocation of Canada’s Emergencies Act in the dripping-fake tones of someone trying to put a smile on an insurance claim rejection, with even phrases packed with bad news steered upward in the form of cheery hypotheticals. As in, The names of both individuals and entities as well as crypto wallets? Have been shared? By the RCMP with financial institutions? And accounts have been frozen? As she confirmed this monstrous news about freezing bank accounts, Freeland burst into nervous laughter, looking like Tony Perkins sharing a cheery memory with “mother.”
Angeleno’s tax dollars at work:
A city audit found LA spends $837,000 to house one homeless person. Perhaps this is why Newsom has done everything he can to block my statewide audit.
China is getting a good return on its investment in the Biden clan: “DOJ shuts down China-focused anti-espionage program. The China Initiative is being cast aside largely because of perceptions that it unfairly painted Chinese Americans and U.S. residents of Chinese origin as disloyal.” We can’t let national security stand in the way of political correctness…
In what may be remembered as one of the greatest miracles of all time, it seems that an upcoming American election cycle is set to put an end to the great COVID pandemic in regions that have been clinging to “mitigation” tactics despite them being proven ineffective long ago. What science couldn’t do for blue state governors, politics is about to. Meanwhile, much of the rest of the country has already adopted an “endemic” approach to COVID. In my Indiana community, for instance, school systems have been in-person and maskless for well over a year.
A combination of experience and common sense led local officials to recognize that while COVID was a serious virus, and an often-times unpleasant condition to endure, we just weren’t experiencing the kind of mortality rates or critical hospitalizations that would require the suspension of normal life. If I was guessing, I would say that there are more counties, cities, and communities in the United States like mine than not.
While mainstream media may be drawn like a moth to the bright lights of urban areas with all the restrictions, mandates, and panic-fueled policies enacted there, most Americans have been “living with” the virus for a long time now.
In fact, if my community is any bellwether for the nation, most Americans are already wondering why anyone is still attempting to take a non-endemic approach at this point. The virus has proven itself to be, like all other viruses, prone to seasonal surges that are largely unaltered by our theatrical mitigation techniques. Not that anyone with their head screwed on straight ever thought there was value in wearing a porous cloth mask while standing up at a restaurant, then taking it off while sitting down, but the comical nonsense of mask histrionics is now widely appreciated as a goofy spectator sport. Behold:
So silly. And so as opinion polls continue showing that an ever-increasing number of Americans are infuriated by this nonsense, and that they are done with all the aggressive pandemic restrictions that proved unnecessary a long time ago, a public pivot of massive proportions is underway amongst the political class.
Whether it’s big blue state governors like California’s Gavin Newsom hilariously announcing that he will be transitioning his state to the country’s first “endemic” virus policy – meaning they’re going to start doing some things that Texas, Florida, South Dakota, Indiana, and so many others have been doing for over a year – or whether it’s blue city school boards like San Francisco’s being recalled by angry voters for their abusive and needless shutdown and masking policies, it’s clear where we’re headed.
Despite that, the midterm news for Democrats is not good.
Democrats know that they should be preparing for a brutal showing in this November’s midterm elections. Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the Virginia gubernatorial race last year — and, more to the point, the substance and style of his successful campaign — were the first sign of it.
But the hits have kept on coming. In San Francisco last week, two progressive parents succeeded in their campaign to oust three school-board members for being . . . too progressive. Irked initially at how long it was taking for area schools to reopen for in-person learning during the pandemic, these two single parents did some digging and discovered even more to be upset about: an enormous budget shortfall, an intensive campaign to rename dozens of school buildings, and the replacement of a merit-based admissions program with a diversity-minded lottery, among other issues.
Suggesting just how central education has become to politics, San Francisco’s intensely progressive mayor, London Breed — who last fall violated her own mask mandate at a concert and defended herself by saying she was “feeling the spirit” — endorsed the school-board recall effort.
“My take is that it was really about the frustration of the board of education doing their fundamental job,” Breed said after the results were in. “And that is to make sure that our children are getting educated, that they get back into the classroom. And that did not occur. . . . We failed our children. Parents were upset. The city as a whole was upset, and the decision to recall school-board members was a result of that.”
San Francisco–based writer Gary Kamiya suggests in a piece for the Atlantic that the results of the recall seem to confirm the conservative narrative. Kamiya writes that conservatives have argued “that the Democratic Party is out of step not just with Republicans, but with its own constituents. . . . Progressives rejected such conclusions, insisting that the recall was simply about competence and was driven by an only-in-San-Francisco set of circumstances.” Kamiya concludes that the best way to read the outcome is “closer to the conservative view.” “At a minimum,” Kamiya writes, “the recall demonstrates that ‘woke’ racial politics have their limits, even in one of the wokest cities in the country.”
Over in Texas, meanwhile, failed Senate candidate and failed presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke is gearing up to become a failed gubernatorial candidate, too. Running against incumbent Republican governor Greg Abbott, O’Rourke was most recently seen trying to pretend that he isn’t a fan of radical gun-control measures.
Asked about the promise he made during his run for president that he would “take away AR-15s and AK-47s,” O’Rourke attempted a hard about-face.
“I’m not interested in taking anything from anyone,” he said. “What I want to make sure that we do is defend the Second Amendment. I want to make sure that we protect our fellow Texans far better than we’re doing right now. And that we listen to law enforcement, which Greg Abbott refused to do. He turned his back on them when he signed that permitless-carry bill that endangers the lives of law enforcement in a state that’s seen more cops and sheriff’s deputies gunned down than in any other.”
As Charlie Cooke has noted, this is utter tripe. It also isn’t working. The latest poll of the race from the Dallas Moring News has Abbott up by seven points, 45 percent to 38 percent. O’Rourke himself remains underwater with voters: Only 40 percent view him favorably, while 46 percent say they have an unfavorable view of the candidate.
Republicans win a Jacksonville City Council race:
It's a citywide race, and this result will more or less match the average partisanship of the city for the past decade or so. But this was a Dem-held seat, and losing it in this fashion has to hurt the local party. And doesn't portend well in other races.
Kyle Rittenhouse is finally ready to sue, including lawsuits against Whoopi Goldberg and Cenk Uygur. I hope he bankrupts anyone who called him a white supremacist.
Former Houston Rockets draft bust Royce White is running for Congress as a Republican against “Squad” member Ilhan Omar. Hopefully he can be on the campaign trail more than he was on the floor for the Rockets…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Google again, this time over location tracking.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Google for harvesting the location data of its users, claiming the practice violates the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (TDTPA).
“This most recent Google lawsuit argues that the company misled Texas consumers by continuing to track their personal location even when the user thought he or she had disabled it from doing so. Google then uses the deceptively gathered data to push advertisements to the consumer, earning the Big Tech company enormous profits,” Paxton’s office stated in a press release issued Monday morning.
The Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act is a law that requires businesses in Texas to truthfully represent their products and ownership to consumers. By misleadingly implying to users that they can stop location tracking, Paxton claims Google violated the section of the law that bans businesses from withholding information that might prevent consumers from using their product.
“Google has systematically misled, deceived, and withheld material facts from users in Texas about how their location is tracked and used and how to stop Google from monetizing their movements,” the lawsuit claims.
“[While] many Texans may reasonably believe they have disabled the tracking of their location, the reality is that Google has been hard at work behind the scenes logging their movements in a data store Google calls ‘Footprints.’ But while footprints generally fade, Google ensures that the location information it stores about Texans is not so easily erased.”
The lawsuit claims that the sheer prevalence of Google technology makes the company’s data collection all the more effective, complete, and specific. Paxton argues that location data alone allows the company to create a “unique mosaic” of each user with information like health status and religious affiliation inferred from travel habits.
This is a good time to remind you that if Google or Facebook has your email address or phone number (and they do), they have all your personal information and can track you no matter how many cookies or location tracking controls you turn off. And it’s not just them: Any of their advertising partners that has your email or phone number can link you to your Google and/or Facebook profile. So any time you enter your email to, say, use Wi-Fi at a venue, it’s a good bet they automatically have access to all the ad profile information Google and Facebook have gathered on you. And I suspect this information is tied to your phone in various ways, cookies or no cookies.
Since the City of Austin is still refusing to enforce the will of voters when it comes to clearing out illegal camps of drug-addicted transients, Save Austin Now and several business owners have filed lawsuits against the city:
Two lawsuits were filed in Travis County District Court this week alleging that the City of Austin has failed to enforce the public camping ban that was reinstated back in May.
Austin voters approved the reinstatement by a wide margin after the activist group Save Austin Now collected 26,000 signatures in 50 days to place it on the ballot. Rather than implement the camping ban immediately, the city council decided to move toward a phased re-enforcement over the course of four months.
The fourth phase, begun earlier this month, was the first during which illegal campers that refused to move could be arrested. At the time of its start, numbers released by the city showed 572 warnings and 24 citations had been issued. No citations have been issued since July 20.
Since Phase 4’s beginning, some larger camps have been cleared out, but tents and encampments remain scattered throughout the city.
“That refusal leaves voters and residents of the City in the same position as they were before the ban was reinstated,” reads the first lawsuit filed by Save Austin Now co-founders Matt Mackowiak and Cleo Petricek.
The other lawsuit — filed by Headspace Salon and Co-op owner Laura North, Balance Dance Studio owner Stuart Dupuy, Dairy Queen franchisee Robert Mayfield, and Buckshot Bar owner Bob Woody — say the city’s actions have “resulted in severe business disruption.”
“[The business owners] have incurred substantial expenses to protect their property, their customers, and their clients,” it adds further.
Those businesses are requesting at most $100,000 in monetary relief along with full enforcement of the ban.
In his legal statement, Mayfield says he’s had to hire off-duty police officers as security for the establishments — to the tune of $72,000 per store per year.
I think Mayfield actually owns more Dairy Queens in the Austin area. But the two stores mentioned in the lawsuit filing are at 8728 North Lamar and 5900 Manor. Says Mayfield:
The problem is bad with homeless coming in to use the rest room and nothing more, hanging around the parking lot bothering customers, asking for money, and making DQ not a desirable place to visit. We have to run them off or real customers would not come in to the store. We have had customers harassed while in line at the drive up window.
Perhaps worst of all, it is costing us in the neighborhood of 572,000 per year, PER STORE, paid to off duty police, to keep these stores clean and inviting so that customers will visit us. Having off duty police has helped us a lot and sales are good, but at a cost that we should not have to bear. Try swallowing $140,000 per year and see what it does.
Perhaps people upset with the Austin City Council’s refusal to enforce the camping ban can organize a buycott of his Dairy Queens.
Youth Dance studio owner Stuart Dupuy had this to say about the huge problems caused by Austin’s refusal to enforce the law:
On our security cameras, we started seeing more people come up to our building at night. Someone broke through the roof, stole the cash register, and smashed the glass door on their way out. Someone stole a catalytic converter from one of our vans. We’ve been broken into three times in the past 18 months. At least once a week, we now see people park in our parking lot, and we watch a constant stream of people come up to their car from the Greenbelt or from under the overpass.
People were bathing in our exterior faucet, between our buildings. We kept putting locks on the faucets, which they would break off. Eventually we just removed the handle completely. One time a lady was bathing, while kids were there, and I asked her to leave and she started screaming at me telling me that I was going to go to Hell.
These people, ordinary Austin taxpayers and business owners, don’t seem to figure in City Council decisions at all. Only the drug-addicted transients, and the left-wing activists of the Homeless Industrial Complex who profit off them, seem to count.
One thing about these lawsuits: Discovery is going to be lit…
“Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”
– Matthew 6:27
It’s Thursday morning and the Presidential race is still up in the air. I would probably worry more about it if I hadn’t been suffering from such sleep deprivation last night. So instead, I achieved the sort of zen calm that comes over you after you’ve depleted all those neurotransmitters and neuroeptides necessary for you to worry. And I have other worries ahead of national elections right now.
Are Democrats in the process of stealing the 2020 Presidential race by carrying out massive voter fraud in a few key battleground states?
Some evidence:
So in this batch 23,277 philly votes were counted and not a single ballot among them for Donald Trump? https://t.co/eUBsX6fMRU
These are some astounding absentee voting results.
Joe Biden is +57.7 in PA and +37.9 in MI, compared to being up only single digits in absentee voting in most other battleground states. WI is not reported, but would be interesting. Source is NYT. pic.twitter.com/DPRiJpj3mz
My wife just sent this video of Detroit election workers cheering every time a @migop attorney is removed from the TCF Center, where absentee ballot counting is happening. She says they do this every time they eject a GOP poll watcher & that Dem watchers outnumber GOP 3:1. pic.twitter.com/Sx1aHCoChY
Translation: North Carolina is refusing to concede the state to Donald Trump. Will keep the state in play with the perfect margin of dead people ballots on standby. https://t.co/x65bTV15m4
Foreign interference in our elections? We are actually experiencing it. Since reporting on video showing suspicious activity at a Detroit vote-counting center, @TexasScorecard’s website has been attacked by computers in China, Vietnam, Indonesia, & Korea. #StopTheSteal
Then there’s the county where Biden and Trump numbers were briefly transposed. It’s entirely possible that was just an error.
Obviously, this is going to end up in courts. In fact, legal action is already underway:
“Supreme Court orders Pennsylvania Democrats to respond in ballot dispute.” “President Trump has moved to intervene in a lawsuit brought by Pennsylvania Republicans, arguing the state’s Democratic Party and Secretary of State violated the law by extending the time for counting mail-in ballots to Nov. 6 at 5 p.m., despite the state legislature setting the deadline as Election Day.”
In addition to that, the campaign has filed a lawsuit in Georgia, and is demanding a recount in Wisconsin.
This post was going to have some insightful commentary on possible paths for various Trump/Biden win/lose scenarios, but I don’t have time to get to it right now. And after 9 hours of sleep, I still feel tired…
The Washington Post reports that The Democratic National Committee filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit Friday against the Russian government, the Trump campaign and the WikiLeaks organization alleging a far-reaching conspiracy to disrupt the 2016 campaign and tilt the election to Donald Trump.
The lawsuit alleges that in addition to the Russian Federation, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Wikileaks and Guccifer 2.0, top Trump campaign officials, including Donald Trump Jr, Roger Stone, Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and pretty much everyone else who has been mentioned in the same paragraph as Trump….
ZeroHedge also swipes this swell graphic to make his point:
This move reeks of desperation. The Mueller campaign is getting nowhere fast, the RNC fundraising numbers continue to set records, while the DNC recently took out another $2 million loan to keep the lights on, despite all the anti-Trump fervor. With the economy humming along, and both job numbers and trumps own poll numbers up, the posited “blue tsunami” in November is looking more and more like a ripple. The lawsuit looks like a last-ditch effort to keep their base fired up until then.
Just think of all the discovery Donald Trump’s legal team will be able to compel from Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, Debbie Wassermann-Schultz, all the DNC staffers who colluded to screw Bernie Sanders, etc.
This has all the hallmarks of a publicity stunt that will backfire badly.
A Harris County jury on Tuesday awarded a Houston commercial cleaning firm $5.3 million in damages, finding that a labor union’s aggressive organizing campaign went too far when it maligned the reputation of the company. It opens the door for more employers to sue unions over hardball tactics often used in membership drives and contract disputes.
The jury, by a 10-2 vote, found for Professional Janitorial Service in a suit the company brought nine years ago against the Service Employees International Union, which targeted the company as part of its “Justice for Janitors” organizing campaign and wrongly claimed Professional Janitorial Service had violated wage, overtime and other labor laws.
The case was the first time that a jury has found against a union in a business defamation or disparagement case, according to a search of legal records by the company’s law firm, AZA of Houston.
“The jury found what PJS and its employees have known for more than a decade,” Brent Southwell, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement. “The SEIU is a corrupt organization that is rotten to its core.”
Snip.
The trial, which lasted four weeks, represented the first time the SEIU, which has nearly 2 million members nationwide, has had to defend its tactics in front to a jury. Other cases, including a federal racketeering lawsuit filed by the international food, maintenance and cleaning company Sodexo in 2011, were settled before they ever got before a jury.
One of the tactics many unions use to access potential members is “salting,” and the SEIU is no exception. Salting is the tactic of sending a union-affiliate to a targeted employer to apply for, and then accept a position working for the company. Since unions are often prohibited from contacting employees at work, salts do it for them.
Two of the salts used against PJS were Adriana Menchu and Eleanor Parada; both have been reoccurring figures during the SEIU trial.
The union used Menchu’s name in various campaigns, lawsuits, and fliers. In one flier she was quoted saying, “They don’t give us gloves or masks to clean. I know a woman who brings her own cleaning supplies from home just so she can protect her health.” Which PJS refuted with their longstanding policy prohibiting the use of any outside cleaning agents unless supplied by the company.
SEIU fliers claimed that PJS failed to pay Menchu for hours worked, but internal union emails contradicted that statement saying that PJS was trying to “buy” Menchu off by giving her a raise. More evidence that they knew the information they were releasing was false.
One press release read, “Mostly immigrant janitors were instructed to work ‘off-the-clock’ and had pay withheld by the city’s largest locally-based cleaning company, Professional Janitorial Service (PJS), according to a new lawsuit filed today.”
Never revealing that SEIU was the party behind the lawsuit, or that the union planted the “janitors” they were referring to.
Parada was another salt frequently used in lawsuits, and was quoted in an SEIU press release about the unfair labor practice suit they filed saying, “We work hard, but PJS thinks they can treat us however they want…That’s why PJS janitors are taking a stand today – so we can have some basic protections.”
It’s worth noting that until the SEIU came to Houston to unionize janitors PJS had never faced labor violation allegations, had not been investigated by the Department of Labor or National Labor Relations Board, and had not had unfair labor practice lawsuits filed against them. Also, out of the 20 ULPs the union filed against PJS, 19 were dismissed with the last being rectified by simply having the employer post safety signs in the workplace.
A jury sided with ex-pro wrestler Hulk Hogan on Friday and awarded him $115 million in his sex tape lawsuit against Gawker Media.
The jurors reached the decision Friday evening, less than six hours after they began deliberations. The trial lasted two weeks.
Earlier Friday, in spirited closing arguments, lawyers for Hogan and Gawker discussed themes of personal life versus celebrity, and freedom of speech versus the right to privacy.
Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, sued Gawker for $100 million for posting a video of him having sex with his former best friend’s wife. Hogan contended the 2012 post violated his privacy.
Hogan’s attorneys told jurors this is the core of the case: “Gawker took a secretly recorded sex tape and put it on the Internet.”
Are there circumstances where a secretly recorded sex tape is of legitimate news interest? Sure! Say, if it’s a President sleeping with his intern, a famous anti-gay crusader having sex with a man, or a Department of Defense official in bed with a member of the KGB. The Hulk Hogan sex tape did not even remotely rise to that level of newsworthiness.
The problem with Gawker proving an absence of malice is that Gawker is malice all the way down…
Former Lt. Governor David Dewhurst has settled his lawsuit against Houston oilman Michael Looney, who evidently received money embezzled by Dewhurst campaign adviser Kenneth “Buddy” Barfield:
Former Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the once powerful Republican who was bilked by an adviser for at least $2.8 million, has settled a lawsuit against a Houston oilman who used a chunk of the stolen money to invest in a new business.
The out-of-court settlement ends years of litigation by the three-term ex-lieutenant governor aimed at recouping funds embezzled from two campaign accounts by former adviser Kenneth “Buddy” Barfield, a Dewhurst spokesman said.
Once a trusted consultant to one of Texas’ wealthiest politicians, Barfield was sentenced in February to more than seven years in federal prison for orchestrating a complex money funneling scheme in which he falsified records, bank statements, invoices and campaign finance reports.
Dewhurst filed a civil lawsuit against Barfield in 2013 to get some of the money back. That lawsuit was settled when Barfield signed over his multi-million dollar West Austin home as part of the agreement.
However, Dewhurst’s lawyers also set their sights on Houston businessman Michael Looney, who partnered with Barfield and, according to court documents, received “several hundred thousand dollars” of stolen Dewhurst money.
The funds, according to the lawsuit, were used to start a new oil and gas business co-owned by Looney and Barfield that would make use of valuable seismic data under license from ExxonMobil.
Dewhurst’s lawsuit was asking for an award of one-half interest in the seismic data and the new company. The exact value of the data was not released, but Looney’s lawyers said in a filing that Barfield “stood to make millions and millions of dollars” if the deal went through.
The terms of the lawsuit settlement were not disclosed.
