President Trump (and parents) rack up Supreme Court wins, more Iran nuke damage assessments, a whole lot of Democrats want to die on the hill of taxpayer subsidies for mutilating your children, and some fast cars. Plus a weird assortment of violent lunatics.
The Supreme Court on Friday handed the Trump administration a win by limiting the ability of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions blocking the president’s agenda.
The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in Trump v. Casa, siding with the Trump administration’s challenge to the scope of nationwide injunctions issued against Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order. The Court did not, however, weigh-in on the legality of the birthright-citizenship order itself.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion, finding that universal injunctions exceed the authority Congress has given to federal courts. Barrett was joined by the Court’s five other conservative justices.
The High Court ruled that lower courts cannot prevent the federal government from enforcing its policies against nonparties to the specific case they’re ruling on. For the time being, the justices have partially halted the nationwide injunctions against Trump’s executive order. They halted the injunctions in areas where their authority is too broad and prevent the executive branch from developing public guidance related to Trump’s executive order.
They punted on birthright citizenship, but a win is a win, and hopefully lower courts will now stop trying to reimport convicted and deported illegal alien felons.
Suchomimus has clear satellite images of the damage Operation Midnight Hammer did to the Isfahan and Natanz nuclear complexes.
UN Nuclear Watchdog Chief: ‘Night and Day’ Difference Between Iran’s Nuclear Capabilities Before and After US Strikes. ‘It is clear that there is one Iran—before June 13, nuclear Iran—and one now,’ says IAEA’s Rafael Grossi.
The U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities set back the Islamic Republic’s program “significantly,” the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog organization said Tuesday.
“I think the Iranian nuclear program has been set back significantly, significantly,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Rafael Grossi said in a Fox News interview. He noted that “it is clear that there is one Iran—before June 13, nuclear Iran—and one now,” describing the difference as “night and day.”
Just before the Tuesday afternoon interview, the IAEA revealed that it detected “extensive damage at several nuclear sites in Iran, including its uranium conversion and enrichment facilities.” That damage caused a radioactive release, according to the organization.
“Our assessment is that there has been some localized radioactive as well as chemical release inside the affected facilities that contained nuclear material—mainly uranium enriched to varying degrees—but there has been no report of increased off-site radiation levels,” Grossi said in the IAEA statement. The organization observed “two impact holes from the U.S. strikes” at Iran’s Natanz enrichment site above “the underground halls that had been used for enrichment as well as for storage,” according to the statement, in which Grossi also said he saw “extensive damage at several nuclear sites in Iran, including its uranium conversion and enrichment facilities.”
After a week’s worth of pounding from the Israel Defense Forces, the Iranian regime was disoriented and defenseless, helplessly exposed to Israeli and American air superiority, like a turtle flipped on its shell and baking underneath the pitiless desert sun. Now was the time to finish the job, not two weeks from now, after (what was left of) the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command structure had time to regroup.
So we finished the job. It was the right thing to do. In fact, I will go further than that: If Donald Trump’s finest moment as a politician is forever destined to be that dark day when he arose bleeding from an assassin’s bullet to throw a reassuringly defiant fist to a terrified crowd, then there is good reason to think that Saturday will ultimately rank second. Not because of any one image or moment from the day’s events — although Trump’s charmingly direct invocation of the Creator at the end of his press conference (“I just want to say, we love you, God,”) has immediately entered my bedtime prayer rotation — but because of the foreign policy legacy it has the potential to represent.
I operate by rather simple logic, myself. The Iranian regime — whose unofficial motto is “Death to America,” and which openly calls for the destruction of Israel, our sole true ally in the region — seeks a nuclear weapon to achieve this goal. I have yet to see anyone other than Ben Rhodes, or those quietly receiving funding from Qatar, argue that Iran should be allowed to acquire or build one. That point having been settled, the question then turns to what cost would be worth paying in order to prevent such a thing from happening.
If the price is merely a few bombs from a B-2, then the question is easily answered. Iran’s nuclear program has either been destroyed permanently or set back decades. The mullahs are very upset, as one imagines murderous religious fanatics tend to be, but also seemingly powerless to do much more than cause a temporary economic ruction by laying mines across the Strait of Hormuz. (Note: In a late-breaking development after this piece had gone to press, Trump announced last night that he had in fact brokered a cease-fire between Iran and Israel.)
This is an unalloyed victory for the forces of sanity and civilization. To those who point to the inevitability of unforeseen “blowback,” I will remind you that Iran and its proxies have been engaging in low-level conflict with America for well over a decade now — who do you think was funding and training the people killing our boys in Iraq and Afghanistan all those years? — and now it is free to try its hand at more of the same, if it wishes, this time without a looming nuclear threat to back it up. America has come out ahead on this in concrete, measurable, and hugely valuable geostrategic ways.
Most importantly of all, none of this would have happened if Kamala Harris were president. Think about that for a moment; think about the road not taken. One can only speculate about hypotheticals, but . . . c’mon now. Look into your heart, you know it to be true. Imagine a President Harris, sitting uneasily atop a Democratic coalition barely held together at the seams: Would she have encouraged Netanyahu in his initial campaign against Iranian military and nuclear assets? Would she have provided the final air support and ordnance necessary to get the job done? With people such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, David Hogg, and Zohran Mamdani calling the shots among large segments of her base?
To ask the question out loud is to answer it: no. For that reason alone, it is no exaggeration to say that the shape of the world perceptibly turned for the better on the outcome of last November’s election. You can draw a straight line between Donald Trump’s winning the 2024 race and Iran’s nuclear weapons program now being best described as a series of variably sized craters. If you supported Donald Trump and voted for him in 2024, you should feel proud of it today: Saturday is the most obvious evidence yet of why your vote mattered.
It is hard even to digest the incredible train of events of the last few days in the Middle East.
Iran had been reduced to an anemic, performance-art missile attack on our base in Qatar—the last Parthian shot from a terrified regime, desperate for an out—and a ceasefire.
Iran would have been better off not launching such a ceremonial but ultimately humiliating proof of impotence.
Even worse for the theocracy, Iran’s temporary reprieve came from the now magnanimous but still hated Donald Trump.
So ends the creepy mystique of the supposedly indomitable terror state of Iran, the bane of the last seven American presidents over half a century.
For Supreme Leader Khamenei, it was hard to swallow that U.S. bombers got their permission to fly into Iranian airspace from the Israeli air force.
A good simile is that Trump put a pot of water on the stove, told Iran to jump in, put the lid over them, then smiled, turned up the heat—and will now let them stew.
As postbellum realities now simmer in Iran, the theocracy is left explaining the inexplicable to its humiliated military and shocked but soon-to-be-furious populace. All the regime’s blood-curdling rhetoric, apocalyptic threats against Israel, goose-stepping thugs, and shiny new missiles ended in less than nothing.
A trillion dollars and five decades’ worth of missiles and centrifuges are now up in smoke. That money might have otherwise saved Iranians from the impoverishment of the last fifty years.
How about the little Satan Israel, to which Iran for nearly 50 years promised extinction?
Israel had destroyed Iran’s expeditionary terrorists, Iran’s defenses, its nuclear viability, and the absurd mythology of Iranian military competence. And worse, Israel showed it could repeat all that destruction when and if it is necessary.
So, the most hated regime in the world crawled into the boiling pot because it looked around in vain for someone to void Trump’s ultimatum for a cease and desist.
But there were no last-minute saviors to rescue them.
The dreaded decades-long Iranian nuclear threat?
It is either gone for now, or if it resurfaces, it will be again far easier to vaporize at will than to rebuild a lost trillion-dollar investment.
Russia? Its former Obama-Kerry re-invitation back into the Middle East lasted only a decade.
It will now cut its losses like it did with the vanished Assad kleptocracy in Syria. Putin exits the Middle East not entirely displeased that his lunatic Iranian client did not get a bomb—but did get its just desserts. A tense Middle East tends to prop up Russian export oil prices.
Did China come to the mullahs’ aid?
No, they were not shy about ordering their Iranian lackey to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, through which 50 percent of Chinese-purchased oil passes.
For President Xi, the Iranians are treated as little more than Uyghurs with oil.
The world decided that it was tired of a half-century of crybully terrorism, empty nuke threats, mindless mobs screaming scripted banalities, cowardly murdering, and medieval theocrats threatening the general peace.
So, the world turned its back on Iran. And with a wink and nod, it let Israel and the U.S. do what they must.
We recently learned of a previously concealed tranche of documents likely to shed new light on the past decade of American political controversies. This potentially earth-shaking information is known as “Prohibited Access.”
It was only recently discovered that the FBI’s information system, called Sentinel, had a level of access previously unknown to anyone outside the Bureau and known only to a select few inside. In essence, this was a concealed cache used to hide documents the FBI wanted hidden from discovery.
There is one part of the Sentinel system that is devoted to classified and confidential information, termed “Restricted Access.”
It turns out there is a higher, more secretive level called “Prohibited Access.” To any outside observer or investigator, it would appear that there was no record of Prohibited Access information, even though the existence of Restricted Access documents would be shown.
Accordingly, when prosecutors like John Durham or investigators such as Congressman James Comer were investigating various potential misdeeds, they would not have learned of the existence of documents relevant to their investigation that were kept in Prohibited Access.
Although it remains unclear, there is reasonable suspicion that even FBI Inspector General Michael Horowitz was not aware of this document cache. Alternatively, Horowitz may have known about it but also may have agreed to keep its existence secret, a dismaying possibility for one charged with enlightening Congress and the public.
Logic tells us that, broadly, there could be only two related purposes for this concealed tranche because it prevents those investigating the FBI or its favored parties from even knowing about the existence of the documents; such suggests concealment of information inculpatory to the senior levels of the FBI and/or its favored politicians, as well as exculpatory information about the targets of its biased investigations.
If, by way of a wild hypothetical example, James Comey and Andrew McCabe broke laws to make an innocent Donald Trump appear guilty of “Russian Collusion,” they would not wish a trail of their ugly misconduct to see the light of day, nor reveal proof of Trump’s innocence.
Pam Bondi and Kash Patel should shine a lot of disinfecting sunlight here.
Winning: “Supreme Court Allows States to Cut Off Medicaid Funding to Planned Parenthood.”
The Supreme Court is allowing South Carolina to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood, a win for pro-lifers that will likely clear the way for red states across the country to stop taxpayer dollars from funding abortion.
The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines Thursday to permit South Carolina to cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion for the Court, siding with the state against a private challenge brought by the abortion provider and a patient.
The plaintiffs in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic argued that Medicaid patients should be free to sue in order to choose their own health-care providers, while the state claimed they lacked the right to sue.
“By rejecting Planned Parenthood’s lawfare, the Court not only saves countless unborn babies from a violent death and their mothers from dangerously shoddy ‘care,’ it also protects Medicaid from exposure to thousands of lawsuits from unqualified providers that would jeopardize the entire program,” said Katie Daniel, director of legal affairs at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
The 1965 Medicaid Act grants patients the ability to choose a willing and qualified provider. Medina dealt with whether patients have the right to sue to go to their preferred provider and whether Planned Parenthood qualified as a provider. Planned Parenthood operates two clinics in the state and argued the case was about healthcare access, not abortion.
South Carolina stopped allowing Planned Parenthood to participate in its Medicaid program in 2018 because of state law barring the public funding of abortion. The move was immediately blocked in court in response to a challenge brought by Julie Edwards, a South Carolina woman who claimed she preferred Planned Parenthood for gynecological care and needed Medicaid coverage.
“States should be free to fund real, comprehensive care and exclude organizations like Planned Parenthood that profit off abortion and distribute dangerous gender-transition drugs to minors,” said Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel John Bursch. The Alliance Defending Freedom represented the South Carolina Department of Health in the case.
Abortion is not “woman’s health care” and should not be treated as such.
SB 12 includes a prohibition on schools assisting in the “social transitioning” of students and also restricts the instruction of “sexual orientation or gender identity,” while providing that it does not “limit a student’s ability to engage in speech or expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment … that does not result in material disruption to school activities.”
In a press release Monday, the ACLU of Texas, along with Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT), called SB 12 “one of the most extreme education bans in the country.”
“This ban on education harms Texas schools by shutting down important discussions and programs that mention race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation,” Brian Klosterboer, senior staff attorney for ACLU Texas, stated in the press release.
“Students should be free to learn about themselves and the world around them, but S.B. 12 aims to punish kids for being who they are and ban teachers from supporting them.”
Another Supreme Court win: “Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Maryland Parents in Challenge to Mandatory LGBTQ Curriculum.” Which part of “Get your groomer hands off children” was unclear?
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement recently carried out a multi-state operation targeting eleven Iranian nationals in the U.S. illegally as the threat of Iranian terror cells attacking the U.S. intensifies.
Over the last 48 hours, federal agents arrested the eleven Iranians and a U.S. citizen who harbored an illegal immigrant from Iran, a Department of Homeland Security official told NR.
“Under Secretary Noem, DHS has been full throttle on identifying and arresting known or suspected terrorists and violent extremists that illegally entered this country, came in through Biden’s fraudulent parole programs or otherwise,” DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
“We have been saying we are getting the worst of the worst out—and we are. We don’t wait until a military operation to execute; we proactively deliver on President Trump’s mandate to secure the homeland.”
ICE agents arrested former Iranian army sniper Ribvar Karimi in Alabama on June 22. Karimi possessed an Iran army identification card upon his arrest and is currently being held in ICE custody. He entered the U.S. in October 2024 under a K-1 marriage visa but never updated his immigration status.
In Houston, ICE agents arrested Behzad Sepehrian Bahary Nejad, an illegal alien who was armed with a loaded pistol at the time of his arrest. Nejad was previously arrested in August 2017 for assaulting a family member and had a final order of removal prior to his latest arrest. Also in Houston, ICE arrested Hamid Reza Bayat, who a judge had ordered removed from the U.S. 20 years ago. Bayat was convicted twice on drug charges and again for driving with a suspended license.
In Tempe, Arizona, where they nabbed Mehrzad Asadi Eidivand, an Iranian convicted of threatening a law enforcement officer and possessing a firearm as an illegal alien, and U.S. citizen Linet Vartaniann for threatening law enforcement and harboring Eidvand. The pair were arrested after ICE obtained a search warrant and they now face federal charges.
Likewise, ICE arrested two Iranian nationals living together in Colorado Springs, Mahmoud Shafiei and Mehrdad Mehdipour. Shafiei was ordered removed decades ago and has criminal convictions related to drug crimes, and arrests for assault and child abuse. Border patrol encountered Mehdipour in June 2023 and processed him for expedited removal. Both are now in ICE custody as they undergo removal proceedings.
Another Iranian national ICE nabbed is Mehran Makari Saheli, a former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps who was located in St. Paul, Minnesota. Sahei was previously convicted for being a felon in possession of the firearm and was illegally staying in the U.S. after a judge ordered him removed in 2022.
ICE agents arrested several other Iranian nationals in numerous other states and localities, almost all of whom had criminal convictions for various offenses and are now in federal custody.
How many Democrat district judges had decisions half-written forbidding deportations when the Supreme Court decision came down?
Moderate Democrats, business leaders, and Republicans — concerned about the prospect of a Mayor Zohran Mamdani — are plotting ways to keep the Democratic Socialist out of Gracie Mansion.
Shocked by the 33-year-old state assemblyman’s upset win in the Democratic mayoral primary last night against a former New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, these Cuomo backers, reluctant Cuomo backers, independents, and Republicans say the only way to beat Mr. Mamdani is to all back one candidate.
“The horse they’re going to back is Eric Adams,” a grocery store magnate and former Republican candidate for New York City mayor, Jon Catsimatidis, tells The New York Sun. “He is backed by the White House, by Washington, and he’ll make sure crime is cleaned up.”
When asked what that means for the Republican nominee for mayor, Curtis Sliwa, whom Mr. Catsimatidis employed at his radio station, the billionaire replied, “He’ll clean up the crime.”
Mr. Catsimatidis ended the call. He didn’t respond to a text asking if he is personally planning to back Mr. Adams. He said to tune into his radio show this evening.
Mr. Catsimatidis told the press earlier this month that he may sell his grocery store empire or move his business out of the city if Mr. Mamdani becomes mayor.
Always with the trannies: “Zohran Mamdani Wants To Spend $65 Million on Medical Gender Treatments for Minors and Adults.”
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist candidate for New York City mayor, has quietly proposed channeling tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to pay for medical gender-transition treatments for residents of all ages – including for minors. This city spending would counteract the sustained assault on these medical interventions – coming from the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans – which threatens treatment programs even within blue cities and states.
The controversial method of providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sometimes gender-transition surgeries — such as breast removal — to minors in particular is now at the apex of the culture wars. It has also become a flashpoint in Democrats’ battle to redefine themselves in the wake of their brutal losses in the November election.
Authorities in Austin, Texas, have arrested Brian Johnson, known online as the social media influencer “Liver King,” according to jail records.
He faces one charge of terroristic threat, a Class B misdemeanor.
Snip.
The so-called Liver King rose to viral fame with social media posts depicting a barbarian-like “ancestral lifestyle,” including the consumption of raw animal organs, as depicted in the recent Netflix documentary “Untold: The Liver King.”
His persona and the story behind the physique fell apart in December 2022, however, when he admitted in a YouTube video to using steroids.
Speaking of crazy, violent lunatics: “51-year-old Adam Christopher Sheafe has now confessed to crucifying and killing Pastor William Schonemann in Phoenix in the early hours of Easter Sunday, 2025.”
“U.S. Department of Justice Closes Investigation into Muslim-Centric EPIC City, No Charges Filed.” As I’ve mentioned before, while investigation was certainly warranted, right now EPIC City looks more like a failed speculative real estate venture than an actual Muslim city in the offing, especially now that the developers have sworn up and down that they won’t discriminate against buyers based on religion. Awful nice of them to agree to obey the law…
This is breach of contract action against Mr. Biden for unpaid legal fees,” reads the complaint filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia by Winston & Strawn LLP – which notes that the 55-year-old bagman-in-chief hired the firm “to represent him in several complex matters, including criminal trial in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware,” and that the firm provided him “with extensive legal services in those matters which generated a substantial amount of fees.”
According to the law firm, Hunter has dodged “repeated” efforts to collect those fees.
“Morrissey cancels Stockholm show, saying he and band are ‘travel-weary beyond belief’, citing “’bsolutely zero music industry support’ for full Scandinavia tour.”
“No label will release our music, no radio will play our music … and yet our ticket sales are sensational. What does this tell us about the state of Art in 2025?”
Last year, he said he had bought back the rights back to the album, as well as his 2014 record ‘World Peace Is None Of Your Business’. He later told Medium that “there are two albums” that he has completed but is unable to release, the other being ‘Without Music, The World Dies’.
“The second one was re-recorded in France in late 2023, and given a new title. We scrapped half of the tracks and we recorded six new ones, and so it is not the album from the beginning of 2023.”
He added: “Labels say that they are both fantastic high-quality pop albums but they say that they can’t release them because they don’t want the wrath of The Guardian making their lives hell. The harassment campaign against me by The Guardian is worldwide knowledge now, and it is effective in the sense that labels do not want to become involved with this Gotcha! Journalism.”
Evidently Morrissey figured out that unlimited, unassimilated Muslim immigration to the UK was a bad idea way back in 2019. Obviously The Guardian must punish him for his #wrongthink.
I’m not a Morrissey fan, and a significant percentage of my impression of him is everyone from MST3K to Mojo Nixon making fun of him. I can certainly see a musician cancelling a show due to exhaustion, and Morrissey is no spring chicken. But as for “zero music industry support,” dude, it’s 2025. Major labels don’t support anyone unless they can own your entire output, or at least get their sticky fingers into every possible revenue stream. Just pay to have your own CDs pressed and sell them at your (evidently successful) shows.
A full scale ground war may or may not be developing in Gaza, the Biden recession claims bank branches, California declares itself a “child molesters across from schools” friendly zone, and lots of criminals making very poor decisions. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
There was also a screening today for reporters of footage of the atrocities carried out by the organization so many college lefties are cheering for.
I joined about 20 other journalists in a 14th-floor Manhattan conference room to watch the horrific video, which includes footage and images from a range of sources — such as cameras that Hamas attackers wore, dash cams, traffic cameras, and the phones of terrorists, their victims, and first responders — providing evidence of the crimes that Hamas carried out in Israel this month. The footage shows gagged and bound civilians burnt to an unidentifiable crisp; the casual and summary execution of people, including children, cowering under desks in the dark as they hide from terrorists wearing headlamps; the grisly decapitation of a Thai worker already bleeding from the stomach by a terrorist using a garden hoe; and other horrors.
In Gaza, by contrast, there are no visible military facilities, while Hamas fighters can shed their fashionable black outfits and dress like civilians. This will not, however, frustrate the Israeli offensive, which still has fixed, immovable targets. These are the deep tunnels — too deep for aerial bombing — that Hamas has been excavating and lining in concrete for more than 10 years, using construction equipment and vast quantities of cement donated by different governments and international organisations “to house refugees”. As a result, Gaza’s refugee “camps” do not contain a single tent. Instead, they are home to a forest of high-rise apartments, which is undoubtedly a good thing, except for the fact that both machines and cement were also diverted for tunnelling on the largest scale.
These tunnels house relatively sophisticated rocket-assembly lines, motor-assembly works, sheet metal and explosives’ stores, and warhead-fabrication workshops. More tunnels house Hamas command posts and its ordnance stores of small arms, mortars and rockets. Even deeper tunnels house its leaders’ lodgings and headquarters. Finally, there are the exfiltration tunnels, though there is no sign that they were used in the October 7 attacks, perhaps because their exits had been detected and blocked long before.
When Israel’s forces enter Gaza, they will engage any enemies who resist them, but they will not go looking for them. Their task is to escort combat engineers to their job sites — the camouflaged places from which tunnels can be accessed. How do they know where these entry points are? While Israel’s aerostats with cameras, satellite photography and the pictures generated by radar returns cannot reveal tunnels, they have been used to monitor where cement-mixer trucks have stopped over the years. They cannot pinpoint tunnel entrances by doing so, but they can at least identify places worth exploring with low-frequency, earth-penetrating radars or simple probes.
The obvious danger here is that, even before the escorting troops and combat engineers descend underground to fight off Hamas’s guards and place their demolition charges, they will keep losing casualties to snipers and mortar bombs on their way to the sites.
To minimise the danger, however, the Israeli army can rely on the most heavily protected armoured vehicle ever developed: the Namer infantry combat vehicle. As well as having significantly more armour than any other combat vehicle anywhere in the world, it uses an active defence weapon to intercept incoming anti-tank missiles and rockets, and also has machine guns to fight off infantry attackers. In urban combat, tank crews firing machine guns from the top of their turrets are desperately vulnerable, but the Namer’s crew remains “buttoned up” inside the vehicle, relying on TV screens to see the outside world and operate their weapons remotely. In 2014, the last time Israeli troops fought in Gaza, most were riding thinly armoured M.113s, which were easily penetrated by RPG anti-tank rockets, with some 60 soldiers killed and hundreds wounded. Not this time.
After they reach the suspected tunnel sites, the Namers will line up to form a perimeter — an improvised fortress — to protect the combat engineers as they go about their task. It is very likely that there will still be skirmishing before, during and after each de-tunnelling operation, with Hamas mortar teams in action, as well as snipers hidden in ruins. Fortunately, the Israelis will have their 70-ton Namers, as well as their post-2014 street-fighting training, to protect them.
And they will need that protection, as dismantling Hamas’s tunnel network will take time: the one certainty in all this is that the planting of demolition charges cannot be done quickly without suffering many fatalities. This means there will be at least two weeks of war in the Gaza strip — and even this optimistically assumes that the entire tunnel system in the evacuated northern part can be cleared in a week, allowing the Israelis to do the same in the southern sector, after evacuating the southerners and sending home the northerners. The Government’s vow to persist until the destruction of Hamas will be tested every day.
During the first week of October alone, U.S. banks closed a whopping 54 local branches…
Major US banks are continuing to close branches across the US, leaving an increasing number of Americans without access to basic financial services.
Bank of America axed 21 branches in the first week of October, according to a bulletin published by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) on Friday.
Wells Fargo shuttered 15, while US Bank and Chase reported closing nine and three respectively.
In total, some 54 locations had either closed or were scheduled to close between October 1 and October 7.
That is just one week!
Of course bank branches have been closing at a frightening pace for quite some time now.
Last year, U.S. banks shut down about 2,000 more branches than they opened.
I do wonder how many of those closed-branches are in crime-happy Soros-backed-DA zones…
Scenes from the decline of law and order in California: “Dude is a sex offender with a loophole that allows him to be near a school and he can set up the ‘free fentanyl’ sign because he doesn’t actually have the drugs on him.” Social Justice Warriors seem to love pedophiles almost as much as radical Muslim terrorists…
“NewsGuard, a company which claims to rate media outlets’ level of ‘trustworthiness’ and therefore has a meaningful influence over ad revenue, has been sued along with the Biden administration by Consortium News, which also named the Pentagon’s Cyber Command for “contracting with NewsGuard to identify, report and abridge the speech of American media organizations that dissent from U.S. official positions on foreign policy.”
Sometimes you start working on a story, only to find out there are too many unknowns to fairly approach it from a blogging angle, or because you run the risk of looking like a complete jackass. Such is the case with this story of APD Chief Data Officer Jonathan Kringen being charged with domestic violence. Kringen is married to Anne Kringen, who seems to have been brought into APD to wage social justice against it in the wake of the “rimagining Austin police” lunacy. “I think it’s fundamentally important to involve the community voice into policing in all spheres, including the academy, and I’ll work to foster a culture of inclusivity that reflects the needs of a city as diverse and exciting as Austin.” “Provide insight into institutionalized racism and explores the underlying causes of inequality as well as tools to address these causes.” No one should be the victim of domestic abuse, but it appears that neither Kringen should be employed by APD.
Trump’s gag order is so extreme that even the ACLU agrees his free speech rights are being infringed.
The truth about Postcolonialism: “We started with Frantz Fanon calling for violent revolution, and ended with Gayatari Spivak trying to use postmodern philosophy to attack western ideas of knowledge…Decolonization for Fanon was replacing all the colonizers with colonized people, using violence (or threats of violence) in order to free colonized people from the shackles of western influence…Decolonization is the systematic destruction of any and all western influence anywhere and everywhere by any means necessary.”
“On Thursday, 32-year-old veteran NYPD Officer Grace Rose Baez was arrested along with 42-year-old Casar Martinez and charged with conspiracy to distribute narcotics and the distribution of narcotics after they allegedly tried to sell large quantities of drugs to a federal informant between Oct. 9 and 29.” Even NYPD frowns on such shenanigans as setting up your own fentanyl distribution network while on duty…
And they say retail workers aren’t ambitious these days: “California Home Depot Employee Arrested For Allegedly Embezzling $1.2 Million.” “She was basically just manipulating the books on how much she was depositing” and would walk away with spare cash. I know theft in California is bad, but I’m pretty sure Home Depot has all those sales computerized, and is going to catch on when you keep coming up short…
Robber: “Stop! Hammertime!” Gun store owner: “Nope!” BLAM!
John Kerry’s commie connection. “Kerry’s latest filing with the Office of Government Ethics shows Teresa Kerry benefits from an investment of at least $1 million in a hedge fund specializing in private partnerships with Chinese government-controlled funds.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The Indictment of Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman for allegedly lying to the FBI has a lot of people grumbling about how long it took prosecutor John Durham to finally come up with an indictment of someone with regard to the Russia collusion hoax. And even then, while Sussman was an important lawyer at an important Democrat operative law firm, his indictment has a “that’s it?” feel to it.
But, the 27-page Indictment is a wealth of information, and hopefully a roadmap to wider and more substantial prosecutions (you can’t take my hope away!). What the indictment demonstrates is that the Russia collusion claim leveled against Donald Trump and the Trump campaign was a fabrication of Hillary Clinton operatives who peddled the fraud to the media and FBI, allowing Clinton to use the media reports in the campaign against Trump.
Much like the fabricated Steele Dossier, also paid for and arranged by Clinton operatives, Hillary Clinton and Clintonworld perpetrated a massive fraud on the American public which not only manipulated the election process but also froze the Trump presidency and nearly paralyzed the nation politically for years.
We have had some pretty terrible politicians in our lifetime, and it’s always dangerous to say “the worst” — but the Russia collusion hoax fabricated by Hillary Clinton operatives proves beyond little doubt that Hillary Clinton is the most systemically manipulative politician of our lifetime.
Forget the MSM spin: Here’s what the Maricopa County audit really found:
None of the various systems related to elections had numbers that would balance and agree with each other. In some cases, these differences were significant.
There appears to be many ballots cast from individuals who had moved prior to the election.
Files were missing from the Election Management System (EMS) Server.
Ballot images on the EMS were corrupt or missing.
Logs appeared to be intentionally rolled over, and all the data in the database related to the 2020 General Election had been fully cleared.
On the ballot side, batches were not always clearly delineated, duplicated ballots were missing the required serial numbers, originals were duplicated more than once, and the Auditors were never provided Chain‐of‐ Custody documentation for the ballots for the time‐period prior to the ballot’s movement into the Auditors’ care. This all increased the complexity and difficulty in properly auditing the results; and added ambiguity into the final conclusions.
That’s the thing about a Missing White Woman story — the damsel-in-distress angle only works, in terms of TV news ratings, if the missing woman is young and attractive, preferably blonde. Males can and do go missing, but those disappearances never dominate national news. It’s always a woman, and a young, attractive woman — if she’s old, fat or ugly, nobody cares if she goes missing. But the nubile blonde? Oh, yeah, that’s nationwide headline stuff, because she’s Prime Rape Bait, and sex is the secret ingredient in the Missing White Woman story.
Beyond the cynical calculations of ratings-hungry TV news producers, however, what’s really wrong with Missing White Woman Syndrome is not the kind of “social justice” concerns Joy Reid is talking about. No, what’s wrong is that it feeds the public’s distorted ideas about crime.
How many people are murdered in America annually? Nearly 14,000 in 2019, according to the FBI, and about 78% of the victims were male. In terms of statistical risk, then, males were nearly four times more likely to be murdered than women, but how many of those murdered men become national news? Not many. And how many murder victims are white? About 5,800 in 2019 — 42% of the total — whereas blacks were 54% of the total murders. There were 1,759 white women murdered in 2019 — 12.6% of the total, according to the FBI — compared to 6,446 black males, 46.3% of the total. So the death of Gabby Petito was anomalous, a comparative rarity in the overall crime situation in America.
A blonde, blue-eyed “social media influencer” is not typical of murder victims, who are disproportionately male and black. During the month of August, when Gabby and her boyfriend were on their excursion across the West, 87 people were killed and 424 were wounded in Chicago. Did any of those Chicago victims make national news? Well, about 83% of the victims in Chicago were black, and none were blonde, blue-eyed 22-year-old “social media influencers.” Not newsworthy, you see?
The selectivity of the news media in deciding which murders deserve national attention is a sort of bias that most people never notice. Why does the death of one black in police custody become a cause célèbre, while the vast majority of murdered black men — about 125 a week, on average — never get any national media attention? Because the death of George Floyd fit a specific political narrative. And why does the disappearance of a blonde girl with an Instagram account get hourly updates on the cable-news networks? Because it’s a convenient distraction from the disastrous failure of Joe Biden’s presidency.
In fact, there were at least 46 reports of swollen balls (and another 76 of testicular pain) in the VAERS database of adverse reactions.
People who wanted Biden to win to see a “return to normal” are being gravely disappointed:
In traditional Washington fashion, Biden has ignored that message voters sent and delivered the opposite. In less than seven months, we have found that Biden is far from that empathetic persona he has crafted over the years, and we have not returned to anything near normal.
And Biden lies. Not tiny little lies, but ones that affect events that are deeply tragic. Last week, he told leaders in the Jewish community that he visited the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, where 11 people were slaughtered during a service in 2018.
Synagogue officials said he was never there.
One can only guess he said this as an attempt to continue the manufactured empathy he allegedly possesses. Forgetfulness is not an excuse anyone should accept.
Nor is it normal.
In fact, the only thing the Biden presidency has done most effectively is prove that we are not on the path to normality under his administration.
From the uneven overall economy to soaring inflation to the humiliating debacle in Afghanistan, and from Biden’s insistence to spend our money like a drunken sailor to the crisis at the Mexican border that he has blatantly ignored and to how he has politicized the pandemic: None of this is normal, none of this promotes stability, none of this is what an exhausted electorate bargained for.
Over the past 18 months our overall sales have increased as follows:
590% increase in revenue
604% increase in transactions
271% increase in site traffic
77% increase in conversion rate
This data is from February 23, 2020 – August 23, 2021, when compared to the previous 18 months (August 24, 2018 – February 22, 2020).
Leading the way: Texas, with a 736% increase.
9mm was the most popular ammunition just about everywhere, followed by .223 and 5.56 NATO.
“Maspeth High School [NYC] created fake classes, awarded bogus credits, and fixed grades to push students to graduate — ‘even if the diploma was not worth the paper on which it was printed,’ an explosive investigative report charges. Principal Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir demanded that teachers pass students no matter how little they learned, says the 32-page report by the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools, Anastasia Coleman.”
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s gambit to have funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system stripped backfires, with the funding passing 420-9. Now there’s principled case to be made against the U.S. funding Iron Dome, as part of a broader initiative to eliminate all foreign aid because it’s not an enumerated responsibility of the federal government, because we’re already running huge budget deficits, and because Israel is a prosperous, modern country that shouldn’t need our charity. But we all know that not why The Squad presented this bill.
I think the Squad’s biggest problem with the Iron Dome is that it keeps people from killing Jews.
Word is that pick isn’t popular with the rank and file:
@austin_police officers voted 90% to 10% for an outside candidate over a career insider for chief, yet Cronk/Council gave the insider the nod. Tell me again who is protecting the status quo? #atxcouncil has forfeited the right to say APD officers are the ones resisting change. pic.twitter.com/RwnBOHptmv
In the UK: “Our eco-obsessed government is sleepwalking into an energy crisis….we could be facing a hard winter of higher energy bills and even blackouts.”
50-64 years: 106,674 (.27% of total cases) 65-74 years: 144,020 (.36% of total cases) 75-84 years: 173,655 (.43% of total cases) 85+ years: 185,188 (.46% of total cases)
50-64 years: 106,674 (.27% of total cases) 65-74 years: 144,020 (.36% of total cases) 75-84 years: 173,655 (.43% of total cases) 85+ years: 185,188 (.46% of total cases)
Islamic terrorist dirtnapped in Indonesia. “The military earlier said the militants killed late Saturday were Ali Kalora, leader of the East Indonesia Mujahideen network that has claimed several killings of police officers and minority Christians, and another suspected extremist, Jaka Ramadan, also known as Ikrima.” (Hat tip: Rantburg.)
Our current moment is often described as a “racial reckoning.” In reality, what this often means is that a narrative about Black victimization has gone mainstream. We hear endlessly about systemic racism, white supremacy, the black/white income gap, and police brutality. So powerful an ideology has this narrative become that those of us who pose a credible counter-narrative—black anti-woke writers, for example—frequently find our words being misconstrued in an effort to stanch their impact.
This doesn’t happen to everyone who opposes the Critical Social Justice narrative of black victimization. White dissenters are simply called “racist” while many black dissenters are considered tragic victims of internalized racism. But things get ugly when woke Critical Social Justice proponents encounter a certain kind of black person who does not align with their preferred victim narrative and instead emphasizes his or her own individuality or self-regard. Such people present a threat to the woke narrative, since that narrative insists that all black people are victims of white supremacy, meaning anyone who insists on their individuality and their own power proves the falsity of that victim narrative; if the woke narrative were true, such people should not be able to exist.
Which means that when we claim to exist, antiracist woke warriors need to erase us, using a logical fallacy I call “erase and replace.” Erase and replace is a combination of the strawman and ad hominem logical fallacies. The move involves taking the argument someone is making and substituting it for one that fits more neatly into the woke victim narrative by specifically targeting the character of the challenger—since it is, in part, their character that is the greatest challenge.
“Chris Cuomo accused of sexually harassing former boss at 2005 party.” “A former ABC executive producer has accused Chris Cuomo of sexually harassing her at a 2005 work party after he grabbed her butt in front of her husband and co-workers.” If she was his boss, does that technically count as sexual harassment? In New York, I believe such an offense would fall under the statute for “forcible touching,” which is a class A misdemeanor. Do you think that this is coming out now because, with his brother out of office, Fredo is no longer of any particular political use to CNN?
ACLU alters Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s words to eliminate #Wrongthink.
It seems that every four years the leftwing media complex manufactures another race riot. Who benefits? Do they think they can prevent an erosion of black voters to Trump by playing the “Racist cops!” card from now until election day? That backfired spectacularly in 2016. Minnesota went narrowly to Hillary Clinton in 2016; did they just ensure that it will now flip to Trump? Is that the preferred outcome, so the insane wing can seize control of the Democratic Party from the corrupt wing?
What? “A former club owner in south Minneapolis says the now-fired police officer and the black man who died in his custody this week both worked security for her club up to the end of last year.” I don’t think anyone had that on their bingo card.
According to the CDC’s current best estimate, the case fatality rate of the coronavirus is .4 percent. And that’s just amongst symptomatic cases, which, the CDC estimates, is 65 percent of all cases. This means the CDC estimates that the fatality rate for all infections across all age groups, symptomatic as well as asymptomatic, is approximately .26 percent.
The CDC does caution that the numbers are likely to change with new data, but considering we’ve gone from 3.4 percent to 2.0 percent to now 0.26 percent. The more data we get, the lower the numbers get. So, I’m thinking it might get even lower.
But, the bigger takeaway from this is that the early doomsday predictions about the coronavirus were all wrong. Everything that justified the lockdowns and the shutting down of our economy was wrong. We need to open this country back up.
There appears to be no statistical connection between the economic pain of the nationwide shutdowns and the number of COVID-19 cases or fatalities. None. Let that sink in for a moment, given we were told we had to lock down America to “flatten the curve” and save lives.
On the other hand, the data does suggest that reliance on mass transit is connected with virus cases and fatalities.
Snip.
There appears to be no statistical connection between improved health outcomes and pandemic policies that forced nearly 40 million people into the unemployment lines. None.
One might expect to see that states that suffered the most in COVID cases or fatalities would also be the states with the highest increases in unemployment as politicians and public health officials in those areas instituted strict measures to slow the disease. Alternatively, states that hadn’t seen much in the way of the virus should be relatively better off economically.
Among the 15 most-populous states, New York has the highest COVID case rate, the highest death rate, and the highest age-adjusted death rate, while its unemployment rate jumped 10.8 percent from February to April.
At the other end of the spectrum, Texas has the lowest case rate, the lowest death rate, and the lowest age-adjusted death rate among the 15 most-populous states. Texas’ unemployment rate increased 9.3 percent over the past two months reported.
But New York City’s mass transit probably was a key contributing factor.
“Andrew Cuomo gave immunity to nursing home execs after big campaign donations.” Because being part of the Democratic Money Complex means never having to admit you’re guilty…
For the first time ever, Twitter.com, the company responded directly to one of the president’s tweets. They inserted a link below this one to declare authoritatively that the tweet was false. “Get the facts about mail-in ballots.” If the user has taken to a Twitter news page with a headline declaring “Trump makes the unsubstantiated claim that mail-in voting will lead to voter fraud.” That’s the official story. Voter fraud never happens no matter what, and it definitely won’t happen with mail-in voting. You are hearing trusted news anchors tell you that, a lot. And they say it like they know it. Anyone who disagrees is a conspiracy nut, a flat Earther, a freak. Probably doesn’t vaccinate his kids.
They’re lying. That’s a lie and we know it’s a lie because of fraud at mail-in voting already happens. Not speculating. Do you have Google? Look it up. Ballot harvesting is the problem. Ballot harvesting is the process when the third-party collects and turns in ballots on behalf of another person. It’s only possible with mail-in ballots.
Laws around ballot harvesting vary from state to state. It’s currently legal in 27 states but Democrats want to legalize it in all 50, and, I wonder why. The recent House coronavirus bill declares that “all states” must permit a voter to designate any person to deliver a sealed absentee ballot. The only restriction is ballot harvesters can not be paid based on the number of ballots they collect, but of course, you could easily pay that than a campaign could pay a canvasser for their time or the distance they travel.
With unlimited ballot harvesting, there is no state supervision or chain of custody, to limit on the amount of ballots a single person can collect. Ballot harvesters can go to people’s homes, and they do in California. They pressure them to vote or vote the right way, or they help a person read through a ballot while nudging them on who to vote for.
Why stop there? You could pay a person to sign or turn in a blank ballot… Or simply throw away ballots that don’t vote the right way. We are not saying that all of these methods of fraud are equally likely, you probably could prevent some of them with safeguards but the point is this. Universal mail-in voting with ballot harvesting massively expands the potential for voter fraud and it makes a mockery of the secret ballot.
I don’t care what Twitter tells you, that’s true. It’s obvious. And by the way, it’s been documented. In the past decade, most battles over voter fraud have centered around whether to require an I.D. to vote like most every countries do. But that’s not the real issue… Ballot harvesting is the… choice for those that want to steal an election.
ACLU folds on abortion lawsuit against Texas cities over “sanctuary cities for the unborn.” Which makes you wonder why. Is keeping a slender reed of hope for keeping sanctuary cities for the inevitable illegal alien amnesty more important than the sacrament of abortion? Or maybe, given that they’re all pretty small cities (Big Spring may be the largest) they just didn’t want to spend money on it?
Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Lots of China and technology news this time around.
How much public, firsthand evidence is there of this so-called Ukrainian quid pro quo? Right now, zero: “The problem with this narrative is that all we have to rely on is Mr. [William] Taylor’s opening statement and leaks from Democrats. What we don’t know is how Mr. Taylor responded to questions, or what he knew first-hand versus what he concluded on his own, because like all impeachment witnesses he testified in secret. Chairman Adam Schiff, with the approval of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, refuses to release any witness transcripts.”
Let ye who has never brushed a congressional aide’s hair in the nude, taken naked bong hits, gotten an Iron Cross tattoo, and posted wife-sharing pics to a wife-swapping site cast the first stone.
We all know that if she was a Republican, this would dominate news cycles for weeks on end…
Brett Kavanaugh: *has a beer*
Media: TAKE. HIM. DOWN.
Katie Hill: Does drugs, has multiple inappropriate sexual relationships with employees, posts exhibitionist pictures on Reddit, does "wifesharing," etc. etc.
Media: She's living her best life, give her some privacy.
>Parliament flooded with tractors >Doors rammed >Army deployed >Angry politicians
This has had little to no traction outside the Dutch sphere, so Ive decided to make an English thread detailing the events on the 3 major protests pic.twitter.com/u7W3RWWPdz
This is a bad look: “Apple CEO becomes chairman of China university board.” What’s a little widespread rape and torture next to the almighty buck? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“The Universe Is Made of Tiny Bubbles Containing Mini-Universes, Scientists Say.” An elegant, worm ouroboros structure which answers many questions, but since it’s from vice Motherboard, a salt shaker is probably in order.
Today, the vegetarian ideology is not a stand-alone philosophy. It is tied inexorably to other ideologies such as socialism, globalism and extremist forms of environmentalism. There are very few vegetarian promoters that are not politically motivated. This has caused a rash of propaganda, attempting to rewrite the history of the human diet to fit their bizarre narrative.
Even though human beings have been omnivores for millions of years, the anti-meat campaign claims that humans were actually long time vegetarians. They do this by comparing humans to our closest evolutionary relatives, like chimpanzees and gorillas, and arguing that these animals have a strict vegetable diet (which is not exactly true).
Of course, Native American tribes, living closest to how our prehistoric ancestors lived long ago, had meat heavy diets, but don’t expect the environmentalists to accept this reality. What they conveniently do not mention is that over 2 million years ago human ancestors broke from their vegetable diet and began eating meat. Not only this, but the diet changed our very physical makeup. We grew far stronger, and smarter.
Yes, that’s right, the rise of meat in the human diet tracks almost exactly with the rise of human intelligence and advances in tools and technology.
My theory is that “ethical humanism” among our chattering classes is a low-calorie substitute for traditional religion, and forgoing meat is our punishment for environmental sins. Either way, I say it’s spinach and I say to hell with it. Speaking of spinach…
Russian fighter with freakishly large biceps nicknamed Popeye gets clock cleaned by guy 20 years older. You’ve seen those “Skipped Leg Day” memes? This guy looks like he skipped everything but biceps day for five years.
I regard GNU Foundation head Richard Stallman as a fanatic who’s just a few steps shy of being a complete lunatic. But he’s right to defy Social Justice Warrior-types who want him removed for objecting to the lynch mob regarding the late Marvin Minsky’s minimal ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I for one am stuffed…
For those freaking out about Chief Justice Roberts saying there are no Democratic or Republican judges…¯\_(ツ)_/¯. He’s the head of a co-equal branch of the United States federal government, of course he’s going to defend the institutional independence of the court, no matter the evidence to the contrary. It’s pretty much required for his position.
Now here’s a LinkSwarm to enjoy before girding your loins to do battle over a $99 stereo marked down to $69…
Future historians will have to reconstruct exactly how and why the tipping point has been reached, but the ACLU’s actions over the last couple of months show that the ACLU is no longer a civil libertarian organization in any meaningful sense, but just another left-wing pressure group, albeit one with a civil libertarian history.
First, the ACLU ran an anti-Brett Kavanaugh video ad that relied entirely on something that no committed civil libertarian would countenance, guilt by association. And not just guilt by association, but guilt by association with individuals that Kavanaugh wasn’t actually associated with in any way, except that they were all men who like Kavanaugh had been accused of serious sexual misconduct. The literal point of the ad is that Bill Clinton, Harvey Weinstein, and Bill Cosby were accused of sexual misconduct, they denied it but were actually guilty; therefore, Brett Kavanaugh, also having been accused of sexual misconduct, and also having denied it, is likely guilty too.
Can you imagine back in the 1950s the ACLU running an ad with the theme, “Earl Warren has been accused of being a Communist. He denies it. But Alger Hiss and and Julius Rosenberg were also accused of being Communists, they denied it, but they were lying. So Earl Warren is likely lying, too?”
Meanwhile, yesterday, the Department of Education released a proposed new Title IX regulation that provides for due process rights for accused students that had been prohibited by Obama-era guidance. Shockingly, even to those of us who have followed the ACLU’s long, slow decline, the ACLU tweeted in reponse that the proposed regulation “promotes an unfair process, inappropriately favoring the accused.” Even longtime ACLU critics are choking on the ACLU, of all organizations, claiming that due process protections “inappropriately favor the accuse.”
The ACLU had a clear choice between the identitarian politics of the feminist hard left, and retaining some semblance of its traditional commitment to fair process. It chose the former. And that along with the Kavanaugh ad signals the final end of the ACLU as we knew it. RIP.
Having moved his flock to northern California in the 1960s, Jones began leveraging their labor toward political ends, volunteering them for protests or electioneering on behalf of friendly aspirants to public office. Gaining the respect of San Francisco’s political class, Jones became a player in his own right. Many gave him credit for Moscone’s tight victory in the 1975 mayoral runoff, and he was appointed head of the San Francisco Housing Authority. Praised as a hero of social justice and a crusader for racial equality, Jones became an important figure in Democratic politics.
Among his advocates was Harvey Milk, also a newcomer to San Francisco. Milk, formerly a Goldwater Republican, became politically radical in California and repeatedly sought election to office as an outsider to the political machine. Milk attended services at Peoples Temple dozens of times, and wrote effusive letters to Jones. “Such greatness I have found in Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple,” Milk proclaimed.
Milk wasn’t Jones’s only fan. Many powerful people—Governor Jerry Brown, columnist Herb Caen, and Vice President Walter Mondale, to name a few—sought Jones’s blessings and expressed admiration for his dedication to racial equality and a better world. Flynn does a good job of laying out the social and political landscape of the Bay Area in the late seventies and situating the bizarre respect that the Jones cult received within the general fruitiness of the era. Jim Jones’s Bay Area was the same milieu that gave rise to the Zodiac killer, the lost-in-time Zebra murders, and the depredations of the Symbionese Liberation Army. In that context, a wacky preacher who healed the sick and ran drug-treatment centers while promising a racially unified heaven on earth seemed like a salutary influence by comparison.
Snip.
Jim Jones’s connection to mainstream Democratic politics has been suppressed. He and the Peoples Temple, which exalted racial diversity and social justice, have been cast as harrowing examples of Christian religious extremism, though Jones preached atheism and ordered his followers to use the Bible as toilet paper. A roster of leaders who remain dominant figures in California politics today embraced Jones publically. Jerry Brown, then and now governor of the state, approvingly visited the Peoples Temple, and Senator Dianne Feinstein, who ascended to the mayoralty upon Moscone’s assassination, joined the Board of Supervisors in honoring Jones. Willie Brown, longtime speaker of the California state assembly, a mayor of San Francisco, and the mentor of Senator Kamala Harris, was especially lavish in his praise of Jones, calling him “a combination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Angela Davis, Albert Einstein, and Chairman Mao.”
So Jamal Khashoggi – a former Saudi intelligence agent, a man who was close to the Muslim Brotherhood and a sworn opponent of MBS’ reform program– was in the process of setting up a centre to promote the ideology of the MB. He was setting it up in Turkey with Qatari money. The Saudis wanted to stop him. In September they offered him $9 million to return to Saudi Arabia and to live there unhindered. They wanted him out of play. Khashoggi refused and the rest you know. The Saudis killed him.
Let me make two points. First, there is no justification for murdering Khashoggi. Secondly, this man wasn’t some Western-oriented liberal brutally murdered because of his passion for freedom. This man was a player.
Laura Loomer banned from Twitter. I have had zero interactions with Ms. Loomer, and she sounds like quite a piece of work, but banning her for criticizing a Muslim politician for supporting female genital mutilation is asinine.
The official view of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) remains that the Second Amendment protects a “collective right rather than an individual right.” But the organization nevertheless is helping the National Rifle Association (NRA) fend off extralegal attempts by New York state officials to put it out of business.
In a brief filed in federal court today, the ACLU argues that New York’s strong-arm efforts to compel banks and insurance companies to ditch the NRA as a customer represent a glaring violation of the First Amendment.
“Although public officials are free to express their opinions and may condemn viewpoints or groups they view as inimical to public welfare, they cannot abuse their regulatory authority to retaliate against disfavored advocacy organizations and to impose burdens on those organizations’ ability to conduct lawful business,” the ACLU says.
The ACLU’s amicus brief never says the group agrees with the NRA’s positions on firearms. Instead, the group invokes a long series of First Amendment cases to argue that the regulators should not use their power in office to punish political enemies.
A timeline prepared by the NRA suggests the intimidation campaign began last fall. The anti-gun group Everytown for Gun Safety met with New York officials in September 2017; a month later the Department of Financial Services began an investigation that started with a company called Lockton, which administered the NRA-branded personal liability insurance program known as Carry Guard. Despite a 20-year relationship, Lockton responded by abruptly ditching the NRA as a customer in February; so did Chubb and Lloyd’s.
Emboldened by this initial success, Maria Vullo, head of the state’s Department of Financial Services, sent a pair of ominous letters to all banks, financial institutions, and insurers licensed to do business in New York. Vullo warned companies to sever ties with pro-Second Amendment groups that “promote guns and lead to senseless violence” and instead heed “the voices of the passionate, courageous, and articulate young people” calling for more restrictions on firearms. All companies receiving the letter, she advised, should “review any relationships they have with the NRA or similar gun promotion organizations, and to take prompt actions to managing these risks and promote public health and safety.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo underlined the regulatory threat in a tweet the next day: “The NRA is an extremist organization. I urge companies in New York State to revisit any ties they have to the NRA and consider their reputations, and responsibility to the public.'”
As a result of those not-very-veiled threats, the NRA says, multiple banks withdrew bids to provide basic depository services. The NRA is also worried about being able to continue producing its NRA TV channel, with hosts including Dana Loesch and Cam Edwards, unless it can obtain normal media liability insurance. (In May, NRA sued Cuomo and Vullo, a former Cuomo aide when he was attorney general. See J.D. Tuccille’s Reason coverage at the time.)
“If Cuomo can do this to the NRA, then conservative governors could have their financial regulators threaten banks and financial institutions that do business with any other group whose political views the governor opposes,” David Cole, the ACLU’s legal director, wrote in a blog post today. “The First Amendment bars state officials from using their regulatory power to penalize groups merely because they promote disapproved ideas.”
A few decades ago, the ACLU acting like, you know, a civil liberties union wouldn’t have been shocking at all. (In fact, back in the dim mists of time, the ACLU back the Texas Review Society in a lawsuit against the University of Texas for prohibiting non-university on-campus newspapers, even though the Texas Review Society was a registered student group). Lately, however, the ACLU has seemed little more than an extension of the liberal overclass (it’s Twitter timeline seems to have gone to an “All ‘OMG The Illegal Alien Children’ All The Time” format), and recently it’s gone wobbly on it’s signature issue of free speech.
So it’s nice to see the ACLU at least pretend it still cares about free speech for deplorables…
The House IT scandal, another UK Islamic rape ring, jihad terror attacks, Charlottesville, Google: Another packed week of news, all big stories that deserve more time than I have to fully untangle. I especially don’t want to get dragged into the endless Charlottesville debate/recrimination/squirrel! morass, since that’s exactly where the leftwing activists and the MSM (but I repeat myself) want us to focus our attention, rather than the economy or Islamic terrorism.
Plus two Disney links, just because that’s the way the week shook out.
The Feds also indicted Awan’s wife, Hina Alvi. “In addition to lying on multiple mortgage disclosures, as an affidavit alleged at the time of Imran’s arrest, the indictment claims Hina lied by claiming medical hardship in order to withdraw hundreds of thousands of dollars from a retirement program.”
McALLEN, Texas — Federal authorities arrested a former chief and current police sergeant for his role in allegedly helping Mexico’s Gulf Cartel move cocaine and marijuana through his jurisdiction. The Texas cop claimed that he needed money to pay for his upcoming bid for county constable after a failed attempt for the Hidalgo County Sheriff position.
Current Progreso Police Sergeant Geovani Hernandez went before U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter Ormsby who formally charged him with one count of possession with intent to distribute cocaine and one count of aiding and abetting the distribution of cocaine.
The case against Hernandez began earlier this year when agents with U.S. Homeland Security Investigations received information from a confidential informant indicating that Sgt. Geovani Hernandez was working for the Gulf Cartel, court records obtained by Breitbart Texas revealed. According to the documents, Hernandez bragged to an informant that he was a friend of former Gulf Cartel leader Juan Manuel “El Toro” Loza Salina and was able to travel to Reynosa without heat. The Texas cop told the informant that he needed money for his upcoming race for Hidalgo County Constable.
Hernandez, like the majority of candidates running for office in the Rio Grande Valley, is a Democrat. The person he lost to in the 2012 Democratic, Guadalupe “Lupe” Trevino, is in prison for money-laundering. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Agreeing with the above version of events: Those well-known Nazi sympathizers, the ACLU:
“I was there and brought concerns directly to the secretary of public safety and the head of the Virginia State Police about the way that the barricades in the park limiting access by the arriving demonstrators and the lack of any physical separation of the protesters and counter-protesters on the street were contributing to the potential of violence,” said Gastanaga. “They did not respond. In fact, law enforcement was standing passively by, seeming to be waiting for violence to take place, so that they would have grounds to declare an emergency, declare an ‘unlawful assembly’ and clear the area.”
“The ridiculous campaign by virtually every media outlet, every Democrat and far too many squishy Republicans to label Trump some kind of racist and Nazi sympathizer is beginning to have the stink of an orchestrated smear. The conflagration in Charlottesville is beginning to feel like a set-up, perhaps weeks or months in the planning.” Also this tidbit I’ve seen elsewhere: “The ‘founder’ of Unite The Right, Jason Kessler, was an activist with Occupy Wall Street and Obama supporter.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
“As for Antifa, it’s a minuscule fringe of the Left, just as its predecessors were,” Noam Chomsky told the Washington Examiner. “It’s a major gift to the Right, including the militant Right, who are exuberant.” Noam Chomsky and I agreeing on something. And the moon became as blood… (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Scott Adams: “How To Know You’re In a Mass Hysteria Bubble”:
A mass hysteria happens when the public gets a wrong idea about something that has strong emotional content and it triggers cognitive dissonance that is often supported by confirmation bias. In other words, people spontaneously hallucinate a whole new (and usually crazy-sounding) reality and believe they see plenty of evidence for it. The Salem Witch Trials are the best-known example of mass hysteria. The McMartin Pre-School case and the Tulip Bulb hysteria are others. The dotcom bubble probably qualifies.
Snip.
One sign of a good mass hysteria is that it sounds bonkers to anyone who is not experiencing it. Imagine your neighbor telling you he thinks the other neighbor is a witch. Or imagine someone saying the local daycare provider is a satanic temple in disguise. Or imagine someone telling you tulip bulbs are more valuable than gold. Crazy stuff.
Compare that to the idea that our president is a Russian puppet. Or that the country accidentally elected a racist who thinks the KKK and Nazis are “fine people.” Crazy stuff.
German town of Bad Nenndorf discovers best way to defeat both Neo-Nazis and Antifa: Have a big party! (Hat tip: Will Shetterly.)
On this Althouse thread I joked that SJWs would soon start digging up the graves of Confederate soldiers to put their bones on trial for war crimes. Guess what?
The hard left is drawing up big plans for November 4. “It’s very likely nothing will come of this, that it’s just another left-wing wish-fulfillment pantomime of a type carried out by leftists every year – if not every six months – since the 60s.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
I was fired by Google this past Monday for a document that I wrote and circulated internally raising questions about cultural taboos and how they cloud our thinking about gender diversity at the company and in the wider tech sector. I suggested that at least some of the male-female disparity in tech could be attributed to biological differences (and, yes, I said that bias against women was a factor too). Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai declared that portions of my statement violated the company’s code of conduct and “cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”
My 10-page document set out what I considered a reasoned, well-researched, good-faith argument, but as I wrote, the viewpoint I was putting forward is generally suppressed at Google because of the company’s “ideological echo chamber.” My firing neatly confirms that point.
He rejected Google’s internal mythology, and worse, he did so with basic math, in a company where mathiness is supposed to be part of the culture.
He also rejected a piece of the general mythology so firmly that what he said was actively misreported — so blatantly that one has to conclude the reporters either can’t read the hard parts of the memo, didn’t bother to read the memo, or somehow managed to see things that weren’t there. (That last is my guess, based on the examples of Trump Trance we’ve seen over the last six months.)
In the copious hiring I did at Google, 97% of the people I hired were men. I wrote reams of appeals to the hiring committee to make cases for cross-functional candidates who would be great assets to Google, even though a (typically) male dominated software engineering interview crew did not find these candidates up to snuff. I had a 90+% success rate changing the hiring decision for these candidates. Almost every one of these hires made an amazing difference to the company. 98+% of these candidates were men.
It’s not like I wasn’t trying to hire women. But I was working with a candidate pool composed of 90% men. Try software engineers with experience in sensors, wireless and hardware stacks before angrily correcting my stats there. There was no way I was going to come out of that with a larger percentage of women hires than I did.
Yes, there are some unproductive people in major corporations and the media who wish to push their left-leaning political agendas on the public at large.
But we want no part of it.
And you know what? It’s no different here at Slashdot.
We come here to learn about new technologies, about new scientific and mathematical discoveries, and to discuss computing.
We don’t want to waste our days arguing about genitalia, sexual preference, racism, and transgenderism.
We just want this bullshit to end.
We want those on the political left to stop trying to divide society into small groups based on arbitrary traits.
Or at the very least, we want everybody else to ignore the divisions that the political left are trying to create.
Liberals: “There should be fewer regulations on cool things I like!” Everyone else: “What about regulations on things other people like?” Liberals: “Fuck them!”
Ted Nugent believes he would be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame if he weren’t such an outspoken supporter of gun rights. He’s probably right: How do you think is a bigger “Rock and Roll Legend”: Ted Nugent, or ABBA?
In case you’re wondering how big a joke that Southern Poverty Law Center “hate list” is, Bosch Fawstin, a critic of Islam who drew Mohammed and was targeted for assassination in Garland, is evidently a “hate group” all on his own:
.@CNN publishes the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of "hate groups", & me, an individual, is on the NY list :) https://t.co/3xqpP2lfvY
Early voting started in Texas Monday, which means I’m way behind on covering state and local races. Oh well, maybe later this week…
Hillary Clinton didn’t do as badly as expected in New Hampshire. She did worse.
Sanders’s margin of victory — 60 percent to 39 percent — was the largest ever by a Democrat who wasn’t a sitting president. It was a come-from-behind win: Eight months ago, Sanders was at 9 percent and Clinton held a 46-point advantage. And Sanders overperformed the polls. Only 1 of the last 15 polls had him above 60 percent; the Real Clear Politics average in New Hampshire had him at 54.5 percent going into the vote.
Then there are the crosstabs. The exit polling for Clinton was brutal. Sanders won men by 35 points; he won women by 11. He won voters under the age of 30 by 67 points. People expect that of Sanders and his children’s crusade. Clinton took home senior citizens, 54 percent to 45 percent. People expect that of Clinton’s boomers. But in the big band of middle-aged Democrats, ages 45 to 64 (who made up 42 percent of the electorate), Sanders beat Clinton 54 percent to 45 percent. He beat her among Democrats with a high school diploma or less; he beat her among Democrats with postgraduate degrees. Among people who’d voted in a Democratic primary before, Sanders won by 16 points; among first-time voters, he won by 57. He won self-identified “moderate” voters by 20 points.
Clinton made gun control a substantial part of her pitch in New Hampshire. Sanders won voters who own guns by 40 points. But he won voters who don’t own guns by 14. He even won voters who said that terrorism was their number one concern.
The biggest problem for Clinton, however, came in the candidate-perception categories. The second-most important quality voters said they wanted in a candidate was someone who “cares.” Sanders won these voters by 65 points. The most important quality people said they wanted was “honesty.” Sanders took those people home 92 to 6. Look at that again. When asked “Is Clinton honest and trustworthy?” 53 percent of all voters — not just Sanders voters, but everyone casting a Democratic ballot — said “no.”
The topic is the Clintons, so it’s time for another glimpse of Good Maureen Dowd: “It turned out that female voters seem to be looking at Hillary as a candidate rather than as a historical imperative. And she’s coming up drastically short on trustworthiness.”
The Coen Brothers aren’t fans of cramming diversity for the sake of diversity into individual movies. “Not in the least!” Ethan answered. “It’s important to tell the story you’re telling in the right way, which might involve black people or people of whatever heritage or ethnicity—or it might not.”
Given that the French political establishment continues to ignore widespread French desire to stem Islamic immigration, is it any wonder Marine Le Pen’s National Front did so well in early voting?
Remember that ACLU board member that called for murdering Trump supporters? Turns out that calling for the assassination of political opponents is just a tad too extreme for the ACLU.
Nothing says “rational” and “reasonable” quite like calling Ted Cruz Satan incarnate. Thanks for proving that Hollywood celebrities aren’t overwrought drama queens, Cher…
