Your tax dollars help fund Hamas (and Brazil’s leftist censorship regime), Kathy Hochul and Gavin Newsom will do anything to keep Trump from deporting illegal aliens, Ukraine hits more natural gas facilities and data centers, and actually knocks some Russian trolls offline, a reckoning is finally coming for Ilhan Omar’s misdeeds, Musk unveils a flying car, and Hasan Piker endorses lynching black people. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Your tax dollars at work: “Louisiana Muslims Were on Medicaid While Sending Money to Terrorists.”
Between late 2023 and early this year, Abdel Adhami allegedly transferred more than $83,000, mostly through PayPal to financial associates of a Gaza-based contact who converted the funds into Tether cryptocurrency. Court records say about $2,000 was sent directly to Gaza through Western Union to a recipient who picked up the cash in October 2023.
His brother, Omar, is accused of sending about $6,000 through similar channels. Authorities say the money was ultimately routed to people associated with Saleem Alzaq, whom investigators describe as the brothers’ alleged handler in Gaza.
For example, on or about October 18, 2023, Adhami, via Snapchat account aadhami56, sent a voice message to Snapchat account “saleem_alzaq” stating the following: “I wish we could come, I wish we could help you, I wish we could do Jihad with you, you are the people of Jihad, you are the people of perseverance, you are who the Prophet, peace and prayer be upon him, has mentioned. Congratulations, congratulations, you are the free ones, not us eh . . . and let me know when you receive the wire transfer. If there is anything we can do, our lives and money and everything are at your service.”
While all this was going on, the Adhamis were on Medicaid despite having their own stores and plenty of money to send to terrorists.
A Slidell man who declined to be identified said he remembers the day federal agents raided their Slidell beauty store last month. The brothers also own a beauty store in Hammond.
Two stores. Terror cash. And hundreds of thousands in Medicaid benefits.
The wives of two Northshore brothers accused of helping funnel money to Hamas have been arrested along with another family member in a separate Medicaid fraud investigation.
The Louisiana Attorney General’s Office accuse the five of defrauding the Louisiana Medicaid program of more than $224,000 in benefits between 2021 and 2025.
Abdel Adhami, 35, and his wife, H.D. Srour, 29, received $113,344 in Medicaid benefits, according to the AG’s Office. They each face five counts of government benefits fraud and one count of theft of more than $25,000.
Omar Adhami, 33, and his wife, Abu Zenah, 28, received $81,099 in Medicaid benefits. They each face three counts of government benefits fraud and one count of theft of more than $25,000.
Their brother, Mohammad I. Adhami, 32, received $30,197 in Medicaid benefits. He faces three counts of government benefits fraud and one count of theft of more than $25,000.
New York has declined 16,070 ICE detainers for illegal aliens accused or convicted of over 50,000 serious crimes since President Donald Trump took office.
“While sanctuary politicians continue to release dangerous criminals onto their streets, our brave law enforcement officers will continue to risk their lives to arrest these heinous criminals and make America safe again. Illegal aliens have no sanctuary in America,” said DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin. “We enforce these laws with no help from Mayor Mamdani and Governor Hochul. The Trump Administration is committed to protecting the American people in every city and every state, and we won’t let sanctuary politicians stand in our way. If you’re a state or local politician, your best bet is to cooperate with us so we can all make America safe again.”
Those crimes include murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault:
Homicides: 131
Kidnappings: 132
Sexual offenses: 1,017
DUIs: 1,561
Burglaries: 1,631
Robberies: 1,776
Weapons offenses: 2,198
Dangerous drugs: 4,324
Assaults: 9,502
The ICE detainers ask local and state law enforcement to hold illegal aliens for 48 hours so agents can take custody of them.
But sanctuary states like New York and sanctuary cities like New York City brush off any cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
Two illegal aliens, Dangelo Rafael Jean Caraballo and Sneider Mejia Bautista, allegedly stabbed an NYPD detective on October 2.
Both men have a lengthy rap sheet.
Local law enforcement released Caraballo after his December 2024 arrest for possession of burglar’s tools before ICE could lodge a detainer.
ICE lodged a detainer for Bautista after his October 2025 arrest for criminal possession of a weapon. The NYPD declined the detainer and released him.
Caraballo and Bautista ran to Massachusetts, another sanctuary state, for cover. Both were caught and arrested, but it’s unclear whether New York will hand them over to ICE.
Hochul signed her sanctuary state bill in May 2026. The law bars ICE agents from public places, and local law enforcement cannot cooperate with ICE.
Most public employees also cannot interact with federal immigration authorities unless they present a judicial warrant.
Hochul expanded her anti-ICE agenda in August with the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, which bans local law enforcement from entering or maintaining any agreements with ICE.
In February, Mamdani signed an executive order to strengthen sanctuary laws in New York City.
Trump should flood New York with ICE agents and dare Hochul to arrest them.
Finally: “Feds Raid Ilhan Omar’s DC Home As Immigration Fraud Investigation Heats Up.”
Federal agents raided the Washington, D.C., home of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) early Monday morning as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the Somali-born congresswoman’s immigration paperwork, according to Fox News.
The pre-dawn operation began around 6 a.m., with multiple agents wearing Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) jackets observed outside the residence. Two sources close to the investigation told Fox News that authorities are examining immigration documents completed by Omar’s late father when she was a child.
Snip.
As Jonathan Turley previously noted, Homan confirmed that federal authorities were examining allegations involving the Minnesota Democrat.
The controversy centers in part on longstanding claims that Omar married her brother, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, to facilitate an immigration benefit – allegations Omar has repeatedly denied and which have not been established as fact.
Turley examined whether the allegations could support a fraud case or instead amounted to potentially defamatory accusations, and noted that the statute of limitations could complicate any prosecution involving events dating back many years.
A new federal report finds “irrefutable evidence that the nation’s largest banks have denied, debanked and discriminated against” conservatives, religious organizations and lawful businesses because of their political beliefs or activities.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released the results of its investigation into the nine largest banks it supervises in a 47-page report on Wednesday. Those banks include JPMorgan Chase Bank, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo Bank, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC Bank, TD Bank and BMO Bank.
The revelations in the report include allegations that JPMorgan Chase’s former payment processor WePay closed accounts belonging to merchants selling Trump and Make America Great Again merchandise after the bank’s screening system apparently flagged phrases including “MAGA,” “Make America Great,” and “America First.”
The report also accuses WePay of closing accounts associated with conservative religious organizations, including one that was labeled an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
PNC, meanwhile, allegedly denied a line of credit to a media company after employees argued the company’s conservative owners had expressed opinions “very contrary to PNC’s beliefs/values.”
Wells Fargo pushed a payment processor to debank a religious nonprofit over its opposition to same-sex marriage, and also declined loans to firearms businesses amid concerns about potential Biden administration pressure, the report found.
The Trump administration has filed a lawsuit against California and two election officials, seeking to prevent approximately 20,000 potentially ineligible voters from having their ballots counted in November’s midterm elections until their citizenship status can be verified.
The Justice Department alleges that California is knowingly allowing noncitizens to participate in federal elections, raising concerns about election integrity just weeks before voters head to the polls.
“State-facilitated voter fraud is unacceptable in the United States of America,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.
“If found responsible in a court of law, the State of California will have seriously undermined confidence in our electoral system and violated laws that protect our nation’s representative system of government,” Blanche added.
According to the lawsuit, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators identified potentially ineligible voters using federal immigration records and information from the Social Security Administration and State Department.
The Justice Department previously sent Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan a password-protected drive containing more than 20,000 voter records, demanding citizenship verification within 48 hours.
Logan responded that his office would follow applicable federal and state election laws while maintaining accurate voter registration records.
The administration is now asking a federal court to prevent ballots associated with those voters from being counted until their eligibility is established.
Democrats will use every opportunity to get illegal alien votes into the ballot box.
Result? “Russian bot traffic decimated overnight after Ukraine drone strikes knock multiple Yandex data centers offline.” You know, Comrade Cartridge has been pretty quiet since August…
Abdul El-Seyed’s surrogate Hasan Piker: “I don’t give a fuck what Black people care about. Let’s go back to a better time, when lynchings were happening.”
1.4 million black people live in Michigan. https://t.co/EiEsKuuyrd
Does anyone doubt that if a white conservative “joked” about lynching black people the media would turn it into a full-in, front page onslaught to cancel him?
Former State Department official Mike Benz laid out USAID’s sweeping involvement in Brazil’s political and institutional landscape, detailing a network of American funding that reached media organizations, universities, activist groups and organizations involved with the country’s election system.
Benz, who serves as executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, broke down the extent of USAID’s footprint during an appearance on “The Benny Show” with host Benny Johnson.
“What’s happening in Brazil was a full-on Truman show. You had the media funded by USAID. You had the universities funded by USAID. You had the staffers of the Supreme Court and the TSE (Superior Electoral Court), the election court, USAID. You had all the constitutional law advocates funded by USAID. You had the LGBT activists funded by USAID,” Benz explained.
“It’s full spectrum. If you were to walk down a city block in Sao Paulo or, I don’t know, Brasilia, you would have a 360 vision of institutions funded and puppeteered by USAID without ever knowing it,” the former State Department official added. “In fact, USAID, knowing what they were doing, and I need to be careful about what I can and can’t say here, let’s just say, would anyone be surprised, for example, if USAID was going around and telling its grantees in Brazil to remove the USAID logo so that it doesn’t get out that grantee’s connection to USAID?”
Benz said USAID’s influence could continue even after its funding disappeared because institutional and legal changes remained in place.
“They knew what they were doing. They knew how sensitive it was. Would you be surprised, for example, if USAID, which basically set up the censorship state in Brazil, and this is actually something, let me quickly pivot to say, it is true that this is the first Brazilian election since the 2020 municipal elections in Brazil that does not have USAID money slushing around Lula and his allies, but is still an election that is in many ways under the thumb of the ghost of USAID,” he said. “There is something I call kind of the clockmaker’s dilemma, which is USAID, even when you remove it, the institutional and legal changes that a country goes through can live on even if you cut USAID funding down to zero.”
Benz then zeroed in on two of Brazil’s most powerful institutions, the Supreme Federal Court (STF) and Superior Electoral Court (TSE): “For example, in Brazil, you have this apparatus through the STF and TSE, the Supreme Court and the basically election court that determines all things around elections, and basically after Bolsonaro won in 2018, the TSE court with Alexandre de Moraes, the famous Voldemort judge, they declared disinformation a threat to free and fair elections, not just disinformation during an election season, but disinformation any time, misinformation, disinformation any time about anything because it could pollute people’s, I don’t know, sense of what’s true or false in the information ecosystem, and so it could have an impact on an election three years away if this false information is allowed to circulate online.”
Benz also went into detail about USAID’s connections to Brazil’s election and judicial establishment.
“That was set up by USAID, USAID flooded the zone, USAID had contact at every level with the TSE court, with the Alexandre de Moraes court,” he said. “I testified to the Brazilian Senate Relations Committee and put pictures from USAID’s website of Alexandre de Moraes being trained by CEPS (Competitive Economy Program), the USAID grantee, by NED (National Endowment for Democracy), the USAID grantee has gotten $3 billion from USAID and was created by the Central Intelligence Agency.”
So American taxpayers were footing the bill for the suborning of democracy in favor of leftwing control and censorship.
“Days after federal agents stopped an 18-year-old of Somali descent from buying an AK-47 to kill dozens at the Mall of America in an ISIS-inspired plot, another 18-year-old Somali is free after police say he opened fire outside a high school homecoming game.”
Investigators linked the Eden Prairie shooting to rival Somali gangs. The accused spent just two nights in jail before posting a $100,000 bond with $10,000 cash down. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty had said he would be held accountable.
On October 2, during Eden Prairie High School’s homecoming football game against Minnetonka, a fight involving about 10 people broke out in a parking lot after two vehicles arrived. Surveillance video showed a Hyundai Sonata, registered to the brother of Adam Abdihakeem Adam, 18, of St. Louis Park, enter the area.
harging documents state Adam was the only occupant. He got out, fired a single shot, struck two teenagers, and fled. The victims were an 18-year-old and a 17-year-old, both Somali males from St. Paul known to law enforcement and not students at either school. One was shot through the leg; the other in the foot. Both injuries were non-life-threatening. The stadium was evacuated and the game postponed.
Investigators used phone location data that tracked Adam and the vehicle before, during, and after the shooting. He abandoned the phone and changed its number. A search of his home recovered clothing consistent with what the shooter wore on video.
Eden Prairie police arrested him without incident on October 8 in Minneapolis with help from partner agencies. Police Chief Matt Sackett said, “The arrest today is an important step in this investigation. I’m incredibly proud of our officers and investigators who have worked nonstop alongside our law enforcement partners to identify those responsible and hold them accountable.”
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty charged Adam with two counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and one count of second-degree riot while armed with a dangerous weapon. She stated: “This was an alarming and dangerous act that injured two people and frightened many more. Mr. Adam will be held accountable.” She added, “Violence in our communities is completely unacceptable and it requires a professional, coordinated response, which happened here.”
Bail was set at $100,000 and Adam posted bond and was released on October 10.
For years, Welcoming America has been building a campaign to sell rural communities on immigration—training local leaders, supporting public events and teaching advocates how to change their neighbors’ minds.
Its own rural refugee toolkit describes the role of local media plainly:
“a positive force for changing public opinion”
The same guide praises storytelling used to:
“celebrate the demographic change of the community.”
“reshape the narrative about immigrants in new destination states”
“Trump Admin has Arrested 1,296 Tren de Aragua Gang Members. The admin has charged almost 350 members and associates with federal crimes.”
“President Trump created the Homeland Security Task Force to eradicate gangs, cartels, and transnational criminal organizations who entered the United States, and operated with impunity, as a result of the Biden administration’s disastrous open border policies,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told The Washington Examiner. “Our message to Tren de Aragua and all the transnational criminal organizations is simple: we will dismantle your networks, seize your profits, and put the safety of the American people first. The days of vicious gangs, like TdA, profiting off of the death of American citizens is over.”
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order forming the Homeland Security Task Forces with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ).
“The objective of each HSTF is to end the presence of criminal cartels, foreign gangs, and transnational criminal organizations throughout the United States, dismantle cross-border human smuggling and trafficking networks, end the scourge of human smuggling and trafficking, with a particular focus on such offenses involving children, and ensure the use of all available law enforcement tools to faithfully execute the immigration laws of the United States,” according to the executive order.
The data runs from January 20, 2025, to October 8, 2026. The task force has nabbed 1,296 Trn de Aragua members and charged almost 350 members and associates with federal crimes.
“President Trump’s Homeland Security Task Forces have encountered TdA gang members [in] almost every state,” an ICE spokesperson wrote in a statement to The Washington Examiner. “This is one of the most vicious gangs on planet earth. They rape, maim, and murder for sport.”
“Months after opening, workers at Obama’s presidential center are unionizing due to horrid job conditions.”
Nearly four months after the Obama Presidential Center opened, workers are organizing a union, citing “increasing workloads” and benefit rollbacks that have stirred concerns about their future with the organization.
Fifteen weeks working for Barack H. Obama and these folks have gone full Newsies. 😂
If the Barack Obama library is an unpleasant place to work, you won’t find me surprised. In any event, here’s what the library’s workers have alleged:
They are facing “increasing workloads.” That’s, um, sort of to be expected in the weeks after a major new facility opens and everyone’s still figuring out what work needs to be done. But okay.
They have “seen our benefits rolled back.” After just four months? That was quick! But I guess even the Obamacare Machine realized that offering full insurance to part-time administrative workers wasn’t financially feasible.
“Support from leadership,” meanwhile, has been “minimal.” Concerns about working conditions have been met with “vague responses.”
This unbearable, horrific working environment has contributed to a high turnover rate.
The workers have announced that they are forming a labor coalition, Obama Workers United, with AFSCME Council 31.
San Francisco’s Democratic mayor, Daniel Lurie, says he’s a proud progressive, but in a recent interview, Lurie acknowledged to CNN’s Dana Bash that on issues like crime, homelessness, drug use, housing, and affordability, the city getting “so entrapped in our progressive values” caused it to lose its way and go down the wrong path.
Lurie, a Levi Strauss heir with no political experience, was elected in November 2024, defeating the much better-known incumbent Democratic mayor, London Breed, in part because he promised to clean up the drug-infested streets and be tougher on crime.
In one situation from October 2025 that got a lot of national attention, Lurie was able to convince President Trump to back off sending a “surge” of National Guard troops into the city to help combat crime, successfully arguing to allow local law enforcement to work to turn things around in “continued partnerships” with the FBI, ATF, etc.:
“We have work to do, and we would welcome continued partnerships with the FBI, DEA, ATF, and U.S. Attorney to get drugs and drug dealers off our streets, but having the military and militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder our recovery,” he added. “We appreciate that the president understands that we are the global hub for technology, and when San Francisco is strong, our country is strong.”
In the CNN interview, Lurie noted that there was nothing progressive about overdose deaths, car break-ins, women feeling unsafe walking to their cars, and local businesses having to close because of repeat offenders.
Lurie’s social justice comrades have decided those are precisely the outcomes they desire…
Brandon Herrera’s 23rd Congressional District Democrat opponent Katy Stout isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. “Texas Democrat accidentally blasts opponent for ‘making fun of Nazis’ during live debate.” And if there’s ever been an apt last name…
Lennar and Millrose have a human centipede home selling ecosystem. Lennar makes the homes and owns Millrose, who buys the homes to rent out. And mysteriously helped Lennar hit their quarterly home-sale numbers.
At least he was ambitious. “ICE to deport illegal alien who pretended to be part of DHS and sold deportation “immunity” cards to other illegal aliens.”
[Mario Cesar Dos Santos Jr.] Brazilian illegal immigrant who admitted to creating a fake branch of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and selling counterfeit DHS and FBI identification cards — which he claimed would provide immunity from federal immigration officers — has been ordered deported …
As part of the scheme, Dos Santos claimed to be the president of the ‘Chaplain Emergency Management Agency’ (CEMA), a fictitious federal agency he created to trick attendees at training seminars into paying for immunity from immigration enforcement.
While the training courses were offered for free, participants were charged $400 to $450 for bogus certificates they believed would protect them from deportation, authorities said. Each seminar drew approximately 30 to 45 participants.
In the UK, of course. “Fifteen-Year-Old Boy Is Arrested After Joking About How A Politician Dresses.”
The leader of the Conservative Party on the Wolverhampton City Council, Simon Bennett, apparently can take anything but fashion criticism. The politician reportedly called the police on a 15-year-old boy for mocking his clothing style at meetings. It is the latest example of the collapse of free speech in the United Kingdom.
A boy only identified as “Fraser” is a 15-year-old supporter of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party. He found himself searched and arrested by four officers from the West Midlands Police at his home, locked in a cell, fingerprinted, subjected to a DNA search, and taken for a mugshot. The police then searched his bedroom and telephone.
All of this was over his joking about how Bennett dressed in public.
“Georgia Bought a $954,578 Chevy, but Officials Won’t Say What’s Inside.” “Records obtained through Georgia’s open-records law show that Georgia purchased a 2026 Traverse in April from Hardy Chevrolet GMC. Its listed “TSE cellular communications package” cost $890,478.80, with another $25,394 for installation. The rest went to equipment officials won’t identify publicly, even as state lawmakers question whether a child-welfare agency should have technology normally associated with criminal investigations.”
The Center Square reported last month how the department spent $639,000 on four other police-grade technologies that surveil web activity, extract the contents of cell phones and track cell phone locations. The prospect of the department spending nearly $1 million more on yet another surveillance tool—one that’s mobile and far more invasive—has lawmakers raising Fourth Amendment concerns, the constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
“They are not a law enforcement agency, and my understanding is that that type of equipment is only supposed to go to law enforcement agencies,” state Rep. Beth Camp, R-Concord, told The Center Square after the news wire informed her of the spending. “That is surveillance. That is spy surveillance.”
In the year 1000 A.D. an unbiased world observer would never have picked Europe as the region that would dominate the globe. Probably they would pick China with its massive population or fabulously wealthy India. The Islamic Caliphate would have looked past its sell-by date but would have beaten Europe by a mile.
Snip.
In this day and age – and particularly on Columbus Day – it is frowned upon to ask these questions. The Powers That Be tell us that Europe got rich by stealing indigenous people’s wealth, conveniently ignoring the many other non-European powers that were much more brutal at doing that than the Europeans were. The Mongol Empire in 1300 would have had poll position for World Domination, as would the earlier Abbasid caliphate. If all it takes for World Domination is to steal other people’s stuff, what was it about Europe that was different?
After all, China invented gunpowder. Why did Europe perfect it? Why did little England perfect the sailing Ship-of-the-Line? Why did the Divergence start and why there?
Today I offer two books for interested readers that explain this. One of these could never be published today, and the author would never get tenure today. Fortunately (if that’s the right word) David Landes is safely dead and doesn’t have to worry about The Usual Suspects getting him denied tenure.
Landes was a big deal in Economic History, authoring the section on the Industrial Revolution in the Cambridge Economic History. Late in his career, perhaps 30 years ago, he wrote The Wealth And Poverty of Nations, an economic history whose title was unashamedly stolen from Adam Smith. Landes insisted that social systems were key, and that some societies allowed progress towards a Great Divergence while other societies stifled attempts towards that progress.
In other words, if your society doesn’t support the right efforts it doesn’t matter how much of other people’s wealth you steal; you’re going nowhere. We see this in the history of Spain which became fabulously wealthy by stealing New World wealth but squandered it, ending up at the bottom of European power rankings. You could say exactly the same thing about the Mongol empire, or the Caliphate.
Landes’ arguments in the book are considered double-plus ungood by the woke crowd, so you might want to pick up a used copy from Amazon. The chapter on Argentina is particularly interesting in this age of President Milei. Interestingly, Milei was an Economist, and may have read Landes’ book.
A second recommendation is less controversal with the woke crowd but is joined at the hip with the Great Divergence. The political cycle world wide has been the emergence of an empire, the collapse of the empire, and the rise of a successor empire. We see this in China, in India, in Mesoamerica.
But not in Europe. Europe only had one great empire, Rome. When it fell, it was not replaced. Walter Scheidel wrote a book exploring why this unusual circumstance happened, Escape From Rome. Using Landes’ analytical framework, the Roman Empire did not encourage the types of behaviors that could have led to an Industrial Revolution, because those behaviors were seen by the Authorities as subversive to the state. But when Rome fell, there were unusual circumstances in Europe that prevented a new empire from rising in its place. Then competition between the poor emerging states set Europe on a very different path from the rest of the world. Basically, Europe escaped from Empire while the rest of the world didn’t.
Read the whole thing.
If you want to list American cities least likely to flood, Las Vegas would seem a good bet (heh), but evidently an inch of rain is enough to turn it into Venice.
“Hitler Mussolini wins Peruvian election.” “Hitler Mussolini Simeon Flores has secured a narrow victory in Peru’s local elections, exit polls show. The candidate for the centre-left Ahora Nación party was elected mayor of Queropalca, a remote district in the Peruvian Andes.”
Washington State FAed, and now they’re finding out. “Columbia Bank moving top executives to Arizona, citing Washington taxes.”
A major Pacific Northwest bank is shifting some of its top leadership to Arizona.
First reported by The Puget Sound Business Journal, the Columbia Banking System is opening an executive office in the Scottsdale area.
The office will open later this month.
The exodus of Columbia Bank executives began with CEO Clint Stein, who sold his Auburn home (for $2.45 million in September) to relocate to Arizona permanently. According to The Puget Sound Business Journal, the company said new Washington taxes are costing it approximately $8 million a year, prompting the decision to move most executive roles to Arizona.
Democrats love raising taxes more than life itself.
2026 is turning out to be a pretty strange year politically.
If you’d asked me last year to guess what issues might be concerning the body politic in a midterm year, I might have answered “inflation, jobs growth, social justice madness, housing costs, and the Iran war.” Not on my bingo card: Women cheering on a mother who confessed to killing her three children and the public uniting against Flock cameras, yet here we are.
Texans overwhelmingly oppose Flock cameras and remain wary of data center construction, according to a new poll that also found an essentially tied U.S. Senate race.
Conducted August 24-26 by Overton Insights/Texas Public Policy Foundation, the poll of 1,167 likely voters shows overwhelming concern about license plate reader cameras, especially those offered by Flock Safety.
Opposition to Flock cameras totaled more than 63 percent, with 51 percent strongly opposing the technology. Only 28 percent of Texans expressed support.
There has been increasing public opposition to the technology over the past few months. Many Texans are raising concerns about Fourth Amendment violations and data privacy because Flock cameras allow law enforcement and private entities to track and retain the movements of drivers not suspected of crimes without a warrant.
David Dunmoyer of the Texas Public Policy Foundation has warned that “Texans do not own their own personal information. Texas has never granted its citizens title to their own data.” Texas lawmakers are expected to evaluate potential safeguards during the upcoming legislative session in January.
I initially didn’t feel strongly about Flock cameras one way or another, since public roads are not a place anyone should have “a reasonable expectation of privacy.” However, the fact that Flock and other AI camera companies have employed underhanded methods to get taxpayer approval for funding them (given the mysterious fervor several public officials have shown toward buying and installing them despite voter resistance, I can only assume that bribery is involved) has changed my mind. Plus Flock’s data sharing and retention policies do bring up Fourth Amendment concerns, and do seem like a sneaky attempt to set up a surveillance system over American citizens, using private companies to carry out activities that would be unconstitutional for the federal government to implement directly.
Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered state agencies to pause funding for Flock cameras.
The pause, reportedly issued last Thursday, comes after a Texas agency allegedly spent an estimated $30 million on grants used for the technology.
“To the extent that cities get any funding for those cameras, most of it comes from the federal government,” said Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris on Friday. “To the extent any funding comes from Texas agencies, those agencies are clarifying that those funds cannot be used for Flock cameras.”
Flock contracts have been cancelled or rejected across the nation amid concerns surrounding Fourth Amendment violations, with several Texas localities joining the movement.
Snip.
Flock’s database is free for law enforcement officers to access anytime without a warrant, raising concerns over the potential violations of citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights.
Wylie City Council unanimously voted to not renew its contract with Flock Safety cameras this week.
The 7-0 vote places the city of Wylie in a small group of local governments in Texas opting out of a contract with the automated license plate reader (ALPR) company.
Snip.
Following Pflugerville City Council’s unanimous decision to deactivate the city’s Flock cameras this week, Pflugerville ISD followed suit, notifying parents Wednesday morning of the decision to suspend use of the cameras on district property.
“We understand this technology has raised questions and concerns within our community, and we have listened,” said a Pflugerville ISD spokesperson.
Hood County recently decommissioned its three Flock cameras following significant backlash to concerns of mass surveillance and potential Fourth Amendment violations.
DeFlock Wylie praised the council’s decision, calling it “exactly what residents asked for.” The site quoted Wylie Mayor Matthew Porter as saying, “The protections are just not there and are not required in the terms of the existing contract.”
“This started in January 2026 with one resident reading a contract, and grew into a nonpartisan campaign of neighbors,” wrote DeFlock Wylie.
“By the night of the vote, more than 700 residents had signed the petition, people packed the chamber, and the case was made in Flock’s own words. No lawyers. No budget. No outside money. Just Wylie residents who decided their privacy was worth showing up for.”
The Florida Department of Transportation on Monday revoked all existing permits for automated license plate readers installed by local law enforcement in state highway rights-of-way and said it will stop approving any new installations, citing an “exponential increase” in deployments, reports of misuse, data privacy concerns and “surveillance schemes.”
The Engineering and Operations Memorandum, signed by Will Watts, P.E., FDOT’s chief operating officer and assistant secretary, directs local agencies to remove the devices within 30 days. If they do not, the department said it will take them down. FDOT reserved the right to immediately remove any unit that poses a safety hazard.
An Iran ceasefire (sorta, kinda) holds, still more Californian welfare state fraud, Governor HairGel simply isn’t all there, Colorado steps up its war on the First Amendment, France’s aircraft carrier gets rumbled by a jogging ap, and William Shatner isn’t dying of cancer. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Personally, this has been a damn busy week. I’ve pretty much recovered from my bout of stomach flu, I’m in the home stretch for doing my taxes, and a bunch of other urgencies press.
Rather than provide a specific link, I’m just going to describe what I’m seeing of the ceasefire in the Iranian war. Like cannibalism in the the Royal Navy in that Monty Python skit, when Iran says they’re not lobbing any missiles, the mean that there is a certain amount. Just today, hostile drones were flying over Kuwait. And ships are free to transit the Strait of Hormuz, for values of “free” that include paying Iran protection money. Despite these violation of President Trump’s ceasefire terms, Iran is complaining that it’s no fair that Israel gets to continues kicking Hezbollah’s ass in Lebanon.
Speaking of Lebanon, three days ago the IDF reissued an evacuation notice for all Lebanese residents south of the Zahrani River. Note that the Zahrani is north of the Litani River, Israel’s previous line for evacuation. At this rate, IDF will enter Beirut in a few months…
Gladwin Gill, a 66-year-old psychologist, and his wife, Amelou Gill, a 70-year-old registered nurse, both of Covina, were arrested today on a federal criminal complaint charging them with health care fraud.
According to an affidavit filed with the complaint, the Gills owned and operated the Glendale-based 626 Hospice Inc., which did business as St. Francis Palliative Care.
The Gills allegedly schemed to defraud Medicare by paying illegal kickbacks for the referral of patients who were not dying.
The Gills’ business had a 97% survival rate … for hospice.
The Gills also submitted more than $5.2 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare for hospice services that either were not medically necessary or were not provided. Medicare paid the Gills more than $4 million on these fraudulent claims.
I’m sure the next part will be a huge surprise.
Gill is originally from Pakistan, and he’s served jail time before.
In 2008, he was sentenced to a year in prison for fraudulent political donations.
In 1995, he served two years in prison for real estate fraud.
He also fired a gun at gas company employees who came to his property to collect an unpaid bill.
Blue state officials can ignore any number of red flags as long as they expect to profit from the grift.
The insiders in Sacramento, Salem, and Olympia have been using social service non-profits, NGOs, and questionable charitable groups as passthroughs for their friends and pet constituencies for years. Billions have been gifted to insiders and friends. And now — at long last — actual taxpayers have gotten wise to the grift. You can thank independent journalists for highlighting these absurd expenses in a much simpler and understandable way than thick books or endless PDFs filled with intentionally confusing stats, opaquely written conclusions, and puffed-up executive summaries that don’t reflect the data can ever do.
And now people living on the West Coast, Messed Coast™ want to know one thing: Where’d all that money go?
It all starts with … Gavin
Because your longtime West Coast, Messed Coast™ correspondent has been highlighting this stupidity for years and chronicled it here and in my other writings, radio shows, and podcasts, I’m going to insist you stipulate that the Homeless Industrial Complex exists and began in earnest from about 2005-2010, when leftist leaders saw that a buck could be made by declaring and funding programs to “End Homelessness in 10 Years.” Obviously, it was a smashing success — for grifting, I mean.
In 2005, then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom harrumphed and gesticulated that he would, by dint of his own signature on a proclamation, “end homelessness” by 2015. Other cities followed. Billions went down the toilet as a result. And by toilet, I mean the streets of the Tenderloin and other Skid Rows along the West Coast, Messed Coast™.
There then follows a chart of various attempts to “end homelessness.” I’m sure you’ll be shocked to find out none of them succeeded.
Sen. Tom Cotton: “The New York Times just confirmed what we’ve long suspected: ActBlue knowingly let in fraudulent foreign donations to help Democrats win. Yet another example of the left’s embrace of fraud. Everyone involved must face the full weight of the law.”
“The bombshell Times story comes after a law firm that formerly worked with ActBlue warned the group that they almost certainly lied to Congress about their process of vetting foreign donations.”
After interviewing Gavin Newsom, Adam Carolla thinks “Something’s wrong with him.” “He’s a sociopath. Like he doesn’t really understand anything.”
“Konkivskyi Bridge Destroyed in 60-Day Ukrainian Drone Operation Using Heavy-Lift Drones.” The weird thing is that this is in Oleshky, down from the already-destroyed Antonovsky Bridge, and evidently built up explosive material under the bridge over a period of time.
The moment I heard the smashing of glass, I knew exactly what it was. I had heard that sound dozens of times over the last month. Before I even looked up, I grabbed my phone, turned toward the noise, and started taking photos. Ten feet away, a black Expedition SUV sat with its rear window blown out. Within seconds, a man in a black shirt and backpack sprinted off carrying a laptop, a briefcase, and a gym bag. I ran over, saw the shattered glass, and knew exactly what I had just witnessed: a smash-and-grab. A smash-and-grab is a particular kind of burglary. A thief smashes a car window, grabs whatever looks valuable, and gets out fast. What defines it is not just the speed. It is the confidence. The noise, the alarms, the cameras, the witnesses, none of it matters anymore. The criminal is not trying to avoid attention because attention no longer means consequences.
Without thinking, I took off after him. Just moments earlier, I had been across the street in Portland’s Pearl District with a few dozen volunteers doing a trash cleanup. We were on the sidewalk with gloves and garbage bags, doing what functioning cities are supposed to do: maintain public space, clean up disorder, and take pride in where they live. Then, right across the street, someone did what a broken city has learned to tolerate: smash a car window and steal from strangers in broad daylight. The contrast could not have been clearer. On one side were citizens trying to restore their city. On the other was someone actively tearing it down. Maybe it was that stark line between right and wrong that lit the fuse in me. Maybe I was just tired of watching decent people get victimized while everyone else acted like this was now normal.
I caught up to him as he turned the corner at Northwest 14th and Couch and screamed, “Stop!” Then louder: “STOP!” He looked back, startled, and dropped the first bag. My friend grabbed it and held onto it while I kept running. We ended up in a full sprint. He was at least twenty years younger than me, but adrenaline kept me close. He weaved through traffic, jumped over a garbage can, and slid across the hood of a car like this was routine, like he had done it many times before. Several blocks later, he started to slow down. He ducked behind a parked car, and I chased him around it twice. He was breathing hard and begging me to stop chasing him. I finally caught him and cornered him in a doorway. He shoved me with his left arm. I grabbed his shirt and pushed him back into the door. “Leave me the f*ck alone, bro,” he screamed. I did not let go. I demanded everything back. He tried to pull away, then handed over what he had stolen while repeating, “I didn’t do anything,” over and over. He looked scared, but he also looked stunned. His expression said something I could not ignore: I think I was the first person who had ever chased him down.
My friend called 911. We gave the operator a detailed description, and she told us it would take at least twenty minutes and that we needed to let him go. So we did and he took off running again. But we kept following from a distance so we could continue updating 911 with his location. And once I was no longer right on top of him, the thief stopped sprinting and started operating. That is the part most people do not understand. People imagine smash-and-grabs as chaotic, impulsive crimes, one desperate guy, one reckless decision, one lucky escape. What I witnessed was not chaos. It was choreography. He took off his shoes. Took off his shirt. Cut his jeans into shorts. Within thirty seconds, he looked like a different person. That is not panic. That is a practiced move. That is someone who has done this enough times to have a system.
Then came protection. A middle-aged man in a “Just Do It” Nike hat rolled up on a beat-up bike and grabbed my shoulder. “Stop following,” he said. “I’ll make serious trouble for you.” A random passerby does not physically confront a stranger for following a thief. He does not show up at the perfect moment, get physical
immediately, and start threatening people. That was not random. That was an enforcer, someone whose role was to discourage interference, someone who knew the routine. I knocked his arm off and stood my ground. Once he realized I was not going to back down, he backed off. A moment later, I watched two homeless individuals throw a blanket over the thief as if they were concealing contraband, then casually walk away. If I had not seen it happen, I would have walked right past him.
We called 911 again and gave his updated description and location. Then chaos became a weapon. A woman in a black jacket and mini skirt lunged at me and tried to rip my phone out of my hands. She grabbed it hard, pulling like her life depended on it. Another man rolled up on a BMX bike and grabbed my arm. This was not about stealing my phone. It was about destroying the evidence. They were trying to remove the one thing that made them vulnerable: documentation.
Chinese propaganda outlets linked to the Singham Network have repeatedly sought to raise the profile of self-described “MAGA Communist” Jackson Hinkle as the social media influencer praises the Chinese Communist Party and critiques the Trump Administration and the West.
The China-based propaganda partners of the Singham Network — most notably the pro-CCP Guancha outlet as well as the China Academy and its Wave Media video ecosystem — have repeatedly sought to elevate Hinkle, including hosting him for conferences in Shanghai, giving him favorable interviews, promoting his comments and appearances, and generally pushing his idea of so-called “MAGA Communism.”
Hinkle is openly “Marxist-Leninist” and, despite his use of the “MAGA Communist” label, he has been a harsh critic of President Donald Trump, repeatedly labeling him a “war criminal” as Hinkle openly sides with U.S. adversaries such as Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the CCP, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, the Iranian regime, and terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.
Hinkle has also been promoted in China by Chinese state media outlets, some of which are also linked to Singham’s influence efforts. Singham leads and funds a global financial and activist network that operates inside the U.S. and many other countries, and while he rarely grabs the spotlight for himself in public speeches, he did so in November through the Chinese release of a report that sought to denigrate U.S. and Allied Power contributions to WWII.
Gov. Greg Abbott said he does not expect Texas to legalize gambling in the next legislative session, signaling a continued roadblock for casino interests that have spent millions trying to influence state elections.
Abbott made the remarks during a press conference Tuesday focused on his property tax plan, held after Galveston County Commissioners Court joined the Lone Star Property Tax Reform Council in support of his proposal.
The governor was asked about gambling, as well as a so-called “fuzzy animal” or “fuzzy bear” exception in Texas law—a colloquial term for a narrow provision allowing certain amusement machines to award low-value, non-cash prizes, which some “game room” operators have cited to justify machines critics say function as illegal gambling devices.
“I don’t know how that works, and I’m not sure about fuzzy bears and things like that,” said Abbott. “We’ll look into the fuzzy bears. All I can tell you is what the law says, and that is, gambling is unconstitutional in the state of Texas, and I don’t see that changing in the next session.”
Abbott’s comments come as casino interests, including groups tied to Las Vegas Sands and the Texas Defense PAC, have poured millions into Texas primary elections in recent cycles. Those efforts failed to unseat lawmakers who opposed expanding gambling.
Colorado is now arguably the most anti-free speech state in the union, pushing an array of measures attacking those with opposing social and political views. The irony is that the state has proved a bonanza for free speech with spectacular legal failures that reaffirmed rather than restricted the First Amendment. Now, the Democratic legislature and governor are back with new unconstitutional measures, including a requirement that lawyers not share information with federal immigration officials as a condition for filing with state courts.
Colorado legislators and judges have spent years attacking core free speech and associational rights. In the last election, the state attempted to strip President Donald Trump from the ballot with the support of a majority of its Democratic-controlled state supreme court. (The effort was later declared unconstitutional in a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court. Colorado could not even get any of the liberal justices to support its actions).
The state is responsible for the efforts to force business owners to create products celebrating same-sex marriages. That effort led to the Masterpiece Cake Shop case and then the 303 Creative case. Even after losing earlier efforts against Masterpiece Cake Shop owner Jack Phillips, the targeting of its owner continued for years. That litigation proved to be a tremendous victory for free speech.
Colorado has also been leading the fight to limit the speech and associational rights of professionals and parents on “conversion therapy.” Recently, that effort led to another massive loss before the Supreme Court in Chiles v. Salazar, resulting in a resounding 8-1 rejection of Colorado’s position. It could only secure the vote of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
After that near-unanimous ruling against the state, Colorado responded by doubling down with legislation to expose any counselors engaged in conversion therapy to heightened legal liability, including waiving any statute of limitations. That case could also result in legal challenges as Colorado continues to spend a fortune on seeking to curtail free speech rights.
Now, the state is defending a new public accommodation law, HB 25-1312, that defines “gender expression” to include “chosen name” and “how an individual chooses to be addressed.”
As in past Colorado cases, the state secured favorable rulings from district court judges. President Biden-nominated U.S. District Judge Regina Rodriguez refused to grant a preliminary injunction against the Colorado public accommodation law.
The Alliance Defending Freedom is appealing the matter to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit on behalf of its clients, XX-XY Athletics and Born Again Used Books. Other appeals are also being brought in the matter.
At the same time, the state has moved forward on Senate Bill 25-276, which imposes a threshold condition for state e-filings that requires lawyers to certify annually “under penalty of perjury,” that they will not use “personal identifying information” from the system to help federal immigration enforcement.
California sheriff deputies try to serve an eviction notice, have the guy open fire on them for their troubles. Do they: A.) Taz him, B.) Shoot him, or C.) Roll over him in an armored vehicle? (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Speaking of Shatner, he’s been warning people about crazy “Shippers” (people who imagine relationships between fictional characters) for a while now. Even crazier? When a crazy anime shipper sends a death threat to a voice actress for not agreeing with them that an animated character is crazy shipper’s “soulmate.”
Follow-up: Remember Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, age 47, and her daughter, Sarinasdat Hosseiny, the niece and grandniece of dirtnapped Iranian revolutionary Guard scumbag Qasem Soleimani?
This cute dog is banned from the couch, so the moment its owner leaves the house it races straight onto it – but instantly drops to the floor the second it hears footsteps approaching. 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/WKcjPyr3u8
Microsoft has long had a reputation of an abusive company, all the way back to its origins, when Gary Kildall accused Bill Gates of stealing parts of CP/M for DOS. The list of lawsuits against Microsoft for anti-competitive or shady business business practices is so extensive it has its own Wikipedia article. But it’s latest moves to force both subscription models and AI into every nook and crevice of its software may be the final straws that break the Borg’s back, as longtime Windows users finally seem to be abandoning ship.
Last month, I met with a mid-sized law firm facing a common dilemma. Their Windows 10 laptops were nearing the end of support and needed to be replaced. Typically, this meant buying new hardware and software—predictable and straightforward. But this time, Microsoft suggested a different approach: move to Windows 365 Cloud PCs, a PC that operates with a monthly subscription and is accessible from any device, scalable, secure, and AI-enhanced. The catch? The shift from ownership to a subscription model and reduced local control led their IT team to question how “personal” these computers truly were.
Cloud subscriptions replace personal computing
The experience of this law firm encapsulates a major industry shift: Today, you don’t buy Windows, you rent access to it. Windows 365 Cloud PCs began as a business-only experiment at Microsoft but have grown into its central product and are now the primary road map, with local Windows installations becoming a mere stepping stone to cloud-based desktops. With tools like Windows 365 Boot, users can bypass the traditional local operating system altogether, landing directly into a personalized, cloud-streamed environment, even on third-party or bring-your-own devices.
Hardware no longer anchors the user’s experience; the familiar PC is now a portal into a metered utility controlled, updated, and managed by Microsoft. Windows 365 Switch blurs the line even further, allowing seamless migration between cloud and local environments. With each step, more user agency is surrendered in exchange for the convenience of a cloud-managed world.
The AI revolution and hardware
As if the cloud weren’t enough, artificial intelligence is muddying the waters. Microsoft is loud about a future built on AI PCs, touting Copilot integration, neural processing units (NPUs), and specialized hardware. But as Dell’s own product head recently admitted, customers aren’t flocking to buy these new devices for AI alone; the proposition is too abstract, and the day-to-day benefits too unclear. In reality, most significant leaps in AI are happening in the cloud, not on the desktop. Even Jeff Bezos framed the future simplistically: AI will appear everywhere, but it will live in the cloud.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is aggressively pushing its users to rely on its AI-powered tools and ecosystem, with access controlled through subscriptions. Gone is the idea of installing and running your own AI applications locally; instead, users are nudged to rent access to AI services, hosted and updated in Microsoft’s cloud. The notion of the self-managed PC is fast giving way to a persistent, subscription-based rental of power and capability, with AI primarily serving as another tool for vendor lock-in.
Hidden costs and loss of control
Businesses and individuals face new economic realities. The traditional model—investing in hardware for five years—is replaced by an ever-escalating treadmill. A basic Windows 365 Cloud PC costs about $41 a month for 8GB, excluding Office or AI add-ons. Vendors pitch this as a trade-off against the hidden costs and complexity of managing local computers in hybrid work. Before long, subscription fees will become just another line item in ballooning IT expenses.
Perhaps more concerning is the core loss of control. The local PC gave users the keys. They owned, updated, installed, and protected their own digital spaces. The new cloud-and-AI reality puts Microsoft in charge of software, identity, AI tools, and even privacy decisions. The old personal computer offered freedom; the new model is managed, metered, and routinely adjusted to fit Microsoft’s evolving business interests. Yes, security can benefit. Yes, patching and remote management are simplified for companies. But every user now sits one step further removed from the heart of their own computing experience.
That was linked by this piece, which was linked from Borepatch, who has further thoughts.
What this means is that you don’t own any Microsoft software. Sure, you may think that because you paid them money (most often when you bought your computer – some of that purchase price went to Microsoft in the form of a license fee for Windows). But you actually don’t own “your” copy of software. At all.
Rather, you have the right to run the software on your computer. That may not seem like a big difference, but it is. The license agreement (you know, the one you didn’t read before you clicked “I Agree”) allows Microsoft to change the terms of the agreement at any time, at their pleasure.
Microsoft has just done this in a big, big way. Key new stuff in Windows 11 is:
AI integrated with your operating system
Online presence is critical for lots of Windows now (e.g. AI)
Windows will nag you until you put all your data online (OneDrive) whether you want to or not.
The proper technical term for that first bullet point is that your Windows operating system is essentially now an “AI Agent” which if you are a regular reader you know is very, very bad security juju.
Combine this enormous security hole with the requirement to essentially be online 100% of the time (bad security) and the liklihood that OneDrive will slurp all your data to some Internet black hole in a Microsoft data center, Windows is simply unsecurable.
Yes, I know that is inflammatory, but there is simply no way that you can get assurance that your security is sane. I say that as someone who has spent decades inn Internet Security (and particularly in security assurance). Not to put too fine a point on it, but I don’t think that I could get decent assurance that things aren’t going “bump in the Net”. For most of the readers here, it’s not even worth trying.
And that AI, Copilot, is not only widely loathed by users, but is creating brand spanking new security holes.
“We’ve been following Microsoft and all their massive missteps over the last several months. Most of it related to AI and pushing AI into consumer products and pushing it on to people who don’t want it.”
“There’s an error with Copilot. Apparently, it can can read your email. That’s great. And Copilot is sort of the bedrock of Windows 11. It’s very hard to get rid of Copilot. They want to put it in everything, including Notepad.”
“Copilot slows everything down. I would highly recommend you turn it off.” If you can figure out how. Kneon recommends Linux Mint if you want a Windows-like experience.
“Look, Microsoft is not secure. And just realize if you’re using it, especially for business, if you don’t want anybody to see it, you probably shouldn’t use their tools.”
“A work tab within Copilot chat had summarized email messages stored in a user’s draft and sent folders even when they had a sensitivity label on it and a data loss prevention policy configured to prevent unauthorized data sharing.” Sounds like Copilot is as indifferent to your privacy and security as Microsoft on the whole.
“I don’t know if you can hurt Xbox anymore, because Xbox is a dying brand, but the new boss, who comes from an AI background, promises not to flood it with soulless AI slop. This is Asha Sharma, formerly the head of Microsoft’s AI division, which is causing problems. Now she’s in charge of Xbox. She promises many more great games made by humans.”
Sharma blather about how Xbox will run across multiple platforms instead of a console snipped. “Are we seeing first signs that Xbox is dead and about to be consumed by Microsoft? I think that’s 100% what’s going to happen.”
“I think they’re going to basically AI themselves into the wood chipper. I think it’s very clear that that’s all they care about right now, if they’re putting the head of AI in charge of gaming and she’s talking cloud and AI and all that. Yeah, it’s over, man.”
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is facing some accusations of “Indian nepotism” for putting Sharma in charge of Xbox, especially since she has no background in gaming development. Of course, Microsoft has long been accused of abusing the H1-B visa system to bring over cheap workers. Indeed, this MSN India piece crows about it.
According to official H-1B filings submitted to the US Department of Labor between 2012 and 2023, Microsoft filed over 50,000 H-1B visa applications, and approximately 70 to 80 percent of these applications were for Indian nationals. This makes Indians the largest group in Microsoft’s US-based technical talent pipeline. The data shows a consistent year-on-year trend where Indian engineers make up the majority of Microsoft’s skilled immigrant workforce.
Snip.
Multiple research estimates and workforce studies indicate that 26 to 30 percent of Microsoft’s global technical workforce is Indian or Indian-origin.
Snip.
Microsoft operates one of its biggest global R&D centres in Hyderabad, which works on products including Azure, Office, Windows, LinkedIn integration, AI/ML systems and cybersecurity. The India Development Center (IDC), established in 1998, is one of Microsoft’s oldest and largest development facilities outside Redmond. This drives significant recruitment of Indian engineers for advanced research and product development roles.
Snip.
A review of Microsoft’s global leadership roster shows notable Indian-origin executives including Satya Nadella (CEO), Rajesh Jha (EVP), Suresh Kumar (EVP), Anil Bhansali (VP Engineering), and dozens of corporate vice presidents and product heads. This demonstrates the substantial representation of Indian-origin professionals in high-level technical and management roles within the company.
But Microsoft also has a Jeffrey Epstein problem. Do a search on founder and former CEO Bill Gates in the Epstein files and you get 2,616 results. Nor is he the only Epstein-connected person of interest high in the ranks of Microsoft. Financier and Democrat megadonor Reid Hoffman is still listed on the Microsoft board, despite being notoriously close to Epstein and showing up in the Epstein files 2,667 times. (Also on the board: Former Obama Commerce Department head Penny Pritzker, sister of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and aunt to Epstein friend Tom Pritzker, whose name shows up 2,524 times in the Epstein files.)
Even before Microsoft jumped on the AI bus (or, if you prefer, off the AI cliff), it was notorious for security holes in its software, and there’s precious little evidence that the AI age has made anything better. The latest “Patch Tuesday” featured fixes for no less than six Zero Day exploits.
What all this amounts to: Anyone still on Windows should look to move to Linux if they have the technical chops to do so, or Apple if they don’t. Though Apple has dabbled with subscription services as well, they’re still overwhelmingly a hardware company that wants to sell you the latest shiny. And Apple has been dinged for its “lazy” approach to AI, which may turn put to be the smartest move after all. “Amazon, Microsoft, Meta Platforms, and Alphabet are projected to spend around $700 billion combined on capital expenditures in 2026, much of it on AI data centers and hardware — Apple plans just $14 billion.” That means they’re less likely to try and shove it into every damn thing. And I know my now-relatively-ancient MacBook Pro keeps working even when the Internet is down.
If you’re still on Windows, now might be the time to get out while the getting is good…
Remember when Google was a world-leading corporation whose motto was “don’t be evil”, universally trusted for Internet searches, branching out into other businesses and could seemingly do no wrong? You may not, since that was a good 15-20 years ago. Since then, Google has done plenty of evil to lose our trust, from spinning up useful services only to allow them to be killed off a few years later to letting itself be infected with social justice to ruining search results to plump ad revenues.
Now Google is infecting itself with AI across all its divisions, and the results are disasterous.
No, Cheney didn’t vote for Kamala in 2020, and indeed only announced outright opposition to Trump after January 6. Google’s AI garbage has conflated the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections.
This is far from the first time Google’s AI systems have made mistakes.
A whole bunch of YouTube channels were banned based on the actions of completely unrelated channels, and the creators blamed AI. YouTube eventually restored them and denied AI was involved, but does anyone really believe anything Google/YouTube says anymore?
But Google AI is definitely improving one thing: malware.
Google’s Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) is warning that bad guys are using artificial intelligence to create and deploy new malware that both utilizes and combats large language models (LLM) like Gemini when deployed.
The findings were laid out in a white paper released on Wednesday, November 5 by the GTIG. The group noted that adversaries are no longer leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) just for productivity gains, they are deploying “novel AI-enabled malware in active operations.” They went on to label it a new “operational phase of AI abuse.”
Google is calling the new tools “just-in-time” AI used in at least two malware families: PromptFlux and PromptSteal, both of which use LLMs during deployment. They generate malicious scripts and obfuscate their code to avoid detection by antivirus programs. Additionally, the malware families use AI models to create malicious functions “on demand” rather than being built into the code.
Google says these tools are a nascent but significant step towards “autonomous and adaptive malware.”
PromptFlux is an experimental VBScript dropper that utilizes Google Gemini to generate obfuscated VBScript variants. VBScript is mostly used for automation in Windows environments.
Ah, Windows, a fecund garden of malware for over 30 years.
In this case, PromptFlux attempts to access your PC via Startup folder entries and then spreads through removable drives and mapped network shares.
“The most novel component of PROMPTFLUX is its ‘Thinking Robot’ module, designed to periodically query Gemini to obtain new code for evading antivirus software,” GTIG says.
The researchers say that the code indicates the malware’s makers are trying to create an evolving “metamorphic script.”
According to Google, the Threat Intelligence researchers could not pinpoint who made PromptFlux, but did note that it appears to be used by a group for financial gain. Google also claims that it is in early development and can’t yet inflict real damage.
The company says that it has disabled the malware’s access to Gemini and deleted assets connected to it.
Google also highlighted a number of other malware that establish remote command-and control (FruitShell), capturing GitHub credentials (QuietVault), and one that steals and encrypts data on Windows, macOS and Linux devices (PromptLock). All of them utilize AI to work or in the case of FruitShell to bypass LLM-powered security.
Beyond malware, the paper also reports several cases where threat actors abused Gemini. In one case, a malicious actor posed as a “capture-the-flag” participant, basically acting as a students or researchers to convince Gemini to provide information that is supposed to be blocked.
Google specified a number of threats from Chinese, Iranian and North Korean threat groups that abused Gemini for phishing, data mining, increasing malware sophistication, crypto theft and creating deepfakes.
So Google has created a power bottle genie that refuses to stay in the bottle, but will grant wishes to just about anyone, no matter how evil their intent.
Also, not limited to Google, researchers have demonstrated new exploits for AI browsers (or rather, very old exploits refurbished for the AI age).
Several new AI browsers, including OpenAI’s Atlas, offer the ability to take actions on the user’s behalf, such as opening web pages or even shopping. But these added capabilities create new attack vectors, particularly prompt injection.
Prompt injection occurs when something causes text that the user didn’t write to become commands for an AI bot. Direct prompt injection happens when unwanted text gets entered at the point of prompt input, while indirect injection happens when content, such as a web page or PDF that the bot has been asked to summarize, contains hidden commands that AI then follows as if the user had entered them.
Last week, researchers at Brave browser published a report detailing indirect prompt injection vulns they found in the Comet and Fellou browsers. For Comet, the testers added instructions as unreadable text inside an image on a web page, and for Fellou they simply wrote the instructions into the text of a web page.
When the browsers were asked to summarize these pages – something a user might do – they followed the instructions by opening Gmail, grabbing the subject line of the user’s most recent email message, and then appending that data as the query string of another URL to a website that the researchers controlled. If the website were run by crims, they’d be able to collect user data with it.
When Isaac Asimov crafted the Three Laws of Robotics, he thought that robots would have built-in safeguards deep in their source codes to prevent them from doing harm. What he never could have envisioned is multiple artificial intelligence being created as quickly as possible by competing corporations, none of whom seem to value safety over time-to-market, and that some of these AIs could be capable of modifying their own source code for greater speed and efficiency, so that no one knows precisely at any given time what exactly they’re running, and what data sets have been used to feed their pet Frankenstein monsters…
More dirt comes out about the (intentionally?) shoddy security at Trump’s Butler rally, Netanyahu addresses congress, China bribes some Democrats, Israel hits the Houthis, Redbox users are screwed, and Sanrio upends the world with a shocking revelation. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
More whistleblowers are coming forward with damning allegations about the law-enforcement failures surrounding the failed assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump.
Whistleblowers with “direct knowledge” of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) handling of the Trump rally in Butler, Pa., last weekend came forward to Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) alleging that the rally was a “loose” security event featuring personnel drawn from a different wing of DHS who were not trained for such an event.
“Whistleblowers who have direct knowledge of the event have approached my office. According to the allegations, the July 13 rally was considered to be a ‘loose’ security event. For example, detection canines were not used to monitor entry and detect threats in the usual manner. Individuals without proper designations were able to gain access to backstage areas. Department personnel did not appropriately police the security buffer around the podium and were also not stationed at regular intervals around the event’s security perimeter,” Hawley wrote in a letter sent Friday to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
“In addition, whistleblower allegations suggest the majority of DHS officials were not in fact USSS agents but instead drawn from the department’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). This is especially concerning given that HSI agents were unfamiliar with standard protocols typically used at these types of events, according to the allegations.”
Embattled Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday after her refusal to answer basic questions in front of a congressional committee drew bipartisan calls for her resignation.
Cheatle stepped down ten days after the assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump, one of the most significant law-enforcement failures in American history, and the defining moment of her law-enforcement career.
Snip.
At a hearing with the House Oversight Committee Monday, Cheatle brought Republicans and Democrats together in calling for her resignation. She repeatedly failed to answer basic questions about what went wrong at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pa., instead deflecting to the Secret Service’s ongoing investigation and the FBI’s separate investigation.
Cheatle admitted the assassination attempt was the Secret Service’s most consequential failure in decades, but did not disclose much information, despite being under subpoena.
She did not have a specific timeline of what law enforcement did after the shooter was first discovered, failed to explain why agents were not deployed onto the rooftop the gunman equipped, declined to comment on specific personnel assignments for the Trump rally, did not elaborate on why the rooftop was outside of the Secret Service’s perimeter, would not commit to firing anyone involved with the Trump rally, and deflected each time Trump’s requests for enhanced security came up.
She did tell lawmakers that she had not visited the crime scene, nine days after Trump was wounded when a bullet grazed his right ear. After the attack, Cheatle said she called Trump to apologize.
The Secret Service will have an internal report on what went wrong at the Trump rally in 60 days, a timeline multiple lawmakers told Cheatle is unacceptable given the intensity of the presidential campaign and America’s political climate.
We're only starting to dig into the cover-up of Biden's cognitive decline. Everyone knows Kamala Harris is going to be under the microscope.
But key to the cover-up was Kim Cheatle. Look at her record (detailed below), and it's clear she was hired to help conceal from the… pic.twitter.com/Q9uHlhgm0E
Never in modern presidential history has a political party staged a veritable inside coup to remove their current president from his ongoing candidacy for his party’s nomination and reelection.
Stranger still, the very elites and grandees, who now are using every imaginable means of deposing Biden as their nominee, are the very public voices that just weeks ago insisted that candidate Biden was “sharp as a tack” and “fit as a fiddle.” And they damned any who thought otherwise!
They are also the identical operators whose machinations ensured that there would not be an open Democratic primary. They demonized the few on the Left who weakly challenged Biden in the primaries. Yet now they will select a replacement candidate who likely never received a single primary vote.
Note further: Biden’s impending forced abdication is not because he is non compos mentis.
Rather, the inside move is due to Biden’s disastrous debate exposure that confirmed his dementia could no longer be disguised by a conspiracy of leftist politicos and media.
But far more importantly, the impetus for removal is driven by the admission that the cognitively Biden is headed for a climactic November defeat.
Were Biden now ahead in the polls by five points, these same backroom machinists would be insisting that he was still Pericles.
Yet now Biden is being un-personed and Trotskyized, as we prepare the new groupthink narrative of his likely surrogate—a soon to be praised eloquent, mellifluous, and articulate Cicero-Harris.
That Biden will likely remain as president until January 20, 2025, should remind the country the Left is more worried about its own next four-year continuance in power than the fate of the country that now admittedly will be guided in the next six months by a president judged unfit by his own supporters to run for the very office that he will still keep holding.
Further irony arises when those who, as supposedly guardians of democratic norms, pontificated to the country the last nine years about the Trump-Hitlerian threat to democracy. Yet now they so cavalierly work overtime on how:
a) to pull off the removal of their candidate from the November ballot on grounds of senility,
b) but not the removal of the same president from office (their own fate is more precious than our collective fate as a nation),
c) while trying to select, rather than elect, a replace candidate,
d) without ever offering any explanation, much less an apology, how a Democrat president from January 20, 2021, was daily declared vibrant, dynamic, and engaged but suddenly one day after June 27, 2024, was remanufactured as not?
In this report on cell phone location (presumably from publicly-sourced advertising data, which should terrify you), the Heritage Foundation claims one device that regularly visited the Crooks home was tracked to DC near an FBI office.
Also strange was the fact that a device linked to the Crooks home had visited Butler twice in the week or so before the shooting (an hour and twenty minute drive).
Another device repeatedly visited Plymouth, Massachusetts, although how that connects to the Trump shooting is unknown.
Going back to last August, one device visited a local gun shop (again, not suspicious for an American to visit a gun shop unless this was the visit where the AR was purchased).
If this proves to be true link between the FBI and Crooks, the implications here are pretty frightening…
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was addressing congress, the pro-Hamas Useful Idiot Brigade was busy vandalizing national monuments.
Thousands of demonstrators filled the streets of downtown D.C. carrying signs with messages like “arrest Netanyahu” and “end all U.S. aid to Israel.” Groups waving Palestinian flags, and chanting “Free, free Palestine,” marched toward the U.S. Capitol.
Outside Union Station, protesters removed American flags and hoisted Palestinian ones in their place. The Columbus Memorial Fountain in the circle outside the station was defaced with the words, “Hamas Is Coming,” written in red paint. Other monuments, like the Freedom Bell and various statues, also suffered damage. FOX 5’s Stephanie Ramirez says law enforcement is preparing for more possible protests Thursday.
U.S. Capitol Police officers deployed pepper spray after they said some protesters became “violent” and “failed to obey” orders to move back from the police line.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had harsh words for anti-Israel protesters in his Wednesday address to a joint session of Congress, slamming the activists as “useful idiots” for Iran and other bad actors even as they congregated outside the Capitol.
“Defeating our brutal enemies requires both courage and clarity,” he said. “Clarity begins by knowing the difference between good and evil. Yet, incredibly, many anti-Israel protesters choose to stand with evil. They stand with Hamas. They stand with rapists and murderers. They stand with people who come into the kibbutzim — into the home — with the parents and the children, the two babies in the secret attic, and murder the parents, find the secret latch to the attic, find the babies, and they murder them. These protesters stand with them. They should be ashamed of themselves.”
Netanyahu referenced the claims from many anti-Israel protesters that Hamas terrorism constitutes legitimate resistance while Israel’s retaliatory war is out of bounds.
“They refuse to make the simple distinction between those who target terrorists and those who target civilians — between the democratic state of Israel and the terrorist thugs of Hamas,” he told the chamber.
The prime minister stressed in his speech that anti-Israel protesters are not just opposed to the existence of the Jewish state but are anti-American as well.
“These protesters burn American flags even on the Fourth of July.”
According to the 3,000-participant, three-year study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, giving people $1,000 per month increased leisure time, as recipients spent less time on sleeping, child care, community engagement, caring for others, and self-improvement.
The study also found that recipients’ income, not including the free money, reduced their incomes significantly, as “for every one dollar received, total household income excluding the transfers fell by at least 21 cents, and total individual income fell by at least 12 cents.”
“The takeaway from the best study done so far about UBI in the United States is that handing out money isn’t the solution to all our problems,” Daniel Di Martino, a economics researcher and graduate fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told The Center Square. “In fact, sometimes it makes things worse.”
Or they could have read pages 150-152 of Charles Murray’s Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980 for his summary of the results of the SIME/DIME experiments, which were similarly bleak.
After letting camps of drug-addicted transients overrun his state for years, California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom decides that he can finally start clearing out those camps, now that he has the cover of a Supreme Court ruling.
California governor Gavin Newsom directed state officials to remove homeless encampments across the Golden State on Thursday after the Supreme Court ruled in June that local governments have a right to ban public camping and impose fines for violators.
Newsom announced the guidance in an executive order, advising cities to crack down on encampments on public property while providing social services and housing alternatives. The order, first reported by the New York Times, represents a sharp departure from the accommodative homelessness policies adopted by progressive state governments over the last decade.
Note that “providing social services” means that the Homeless Industrial Complex will still be able to rake off the graft…
Food for thought:
Democrats are rigging their own election. Does anyone still believe they didn’t rig the 2020 election? https://t.co/G3svXIpKmp
CBS said nearly half of Americans can’t afford healthcare, but for some reason didn’t mention ObamaCare.
Americans spend more money on health care on a per capita basis than people in any other developed nation, yet almost half say they’ve struggled recently to pay for medical treatment or prescription drugs, according to a new study from Gallup and West Health.
About 45% of those polled by the organizations said they’d recently had to skip treatment or medicine either because of cost or lack of easy access. Of those, about 8% said they also wouldn’t have access to affordable care if they required it today, a group that Gallup and West Health termed ‘cost desperate.’
Snip.
The Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, became law back in 2010, and President Obama promised Americans that his legislation would “reduce the costs of health care” and that “families will save on premiums.” He said Americans could even keep their doctors and health plans – over and over again, in fact.
Instead, here’s what Obamacare did, according to America First Policy Institute:
Premiums have increased by 80%.
From 2010 to 2023, the average premium for family coverage increased 80%, from just over $13,000 to nearly $24,000.
Total healthcare costs for a family of four now exceed $30,000 per year — increasing from $18,000 per year when Obamacare was passed.
Deductibles have increased over 50% since Obamacare was implemented in 2013.
Speaking of Obama, he officially endorsed Harris, which presumably puts a surprise Michelle Obama nomination at the convention off the table.
Well you can add this to a list of reasons Democrats just can’t seem to stomach Elon Musk any more.
The U.S. subsidiary of Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BYD and its top executive, Stella Li, have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates and organizations over the past decade.
A review of federal and state political spending records by the Daily Caller News Foundation reveals these contributions.
They found that between 2020 and 2023, BYD and Stella Li contributed over $40,000 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Additionally, they have invested more than $30,000 into organizations supporting President Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign.
BYD, the world’s largest EV producer, was recently banned by Congress from selling batteries to the Pentagon due to security concerns, according to Bloomberg News.
The report says that between 2018 and 2023, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom received about $60,000 from Li and BYD USA. Newsom faced criticism for awarding BYD a $1 billion no-bid contract for protective equipment during the pandemic and later test-drove a BYD vehicle in China in 2023.
Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa received over $10,000 from Li for his unsuccessful 2018 gubernatorial campaign, while the California Democratic Party got about $19,000 from Li and BYD USA between 2018 and 2020.
In 2015 and 2016, BYD USA and its executives donated over $11,000 to Michael Antonovich, former Chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, who often supported BYD-friendly initiatives.
Additionally, BYD USA contributed $25,000 in 2018 to Californians For Safe, Reliable Infrastructure, a group opposing Proposition 6, which aimed to repeal a gas tax.
In 2017 and 2018, BYD USA and Stella Li donated over $19,000 to Los Angeles City Councilman Kevin de Leon. De Leon, then President pro Tempore of the California Senate, praised BYD at a 2017 ribbon-cutting for its Lancaster manufacturing facility, emphasizing the company’s role in job creation.
There’s an old saying in politics that “personnel is policy” which refers to a lot more than just having someone competent in the job. It’s a reflection that politics is about coalitions – building them and maintaining them. The coalition members get their cut of the government largess, and pay for it with loyalty to the guy at the top. If they’re not loyal, he gives them their pick slip and they lose the largess.
This was actually Trump’s biggest mistake when he was president, not filling the Federal Government with his coalition. In his defense, he was in the middle of a Republican civil war, where there were multiple factions and multiple coalitions.
That’s exactly what the Democrats face now, and why they can’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together. Because there are multiple coalitions, whoever emerges on top won’t know if he (she?) can trust these coalitions because they aren’t his coalitions. They might be able to be integrated into his coalition, given time, but time is exactly what the Democrats do not have right now.
It takes time to forge a governing coalition – just look at any parliamentary system: when the government is stable it is because the governing coalition is solid. Ministers can issue policy with a reasonable expectation that it will be supported and carried out by the coalition members. When the governing coalition is unstable, chaos results. Orders get ignored or slow walked or subverted because the Minister no longer has the loyalty of the coalition members.
Eventually a leader emerges who can attract key talent from outside coalitions and integrate it into his. This will involve rewards like positions in the bureaucracy or some such – featherbedding is the name of this game. But until this all gets sorted out and the new coalition is filled with people who think they’re better off with the new leader than without, nothing is going anywhere.
Even worse, there will always be serious back stabbing between different coalitions. Trust is not a virtue most politicians hew to, and quite frankly until they are in a position to remove perks as well as give them, they would be a fool to trust just about anybody.
Some day a leader will emerge to stitch together the various coalitions that make up the Democratic party. It won’t happen in the next 100 days, sure as God made little green apples.
The biggest implication of this is that it will be much more difficult for the Democrats to “fortify” the upcoming election via 2020-style shenanigans. Sure, the party bosses will want to, but how much do they trust the other coalitions to support them? Would other coalitions even go so far as to rat them out (with plausible deniability, of course) – leading to various party elders behind bars. That certainly would make it easier for other party elders to construct a winning coalition once they’ve taken out some of the competition.
Althouse: “Joe Biden seems bereft of the ordinary tools of human interchange.”
“Visibly Angry Kamala Harris Lashes Out At Israel After Netanyahu Meeting.” Of course she did. How dare Israel defend itself when she needs to suck up to all those pro-Hamas voters Democrats insisted on importing to Michigan?
Dispatches from the Biden Recession: Commercial real estate bond default rates hit “8.7% in 2024, nearly three times higher than two years ago.”
“Judge Rules for Musk’s SpaceX in Lawsuit Against National Labor Relations Board.” “Members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and administrative law judges (ALJ) employed by the board, are likely unconstitutionally protected from removal by the president, according to U.S. District Judge Alan Albright.”
Israel hits the Houthis. Looks like Israel is kicking just about all Iran’s catspaws in the nuts…
According to an indictment filed with the federal court, beginning in 2021 defendants working for or with AABLE Bonds of Houston created or co-signed fraudulent bond agreements that allowed non-qualifying suspects to obtain pre-trial release.
“An integral part of the criminal justice system, as old as the system itself, is the bail bond – a device that allows defendants temporary release while awaiting trial by guaranteeing future court appearances,” said U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani in a statement. “Honesty in the underwriting of those bail bonds is essential to ensuring compliance and protecting the community. However, this indictment alleges employees of AABLE Bonds and many others conspired to violate that trust.”
In addition to the 50 arrested, officials are seeking three fugitives: Tawana Jones, 44, Pamela Yoder, 60, and Amir Khan, 60.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office stated that co-conspirators allegedly emailed or submitted falsified co-signer financial reports via electronic communications. The office noted that the government and insurance agencies rely on these financial reports to enter into third-party agreements known as surety bonds.
Most of the 53 co-conspirators are charged in connection to alleged conspiracy to commit wire fraud, while AABLE Bonds CEO Sheba Muharib is charged with affecting persons engaged in the business of insurance.
The 11 named criminal defendants who obtained release under the allegedly fraudulent enterprise include Curtis Holliday, who has pleaded guilty to killing his wife and stuffing her body in a freezer. Another is the man who shot to death 17-year-old David Castro as the teen rode in a car with his family after an Astros baseball game in 2021.
David’s father Paul Castro noted on social media that Muharib had bonded out his son’s killer on a discount bond, but he also pointed to the role played by Harris County Justice of the Peace Angela Rodriguez.
“Remember that Judge Angela Rodriguez voted to renew Muharib’s bond license after Muharib showed herself to be a danger to our community,” wrote Castro.
Muharib has been the focus of investigations for several years. Her brother Wisam Muharib provided bail to a murder suspect who was later charged in the murder of Harris County Constable Deputy Omar Ursin.
Andy Kahan, Victim’s Advocate for Crime Stoppers of Houston, emphasized during a press conference Thursday that there were victims impacted by the fraudulent releases of suspects.
During the press event, resident April Aguirre said that after the man charged in the shooting death of her nine-year-old niece Arlene Alvarez was released on a bond by AABLE Bonds, her family became suspicious of some local bail bond companies.
Aguirre, Castro, and others worked with elected officials to change Harris County’s rules in 2022 to require that suspects charged with violent offenses pay at least 10 percent themselves to ensure release from jail, but during a press conference with Crime Stoppers of Houston, she said they suspected fraud was continuing.
“Murderers were still getting out on discounted bonds,” said Aguirre. “So, we started making complaints to the bail bond board and to our federal partners asking for help. We didn’t know what we were dealing with, and we could never have imagined how large this is.”
“But I can say one thing, we need to stop making money off dead children and we need to stop making money off of homicide victims. This should not be a lucrative business, it’s sick.”
Mario Garza, President of the Professional Bondsman of Harris County, said that there were bondsmen who followed the rules and helped support the criminal justice system but lamented that what was supposed to be a partnership between bondsmen and elected judges had broken down.
“Judges used to take that discretion seriously,” said Garza. “What we have is what’s morphed out a soft-on-crime criminal justice system that’s allowed a company like this to do what they’ve done.”
Kahan expressed concern that bail bond companies elsewhere may be operating similar schemes.
Cann’s files for Chapter 11 and will be closing 9 Texas stores, including one in Austin. When I was getting ready to move into my house in 2004, they were one of the stores I thought about buying appliances from, but people told me they hated dealing with Conn’s, so I ended up buying them from Lowes.
“Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley who was blocked from the Twitter account of the University of Oregon’s Division of Equity and Inclusion after tweeting ‘All men are created equal.'”
Unclear on the concept: “California judge says school was justified in punishing 7-year-old who said all lives matter because ‘she’s too young to have First Amendment rights.'”
Intel says it’s software, not hardware that is causing its latest generation of chips to fail. “Our analysis of returned processors confirms that the elevated operating voltage is stemming from a microcode algorithm resulting in incorrect voltage requests to the processor.” OK, microcode is embedded in the heart of the chip, but can be updated, which means that it doesn’t require expensive mask fixes.
The CDC is trying to keep people from importing dogs into the U.S.. This is going to impair the efforts of many dog rescue groups. A bipartisan group of senators is opposing. “The unprecedented requirements included in the final rule, such as the six-month minimum age requirement for dogs to enter the United States and the need for a microchip before a rabies vaccination and additional documentation and certification would create significant barriers to low-risk entry from Canada into the United States and have a disproportionate effect on border communities in our states.”
Everyone who “purchased” a movie from Redbox is now screwed because now that Redbox is bankrupt it turns out they’ve got nada.
If I’m reading between the lines here, Social Justice Warriors seized control of the Romance Writers of America, blew it up when they got caught, and left the organization $3 million in debt.
“Judge Refuses To Dismiss Trump Defamation Lawsuit Against ABC, Stephanopoulos. On Wednesday, a federal judge rejected a motion by ABC News and George Stephanopoulos to dismiss the defamation lawsuit filed against them by former President Donald Trump.”
The assassination attempt against President Donald Trump was less than a week ago and a ton of news has come down the pike since. Biden replacement rumors fly hot and heavy, Trump secures renomination, Windows machines across the globe are down thanks to CrowdStrike, a League of Assholes rises in Africa, Chuy’s gets sold, and we say goodbye to a comedy legend. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The 81-year-old president repeatedly lost his train of thought on the call and was dismissive of the Democrats’ concerns about his 2024 re-election campaign following his train-wreck debate performance last month, Puck reported Wednesday, citing multiple sources…
‘The call was even worse than the debate. He was rambling; he’d start an answer then lose his train of thought, then would just say “whatever.” He really couldn’t complete an answer. I lost a ton of respect for him,’ one person on the call said.
‘The president was rambling, dismissive of concerns, unable or unprepared to present a campaign strategy,’ added a second source, who is a member of Congress.
Joe Biden’s escalating dementia and the long media-political conspiracy to hide his senility from the public are the least of the Democrats’ current problems.
Biden’s track record as president may be more concerning than his cognitive decline. He has literally destroyed the U.S. border, deliberately allowing the entry of more than 10 million illegal aliens. His callous handlers’ agenda was to import abjectly poor constituencies in need of vast government services without regard for the current struggles of a battered American middle class and poor.
The widespread poverty of a vast new cohort of illegal immigrants could serve as indictments of a “racist,” “unequal,” and “unfair” America—as if the residents of East Palestine, Ohio or inner-city Chicago had anything to do with the centuries-long corruption and oppression of Mexico and Latin America that daily drives thousands of their own poorest citizens northwards to a society founded on very different ideas than those of their homelands.
Note that the left, neither in Mexico nor in America, never asks why millions of these impoverished people prefer to break into a supposedly racist America. Much less do they even distinguish those principles and values that once made America prosperous, free, and secure from their antitheses that have sadly made much of Latin America mostly poor, without freedom, and insecure.
Biden inherited near-zero real interest rates and inflation at 1.4 percent. Almost immediately, in nihilistic fashion, Biden did to a sound economy what he had done to a secure border. So, he recklessly printed money at a time of spiraling, quarantine-ending demand and supply chain disruption. Middle-class wages never caught up with Biden’s inflation, as prices for key staples are nearly 30 percent higher than when he took office.
The cost of servicing the ballooning national debt at high interest is now nearly $1 trillion per year. The world abroad is aflame, lit by Biden’s inexplicable withdrawal from Kabul, his mixed signals to Vladimir Putin on the eve of his invasion of Ukraine, his deliberate alienation of Israel, his appeasement of Iran and China, and his cuts in the defense budget, coupled with his woke war on mythical “racists” in the military.
Energy prices soared, even as Biden’s green agenda proved unworkable and prompted draining the strategic petroleum reserve and begging foreign oil despots before key elections. The “unifier” Biden by design needlessly alienated nearly half the country, and in his debate, he reiterated why Trump supporters do not deserve his concern. And more ominously and recently, Biden grossly told hundreds of his donors that “it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye”—just days before the attempt on Trump’s life.
The greatest absurdity of the Biden White House is the gaslighting talk of Biden’s “achievements.” Biden’s actions over the last four years are not offsets for his senility that warrant his continuance in office, but again, sadly, they serve as force multipliers, furthering claims of his dementia and for his removal.
I’ve been saying for a month or so now that I’m really impressed with the way that Trump has been conducting himself in this campaign. Yes, I was a fan before, but he’s really been hitting all the right notes this year, especially given the pressure of the the Democrats’ un-American lawfare assault on him.
The Donald J. Trump who took the stage in Milwaukee last night was a reflective, determined elder statesman and it was glorious. This is what my ultra mega super MAGA friend Kevin wrote about it:
Trump took to the stage with a bandage covering the wound left by the would-be assassin’s bullet. He kicked off his mesmerizing speech by thanking the GOP for the nomination and promising to stand for all Americans, stating: “We rise together or we fall apart.”
Trump’s speech was unlike any of his others. It lacked the bombast and sarcasm of earlier speeches, which I find entertaining. Instead, it focused on unity.
Trump’s sotto voce, conversational tone was perfect, and a counter to the angry maniac that the commies in the mainstream media like to portray him as. He was the adult in the room at a time when the Republic desperately needs that. His recounting of the assassination attempt provided yet another deeply emotional moment at this convention.
I’ve only briefly glimpsed some of the MSM hacks’ response to the speech, and it’s mostly been awful and not reality-based. They’re desperate and losing and their opinion doesn’t matter.
The man who accepted the Republican nomination last night is the man who this country needs to right the wrongs of the Biden administration’s wrecking ball reign of error.
Borepatch sees a preference cascade for Trump that may have the effect of minimizing cheating. “It’s one thing to stuff ballot boxes when you think that everyone on your side is on board and your guy is going to win – and any potential investigation will be done in the most slipshod manner. It’s quite a different thing when you wonder just how many of the guys on your side are actually going to go through with this, and if the other guy wins will you be facing 20 years in Club Fed.”
New York jury convicted Senator Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) on 16 felony charges on Tuesday, including obstruction of justice, acting as a foreign agent, bribery, extortion and honest services wire fraud.
Over the course of a two-month trial, prosecutors accused the three-term senator and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, of accepting bribes — including hundreds of thousands of dollars, gold bars, and a Mercedes-Benz convertible — from three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for help with a number of legal issues. Menendez was also accused of accepting bribes to work as a foreign agent on behalf of Qatar and Egypt while he served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Shortly after the verdict was handed down on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) urged Menendez to “do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country, and resign.”
You know it’s been a pretty news-packed week when the conviction of a Democratic senator on bribery charges is this far down the LinkSwarm…
Kamala Harris has the same approval rating among Black women as President Biden, according to a new poll, which must come as a blow to the Vice President as Biden’s electoral fortunes falter.
And it comes as a surprise, as Black women have been pivotal for securing Harris her spot on the ticket.
The poll, conducted by Split Ticket between July 12 and 14, asked Black voters in battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin about their opinions on Harris, as well as Biden and Donald Trump.
According to the poll, if the 2024 election was a toss up between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, 76 percent of Black voters would vote for Biden, compared to 17 percent for Trump. The gender split was 72 per cent of male voters and 79 percent of females backing Biden.
In contrast, 12 percent of Black women and 23 percent of Black men said they would vote Trump.
But if the election were a toss up between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the results were virtually the same, with an equal proportion of voters opting for Harris over Trump, and a split of 79 percent of Black women and 73 percent of Black men preferring the Vice President.
You know who else doesn’t want to vote for Democrats any more? Young male voters.
A years-long collapse in support for Democrats among young Gen Z “Zoomer” males accelerated to a dizzying speed during the Presidentish Joe Biden administration — and that’s before Donald Trump’s display of sheer damn manliness in the moments after Saturday’s assassination attempt.
The collapse began in 2016, the same year Donald Trump was elected to his first term in office — and, looking back, it seems almost inevitable. That was the year the American Left went from merely unhinged to flying off the rails like Doc Brown and Clara Clayton at the very end of “Back to the Future Part III.”
Daniel Cox — aka The Liberal Patriot — wrote Monday, “A mounting number of polls suggest that young voters are shedding their Democratic attachments” and that “the way young people relate to the two major political parties is undergoing a momentous change.”
A recent Pew study found that “young Americans are evenly divided between the parties: 47 percent lean towards or identify as Republicans and 46 percent identify as Democrats.”
Look at these other numbers from Gallup. They’re unsustainable for the so-called Party of Youth.
Democratic support among young men (18-29) collapsing
Federal appeals court blocks all of Biden student debt relief plan. “The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request, by seven Republican-led states to put on hold parts of the U.S. Department of Education’s debt relief plan that had not already been blocked by a lower-court judge.” Good. I don’t see how the Constitution allows the President to simply declare billions of dollars of subsidies to favored classes of individuals absent congressional approval. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Remember CrowdStrike, the company that helped wipe Hillary’s equipment? An update to their security product Falcon is blue-screening Windows machines across the world today. “The U.S. Emergency Alerts System said 911 lines in multiple states were down.”
Biden can’t remember the name of his own Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and calls him “The Black Man.” We all know this would be career-ending for a Republican, yet it’s just another expected “senior moment” for Slow Joe…
Here’s some news I missed a while back: China expelled a bunch of defense chiefs from the Communist Party in a “corruption crackdown.” “The moves against Li Shangfu and his predecessor, Wei Fenghe, follow a series of shake-ups at the top of the world’s largest military — Li was ousted from the role last year after disappearing without explanation.” Actual corruption, or simply suspicion of disloyalty to Xi?
Barry Diller has lost $9 million propping up The Daily Beast. I know a lot of political publications lose money, but I’m pretty sure you could prop up a leftist website for less than 1/10th that…
Welcome to Africa’s League of Assholes. “The military regimes of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso marked their divorce from the rest of West Africa Saturday as they signed a treaty setting up a confederation between them….All three have expelled anti-jihadi French troops and turned instead toward what they call their ‘sincere partners’ — Russia, Turkey and Iran.” More.
“Newly selected Austin City Manager T.C. Broadnax has presented his proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2025 that totals $5.9 billion — a record for the city.” You can look at the entire 1,162 page document here. Of course there’s plenty of line items for “equity” and “homeless.” That’s where some of the graft is…
Terry and her husband Max Boot, a Washington Post national security columnist, put up their tony Upper West Side apartment as collateral for her $500,000 personal recognizance bond as a condition of her release before trial.
The six-room, $1.8 million turn-of-the-century home features lavish wood paneling, built-in bookcase, stained glass windows and airy 10-foot ceilings, according to its StreetEasy listing.
The taste for such luxury is what allegedly drove Terry — a native of Seoul who formerly worked as a CIA analyst before becoming a prominent policy expert linked to several think tanks — to disclose US secret to South Korean spies, Manhattan federal prosecutors said.
Terry traded her access to information from top US officials, including US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, in exchange for luxury goodies such as a $3,450 Louis Vuitton handbag and a $2,845 Dolce & Gabbana coat, prosecutors said.
“Democratic Socialists Of America Withdraws Endorsement Of AOC.” Because she’s just not anti-Israel enough. Which has jack all to do with democracy or socialism. This is just another sign that victimhood identity politics has eaten the far left whole.
The US Army is seeking a wheeled, self-propelled 155mm cannon-based air defense system capable of firing cheaper hypervelocity rounds.
A cost-effective alternative to current capabilities based on surface-to-air missiles is being sought, particularly in expeditionary scenarios against the rising threat of cruise missiles.
Projectiles fired by the Multi-Domain Artillery Cannon (MDAC) will be guided by offboard sensors, eliminating the cost of onboard sensors in current rounds.
“Current air and missile defense munitions require onboard guidance and targeting components that drive high munition procurement costs,” a service request for information explains.
“In contrast, the MDAC seeks to significantly reduce munition costs and enhance expeditionary utility by developing a 155mm artillery cannon-based air defense system capable of firing Hypervelocity projectiles, integrated into a wheeled platform.”
Additionally, the system will be linked with an external Command and Control Battle Manager and the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System.
A prototype contract award is expected in the third quarter of 2025, with deliveries by the last quarter of fiscal 2027 and demonstration in fiscal 2028.
This is another case of “everything old is new again,” as Germany’s 88mm and 128mm flak cannons were generally considered very effective anti-aircraft weapons in World War II, and I bet 155mm is more than capable of putting a hurt on drones.
Ukrainian sniper takes record for world’s longest sniper shot, using a 12.7x114mm cartridge at 4,155 yards. (Hat tip: Reader John Zoch.)
Local TexMex chain Chuy’s is being bought by Darden Restaurants for $605 million. I didn’t know they actually had more than 100 locations. The food is good, but here in Austin they’ve been in the “no one goes there anymore, they’re too crowded” category for a while. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Generation Kill author Evan Wright RIP. That was a very solid book following a Marine recon unit into Iraq in 2003, and is well worth reading if you haven’t already.
Comedy legend Bob Newhart, RIP. I’m sure everyone and their dog will be posting the justly famous Newhart finale, but we’re going to kick it old school with a selection from his comedy albums.
Brits visit an HEB+. They’re astounded at the size and blown away by Blue Bell. They’re also amazed that a plain, fresh-baked tortilla can taste so good…
Blogger, owned by Google, has evidently decided that it, and not the individual bloggers that use it, are the ultimate arbiter of what those bloggers should be allowed to say, and they’ve started censoring Borepatch. From Friday, November 25, 2022:
In the ongoing effort to protect the world from Borepatch, the following actions have been taken by The Blogger Team.
https://borepatch.blogspot.com/2008/06/what-smells-good.html has been removed.
http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2011/05/america-do-your-part-to-when-harry-met.html has been put behind a warning wall.
http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2010/06/ouch.html has been put behind a warning wall.
As a blogger and Borepatch reader, this sticks in my craw, so here is a a Wayback Machine link to “What smells good.” What Google hopes to accomplish by censoring a 14-year old post to gun cleaning solvents is unclear.
As you may know, our Community Guidelines
(https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy) describe the boundaries for what we allow– and don’t allow– on Blogger. Your post titled “How do we know that Climate “science” is terribly weak?” was flagged to us for review. We have determined that it violates our guidelines and have unpublished the URL http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2014/07/how-do-we-know-that-climate-science-is.html, making it unavailable to blog readers.
Why was your blog post unpublished?
Your content has violated our Malware and Viruses policy. Please visit our Community Guidelines page linked in this email to learn more.
Reading the archived piece, I see nothing that could even be remotely construed as code.
It seems Google is using vague terms-of-service complaints to carry out ideological language policing in the name of crushing dissent against The Holy Narrative.
And it seems like a pretty good reason not to choose Blogger as your platform if you can choose something else.
Lots of “red flag” talk after the latest shooting panics, but Borepatch would like to remind us that such laws are stupid and useless.
The Parkland shooter was known to be a nutcase, having been reported to the local police some four dozen times (and twice to the FBI). Nobody took action, because the local (and likely national) government agencies thought that doing so would screw up the crime statistical goals that they were trying to achieve. While it’s very early after the event, it appears that lots of people knew that the Dayton shooter was a nutcase. Nobody did anything. The Air Force dishonorably discharged a guy because he was, well, a nutcase – but forgot to update the NCIC database with this information. The nutcase was able to buy a gun and kill a bunch of people in a church.
These are just the examples that come to mind; presumably a thorough analysis my the media or by social scientists would turn up many more examples. Of course, the media and social scientists don’t want to look into this because it would hurt their push for more gun control.
Research shows that any group of people identified as future violent criminals will contain many more who will not be violent (false positives) than they will (true positives). More true positives mean more false ones. Such groups also fail to identify many future violent criminals (false negatives).
We do not currently have the predictive tools needed to increase the number of true positives while reducing false positives. We may one day develop such tools, but how many false positives are we willing to tolerate until then to reduce the number of false negatives? Put another way: How many law-abiding people are we prepared to steal weapons to prevent another mass shooting?
For those who favor strict gun control, the answer may seem obvious. They believe it is worth it for 100 or 1,000 non-violent people to lose their weapons to prevent mass shootings. But those who view gun possession as a fundamental right under the Second Amendment – as the Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) – frame the problem differently. They ask: Can the government deprive a citizen of a constitutional right based on a prediction?
Red Flag laws run the risk of setting a dangerous precedent. If the government can take your weapons based on a prediction today, what will prevent it from taking your freedom based on a prediction tomorrow?
Indeed, everywhere on Twitter this week, the left have been saying two things:
1. We need to remove guns from the hands of racists, and
2. Everyone who voted for Trump is a racist.
Let me take a stab at providing answers to these questions from the “we should declare victory in the War on Drugs and go home” perspective. The proposal is that most or perhaps all drugs be decriminalized, offered for sale, and taxed.
Rule #1. Can the person proposing the law state what they think the law will accomplish? This is intended to accomplish five specific things:
Remove the perceived need to militarization of the police forces, no-knock raids, asset forfeiture, controls on how much you can deposit at your bank, etc. It’s caustic for the Republic and it costs us a lot of money. It’s an anti-tyranny goal.
Improve the purity of the drugs on the market which will reduce overdose deaths. Food and Drug purity laws would apply and so the heroin that Joe Junkie buys at the local Alcohol Beverage and Drug Emporium wouldn’t be the equivalent of bathtub gin. His gin isn’t adulterated (like it was during the Prohibition days) and his smack shouldn’t be either.
Lower the price of drugs, by eliminating the risk premium that must exist to cover expected loss from seizure, arrest, etc.
Eliminate the massive profits that are flowing to drug cartels, which fund a bunch (admittedly not all) of the violence associated with illegal drug use.
Generate a tax revenue stream that can be targeted towards providing detox centers for drug users who want to fight their addiction.
Laws about theft, driving under the influence, etc would fully apply to junkies who commit these crimes, just as they do today. Peter, Aesop, and Bill are entirely correct that today these are not “victimless” crimes.
Rule #2. Can the person proposing the law state how likely the law is to accomplish the goal from Rule #1? Let’s break these down by the five points above.
No doubt some agencies will resist this – police unions, prison guard unions, the DEA, etc will rightly see the reduction of public funding as a threat to them. However, this is more of a hinderance to getting decriminalization passed in Congress than in implementation. In any case, I don’t see any fundamental disagreement between the two camps in this as a goal.
This seems a no-brainer, as the illegal drug market is replaced by a legal one. It will be safer for both sellers and users, and legalization will probably attract big corporations who know how to mass produce pure products. I’m not sure you’ll see Superbowl advertisements for “The Champagne of heroin” but I don’t think you need to for success here.
This seems like an absolute no-brainer. You are eliminating some very costly parts of the supply chain (machine guns, private armies, etc). Not sure how big this is but it sure isn’t zero.
We saw this with the end of Prohibition. Today’s Al Capones are drug king pins.
Tax money is notoriously fungible and is often diverted by politicians, but we see tax revenue streams from legal pot in places where it was legalized (e.g. Colorado).
I endorse this line of thinking. I cannot, however, endorse Borepatch’s heinous use of two spaces after periods in the computer era…
My own two cents (familiar to regular readers) is that federal drug prohibition is unconstitutional on Ninth and Tenth Amendment grounds, being neither necessary nor proper for the federal government to enforce, and thus should be left to the states. This is especially true of federal prohibition of growing marijuana for personal use, as only the warped, grossly expansive interpretation of the commerce clause endorsed in Wickard vs. Filburn would give the federal government standing to determine what can and can’t be grown on a person’s private property for their personal consumption. Elimination of federal prohibition would allow states to experiment with the right mix of policies for narcotics. Let Utah try total prohibition, Portland complete legalization and deregulation, Maryland decriminalization and drug treatment, and Pennsylvania state owned drug dispensaries, and see which aspects of which approaches work best. That’s what federalism and subsidiarity are for.
Anyway, there’s a lot more over there, and a lot of links to all sides of the debate, that are worth pursuing.
