Posts Tagged ‘District of Columbia’

LinkSwarm for August 29, 2025

Friday, August 29th, 2025

The Trump Administration guts two lefty slop buckets of graft, Israel lights up the Houthis big time, crazy tranny shooter might have been in satanic cult too crazy for the Church of Satan, Ukraine bombs the snot out of Russia’s oil infrastructure (again), Scotland and Germany continue to favor unassimilated Muslim immigrants over their own citizens, a secret Spinal Tap concert, and the full weight of Plano ISD comes down on a nefarious…a choir booster club?

It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Another court win for Trump47. “Supreme Court Rules 5-4 That Trump Can Slash $783 Million In DEI Research Funding.”

    The Trump administration is free to eliminate hundreds of millions of dollars worth of research funding on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) following last week’s ruling by the United States Supreme Court.

    In a 5-4 vote, the justices lifted an order from a federal court judge in Boston that blocked $783 million in cuts made by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on health research grants that were being used to advance DEI efforts as well as “gender ideology extremism.”

    The Supreme Court was split on the 5-4 decision which marks another win for President Trump and clears the way for his administration to move forward with canceling hundreds of grants after U.S. District Judge William Young ordered the health-related grants restored in June.

    Chief Justice John Roberts was among the dissenters in the high court’s decision and Justice Amy Coney Barrett voted with conservative majority to let the administration stop the grant funding.

    Roberts and Barrett did land on the side of the dissent and allowed to stand a portion of the lower judge’s order that voided a number of NIH policies that targeted DEI programs at the direction of the White House.

  • Speaking of self-dealing garbage corrupt Biden Administration toadies were cutting themselves in for, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick voided ‘illegal’ $7.4B payment to Biden ally-staffed nonprofit for semiconductor research.

    Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick canceled an Biden administration agreement Monday to distribute billions of dollars for semiconductor research through a nonprofit set up and staffed by former political appointees, according to a letter obtained by The Post.

    The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act provided for $11 billion in semiconductor research and development funding to be given out by the Commerce Department’s National Semiconductor Technology Center.

    “Rather than establishing these operations within the Department, however, Biden Administration officials spent significant time, effort, and resources creating an unaccountable, outside entity–Natcast–to administer taxpayer funds,” Lutnick wrote Natcast CEO Deirdre Hanford.

    Four days before Biden left office on Jan. 20, Lutnick noted, the Commerce Department agreed to set aside $7.4 billion in “advance payments” to Natcast after spending nearly two years setting it up and tapping administration officials, advisers and allies to fill out positions.

    That arrangement both effectively removed the incoming Trump administration from being involved in the process and provided “virtually all” of Natcast’s funding — prompting incoming Departments of Justice and Commerce officials to take another look at the Sunnyvale, Calif., nonprofit.

    “These actions do not just give the appearance of impropriety; they flout federal law,” Lutnick told Hanford, pointing out that no provisions in the CHIPS Act authorized an outside entity like Natcast to distribute semiconductor research funds.

    “The GCCA [Government Corporation Control Act] plainly prohibits agencies from establishing a corporation to act as an agency without specific authorization, and the January 16, 2025, agreement does nothing other than set forth the terms of the Biden Administration’s attempt to do just that.”

    Natcast’s selection committee included Biden White House alums like Jason Matheny, former deputy director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and Kendra Wilkerson, the CEO of a nonprofit that “promotes greater equality for women and nonbinary professionals in technology fields,” according to the Biden Commerce Department.

    Donna Dubinsky, another Natcast executive, worked as senior counselor to former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and signed off on the nonprofit’s 501(c)(3) status.

    Susan Feindt, the Biden Commerce Department’s vice chair of its CHIPS Act advisory committee, is now the senior vice president of ecosystem development at Natcast.

    Jeremy Licht, the former chief counsel on semiconductor incentives at the Biden Commerce Department, is now the general counsel at Natcast.

    They weren’t robbing Peter to pay Paul, they were robbing you to line their own pockets. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Try to contain your shock, but D.C.’s Democrat government was lying about crime statistics.

    White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller told reporters Monday that the Trump administration has uncovered a “massive scandal” in Washington D.C. involving the doctoring of crime statistics.

    He said the alleged corruption is currently under investigation and said details of the corruption will soon be brought to light.

    “The results will stun you,” he said.

    Miller made the remarks in the Oval Office after President Trump signed a slew of new executive orders to end cashless bail throughout the United States and in the District of Columbia, prosecute the burning of the American flag, and additional measures to address crime in Washington D.C.

    Miller said D.C. already had the worst crime statistics in the United States when “honestly measured,” but those stats “dramatically understated how bad it was.”

    The White House advisor told reporters that murders and homicides were allegedly being reported as accidents instead of murders.

    “This is how severe the manipulation of the crime data has been in the city and it will all be uncovered and it will all be brought to light,” he said.

    For the past two weeks—since the D.C. crime crackdown began—the city has not seen a single murder or homicide.

    “No police officer working in the city can remember a time in their lives when there has been no murders,” Miller asserted.

    He said police officers have told him that members of the public have been thanking them for making D.C safe again.

    “For the first time in their lives, they can use the parks, they can walk on the streets, you have people who can walk freely at night without worrying about being ribbed or mugged,” he said. “They’re wearing their watch again, they’re wearing jewelry again, they’re carrying purses again.”

    Miller explained that D.C. residents had been forced to “change their who lives for fear of being murdered, mugged or carjacked.”

    He added that Trump had freed the 700,000 residents of the city from “the rule of criminals and thugs.”

    Miller credited Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Terrance C. Cole with discovering that street criminals in Washington D.C. have been “doing business directly with the transnational criminal cartels,” which are foreign terrorist organizations.

    “So not only was the city being run by these criminal thugs, but they were working with some of the most dangerous terrorist organizations on the planet to traffic weapons and drugs into this city,” he explained.

  • Israel gets tired of the Houthis tugging on their cape.

    Israel’s military conducted airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital, Sanaa, on Sunday, targeting high-profile sites in a significant escalation of hostilities.

    The strikes hit areas near the presidential palace, the Asar and Hizaz power plants, and Houthi facilities suspected of housing artillery, including ballistic missiles, according to regional reports.

    The operation was a direct response to recent Houthi attacks on Israel, including projectile launches on Friday, a military source told the Jerusalem Post. While Israel has previously targeted Houthi infrastructure, its strikes have largely focused on the strategic port city of Hodeida, a critical economic and military hub. The shift to Sanaa signals a broader and more aggressive approach to the conflict.

    At least two people were killed and five others injured, Al Masirah, a Houthi-affiliated media outlet reported, according to Al Jazeera.

    “The attacks were carried out in response to repeated attacks by the Houthi terrorist regime against the state of Israel and its citizens, including the launch of surface-to-surface missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles towards the country’s territory,” the Israeli military said in a statement.

  • There’s video:

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Crazy trans-cult member Robert Paul Westman, who hated Donald Trump and Jews, murdered children at a Minneapolis church this week.
  • Weirdly, the crazy murderous tranny’s manifesto name-checked Brandon Herrera. He is not pleased. (And there is a previous parallel.)
  • “Westman’s videos, posted hours before the shootings, may only suggest he used ‘very similar to the symbolism used by violent global satanic cults called Order of 9 Angles and 764.'” I reached out to a “left-hand path” guy I knew from science fiction for background, and he offered the following:

    Many years ago Dr. Anton LaVey asked Micheal Aquino to write two “Lovecraftain Pieces” for the _Satanic Rituals — “Th Cermony of the Nine Angles”and “The Call to Cthulhu”.

    Then back in the 1990s a weirdo (named Myall back in the day) claimed that family knew the REAL SECRET of the nine angles. It was mainly Neo_Nazy stuff — “Kill a Jew for Satan” The guy claimed 100s of followers and had several Orders he was running –my favorite was the “lesbian: Order of the Sapphic Satanists. He tried to join Islam and run an atisemetic Islamic Runic brotherhood that worshipped Azathoth. It did not go well. The ONA shows occasionally with anti-Jewish slogans.

    According to this piece last year, 764 is a global Satanic child predator network.

  • Zohran Mamdani’s advisors are just as filled with lunacy as him.

    The likely next mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, is, as President Donald Trump put it, a “100% Communist lunatic,” and so you won’t exactly be dumbfounded to learn that his advisors are a rogue’s gallery of political hacks and psychopaths the likes of which have not been seen since Chairman Mao sat down for a tete-a-tete with his fellow cultural revolutionaries. It’s clear that one way or another, once this clown moves into Gracie Mansion, New York City is in for it: skyrocketing crime, an inundation of illegal migrants, bankruptcy, the destruction of the city’s economic base — all that and more is on the table.

    Fox News reported Thursday Mamdani’s “growing circle of influence is littered with activists who have espoused anti-Israel views and socialist principles as he attempts to dispel the narrative that he is too ‘radical’ to run the nation’s largest city.” Yeah, these advisors show that he is indeed far too radical to be mayor of New York, but that’s not likely to keep him from being elected.

    Among those advisors is Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), which advocates ending “state support for detention, deportation, and mass incarceration.” Awawdeh insists that illegal migrants “deserve” healthcare, presumably at the expense of the American taxpayer. He has also ranted: “NO LISTEN… SEEKING ASYLUM AT THE BORDER IS A LEGAL RIGHT. ASYLUM SEEKERS ARE FLEEING FOR THEIR LIVES FROM VIOLENCE, PERSECUTION, & IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE. THE U.S. HAS A LEGAL OBLIGATION TO PROVIDE REFUGE. #WelcomeWithDignity”

    A legal obligation to provide refuge for anyone fleeing any kind of difficulty? Do tell. Anyway, NYIC has “taken in $175,000 from the sprawling George Soros nonprofit network,” and if that connection of Soros to Mamdani is too tenuous for you, there is plenty more. Fox News reported on Aug. 14 that “A former top executive for liberal billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF) between 2017 and 2020 is back in the spotlight amid reports highlighting his involvement with Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign and connecting Obama world to the campaign.”

    The Soros exec in question is Patrick Gaspard, an old political hand on the left; the first campaign he worked on was Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential run. Gaspard “has served in several high-profile political positions, including advising former President Barack Obama’s historic 2008 campaign, serving as the Democratic National Committee’s executive director, and being tapped as the Center for American Progress (CAP) president in 2021.”

  • Another Trump Administration victory over crime.

    Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, is set to face the rest of his life behind bars as the Trump administration ramps up its efforts to dismantle cartels.

    Zambada, 75, confessed in a Brooklyn, New York, courtroom Monday that he had coordinated with Mexican officials to smuggle drugs into the U.S. for decades — and ultimately pleaded guilty to serving as principal leader of a continuing criminal enterprise and racketeering conspiracy.

    The Trump administration has pledged to take down the cartels — and experts predict Zambada’s guilty plea paves the way for the Justice Department to launch more indictments against high-profile cartel members moving forward and exerts additional pressure on Mexico to comply with U.S. requests.

  • Russia may not have an oil industry at all when this war is over. Ukraine just hit two more oil refineries, Kuybyshevskiy in Samara and Afipsky in Krasnodar. “Multiple swarms hit this refinery, which makes Russia’s air defense look even more incompetent than usual.” It was also 1,000km away.
  • They also hit the Ust-Luga gas processing terminal near St. Petersburg with ten drones. “This terminal is responsible for processing stable gas condenscent in naphtha jet fuel fuel oil and distillates.” The location makes me wonder if a goodly portion was intended for the export market.
  • They also hit Syzran oil refinery again.

    The map of Russian refineries reveals a key strategic problem. The main processing capabilities are in the European part of the country, whilst fuel consumption is rising in the far east. Fuel logistic chains for eastern regions span thousands of kilometers, creating additional costs and risks. Kilometer-long queues in cities are a direct result of the imbalance between western production and eastern consumption.

  • And they hit another fuel train, this one in in Dzhankoi, Crimea.
  • Russia tries to war crime a Ukrainian civilian with a drone, but it gets taken out by another civilian.
  • New problems require…very old solutions? “Ukrainians hunt Russian drones dangling out of prop planes with shotguns.”
  • “Chinese National Charged With Stealing Sensitive Data from UT-MD Anderson.”

    Harris County’s District Attorney Sean Teare has charged Yunhai Li, a 35-year-old former MD Anderson Cancer Center researcher, with attempting to steal and take proprietary cancer-related research back to China. This comes after multiple warnings about research security in Texas higher education.

  • Texas House votes to the Attorney General’s power to prosecute election fraud.
  • “Trump Administration to Retake Control of D.C.’s Union Station amid Crime Crackdown.”

    While the Department of Transportation has owned the historic station since the 1980s, it has allowed a nonprofit, the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation, more control over the station year after year.

    Now, the Department of Transportation says it plans to use a new deal with Amtrak and USRC to fund improvements to elevators, lighting, security and other repairs to the roof and several major systems.

  • “Scottish Girl Arrested For Using Knife And Axe To Ward Off Migrant Stalker.” She was defending her 12-year old sister from unassimilated would-be Muslim statutory rapists, so of course the police had to arrest her…
  • “How can you tell the difference between a police raid and a home invasion?”

    Last week, a Houston resident foiled a home invasion attempt by a couple criminals trying to impersonate the police. According to the news article:

    “Police said the men told the homeowner they were serving a warrant. They were wearing bullet-proof vests, had badges around their necks and were wearing ski masks.”

    The homeowner ended up shooting and killing both offenders.

    There are many more tips in the article, but police don’t wear ski masks while serving a warrant…

  • “Texas Teacher Arrested on Federal Child Porn Charge…Robert Jerome Custer, 56, was arrested on a federal charge of accessing child sexual abuse material, commonly called child pornography. Custer previously worked as an educator and counselor in Palestine, Barksdale, Kingsville, and Abilene, according to a statement from the Texas Department of Public Safety.”
  • Welfare state is not sustainable, says German chancellor.”

    The German welfare state is no longer financially sustainable, Friedrich Merz said on Saturday.

    The chancellor argued for a fundamental reassessment of the benefits system as spending continues to soar past last year’s record of €47bn (£40bn).

    In a state-level party conference meeting on Saturday, Mr Merz said: “The welfare state as we have it today can no longer be financed with what we can economically afford.”

    Once the export champion of Europe, Germany’s economy has slowed dramatically since 2017, with GDP growing by only 1.6 per cent since then versus 9.5 per cent for the rest of the eurozone.

    Germany’s economy shrank by 0.2 per cent last year following a 0.3 per cent dip in 2023 – the first time since the early 2000s the economy has retreated two years in a row.

    Industrial production fell under the Left-leaning “traffic light” coalition of Olaf Scholz and continues to slide under the new government, with GDP declining by 0.3 per cent in the second quarter of 2025.

    Meanwhile, spending on social welfare has exploded, and is set to increase further this year as Germany’s population ages and unemployment rises. Although the majority of benefit recipients are German, large numbers are non-German citizens.

    German elites will do anything to support its welfare state…except stop importing unassimilated Muslim immigrants. Just like all the rest of Europe’s elites. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • “Paxton Seeks End to Federal Decree Mandating Release of Harris County Misdemeanor Suspects. The O’Donnell federal consent decree has governed county bail practices since 2019.”
  • A decade after the radical left first started shoving tranny bathrooms down the public’s throat without debate, Texas is finally limiting bathrooms to biological sex.
  • Mark Teixeira, Longtime Major League Baseball Player, Launches Texas Congressional Bid.” He’s running as a Republican for the 21st Texas Congressional District, where incumbent Chip Roy is running for Attorney General.
  • Having a meth habit is going to be disqualifying for a lot of jobs. Like District Attorney for Mariposa County. Thus it’s no surprise that DA Mike McAfee resigned…
  • Another electric bus company goes bankrupt. “Quebec-based Lion Electric, which the Biden administration awarded $159 million ‘to manufacture 435 school buses between 2022 and 2024,’ has fallen into bankruptcy.” (Previously.)
  • LA police can’t catch fleeing suspect…even after he stopped to fill up on gas.  
  • This is a weird story. “Moms Arrested for Running North Texas Choir Booster Club. Cleared of charges, moms still lost choir booster club money to the school district.”

    Local authorities in Collin County, including a school district, have harassed three moms in a quest to control a school booster club and its funds, even going so far as to arrest them.

    Plano Independent School District targeted the Jasper High School Choir Booster Club for control of its bank account after the mothers charged with running the independent organization insisted that the district pay for Jasper High School’s stage—as was the district’s responsibility.

    The district had the Plano police arrest the booster club’s founders—Laura Cervantes, Krisinda Lingenfelter, and Maria Luisa King. Yet, after a Collin County grand jury failed to find enough evidence to prosecute these moms, a Plano municipal judge recently awarded the club’s bank funds to Plano ISD.

    Also this: “Oral arguments were held on May 30 before Judge Paul McNulty, chief judge for the Municipal Court of Plano. Texas Scorecard was in attendance. Recording devices were banned from the trial and the booster club was denied its request to bring a court reporter.” Also, another judge involved in the case, Lisa Bronchetti, evidently wrote a bad check to the club but still failed to excuse herself.

    Like I said, weird…

  • Newark Airport sucks. Objectively. One major culprit? God.
  • Roanoke’s famous lost colony was never lost.
  • Spinal Tap did a secret concert at Stonehenge.

  • Ryan George tackles the difficulties of reading online news sites.
  • “Dear Stupid Bitch, I’m sorry to hear that your cat is a Communist.”
  • “Nation That Once Charged Into Certain Death For Freedom Now Letting Their Daughters Handle The Rape Gangs.”
  • “Travis Kelce Finally Acquires Ring Without Help Of Referees.”
  • Hap, hap, happy dog.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    Trump’s D.C. Takeover Drives Crime Down…And Even Democrats Notice

    Tuesday, August 19th, 2025

    High profile Democrats have been freaking out about President Trump’s takeover of policing functions in the District of Columbia. There’s just one tiny little problem: Trump’s takeover is working and reducing crime.

    The Democrats have been losing their minds about President Donald Trump’s takeover of law enforcement in Washington, D.C. You even had people like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) trying to downplay crime in the city, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) claiming it wasn’t an emergency, and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) trying to argue that Trump “owned” a murder the day after the president formally announced he was taking action. People talk about Trump setting a trap for them to fall into to defend crime, but it’s truly that they are this dumb that they do this.

    But most people aren’t buying the Democrat pitch – they know there’s a problem with crime in the city. Even the leftist protest in D.C. on Saturday which was focused on this issue didn’t draw many people. Probably because If you live in the area, you know crime is a reality.

    Snip.

    There have been more than 380 total arrests since the start of the operation 11 days ago.

    In total…
    – 59 firearms have been seized.
    – Over 160 illegal aliens have been arrested, including known gang members and those with additional charges: assault, kidnapping, burglary, larceny, commercialized sexual offenses, smuggling illegal drugs like heroin, and more.

    Last night 22 multi-agency teams were deployed throughout all 7 districts in D.C. There were more than 1,950 participants in last night’s operations.

    That sounds like a lot of action in a short time. You would think flooding the streets with law enforcement presence would have an effect – it tends to discourage bad actors.

    How does that compare to what had been going on before the Trump move?

    Here’s what the D.C. Police Union is saying.

    The D.C. Police Union was supportive of the Trump move – they knew crime was a crisis because their people deal with it every day. They also want to eliminate legislation they feel has been tying their hands. But once again, just as with the border, it seems what was needed to make a change was a new president with the will to get the job done.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

    And one of the dirty secrets elected Democrats don’t want you to hear is that people in D.C. are noticing the huge drop in crime…even Democrats.

  • “A lot of our friends are in the media and also Democrats that worked on Joe Biden’s campaign, that worked on other campaigns that are saying, ‘Yeah, I’d like to feel safe walking around this city.’ If the federal government can be a positive partner in keeping the street safe while again forming a partnership with the DC police and not taking over, then at least the people I’ve spoken with that live in DC, day in, day out, see this as a positive step.”
  • “The Washington Post took a poll late April, early May. 91% of Washington residents say crime is a problem.”
  • “This is one thing that I think Democrats have gotten so wrong about crime.”
  • “There are stark divides among lines of race and income in the poll with black residents and lower income residents significantly more worried about crime than white residents and those with higher incomes.”
  • Let’s talk about that “positive partner” blather.

    As shown above, the Trump Administration and other Republicans have no trouble working with police and police unions to reduce crime. That’s been shown time and time again.

    Who Trump, Republicans and police can’t work with as “positive partners” to reduce crime are social justice-infected Democrats, because they don’t want to reduce crime. Some cadres believe high crime rates are key to radicalizing minorities and fomenting revolution against capitalism. There are others that believe that “whiteness” and “structural racism” mean that no black person should ever be punished for any crime against any white person. There are others that want to completely defund the police so they can rake off all police funding for their own graft and left-wing causes. Still others refuse to deport any illegal aliens, even rapists and murderers, because they still believe that amnestied illegal aliens are their key to achieving permanent electoral majorities.

    None of these people can be trusted partners in reducing crime because none of them want to reduce crime. Or, to put it ever-so-slightly more charitably, none of them are willing to implement policies known to reduce crime because none of those policies would benefit the Democratic Party.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

    LinkSwarm For August 15, 2025

    Friday, August 15th, 2025

    There’s been a lot of media articles that the runaway Texas House Democrats are going to cave, but it hasn’t happened yet. The Trump Administration continues to rack up success after success at the border, Ukraine hits more Russian oil facilities, once again Adam is full of Schiff, more illegal alien sex traffickers nabbed, and China finally picks on someone its own size.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • DHS reports all-time border crossing lows.

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said that the U.S.-Mexico border is experiencing “all-time lows” of illegal immigrant crossings after President Donald Trump’s administration ramped up efforts to secure the southern border.

    On August 1, DHS released preliminary numbers for the month of July that report to show nationwide encounters are 90 percent lower than during the Biden administration, in addition to the “lowest single-day apprehensions in history” — on July 20, DHS reported just 88 apprehensions at the southern border and 116 across the country.

    “History made, again. The numbers don’t lie — this is the most secure the border has ever been,” said DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. “President Trump didn’t just manage the crisis — he obliterated it. No more excuses. No more releases. We’ve put the cartels on defense and taken our border back.”

    The numbers released from DHS reflect previous assessments made by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which said in July that nationwide apprehensions have hit a “new historic low” following a “dramatic shift” in policy focus since President Donald Trump entered office.

    According to the Migration Policy Institute, encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border have dropped to levels not observed since the 1960s.

  • Progress. “Trump Purges 275,000 Illegal Aliens From Social Security.”

    Months after President Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum targeting illegal aliens and other ineligible individuals from collecting Social Security Act benefits, the president told reporters at the White House on Thursday afternoon that nearly 300,000 illegals have been removed from the government program that provides financial benefits to eligible citizen taxpayers and/or lawful permanent residents (green card holders).

    “Last month, I signed the One Big Beautiful Bill, and allowed No Tax on Social Security for our great seniors … and to protect our benefits, we’ve already kicked nearly 275,000 illegal aliens off of the Social Security system,” Trump told reporters.

    Recall that on April 15, the president signed a memorandum directing federal agencies to take immediate action to purge the Social Security system of illegals and fraudsters.

    As Maureen Steele via American Greatness elegantly noted earlier this year, “We don’t need an executive order to bar illegals from Social Security – we need a government that obeys the law.”

    Let’s not forget that the Biden-Harris regime facilitated the invasion of illegal aliens, allowing millions of these third-worlders to siphon dollars and essential services from citizens and lawful permanent residents – in what some have described as a classic Cloward–Piven strategy.

    The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimated that taxpayers spend more than $182 billion annually to cover costs associated with 20 million illegal aliens and their children, which includes $66.4 billion in Federal expenses plus an additional $115.6 billion in state and local expenses.

    The free lunch for the Democratic Party’s illegals is coming to an end.

  • President Trump brokers peace deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia after 35 years of conflict.” Neither Russia nor Iran can be happy with how President Trump has strengthened America’s position in their own backyards…
  • In deep Schiff over Russigate lies.

    A Democratic whistleblower told the FBI that Senator Adam Schiff authorized the leak of classified information related to the Russia collusion investigation in 2017 in an effort to discredit President Trump, newly-released documents show.

    The whistleblower, who worked for Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee for more than ten years, first reported Schiff’s alleged behavior to the FBI in 2017, when Schiff was leading the committee’s Russian collusion investigation.

    FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed on Monday that he had handed over the documents, first obtained by Just the News, to Congress. “We found it. We declassified it. Now Congress can see how classified info was leaked to shape political narratives – and decide if our institutions were weaponized against the American people.”

    The FBI interviewed the whistleblower most recently in June 2023, at which point the unidentified intelligence officer said he had been part of an all-staff meeting called by Schiff in which the then-California representative “stated the group would leak classified information which was derogatory to President of the United States Donald J. TRUMP. SCHIFF stated the information would be used to Indict President TRUMP.”

    “[The whistleblower] stated this would be illegal and, upon hearing his concerns, unnamed members of the meeting reassured that they would not be caught leaking classified information,” the report added.

    The whistleblower expressed concerns that Schiff’s actions were “treasonous” and “illegal.”

    Indeed.

  • Remember how Alan Dershowitz said that two judges are holding up release of the Epstein files? Obama Judge Refuses To Release Ghislaine Maxwell Grand Jury Transcripts.”

    District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer (Obama) wrote in his order that the government’s premise that unsealing the records would shed light on meaningful new information was “demonstrably false,” and that “unsealing the grand jury materials would not reveal new information of any consequence.”

    “Contrary to the Government’s depiction, the Maxwell grand jury testimony is not a matter of significant historical or public interest. Far from it,” he wrote. “It consists of garden-variety summary testimony by two law enforcement agents. And the information it contains is already almost entirely a matter of longstanding public record.

    Translation: Either it implicates powerful Democrats, or else we need to keep the issue alive to try to dirty up President Trump.

  • Truth: “White House Deputy Chief of Staff on Redistricting Battle: ‘We all know Democrats cheat.”

    White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is blasting Democrats for complaining about the current redistricting uproar and accuses them of stealing dozens of House seats by counting illegal aliens in the last census.

    Miller told Newsmax that Democrats brought in tens of millions of “invaders” into the nation through their open borders policies to “rig the results of the census” and the apportionment of congressional seats.

    Miller pointed out that even though Republicans won a landslide in the House popular vote, they only picked up a 4-seat majority due to Democratic gerrymandering, manipulation and rigging of congressional districts.

    He contrasted the gains of this last election with the 2010 election, in which the Republicans won a much smaller majority in the popular vote, yet gained 63 seats in the House.

  • President Trump has put D.C. Police under Federal control and deployed the National Guard to the capital.

    President Trump on Monday announced plans to place the Metropolitan Police Department under federal control and to deploy several hundred National Guard troops and more than 100 FBI agents to the streets of Washington, D.C., to assist local law enforcement in fighting crime.

    “I’m announcing a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, squalor and worse,” Trump said during a press conference on Monday. “This is liberation day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back.”

    “Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people,” he said.

    Trump said the murder rate in D.C. is higher than some of the “worst places” in the world, including Bogota, Colombia.

    Trump has the authority to take over the Metropolitan Police Department under the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which includes a provision that grants him the ability to take over the department when there are “special conditions of an emergency nature.” As part of the federal takeover, Attorney General Pam Bondi will lead the department, while Terry Cole, the new DEA Administrator, will be the interim federal commissioner of the department.

    On Friday, the Trump administration dispatched federal law enforcement officers to tourist hotspots around D.C. Trump has also threatened to federalize the district if crime rates do not fall and on Monday, he said he would send in the military, if needed.

  • One immediate effect: Cooperation with ICE in deporting illegal aliens.

    Attorney General Pam Bondi rescinded several DC police executive orders Thursday that restricted officers from arresting illegal migrants – vowing that the nation’s capital will not be a sanctuary jurisdiction under President Trump.

    “DC will not remain a sanctuary city. Actively shielding criminal aliens will not happen,” Bondi declared in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.

    The attorney general’s comments came as she issued a new directive voiding commands issued – as recently as earlier Thursday – by DC Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith.

  • Smith is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. “DC police chief [Pamela Smith] asks what ‘chain of command’ means after question from reporter.”
  • A sampler of the rich life people enjoy in the District of Columbia. Human poop on the sidewalk and masturbating transients figure prominently..
  • Hilarious news this week: “Two Chinese ships collide while chasing Philippine Coast Guard boat.” A Chinese Coast Guard ship collided with a Chinese Navy ship. And yes, there is video:

  • A Ukrainian drone strike hit an oil depot in Ukhta, Komi Republic, a good 2,000km from Ukraine.
  • They also hit a Shahed drone assembly plant in Nizhnekamsk, 1,200km from Ukraine.
  • They also hit an electronics factory in Arzamas.
  • They also hit the JSC Monocystal plant, a maker of military optics systems.
  • They also hit the Saratov oil refinery.
  • And a big strike on a Volgograd oil refinery.
  • The Democrat decision to channel money to their green energy scam and ignore reliable fossil fuels is sending electric rates soaring across the northeast.

    A power bill crisis is gripping parts of the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and is set to worsen, threatening to financially crush households as long-range forecasts point to a brutally cold winter. What began in Baltimore, Maryland – as first covered in our reporting one year ago- has now spread to New Jersey, where residents are furious over skyrocketing electricity costs.

    The common denominator in both states? A disastrous green energy agenda, pushed by radical leftist lawmakers, is dismantling reliable and cheap fossil fuel power generation in favor of unstable solar and wind. This has unleashed a power bill armageddon on working-class and middle-class households, as well as mom-and-pop businesses, all while baseload power demand surges in the era of AI data centers.

    Fox News is beginning to latch onto the power bill crisis theme, starting with coverage of New Jersey residents who are absolutely furious over exploding power bills. This new development could severely damage the state’s Democratic leaders in the upcoming elections.

    This all started when New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities approved a 17 to 20% rate hike for power bills in June. Many residents were shocked when they opened their bills at the end of last month.

    “$200 more, I know my electrical bill,” one Jersey woman told Fox News reporter CB Cotton, adding, “I was shocked. So to say the least, I’m very disappointed. This is killing us, and every time you turn around it’s something more. You only get little pleasures in life that you enjoy, and my air conditioner is one of them.”

    Perhaps Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s decision to shutter the state’s nuclear and coal plants, without a one-to-one replacement for lost capacity on the grid, was a catastrophic error that is only now coming home to roost. He also prioritized offshore wind farms and other green energy projects, which have left the grid more fragile than ever.

    “Just like the old gypsy woman every Republican ever said!”

  • How bad is the Democratic Party sucking? The Teamsters Union is donating to Republicans.

    The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, disillusioned and even disavowed by Democratic leaders, is showing Republicans some love in the midterms. The union’s donations are evidence of a realignment that could outlast President Trump’s term unless Democrats embrace at least some union-friendly policies like tariffs.

    Prior to 2024, the Teamsters backed almost no Republicans. This year, the Democrat, Republican, Independent Voter Education PAC gave the maximum, $5,000, to each of 22 House Republicans and backed several Senate candidates, Politico reports. They also gave $50,000 to the Republican Attorneys General Association.

  • Casino interests aren’t giving up on buying Texas.

    After dumping millions into the 2024 election cycle and coming up short, Las Vegas Sands appears ready to roll the dice again.

    New financial disclosures show that Texas Sands PAC, the Texas-based political arm of the casino giant, has more than $9 million in cash on hand heading into the upcoming election season. That money comes almost entirely from Miriam Adelson, the billionaire owner of Las Vegas Sands and majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks. Despite its name, Sands does not operate casinos in Las Vegas or anywhere in the United States; its operations are exclusively in China and Singapore.

    While the group has largely held off on spending in recent months, records show it contributed $1.8 million to members of the Texas House during the 2024 cycle—$1.34 million to Republicans and $457,500 to Democrats. That spending mirrors the strategy the group employed last time: pour money into protecting lawmakers who supported its push to legalize casino gambling in Texas.

    That effort didn’t go as planned.

    Despite getting casino legislation to the floor of the Texas House in 2023, Sands watched its momentum collapse in the primaries. Voters rejected the very lawmakers who had sided with the casino giant. Former House Speaker Dade Phelan, the top recipient of Sands money, was forced into a runoff. Meanwhile, 14 Republican House members who voted for casino legislation either lost re-election or chose not to seek it.

    Sands and Adelson attempted to salvage the cycle with a massive last-minute push. The Texas Defense PAC, funded entirely by Adelson, poured more than $7 million into runoff races in an effort to rescue Phelan’s allies. But again, the money didn’t translate into wins.

    Now, Sands is recalibrating.

    Although no major new contributions have been reported yet this cycle, those connected to the group have continued to work in some statewide campaigns.

    Former State Sen. Kelly Hancock, who is now running for state comptroller, has hired John Jackson to run his campaign.

    Until earlier this year, however, Jackson served as Sands’ head political consultant in Texas. He previously managed campaigns for Gov. Greg Abbott and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.

    Hancock did not respond to a request for comment on whether he supports the group’s efforts to bring government-monopoly casinos to Texas.

    Neither Don Huffines or Christi Craddick—the other two candidates currently in the race—have casino operatives leading their campaigns.

    Hancock is not the only one with senior staff tied to the casino operator.

    Jordan Berry, a recent registered lobbyist for Sands, also serves as a campaign consultant to numerous candidates in the state legislature, including State Sen. Mayes Middleton (R–Galveston) in his campaign for attorney general. Berry’s lobby registration with all his clients ended on June 23.

  • City-owned Kansas City grocery store closes despite because of millions of dollars in subsidies.
  • Not this shit again: “Judge Rules Against Little Sisters of the Poor in Obamacare Contraception Case.”

    A U.S. district court decided on Wednesday to strike down a 2017 federal regulation that exempted religious employers from the Affordable Care Act’s mandate for employer-sponsored health insurance to cover the cost of contraception.

    If the ruling holds, religious non-profit organizations such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, the defendants in the case, may now be required to file for an accommodation process with the government that still maintains employees’ access to contraception without the religious organization having to pay. For-profit employers would have access to no religious exemption from the mandate whatsoever.

    Judge Wendy Beetlestone, chief judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, found that the Trump administration’s 2017 rule expanding religious exemptions from the contraception mandate was “arbitrary and capricious,” thus violating statutory authority. Consequently, she declared the rule vacated.

    The left can’t stop attacking the Little Sisters of the Poor because it is intolerable to them that there is an legitimate source of moral authority apart from the state. Catholic nuns must be forced to pay for contraception (and abortions) as a token of their submission to social justice. Every. Knee. Must. Bend.

    I know you’ll be shocked to learn that Beetlestone is an Obama appointee…

  • “Man Says His Minneapolis Neighborhood Is Too Dangerous For Apartment Security Contractor.”

    So on Monday, I get a text from my property management company saying that they’ve retained an outside security company to address the numerous complaints about loitering and drug sales in the neighborhood.

    ‘Beginning today, you will see these security personnel around the properties and in the neighborhood, goes on and on about procedures.’

    Okay. Today’s Wednesday. It’s two days later, I get an email from my property management, and they said,

    ‘We’re disappointed to share that the security company that was hired has pulled out of the neighborhood. After a day and a half of doing recon and observing activity in the neighborhood, they decided the problems with crime exceed their resources to control. We will continue to work with organizations and neighborhood and explore other options to improve public safety and so on.’

    Funny what happens when a Democrat-run locale decides to “defund the police” because a random black drug user died…

  • “Commissioner Ramsey Seeks Removal of Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. Following a vote to censure Hidalgo, Ramsey said, ‘It is time to consider replacing Judge Hidalgo.'”

    Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo faced a historic 3-1 censure vote from the commissioners court after her proposed property tax increase was rejected. The vote followed accusations of disruptive behavior, prompting Republican Commissioner Tom Ramsey to call for her removal.

    This is the first time a Harris County judge, the chief executive of the county, has been censured.

    Lots of candidates (Democrats and Republicans) are lining up to run against Hidalgo next year.

  • Sex trafficking ring broken up in Nebraska.

    United States Attorney Lesley A. Woods announced that five people were charged by complaint for a range of federal violations that center around their alleged conspiracy to engage in labor trafficking, sex trafficking, and harboring of aliens at several hotel locations across the Omaha metro area and into central Nebraska. The defendants own, operate and manage several hotels in the Omaha metro area located at the following locations where federal search warrants were executed in the early morning hours of August 12, 2025:

    • The AmericInn, 2920 S 13 Ct., Omaha;
    • The Inn (formerly Super 8), 9305 S 145th St., Omaha;
    • The New Victorian, 10728 L St., Omaha; and
    • Roadway Inn, 1110 Fort Crook Rd S, Bellevue, NE.

    The five Nebraska men from Nebraska with very Nebraskan names were identified as:

    • Kentakumar Chaudhari, a/k/a Ken Chaudhari, age 36, of Elkhorn, NE;
    • Rashmi Ajit Samani, a/k/a Falguni Samani, age 42, of Elkhorn, NE:;
    • Amit Prahladbhai Chaudhari, a/k/a Amit, age 32, of Omaha;
    • Amit Babubhai Chaudhari, a/k/a Matt, age 33, of Omaha; and
    • Maheshkumar Chaudhari, a/k/a Mahesh, age 38, of Norfolk, NE.

    Federal, state, and local law enforcement officers conducted a search of 14 premises, including homes and several “Brow and Lash” salons associated with the men.

    During the operation, law enforcement officers rescued 10 minors from an alleged labor trafficking conspiracy that involved putting children under the age of twelve years old to work at the hotels for long hours with little to no pay. Seventeen adult victims were also rescued from the same conspiracy.

    The US Attorney’s Office says at least one of the defendants were running a sex trafficking operation that sold both children and adults into prostitution. Sex trafficking was “not only allowed at the hotels … but also encouraged.” Prosecutors say hotel management and employees sexually abused the victims personally, as well as selling their victims out to others.

    Drugs were also openly used and sold at the hotels, according to officials.

    The Biden Administration went all-out to ensure that all 50 states got to enjoy that vibrant illegal alien diversity they imported…

  • Former Austin Elementary School Teacher Gets 71 Years For 20 Child Sex Crimes. Kevin Abeyta taught art at Austin ISD’s Campbell Elementary.”
  • An Arizona judge freed an illegal alien child rapist despite him violating the Mann Act.

    An Arizona judge is reportedly planning to free an illegal alien who kidnapped and raped a girl from Kansas whom he brought all the way to Arizona.

    The 14-year-old girl went missing on July 20, but authorities were able to track her cell phone and locate her in an Extended Stay America hotel in Chandler, Arizona. The kidnapper is a man named Cristian Leonardo Caal Mucu. When police arrived, the teenage girl was alone in the hotel room. What local media was reluctant to admit was that Caal Mucu is an illegal alien. And now this predator is set to be released on bail with only electronic monitoring.

    How is he not being handed over to the FBI and/or ICE? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “Of the 2,942 religion-based hate crimes that were reported to the FBI in 2024, 2,041 (69%) offenses targeted Jews.”
  • China has a supergenius to solve its housing collapse problems: Force government-backed corporations to buy unsold homes. What could possibly go wrong?

  • Hollywood unions want to control YouTube. Also, people in Hell want ice-water.
  • Funko popped.
  • The Critical Drinker really liked Weapons.
  • “Democrats Warn New Trump Census Could Negate All The Illegal Alien Votes Biden Brought In.”
  • “Democrat Mayors Report Violent Crime Down 40% Since They Redefined ‘Violent’ And ‘Crime.'”
  • “Gavin Newsom Vows To Double California’s Violent Crime If Trump Doesn’t Stop Cleaning Up D.C.”
  • Saying hello to the new neighbor:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    LinkSwarm For August 23, 2024

    Friday, August 23rd, 2024

    Both unemployment and inflation numbers in the Biden Recession are lies, the DNC finishes up as bad as everyone thought it would be, why supporting Russia’s illegal war of territorial aggression in Ukraine is not a conservative position, Canada goes on strike, crappy modern art prices collapse, and Disney ships The Acolyte to a farm in the country where it can run around all day.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Biden’s Labor Department admits that it overcounted new jobs created by 818,000.

    For the past few days, rumors and reports have indicated that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics was going to downwardly revise their assessment of the number of jobs created from April 2023 to March 2024 “by up to 1 million. This means that all ‘beats’ recorded in the past year will have been misses and the US job market is in far worse shape than the admin[istration] would admit.”

    The revision is out, and while it’s not quite a million, it’s still really darn high — 818,000 fewer jobs were created in that yearlong period than were initially reported.

    In a normal presidential campaign, where the nominee and her running mate did interviews and press conferences, this would be a major headache. Luckily, Kamala Harris and her campaign have more or less unilaterally decided she doesn’t have to do them anymore, and figures like Michael Steele, Rick Wilson, and Leslie Gray Streeter have concurred that presidential candidates answering questions in interviews are an unneeded relic of a bygone era. The candidate will tell us all we need to know or deserve to know in her stump speech.

    The president and his team want to communicate the story of successful economic management. The vice president running for her own term doesn’t have the luxury of insisting the economy is doing gangbusters and that inflation is defeated when so many Americans, looking at empty storefronts and office spaces, are concluding otherwise.

  • The other half of the Misery index, inflation, is up higher than the official rate as well:

    (Hat tip: ZeroHedge.)

  • This is going to have a lot of Democrats going to Brown Alert: “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Suspends Presidential Campaign, Endorses Trump.”

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “suspended” his presidential campaign Friday afternoon, explaining that he would remain on the ballot in many states to give his supporters a protest-vote option but that he would remove his name from the ballot in battleground states, where his presence might help Kamala Harris, the candidate he views as the most significant threat to his populist political project.

    Kennedy launched his quixotic run for America’s highest office after boosting his national profile during the Covid pandemic. Already a prominent vaccine skeptic and a scion of America’s most famous political dynasty, Kennedy emerged as a leader of the populist backlash against pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates, writing a bestselling book, The Real Anthony Fauci, which cast the face of the federal government’s Covid response as a power-hungry bureaucrat intent on using health emergencies as a pretext to control the public.

    After making a splash through his appearances in independent media and building a following among well-heeled Silicon Valley donors, Kennedy abandoned his effort to get on the Democratic primary ballot, accusing the party of sabotaging him. Having failed to gain traction as an independent candidate and with his campaign coffers near empty, Kennedy finally announced the suspension of his campaign in an upbeat speech from Phoenix, Arizona, in which he argued that he and his supporters succeeded in shaking up America’s political establishment.

    “We proved them wrong,” Kennedy said of the those who doubted his ability to mount a campaign as an independent. “We did it because, beneath the radar of mainstream media organs, we inspired a massive political movement.”

    Kennedy went on to attack Democrats for “disenfranchising American voters” by swapping in Kamala Harris for Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, casting the party he called home for decades as a corrupt cabal of elites who carefully stage manage the political process through their influence over the media.

    “The mainstream media was once the guardian of the First Amendment and democratic principles, and it’s joined this systemic attack on democracy,” Kennedy said. “The media justifies their censorship on the grounds of combatting misinformation, but governments and oppressors don’t censor lies, they don’t fear lies, they fear the truth and that’s what they censor.”

  • The DNC just finished up and it was “a parade of horribles“:

    The DNC was a parade of horribles, displaying every form of sin, debauchery, and malign political philosophy invented by mankind—all in one room. We’ve spent the last four days being hectored by screeching harridans who demand that we reject the values that made the United States the greatest country in history and replace them with a feminist nightmare.

    • We learned that a Harris-Walz administration would put abortion on demand, for any and every reason, at the top of its priority list because, in the Democrats’ view, we are not killing enough babies in this country. They’re going to squeeze every dead baby they can out of their four years in office if they make it to the White House.
    • We also learned that they’re going to drag us into more wars and conflicts and encourage more terror attacks with their flaccid foreign policy—as they hobnob with All the Right Globalists in Davos.
    • We’ll be looking at Soviet-style price controls, unbridled socialism, and more regulations on businesses.
    • Kamala and Co. believe that the economy is just humming along, choosing to ignore runaway inflation, rampant joblessness, and the inability of many people to purchase homes, so they’ll double down on the Biden-Harris economic policies.
    • They’ll destroy children and families by encouraging mental illnesses like transgenderism, using the schools as a vehicle to spread their destructive lies about gender.
    • And speaking of schools, never forget that Kamala wants to bring back school busing in the name of equity while destroying school choice, which actually results in equity by putting educational decisions in parents’ hands. In June 2019, busing was discussed in a Democratic debate when Harris was still in the race. Afterward, her campaign confirmed that she “supported busing as a method for school integration.” And God only knows what they’ll do to homeschooling if they win in November.
    • And, of course, the border will remain wide open, with rapists, child traffickers, fentanyl pushers, and drug cartels at liberty to walk into the United States almost unimpeded.
    • Pro-lifers and peaceful protesters will continue to be locked up while violent felons roam free under a Harris-Walz administration.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Man who says he went with Tim Walz to China says he’s Maoist to the core.

    A man who says he joined Tim Walz on a trip to communist China is speaking out about his experience of traveling to the country with the future vice-presidential candidate.

    “It was almost a daily revelation of how much he adores the communist regime,” the former student told Alpha News.

    For over a decade, Tim Walz traveled to and from China. First arriving in the country in 1989, Walz taught at a high school in partnership with a nonprofit program affiliated with Harvard University. During this first trip, Walz was visiting Hong Kong when the Tiananmen Square protests began in April. Those protests ended in June when the communist government massacred protestors on June 3-4, 1989.

    After the massacre, Walz later took a train to Beijing to visit the square, according to the New York Times.

    Upon returning to the United States after that first trip, Walz told local newspapers how much he enjoyed his time in China. On June 4, 1994, Walz married Gwen Whipple on the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Gwen told a local newspaper that Walz “wanted to have a date he’ll always remember,” the Wall Street Journal reported. The couple spent their honeymoon in China, according to local reports from the time.
    The Star Herald/Newspapers.com

    After this first trip to China, Walz founded a company that took students on summer trips to China. Walz said in a 2016 interview that he has traveled to China “about 30 times” as a teacher and member of Congress. The New York Post recently reported that Walz was a visiting fellow at a state-run university in China as recently as 2007.

    Now, a former student who says he joined Walz on a 1995 trip to China is speaking to Alpha News about the experience. That student, Shad, asked that we not use his last name.

    For several weeks, Walz and his group of students explored China together in the summer of 1995, Shad said. They saw Tiananmen Square, walked along the Great Wall of China, and traversed the country. However, the former student says he was struck by Walz’s adoration for China and its communist ideology.

    “There was no doubt he was a true believer,” Shad said. “I’ve been trying to tell people this for 30 years. Nobody wanted to listen.

    “At night, we’d go out, we’d walk the street fairs. We’d be buying souvenirs and Tim was always buying the little red book. He said he gave them as gifts … I saw him buy at least a dozen on the trip,” he said.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Democrats admit what Republicans have known all along: they want to amnesty all the illegal aliens they’ve let in the country.
  • “Congressional Democrats in tight reelection bids skip Harris, party’s nominating convention.”

    Several congressional Democrats facing tight reelection bids, particularly those in tossup or GOP-leaning states or House districts, are skipping the party’s nominating convention in Chicago this week.

    Montana Sen. Jon Tester has not yet endorsed Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, and he was the red state’s only delegate to withhold a vote backing Harris, according to Montana Public Radio.

    Instead of attending the Democratic National Convention, Tester will hold a fundraiser, farm and campaign for his reelection, according to the Montana Free Press.

    Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen told The New York Times that she would be campaigning for her reelection this week and needed to be close to her home state.

    Tester, Brown and Rosen are three of the six Senate Democrats most vulnerable to losing reelection, according the the news outlet Roll Call.

    Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, declined to join the virtual vote to nominate Harris, the Bangor Daily News reported. He also wouldn’t say who he’s voting for in November.

    Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, told CNN he rarely attends conventions, but he has attended each convention during his time in Congress, according to The Hill newspaper.

    New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich told Scripps News he has commitments that conflict with the convention.

    Plus Rep Yadira Caraveo (D-CO), Rep. Val Hoyle (D-OR), Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK), and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA) also skipped the convention.

  • Don Lemon asks random about the 2024 election and finds out a lot are supporting Trump.

  • Van Jones admits that anti-Jewish bigotry is “marbled” into the Democratic Party.
  • So just where is ActBlue getting all their money?

    Paging Dr. Adrienne Young, M.D.

    The good doctor is listed online as an “internist” in McKees Rocks, a borough in western Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, known locally as “the Rocks.”

    Campaign finance filings report Young’s practice is located on Heckel Road in McKees and list a 412 area code phone number. But her office does not appear to exist at this address and the number is not in service. Moreover, none of the receptionists attached to doctors’ offices located in close proximity to Young’s office address in McKees have ever heard of her. That’s peculiar in and of itself. But a search of campaign finance records only adds to the intrigue.

    Someone identified as Adrienne Young has been making substantial contributions to a left-of-center political action committee known as ActBlue, according to Federal Election Commission records.

    ActBlue was founded in 2009 to help Democratic Party candidates and allied “progressive” groups raise funds through a multiheaded hydra serving as a conduit for left-wing donors, with two more arms—ActBlue Charities and ActBlue Civics—funneling money to 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) clients, respectively.

    Restoration News is still attempting to contact the individual listed in campaign finance documents as Adrienne Young. Records list her residing on Leet Road in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. These records show that since 2017, Young has made 17,342 in contributions to ActBlue totaling $209,670.06—which averages seven contributions per day.

    However, there is no one named Adrienne Young residing at that or any other Leet Road address. Moreover, there is no one named Adrienne Young who could be described as a “mega-donor” in the same vein as say a George Soros, the source of the Open Society Foundations’ billions, or former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Moreover, mega-donors do not typically make multiple transactions over an extended period of time, but instead make lump sum donations.

    To add to the confusion, one online search for Young does suggest she has more than 44 years of experience in the medical field and graduated from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in 1979. It raises a key question: Such a credentialed person should not be so difficult to find. If she’s out there, Young could be the victim of identity theft. If she’s not, then she might be a fictitious person used to pump funds into ActBlue.

    “Smurfing” involves repackaging large sums of money into smaller, individual transactions to appear less suspicious and avoid scrutiny from law enforcement officials. Is “Adrienne Young” a cover for such an operation, benefiting Democrats?

    While it is indisputably the case that ActBlue is ringing the bell with hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions, it’s not evident the smaller contributions that translate over time into larger sums are coming from an individual donor.

    One of the more recent contributions to ActBlue leading back to the donor identified as Young came on March 16, 2023, in the amount of $1196.50. That’s not an unusual amount for an individual, but what is unusual is folding that amount into more than 17,000 contributions made over the span of several years. The donor identified as Young was actively contributing to ActBlue at least through part of this year with a donation of $429.00 made on April 30, 2024. If a smurfing operation is underway, it may not be limited to what’s flowing into ActBlue.

    There were also 991 donations made in Young’s name totaling $26,481 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, 904 donations totaling $22,881.72 to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, and $16,190.56 to the Progressive Turnout Project, a left-of-center PAC based in Chicago.

    Once again, multiple small donations add up to large donations over time. Young is listed, for example, as making a $869 donation to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on May 12, 2019, $1,776 to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee on May 23, 2024, and $800.00 to the Progressive Turnout Project on April 12, 2024. Apparently, Young has been an active donor, at least up until a few months ago.

    Allegations involving multiple donations to ActBlue that might possibly involve identify and credit card theft have caught the attention of Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares who is conducting his own investigation. The attorney general has sent a letter to ActBlue that is available on X. For its part, ActBlue has pushed back against Miyares in a statement describing the Republican attorney general’s actions as a partisan exercise.

    How expansive smurfing might be across the country isn’t certain. But the common denominator in these questionable transactions—ActBlue—certainly is.

    Restoration News has identified another potential fictional donor, Wendy Urbanowicz, residing in Vancouver, Washington. Campaign finance records show that since 2020 she has made 28,659 donations to ActBlue totaling $260,196—averaging 17 contributions per day.

    Urbanowicz supposedly made another 720 donations totaling $12,099 to the Democratic Congressional Committee; 609 donations totaling $12,365 to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee; and 259 donations totaling $11,421 to Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz.

    But an online search for Urbanowicz is every bit as fruitless as a search for Adrienne Young. She’s listed in FEC filings as a 73-year-old residing in Vancouver, Washington, with a 360 area code phone number. Once again, there is no record of Urbanowicz in Vancouver and the number is not active.

    It’s always possible someone is deceased or moved away. But some of the contributions listed by the FEC for Urbanowicz are as recent as May 2024. Just to cite a few examples, a donation from Urbanowicz in the amount of $2,955 was made on March 22 and a $193 donation was made on May 12.

    Not all of the FEC records pop up in an online search. This one, for instance, for ActBlue produces an error message.

    But Urbanowicz and Young are both listed as donors to the far-left PAC EMILY’s List, which backs Democrats. In these filings, Urbanowicz is listed at a P.O. Box in Vancouver with the ZIP code 98668. We’re still attempting to track down Urbanowicz, but early indications are that no one with her name resides in Vancouver or nearby.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Chicago is living down to its reputation. “Texas Delegate Robbed at Gunpoint Near Democratic Convention in Downtown Chicago.”

    A member of the Texas Democratic delegation, who arrived in Chicago for the Democratic National Convention this week, was robbed at gunpoint while walking with a friend in the city early Wednesday morning.

    The delegate’s name is unknown at this time, CWBChicago reported. The outlet said it is “not identifying him by name because he is a crime victim.” No one is in custody and detectives are still investigating the crime, the Chicago Police Department confirmed in a statement obtained by National Review.

    The victim and his friend were walking near Allegro Royal Sonesta Hotel Chicago when a gunman in a ski mask pulled up in a black Range Rover and robbed them around 2 a.m. The robber stole a 25-year-old man’s wallet and hotel-room key in the same vicinity before turning his attention to the delegate and his associate. No injuries were reported in either incident.

    The prime suspects are described as two black men wearing all black clothing and ski masks. They are still believed to be at large.

    The Chicago police issued an alert warning the community about the robbers Thursday morning, saying they were linked to another robbery around the same time that the delegate and the two other victims were mugged. The pair are also responsible for two more robberies early Tuesday and Monday morning.

    Sounds like the sorts of career criminals that Democrats go out of their way to make sure remains on the streets to victimize people…

  • “D.C. Councilman Known for Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory Arrested on Bribery Charge.”

    Washington, D.C., councilman Trayon White (D.) was arrested Sunday on a bribery charge, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia announced, over allegations that he agreed to take cash payments in exchange for pressuring government employees to extend public-safety contracts with two firms.

    White, who chairs the D.C. Council’s Committee on Recreation, Libraries, and Youth Affairs and oversees the D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, allegedly sought a sum of $156,000 — three percent of total contract value — for his work. In its press release, the office of U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves noted that White’s alleged corruption was caught on film.

    “According to the complaint, White’s agreement with a confidential human source (the owner of the companies) — including the source’s payments to White of $35,000 in cash on four separate occasions (June 26, July 17, July 25, and August 9, 2024_ and the source showing White a document reflecting how White’s three-percent cut was calculated based on those contracts — was captured on video,” the release reads.

    Graves wrote in a statement that the time-sensitive nature of the case led his office to act quickly.

    “Because the investigation into the alleged bribery scheme involved contracts that could soon be awarded and other potential official acts that could be taken, our Office took swift steps to address the alleged crimes we were investigating,” Graves said.

    White is perhaps best known for a 2018 video he published in which he accused Jewish financiers of controlling the weather.

    “Man, it just started snowing out of nowhere this morning, man,” White said. “Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation. And D.C. keep talking about ‘we a resilient city.’ And that’s a model based off the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man. Be careful.”

  • Another day, another potential assassination attempt against Trump.
  • Here’s a good essay on why conservatives should be on Ukraine’s side in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

    It’s time to talk to some of the bizarrely non-conservative conservatives, who for unfathomable reasons are fans of Putin’s Russia. We call these people “Brosheviks.”

    The simple background is that Kiev is far older than Moscow, and various groups controlled both territories. Ukraine was independent as a nation, then captured by the USSR. The USSR spent seventy plus years abusing and starving Ukraine to the tune of more than 30 million people. After the USSR collapsed it became independent, and the poorest country in Europe, looted and raped by its occupiers.

    Ukraine had a lot of corruption because it was a former Soviet state. They all do. It has far less corruption than Russia. Remember the Clinton Foundation washing $650 mil through Russia? And Uranium deals? Etc? That’s just the stuff we know about large scale.
    ~~
    The USSR, though, and now Russia has the greatest propaganda organ the world has ever seen. Witness:

    Literally every Russian military development—tank, aircraft, everything, led to wails of, “Oooh! The Russians have got us this time! ZOMG! State of the art! We’ll be catching up for generations! Panic! Gloom, despair, and agony on me!”

    Then we’d capture or acquire one and it would be shit tier garbage. Every fucking time. The MiG25: Shit that couldn’t dogfight or maneuver and had no loiter time. The T72: Shit armor, shit fire control, overall shit. The T90: Such shit a Bradley can take it out with 25mm. The vaunted AK47: If you’ve ever shot one you understand it’s a weapon for illiterate peasants and yes, jams like you wouldn’t believe if you haven’t handled one. That long stroke gas piston loves corrosion, debris, and mud and turns into an unergonomic club.

    The USSR persuaded the Western world, especially the left, that they were some sort of victims, not a larger, less-effective murder machine as the Nazis, but still a mass murder machine with a higher body count. Hanging a Swastika banner will get you excoriated (and should), but hang up the Hammer and Sickle, and well, we have to be tolerant of divergent viewpoints.

    We really fucking don’t. Commies are just as much subhuman shit as the Nazis. But that propaganda.

    Snip.

    “Ukraine has corruption! Vlad is saving us from the New World Order!”

    Name a single nation we’ve ever assisted in war that wasn’t corrupt. Including our own.

    Also, if you’ve paid attention the last decade (you obviously haven’t paid attention the last decade), Ukraine was in the process of flushing the corrupt leaders, most of whom were…friends of Vladimir Sputum.
    ~~
    “Ukraine has Nazis!”

    Probably a few. So does the US. So does Russia, since the head of Wagner Group, named after Hitler’s favorite composer, LITERALLY HAS SS INSIGNIA TATTOOED ON HIS CHEST, COLLARS AND SHOULDERS. Are you that fucking gullible and retarded? Apparently.

    Also, the POWs from the alleged Nazi Azov Battalion were exchanged for Russian POWs, no issue. So no (alleged) Nazis were actually stopped or tried.

    Also, those “Nazis” are taking orders from a Jewish comedian. Vlad explains this as “They’re a special kind of Nazi that isn’t necessarily anti-semitic, but still Nazis.” So, National Socialists…like yourself, Vlad?

    Snip.

    “Russia warned Ukraine not to join NATO! They can’t be aggressive like that.”

    Ukraine has not joined NATO, and your ex doesn’t get to tell you who to date.
    ~~
    “Russia is rightfully afraid of NATO aggression!”

    THIS Cold War bullshit again? Are you liberal, or retarded?
    ~~
    “Why won’t anyone stand with Russia against the New World Order? Vlad is a hero!”

    Such a hero his allies are Lil Kim in North Korea, and the Assahola in Iran. That’s who you’re supporting here, dipshit.
    ~~
    “You’re going to find out that Ukraine is carefully making it look like they’re winning! There’s this huge push in March/April 2023/2024 that’s going to end it. After Ukraine is worn out fighting Russian garbage, the A-team is going to wreck them!”

    It’s been 2.5 years. The Russian Airborne died the first day. The vaunted Spaznutz met Ukrainian reservists and got slaughtered like the shit tier, third world, all-show-and-no-dick bitches they actually are. It’s getting worse. Russians have been seen on scooters (the step on kind that populate cities like cockroaches) and Chinese golf carts. They’re losing T54s on a recurring basis, having run out of modern (1960s) tanks. It’s become a joke at this point.

    Snip.

    FACT: Russia invaded Ukraine because it wanted to seize territory it’s not entitled to, and is getting its incompetent shit tier military ass kicked by a third world nation. Even if they “win” a few counties of utter wasteland that are wrecked more than No Man’s Land in WWI, they’ve lost their credibility and military footprint for decades to come.

    Now stop being their propaganda bitch.

    Much more at the link. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)

  • Ukraine hit the only ferry working across the Kerch strait when it was loaded with fuel tanks.
  • Ukraine also hit Marinovka airbase in Volgograd, some 500km from the front lines, with drones using ball bearing warheads like on HIMARS tungsten rounds, hitting number of hangers and destroying at least three Su-34 and one Su-24 aircraft.
  • “Texas Children’s Whistleblower Fired After Alleging Child Gender Modification Medicaid Fraud.”

    Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) has fired a whistleblower following allegations that it was “unlawfully billing the state Medicaid program” for the purposes of child gender modification.

    The whistleblower, Vanessa Sivadge, provided a statement to the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo with details about how she was fired after revealing the “sex-change procedures ongoing at the hospital, but also the fraud and deception related to the illegal billing practices to Medicaid in having these procedures covered by taxpayers.”

    Sivadge stated that after her initial story went public, TCH put her “on leave.” She was then fired on Friday, August 16.

    Prior to Sivadge blowing the whistle, she stated that she submitted a religious accommodation request to transfer to another department. She said her role in the endocrinology clinic “was devastating” because her role as a nurse “primarily involved providing medication refills and working with physicians to answer questions from parents about treatment plans.”

    Sivadge added that she “would like to challenge this in court” and asked for donations for her legal defense.

    “No regrets,” wrote Sivadge on social media.

    Her story first became public back in June, following a previous TCH whistleblower, Eithan Haim, alleging that TCH had continued to provide “gender-affirming care” to minor children even after stating that it would stop doing so.

    Following Sivadge talking with Rufo, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sent agents to her home to “intimidate and threaten her,” in Rufo’s words.

    Haim has been visited by agents of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and has been indicted on four felony counts of violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA.

  • Harris County’s Lina Hidalgo still hasn’t given up on her socialist guaranteed income program, despite the Texas Supreme Court ruling it unconstitutional.

    The Harris County Commissioners Court voted along partisan lines last week to revive a guaranteed basic income (GBI) program for select residents with more restrictions and higher costs, although a previous version was halted by state courts earlier this year.

    Under the original version of the program, named Uplift Harris, the county planned to send “no-strings-attached” $500 monthly stipends to 1,928 recipients for 18 months, but Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed suit challenging the constitutionality of the program last April. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court of Texas (SCOTX) halted the plan indefinitely.

    Now Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo says the revised program, Uplift Harris 2.0, will provide preloaded cards with restrictions on how the funds may be spent.

    “That’s not the spirit of a guaranteed income program,” said Hidalgo. “If the state gets in the way of this and the program becomes stuck in court again then the funds will be reallocated to programs that already exist to support people living in poverty.”

    Hidalgo did not specify the restrictions on how recipients could spend funds but said the debit cards could be used for “medicine, groceries, et cetera.” The county has not yet published details of the revised GBI.

    Commissioners will cover the costs of Uplift Harris with nearly $21 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds, of which $17,350,000 will be distributed to selected residents and $1 million will fund a study of the program’s effectiveness.

    Administrative costs charged by nonprofit GiveDirectly were originally $1,740,500, but under the revised GBI will rise another $400,000.

    All the better to rake off more social justice graft…

  • Both Canadian freight rail networks are hit by strikes.

  • If someone contacts you claiming to be a U.S. Marshall, but claims you need to pay your failure to appear fine in cash, then it’s a scam.

  • “Russian businesses are locked out of billions as payment issues reportedly pile up abroad.” The sanctions are leaky, but not entirely useless.
  • Why Japanese software lags so far behind western software.
  • The Baltics switch over to European electrical standards.
  • There can be only one.
  • Google to Invest $1 Billion in Texas Data, Cloud Center Infrastructure. Google plans to make another billion-dollar investment in Texas to support data center infrastructure.” I have no respect for woke Google, but better they spend money in Texas rather than California.
  • “Warner Bros Discovery pledges $8.5 billion on Nevada Studios pending tax credit approval.” Moving production out of California makes a lot of sense, though $8.5 billion is a lot of money for a company with a market cap of $19.5 billion.
  • Follow-up: Disney backtracks on forced arbitration for wrongful death lawsuit.
  • Critical Drinker watches the new Snow White trailer. “As for the dwarfs, [these] things are absolute nightmare fuel.” And it’s amusing to see Rachel Zegler go from calling the original “dated” to calling it “beloved” is an amusing turnabout.
  • And speaking of the Drinker, he gets to dance on The Acolyte grave.

    In life you reap what you sow, and if what you sow happens to be a $180 million vanity project made by a feminist activist promoted way beyond her abilities with practically no experience, only a vague understanding of the subject matter, and even less talent for actual storytelling, starring a blank-faced charisma-vacuum with all the acting talent of a comatose Steven Seagal, and incorporating some of the most cringe-inducing scenes ever committed to film, then, well, what you reap will be a big old dose of cancel.

    More: “Man, it’s got to be a bitter pill for Kathleen Kennedy to swallow. [The Acolyte] represented her ultimate vision for Star Wars: Female focused, female led, and female directed. And, funnily enough, it was rejected by absolutely everyone.” And: “The cold, harsh truth is that the mythical ‘modern audience’ that Lucasfilm have been chasing for 10 years now simply doesn’t exist, never has existed, and never will exist.”

  • Just a bit more on The Acolyte from How it Should have Ended:

  • This just in: Crappy modern art is now bringing in 1/10th of what it was. Still outperforming NFTs, though…
  • John Richardson of the No Lawyers – Only Guns And Money blog is running for the NRA Board of Directors. Since he has done such and admirable job of covering every twist and turn of the organization’s dysfunction during the terminal years of the LaPierre regime, I can only imagine that he’ll be an excellent addition to the board.
  • Rotten Tomatoes drops the audience score to hide how much viewers actually hate woke films. Sounds like they just made their site entirely useless.
  • Kotaku social justice warrior Alyssa Mercante threatens to sue the Internet. I’m sure that will work out well for her…
  • Jeremy Clarkson bans Labour PM Keir Starmer from Clarkson’s newly opened pub.
  • Hoovie spent more than three times as much renovating his farmhouse as I spent on my entire house in 2004.
  • Woman runs over her boyfriend on the way the couples therapy.
  • The vicious claw shrimp strikes again. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • I am proud to announced that I am the Grand Prize winner in this year’s Bulwer-Lytton contest.

  • “Kamala Harris Unveils New Economic Platform ‘We Must Seize The Means Of Production And Execute The Bourgeoisie.'”
  • David French Founds New Group ‘Evangelicals For Satan.'”
  • I’ve featured a dog bus video before, but not this particular one:

  • Still between jobs, so hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    LinkSwarm for March 25, 2022

    Friday, March 25th, 2022

    It’s been a month since Russia invaded Ukraine, and Russian forces seem to have been pushed out of Irpin on the outskirts of Kiev.

    No wonder Russia is reported to be downsizing its war aims to the complete takeover of Donbas. Look for another Russo-Ukraine War roundup on Sunday or Monday. (Also, correction to a previous post: Despite complete encirclement, Mariupol still hasn’t fallen.)

    No on to the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • The big scandal in the Hunter Biden Laptop story isn’t Hunter’s deplorable actions, it’s Joe Biden’s corruption.

    Investigative reporter Peter Schweizer reiterated what he’s said about Hunter being close to criminal indictment. He said The New York Times “got a lot of cooperation from Team Biden” before they ran the story on Hunter that included their admission that the laptop was, indeed, real. He says Biden’s team was “trying to position themselves.” Of course, this case isn’t really about Hunter but the President of the United States, and a criminal indictment would open up “that whole can of worms” concerning dad’s connections to dirty money and the associated tax issues and huge national security concerns.

    Snip.

    George Soros, probably the most influential man in Ukraine, is a big part of this story, too. He gave $1 million to the humorously named Democratic Integrity Project, headed by Daniel J. Jones, a former FBI analyst and staffer for California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Jones had started the nonprofit (seems pretty profitable to me) after Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS approached him with the idea of forming the organization. Then, after filling its coffers to the tune of $7 million, Jones turned around and wrote a check to Fusion GPS for $3.3 million. I am not making this up. The same players keep turning up again and again.

    Fusion GPS’s task: to research how Russian intelligence operations were affecting elections around the world. And they brought in Hillary’s campaign chairman John Podesta to help. Still not making it up, my friends. This was after Podesta’s and the DNC’s emails had been purloined (the narrative became that they were hacked by Russia) and published by WikiLeaks, to the DNC’s embarrassment.

    (Incidentally, John’s lobbyist brother Tony was under investigation at that time for “cashing in” in Ukraine. He was paid $1.2 million to promote a plan conceived, ironically, by Manfort and Gates.)

    Then there’s the story you know, the investigation of Burisma by prosecutor Viktor Shokin until then-Vice President Biden got him fired by threatening to withhold a $1 billion loan guarantee. By now everyone has seen the video of Biden bragging about it before a live audience — without mentioning Hunter was on the Burisma board.

    There’s much more, involving Soros and an investigation by Shokin’s replacement into a Soros-funded organization, the ironically named Anti-Corruption Action Center (AntAC). This was when the new U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch (remember her from Trump’s impeachment?) gave the prosecutor a list of people not to prosecute, including a founder of AntAC. Second-in-command George Kent had already tried to discourage the prosecutor from investigating. According to reporter John Solomon, their message to Ukrainian officials was this: “Don’t target AntAC in the middle of an American presidential election in which Soros was backing Hillary Clinton to succeed another Soros favorite, Barack Obama.”

    There are others in Ukraine tied to both the Russia hoax and Trump’s impeachment. California Rep. Adam Schiff, running the impeachment, trotted out our diplomatic “experts” from Ukraine to talk about Trump and his “impeachable” phone call to President Zelenskyy. Those were Americans, our diplomatic corps, who’d been telling Ukrainian prosecutors who they could and could not prosecute and treating a Soros-funded organization like some sort of sacred cow. Soros supported Hillary and was Trump’s political enemy. He funded an organization conceived by Glenn Simpson. Something smells like bad borscht.

  • Questions asked: “Did The New York Times Admit Joe Biden Is Corrupt So Democrats Can Get Rid Of Him?” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • The coming bloodbath for Democrats.

    Will Rogers once famously said he did not belong to an organised political party because he was a Democrat. Yet today the traditional factiousness of the Democratic coalition has been engulfed by an almost Stalinist attitude that brooks no dissent on its most treasured policies – even though these do not resonate well with the bulk of the electorate.

    To recover, Democrats need to find a way back to their historic base of working-class and minority voters, who now seem to be heading to the GOP. Franklin D Roosevelt’s alliance between big cities, small towns, labour unions and farmers was often awkward, but it still achieved remarkable success in restoring US confidence and winning the war. In contrast, President Biden’s boneheaded embrace of a progressive agenda that is widely detested across most of the population may prove to be one of the greatest political blunders of recent American history.

    Given the probability of a significant loss in this November’s Midterms, we should expect – and hope for – a full-scale brawl over the party’s trajectory. There needs to be something equivalent to the New Democrats who, under Bill Clinton, revived the party after the devastating defeats of George McGovern and Michael Dukakis in the 1970s and 80s by moving the party to the centre and connecting it to the country’s diverse regions. ‘Too many Americans’, wrote New Democrats Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck in 1989, ‘have come to see the party as inattentive to their economic interests, indifferent if not hostile to their moral sentiments, and ineffective in defence of their national security’.

    Snip.

    The economic metrics are awful. Despite nominal GDP gains and higher wages, inflation, largely driven by energy prices, has been particularly cruel to minority and working-class voters. Overall, when asked if they are better off now than a year ago, twice as many Americans said ‘worse’ than better in a recent poll.

    The cave-in to the greens has increased the Democrats’ economic vulnerability, particularly in the wake of Russian aggression and the continued role of China as the world’s dominant greenhouse-gas emitter. The well-funded American environmental elite lack the grudging sense of realism of their German counterparts, who have been forced to reconsider some of their energy policies in light of the invasion. But in resource-rich America, the green grandees still oppose boosting fossil-fuel energy supplies, despite 80 per cent of voters, and an equal percentage of Democrats, favouring the use of both fossil fuels and renewables. Public support for Net Zero / the Green New Deal hovers around 20 per cent.

    Essentially the Democrats’ Net Zero obsession could result in a political disaster. In February, according to Gallup, only two per cent of voters named climate or the environment as their biggest concern, one-fifth the number who named inflation and barely one-tenth the number who cited poor government leadership. Relentless climate scaremongering has not moved the needle among voters. ‘Climate catastrophism’, notes political strategist Ruy Teixeira, is a political ‘loser’, particularly among working-class voters of all races.

    Cultural issues represent another fault line between the bulk of the electorate and the tin-eared elites of the party. Democrats’ have embraced what former Bill Clinton strategist James Carville scathingly labels ‘the politics of the faculty lounge’, such as support for the increasingly discredited Black Lives Matter movement and its calls to ‘defund the police’. This idea may be beloved at places like Harvard, but among the less elevated mortals it is widely unpopular, even among minorities, including two of the nation’s Democratic African-American mayors, Houston mayor Sylvester Turner and New York City’s Eric Adams.

    Voters view crime as the second-most pressing issue, after the economy and inflation. Here again the survey results are equally distressing for the progressive agenda. Voters, according to one recent survey, blame the Democrats for the current crime wave by a margin of two to one. Moderate Democrats, like retiring Florida congresswoman Stephanie Murphy, herself a refugee from Vietnam, found her support for legislation that would penalise undocumented criminals got her labeled as ‘anti-immigrant’ by the party’s dominant progressive mob.

  • “Hispanic Texans Overwhelmingly Believe There Is a Border Crisis and Support Security Measures.” “Almost three-quarters of respondents agreed that there is a crisis at the U.S. border with Mexico with only 23 percent disagreeing with that characterization.”
  • Turns out even Democratic primary voters don’t think you should be talking to kindergartners about sex:

  • “DeSantis signs bill to make school curriculums more transparent for parents.”
  • Donald Trump is suing Hillary and her Russia Collusion Hoax Co-Conspirators. Good. The discovery alone should be epic…
  • Speaking of Trump lawsuits, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is suspending his investigation into Trump indefinitely. Time to pull this timeless montage out of the closet again:

  • The Biden Administration really wants to increase the price of oil, even if it means illegally roping in the SEC to enforce green “climate justice.”
  • Biden also said that food shortages are coming. That’s some mighty fine leadership you’ve got going on there, Lou…
  • No wonder Biden’s approval rating now matches Trump’s lowest. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit. )
  • U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela will resign early from Congress. The South Texas Democrat announced last year that he wouldn’t seek reelection. He’s leaving early to take a job at a law firm.” Yeah, people don’t leave the United States Congress early for a law firm job. There’s something else going on there. (Hat tip: Push Junction, who noted Republicans have a good chance to flip the seat.)
  • Hidalgo Staff Allegedly Plotted to Steer $11 Million Contract, ‘Slam the Door’ on Competing Bid, per Warrants. A grand jury investigation found probable cause of tampering with governmental documents and misuse of official information related to a contract awarded to a woman with ties to local and national Democrats.” My working theory is that whenever you see something like this going on, kickbacks, graft and illegal donations to hard left groups and individuals are all but a certainty.
  • Also: “Hidalgo Says Communications About $11 Million Vaccine Outreach Contract Were Private, Taken Out of Context.” When you’re talking about a public official discussing a public contract using taxpayer money with her public staff, also paid using taxpayer money, there is no such thing as “private.”
  • Nicholas Moran cautions to avoid drawing too many conclusions from the limited video information coming out of the Russo-Ukranian War. “That tanks unsupported by the other arms are easy prey is tanking 101, and what we are seeing in Ukraine isn’t revolutionary, it’s exactly what you would expect to happen if you send vehicles in unsupported into areas infested with infantry and not denied to enemy air.” Also: We’re only seeing the Ukrainian side because they’re the ones uploading cell phone footage, and an important reminder that an anti-tank hit is not an anti-tank kill. (Previously.)
  • Borepatch is not impressed with the level of security in the latest online voting scheme.
  • Heh:

    

  • This seems disturbing: “Seven hospitalized ‘including four juveniles’ in mass fentanyl poisoning after deadly drug is released through air vents.” This was in Ohio. So add “aerosolized Fentanyl” to the list of things to worry about…
  • “United Airlines Rolls Back Vaccine Requirements for Employees. United Airlines announced that it would be changing its policy and that unvaccinated workers would be allowed to return to their normal positions by March 28.” Personally, I’d try to get them to pay through the nose for my return…
  • Utah’s legislature overrides the Republicans governor’s veto of a bill banning men from women’s sports.
  • Another week, another high-profile staffer quitting Kamala Harris’ office. “On Monday, in the wake of Vice President Kamala Harris’ disastrous visit to Poland, it was reported that her National Security Adviser Nancy McEldowney, will become the latest staffer to leave Harris’ office.”
  • Not just Texas: A tornado ripped through New Orleans this week.
  • Interesting thread on how fake science on dietary fat causing heart disease led to the sugar-and-carb engendered obesity epidemic in today’s America.
  • There’s a construction labor shortage in Houston.
  • “Investors at BuzzFeed are reportedly pressuring CEO Jonah Peretti to close down its entire money-losing news operation as senior journalists announced their resignations on Tuesday.” See, the problem here is that they used “Buzzfeed,” “journalists” and “news” all in the same sentence…
  • Speaking of failing leftwing outlets, the Texas Observer is circling the drain.

    In September, the Observer’s editorial staff comprised 13 journalists. As of this month, after a rash of resignations — and one firing — only four of them remain. The five-person business team dwindled to zero in February. This mass exodus, former staffers said, can be traced to a series of board decisions — from the handling of a complaint by former Editor-in-Chief Tristan Ahtone, which led to his resignation; to promising Executive Editor Megan Kimble the top job in the interim, only to pass her over for an outside hire; to unilaterally halting publication of the magazine just days before it went to print.

    Read on for the blow-by-blow, but evidently the staff got too uppity for the board of directors and we’re shown the door, with some side orders of “diversity” and “a web-first publication.” I would say this was all good schadenfreude, but I doubt I’ve even thought of the Observer since George W. Bush was governor…

  • Babylon Bee banned from Twitter for naming “Dr. Rachel Levine” Man of the Year.
  • Louis Rossmann finds the same problems plaguing New York City also plague D.C., namely high retail vacancies and general disorder. “It’s literally like somebody just picked up all the problems of New York City, control-C, and control-V them somewhere else.”
  • Speaking of New York City, Democratic Mayor Eric Adams wants you to know that athletes and actors are simply better than you common peasants, so vaccine mandates don’t apply to them. “The exemption for athletes and entertainers comes ahead of the upcoming baseball season, opening the field for unvaccinated Mets and Yankees to play home games too. Roughly two-thirds of Yankees players and at least ten Mets remain unvaccinated and will now be able to participate, Jon Heyman of the MLB Network noted.” Plus Kyrie Irving on the Brooklyn Nets.
  • I LOLed:

  • “Taliban Spokesman Finally Banned From Twitter After Sharing Babylon Bee Headline.”
  • Washington Post Gun Article Followup

    Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

    Yesterday I mentioned what I thought was the largest problem in that David S. Fallis Washington Post article on Realco: The failure to mention that the shop is the one nearest the District of Columbia and located in an overwhelmingly black (and high crime) area.

    However, reading through that article, I couldn’t help be struck by all the other information Fallis and the Post seemed uninterested in pursuing because they thought of this as a gun story rather than a crime story. Instead of spending all that time pouring through 35,000 gun traces, they could have taken the same 18-year period they traced 86 guns (i.e. roughly 4.8 guns a year involved in homicide) back to Realco, and looked at all (by my count) 4,911 homicides in the District of Columbia. They could have looked at each convicted offender (certainly less than the 4,911 number) and tried to find out:

    • Which had already committed felonies
    • Which already had a warrant out for their arrest at the time they murdered someone
    • Which were on probation at the time they murdered someone
    • What level of education they had obtained before committing their crime (how many were high school dropouts)
    • Which came from single-parent homes
    • Which came from homes where the primary source of income was government welfare
    • How many were involved in the illegal drug trade
    • The race of the murderer
    • The race of the victim
    • Sex of the murderer (almost certainly overwhelmingly male)
    • Sex of the victim (ditto, though I suspect less overwhelmingly)
    • If the murderer already knew their victim
    • Etc.

    A comprehensive look at all those variables would have provided a valuable, multifaceted look at inner city crime in the DC area, and could have generated real insights into the problems and possible solutions to them.

    Sadly, I suspect such a project would have seemed far less sexy to Washington Post editors than yet another “Guns are bad, mmmkay?” article to pander to their core liberal readership.