Posts Tagged ‘feminism’

Iran Strikes: Day 2

Sunday, March 1st, 2026

If it wasn’t clear from yesterday’s roundup, it appears that a whole lot of Islamic Republic of Iran leaders were physically meeting at Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s bunker in Tehran when the successful decapitation strike was carried out as part of Operation Epic Fury/Roaring Lion. The operations are still ongoing, and here are some news updates.

  • “‘All’ of [Ali Khamenei’s] likely successors are ‘probably dead’ following US-Israeli strikes.”

    • Mick Mulvaney, former Trump OMB head and Chief of Staff: “A high risk, high reward type of operation.”
    • A “once in a lifetime opportunity” to both end the nuclear program and effect regime change. “All the [Iranian] senior leadership gathered together at one place at one time.”
    • The daylight attack must have meant we had really solid intel on the regime meeting. Most of our Middle East strikes happen at night during a new moon. “An opportunity they simply couldn’t pass up.”
    • “All of [Ali Khamenei’s] likely successors are probably dead as well.”
    • “The chances of getting a pro-Western, pro-American regime in Iran were as high as it ever was going to be.”
    • John Bolton was lamenting that these actions weren’t taken six or seven years ago, but the situation on the ground now is very different. “Everything has to come together at the same time for this to work.”
    • “This can’t be a forever war.”
    • Taking out the mullahs is “a step toward peace.”
  • New Guy steps into the leadership crosshairs. “Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref informed officials of plans to have him take charge of the nation during wartime, according to a report from the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) published on social media late Saturday night. There was no explicit note of President Masoud Pezeshkian’s ability to carry out presidential duties.”
  • Simon Whistler covers the strikes:

    Much of this covers information included here yesterday, but here are a few new tidbits.

    • Whistler states Iran is claiming they hit Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. LiveUAMap shows a strike against Prince Sultan Air Base, which is over a 100 miles from Riyadh. I mean, they’re both in central Saudi Arabia, but, eh.
    • In Yemen, Houthis threaten retaliation. Nothing yet.
    • The gulf states are plenty pissed at Iran tossing drones and missiles at them.
    • Russia issued a single proforma condemnation of U.S. attacks. China, on the other hand, hasn’t even done that.

  • A lot of Chinese MilTech deals were supposedly in the works when things kicked off, but it looks like very little (if any) actually made it to Iran.
  • Suchomimus video the first:

    • “It is quite telling that [Khamenei]’s death is being celebrated on the streets.”
    • Khamenei was likely killed in the opening strike. “A few sources are now saying it was Israel that hit this.”
    • “Iran isn’t showing any signs of giving up. Well, these could just be the last temper tantrum of the finished regime. The generals and remaining politicians lashing out knowing their time is over and that a surrender is inevitable and just trying to inflict damage.”
    • Suchomimus sees regime change as unlikely without “boots on the ground.”
  • Suchomimus video the second, which is all damage assessment:

    • One Iranian frigate hit, but two more showing no signs of damage.
    • Bandar Abbas radar site hit. Bandar Abbas is the port city directly north of the Strait of Hormuz.
    • Four MiG-29 fighters destroyed out of 30 in service.
    • Israel took out a Basij installation in northern Tehran, they being the hated Iranian religious police. The video shows four large buildings all exploding in a matter of seconds. “Iran’s air defense is completely ineffective here.”
    • Iran’s counterstrikes have had some limited success. In Kuwait “Ali al-Salim air base was hit.” The image shows smoke rising up from three different points, one evidently from a fuel storage strike. “One of Iran’s most successful strikes to date.” Plus a car park and a support facility.
    • Iran also hit Erbil air base in Iraq, where a large fire was seen burning. No information yet on what was hit.
    • Iran also hit Al-Udeid air base in Qatar. “This is the largest American base in the Middle East.” Videos show Patriot intercepting Iranian vehicles, but also one miss and one Patriot interceptor wandering off course and hitting the ground.
  • More IDF footage of the Basij strike:

  • The War Zone’s rolling coverage yesterday. Some highlights:

    I see Tomahawks, F-18s and F-35s, and a lot of Iranian targets going boom. And other American assets are poised to join the action:

  • Update: B-2s are already in-theater pounding Iranian ballistic missile facilities.
  • Here’s The War Zone’s day two coverage.

    Plus President Trump was stating that Iranian retaliation was less than expected.

    Also this: “Imagery circulating points to Iranian attacks in the vicinity of France’s naval base in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.” In other news, there’s a French naval base in Abu Dhabi…

  • Beware of Astroturf protesters. “CCP-Linked NGO Network Prepares “Emergency Protests” In US After Trump’s Iran Strikes Jeopardize Oil Flows To China.”

    Planned demonstrations branded “Hands Off Iran” or “Stop The War On Iran” are scheduled to take place this afternoon in major cities across the U.S. From New York to Los Angeles, left-wing organizers have circulated digital flyers, coordinated social media blasts, and activated email lists urging supporters to mobilize within hours of the announcement. This activation alert for the protest-industrial complex occurred shortly after the Department of War’s “Operation Epic Furry” began in Iran.

    To the average person, this afternoon’s protests may look like a groundswell of outrage over the U.S. strikes on Iran, especially given that the Trump administration campaigned on no new foreign wars. But the speed, uniform messaging, and coordinated national footprint suggest something highly more organized – and familiar for readers, as we’ve diligently followed the activities of the protest-industrial complex.

    This is the same mobilization network that has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to move tens of thousands of social justice warriors into the streets in under 12 hours.

    Earlier this year, that same protest infrastructure powered nationwide pro-Maduro demonstrations almost immediately after developments in Venezuela made national headlines. In the months prior, overlapping coalitions were instrumental in organizing the anti-Israel encampments at Columbia University and other campuses, as well as anti-ICE demonstrations in Los Angeles and other sanctuary cities. The causes shift. The slogans change. The logistical infrastructure – or the machine that makes this spark – remains the same.

    What we are witnessing is not a loose collection of anti-war activists or 1970s-style hippies responding independently to global events. It is a coordinated ecosystem of dark-money funded nonprofits, advocacy groups, campus organizations, and ideological networks that can rapidly repurpose whatever geopolitical flashpoint dominates the news cycle. From the George Floyd riots to pro-Palestine protests to anti-Tesla protests to anti-Trump protests and anti-Elon Musk protests to anti-DOGE protests to anti-ICE protests/riots, these movements are not dedicated to a single issue. They are part of omni-cause mobilizers, sowing chaos deep within the nation’s core.

    Whether the banner reads “Free Palestine,” “Hands Off Venezuela,” “Abolish ICE,” or now “Hands Off Iran,” the same names frequently appear on sponsorship lists. The same fiscal sponsors provide infrastructure. The same activist pipelines appear.

    This brings us to far-left billionaire Neville Roy Singham, whom The New York Times recently described as “known as a socialist benefactor of far-left causes” and as someone who “works closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide.”

    Singham’s network, shortly after Operation Epic Furry began, announced on X “New York City Emergency Protest” to “Stop The war On Iran.”

    “The U.S. and Israel are carrying out an unprovoked, illegal bombing campaign on Iran. This war serves no one but a tiny elite and oil executives and is a continuation of more than two years of genocide in Palestine and US-Israeli aggressions throught the region,” the People’s Forum, a Manhattan far-left non-profit also linked to Singham, wrote on X.

    Other left-wing groups on the flyer tied to Singham’s network include the ANSWER Coalition and CODEPINK. Also on the list are the Democratic Socialists of America, American Muslims for Palestine, the National Iranian American Council, the Palestinian Youth Movement, Black Alliance for Peace, and 50501.

  • After almost half a century, we’re finally cutting the head off the snake.

    November 4, 1979 — almost 47 years ago — Iran seized the American embassy in Tehran and held its staff hostage. Ever since then, American presidents have struggled with what to do.

    Jimmy Carter temporized for many months, even as ABC’s newly created Nightline — a nighttime news show created specially to cover the hostage crisis — opened every night with “America held hostage, day XXX.” His wife, First Lady Rosalynn Carter, finally prodded him to do something. The “something” turned out to be a shambolic rescue mission that ended in disaster.

    President Reagan intimidated the mullahs a bit, but never seriously retaliated for the Beirut barracks bombing that killed over 200 Marines along with over a score of other service personnel. George H.W. Bush invaded Iraq but left the mullahs largely alone. Bill Clinton did nothing of substance. George W. Bush had a chance to bring the Iranians to heel after the conquest of Iraq, but inexplicably failed to press his advantage. Barack Obama was, basically, complicit in their nuclear program, to the point of famously sending them pallets of cash totaling over a billion dollars.

    President Trump, on the other hand, killed General Soleimani and told other Iranian leaders that they could be next. And now they are next.

    So what have we learned, and what’s likely to happen in the future?

    Well, first, with the capture of Maduro and now this, we’ve learned that our military can do things no one else can. We seized a leader of a hostile nation from his largest military base and brought him to custody without losing a single American life. Now we’ve killed the single biggest threat to American interests in the Mideast, along with much of his senior leadership, again without losing a single American life.

    Why didn’t we do this before? And why could we do it now? The reason we can do it now is mostly leadership. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth quickly prioritized precision and lethality in the military; President Trump was willing to use the military in ways prior presidents were not.

    Why didn’t we do this before? Part of that is because the foreign policy establishment, like the domestic policy establishment, doesn’t exist to solve problems. It exists to manage those problems in ways that keep its members cushily employed. To, in Myres McDougal’s words, “maintain tensions at a level short of unacceptable violence.”

    Trump, on the other hand, wants to solve things, even if it involves inflicting unacceptable violence on the enemy. Also, he regards our enemies as actual enemies, not as “foreign colleagues” or “partners in peace.” To quote author Keith Laumer, “there’s nothing as peaceful as a dead troublemaker.” Khamenei is now peaceful.

    In fact, Trump’s approach across the board, which has brought him success after success in his first 13 months back in office, is to solve problems the way the guys in the bar say they would do it. Too much illegal immigration? Close the border and deport the illegals. Problems with Iran? Kill their leaders and encourage a revolution. Venezuela shipping drugs and gangs to the U.S.? Capture their leader and encourage his successor to cooperate or share his fate. You can just do things.

    The thing is, though, that there’s a subtlety in this approach. Just doing things turns out to work. But if you take a step back from these actions of Trump’s, the big picture shows a pretty coherent strategy. Trump wants to weaken China without going to war with China. He has now cut off two major suppliers of oil to the PRC, which produces hardly any oil of its own. (It’s worse than that, because China wasn’t paying for that oil with dollars, and now it will need dollars to buy oil elsewhere.) That applies a squeeze to an already squeezed CCP, and will make Xi’s position, domestically and internationally, weaker. Also the military excellence recently displayed has to inspire second, third, and fourth thoughts about invading Taiwan.

    Trump’s tactics typically have two characteristics: He goes after his opponents’ source of sustenance (usually that means money, but not always) and he accomplishes more than one thing at a time. In neutralizing Iran, Trump accomplishes a lot of things. First, of course, he neutralizes a major hostile regional threat.

    But second, he cuts the ground out from under what’s left of Hamas and Hezbollah. He also shuts off the pipeline of cash that was being used to bribe politicians and journalists in Europe (the Iranians have basically admitted that they do that) and support various NGOs and the like that serve anti-American and anti-Israeli ends. Iran has been a major sponsor of terrorism around the world; that will end.

    With Iran gone (and India, thanks to tariffs, eager to be on our team) the threat of the BRICS has been sharply reduced. Brazil under Lula isn’t friendly, but isn’t a power house. Russia and China don’t like us but China needs oil and Russia is broke and mired in an endless and ruinous war of its own devising.

    With Iranians free to say what they think of the mullahs’ regime, he also delegitimizes the left’s narrative that fundamentalist Islam somehow has some sort of anti-colonial virtue. In fact, the mullahs ran Iran as a Persian colony of an Arab ideology. The Iranian public is well aware of this, and will be saying that a lot.

    And if he’s able to see a new pro-American government in Iran (distinctly likely) we’ll have a regional ally that will encourage the Arab states, currently friendly to us and Israel out of fear of Iran, to remain friendly to us and Israel out of a different sort of fear of Iran.

  • As they say: Developing…

    Update Some tidbits of news from the Suchomimus discord:

  • Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian claims he’s alive and in charge:

    Power struggle between him and Mohammad Reza Aref, or just confusion?

  • Iranian foreign minister is suggesting that no one is actually in charge, that the chain of command has broken down and the military is just sort of acting on general vibes:

    Which is not what you want to hear less than 48 hours into a shooting war…

  • Mojtaba Khamenei, Ayatollah heir apparent, is apparently dead as well.

  • That four building complex previously described as Basij headquarters is here described as “Sarallah Headquarters” or “security crisis management command center of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Tehran”:

    Now technically, the Basij is a subset of the IRGC, so that may be where the confusion comes in. Or the complex could be both. Google Maps isn’t helping me out here…

  • More of Iran’s classic aircraft destroyed:

  • Despite claims of not being involved, UK fighters are reportedly flying CAP over the Persian Gulf:

  • I’m dancing as fast as I can…

    Update 2: Another Suchomimus video. Did Iran just sink their own shadow fleet tanker?

    Update 3 via Instapundit:

  • Also dead: Iran’s ex-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
  • More Iranian officials killed:

    “Gen. Abdol Rahim Mousavi and Defense Minister Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh were killed at the meeting alongside the head of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and security adviser Ali Shamkhani.”

  • Why do feminists hate women’s freedom?

  • Update 4 via the Suchomimus Discord.

  • More dead regime bigwigs:

    “Iranian state media confirmed the killing of seven senior Armed Forces commanders in the US-Israeli strikes. Those killed include Supreme Leader’s office chief Mohammad Shirazi, his deputy Akbar Ebrahimzadeh, Armed Forces intelligence deputy Saleh Asadi, logistics deputy Mohsen Darreh Baghi, police intelligence chief Gholamreza Rezaeian, Armed Forces operations planning chief Bahram Hosseini Motlaq, and Armed Forces logistics chief Hasanali Tajik.”

  • More regime buildings go boom:

  • Update 5 Saw ships, sunk same.

    U.S. President Donald Trump announced Sunday that nine Iranian naval ships have been sunk as part of combat operations against Iran.

    “I have just been informed that we have destroyed and sunk 9 Iranian Naval Ships, some of them relatively large and important,” Trump wrote in a post on X, adding that Iran’s naval headquarters has been “largely destroyed” in a different attack.

    “We are going after the rest — They will soon be floating at the bottom of the sea, also!” Trump wrote.

    U.S. Central Command officials said earlier Sunday that an Iranian Jamaran-class corvette was struck by U.S. forces at the beginning of Operation Epic Fury.

    “The ship is currently sinking to the bottom of the Gulf of Oman at a Chah Bahar pier,” the statement reads. “As the president said, members of Iran’s armed forces, IRGC and police ‘must lay down your weapons.’ Abandon ship.”

    Update 6: The SUPERgeniuses controlling Iran’s missiles decided it was a swell idea to toss ballistic missiles at a UK base in Cyprus.

    Result: Craven jihad apologist Keir Starmer grows something vaguely resembling a spine and gives the U.S. permission to use Cyprus base for “defensive purposes.” With so many Middle East bases to chose from, I’m not sure the US actually has any assets they can usefully deploy there, but still.

    Clarification: Here Starmer makes clear that “defensive purposes” includes letting American assets use British bases, including those in the Persian Gulf, to hunt Iranian missile launch sites and storage facilities:

    “They say his spine grew three times as large that day…”

    LinkSwarm For October 10, 2025

    Friday, October 10th, 2025

    Trump might actually bring peace to the Middle East, the FBI behaving badly (again), Letitia James gets served a heaping plate of payback, a bomb factory goes boom, a dive into the mind of a social justice warrior, Ukraine keeps wrecking Russia’s oil infrastructure, and ShoeOnHead dives deep into really icky erotica aimed at women. Plus multiple good boys.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Peace in the Middle East? “Trump Announces Israel, Hamas Have Agreed to First Phase of Peace Deal to End Gaza War.”

    President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that Israel and Hamas have agreed on the first phase of his 20-point peace agreement to end the war in Gaza.

    Hamas will exchange the remaining living and dead hostages in its captivity and Israel will respond by releasing Palestinian prisoners, Trump said on Truth Social.

    “I am very proud to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first Phase of our Peace Plan. This means that ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed upon line as the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace,” Trump said.

    “All Parties will be treated fairly! This is a GREAT Day for the Arab and Muslim World, Israel, all surrounding Nations, and the United States of America, and we thank the mediators from Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey, who worked with us to make this Historic and Unprecedented Event happen,” he added.

    “BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS!”

    Snip.

    With the deal on the table, the White House said Trump is considering a trip to the Middle East after he completes his annual checkup on Friday.

    Releasing the hostages and prisoners is one aspect of the Trump administration’s plan to stop the fighting in Gaza and foster economic development in the region. Hamas is expected to begin releasing the hostages this upcoming weekend.

    In September, the White House released Trump’s plan for stabilizing Gaza and creating a temporary governance structure to rebuild the territory and prevent Hamas from governing it after the war. At the same time, Trump gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the green light to escalate the conflict in Gaza if Hamas rejected his latest overture.

    “With God’s help we will bring them all home,” Netanyahu said in a statement.

    Trump’s announcement Wednesday marks the beginning of end of the war between Israel and Hamas after almost two years of fighting and tens of thousands of casualties. The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas fighters killed 1,200 innocent civilians and abducted more than 250 hostages.

    If it works out and the hostages get home, fine and dandy, but Jihadis not living up to their promises and treaties is pretty much the norm, so I’m not going to hold my breath…

  • “Patel Fires FBI Agents, Ends CR-15 Squad After Learning Jack Smith Tracked GOP Senators. Patel also said the FBI “initiated an ongoing investigation with more accountability measures ahead.”

    FBI Director Kash Patel announced he fired the agents and dismantled the squad after learning former Special Counsel Jack Smith tracked eight GOP senators while investigating then-former President Donald Trump.

    Patel wrote on X:

    Transparency is important and accountability is critical. We promised both, and this is what promises kept looks like. This FBI is delivering.

    As a result of our latest disclosure about the baseless monitoring of members of Congress by the prior leadership team of the FBI, we have already taken the following actions:

    We terminated employees, we abolished the weaponized CR-15 squad, and we initiated an ongoing investigation with more accountability measures ahead.

    Transparency is important and accountability is critical. We promised both, and this is what promises kept looks like. This FBI is delivering.

    As a result of our latest disclosure about the baseless monitoring of members of Congress by the prior leadership team of the FBI, we…

    — FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) October 7, 2025

    But will the DOJ take action against Smith? That’s my big question.

    The CR-15 squad is a federal public corruption squad. It helped Smith during the Arctic Frost investigation, which involved Trump allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election and the Capitol Hill Riot.

    In May, Patel said he folded the squad and reassigned the agents. I’m unsure if today’s comments indicate that the FBI will no longer have another CR-15 squad.

    Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) revealed the tracking memo on Monday. Smith tracked these eight senators:

    • Marsha Blackburn (TN)
    • Lindsey Graham (SC)
    • Bill Hagerty (TN)
    • Josh Hawley (MO)
    • Ron Johnson (WI)
    • Mike Kelly (PA)
    • Cynthia Lummis (WY)
    • Tommy Tuberville (AL)

    Yet another reason President Autopen was so busy handing out pardons like Halloween candy…

  • R.S. McCain takes a deep dive into the Democrat Party’s social justice craziness.

    Did you ever wonder how the Democratic Party got so crazy? For example, how is it that the governor of Illinois is inciting violent mobs against federal immigration authorities and meanwhile, in Virginia, every Democrat is rallying to the defense of Attorney General candidate Jay Jones, who openly fantasized about murdering political opponents?

    To summarize briefly: Bad causes attract bad people.

    To understand the symbiotic relationship between toxic political movements and their toxic supporters, my advice is to first read Eric Hoffer’s 1951 classic, The True Believer, especially Part 2: “The Potential Converts.” Next, you should read Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, focusing on Chapter 10, “Why the Worst Get on Top.” Among the personal experiences that led me to comprehend this phenomenon was being swarmed by a mob of “Occupy” protesters in 2011. If you ever had the misfortune to be in close proximity to a zombie horde like that, you would never doubt that the fundamental problem of the Democratic Party is that its grassroots “base” is composed of dangerous lunatics.

    If you ever needed a reason to vote Republican, this is it: Democrats are the party of people who celebrate terrorist massacres of innocent Jews.

    All of which is preamble to introducing you to the person calling herself “Cloud,” who describes herself as “Pisces / 26 / ATL / Immortal Angel Femboy / Cosplayer” on an Instagram account with approximately 8,000 followers. If ever anyone needed a Kiwi Farms LOLCow file . . .

    This summer, “Cloud” went viral with a video denouncing Taylor Swift’s engagement to “MAGA-adjacent” Travis Kelce:

    “I can already feel myself regretting making this video. If ten people are sitting at a table, and one of them is a Nazi, and the other nine people are not telling the Nazi to fuck off, then you’re at a table with ten Nazis. When Taylor Swift first started dating Travis Kelce and Travis Kelce was so open about his ‘respect’ for Donald Trump, I already knew we were reaching the beginning of the end, right? When she was posting photos with, like, other NFL wives and girlfriends or whatever, and they were all open MAGAs, and Taylor was happily posing with them on Instagram, I knew we were at the beginning of the end. I just didn’t know how long it would take for the general populace to catch on that it was the beginning of the end. You cannot be friends with people who have different opinions on you when those opinions are life and death for other people — when the Supreme Court ruling today has decided that certain people’s lives are genuinely worth more on paper than others. This is a black-and-white issue. I’m sorry, but there is no nuance when it comes to Trump. You’re either chill with the guy who has death camps in El Salvador or you’re not. And the only reason I’m making this video is because I’ve been very open about how much I love Taylor Swift during the last few years. So I do feel obligated to come on here and say she is MAGA — or at least, MAGA-adjacent. And I’m sorry, as a trans person, if you’re Nazi-adjacent, that’s still a Nazi to me. Do with that info whatever you will.”

    Oh, wow — where to begin unraveling this gigantic yarn-ball of dangerous craziness? To start with, the Supreme Court ruling she references (see “NY Times on the Left’s Skrmetti Bungle: ‘Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb’,” June 21) was a consequence of transgender activists overplaying their hand, trying to claim that a state law prohibiting transgender “treatment” for children to be a form of sex-based discrimination that violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pause for a moment to ask yourself whether those who voted to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 intended for it to protect the use of synthetic hormones and surgery to turn children into carnival sideshow freaks. As a legal theory, this is bizarre, and yet “Cloud” (who identifies as a “trans person” despite apparently having undergone no such treatment herself) sees the Skrmetti ruling as “life or death.” This over-the-top rhetoric is entirely consistent with her lazy formula “MAGA = Nazi.” If you don’t vote for Democrats, you are a latter-day Hitler, she contends, and therefore . . . ?

    Violence is the logical conclusion of a syllogism built on such premises, and good luck trying to convince Democratic voters that their belief system is based on dubious premises and fallacies. Having convinced themselves that they are “on the right side of history,” they consider it a hate crime to disagree with them. This fanaticism attracts bad people to the Democratic Party banner, and the bad people expect their party to represent their beliefs, which is why the Democrats are so crazy.

  • A long-overdue comeuppance: “Grand Jury Indicts NY AG Letitia James On Criminal Bank Fraud.”

    A federal grand jury in Eastern Virginia has indicted New York Attorney General Letitia James on one count of bank fraud, multiple outlets are reporting.

    US Attorney Lindsey Halligan presented the case to the grand jury on Thursday, according to sources, one month after she was installed in her role.

    As noted in August, a criminal referral was filed against James, alleging that she had “falsified records” to get home loans for a Virginia property that she claimed was her “principal residence” in 2023 – while she was serving as a New York state prosecutor.

    Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director William Pulte sent the missive to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy AG Todd Blanche, claiming that in late August 2023 – weeks before she launched her civil fraud trial against the Trump Organization for inflating the values of its properties.

    In 2021, James also purchased a 5-family Brooklyn property, but has “consistently misrepresented the same property as only having four units in both building permit applications and numerous mortgage documents and applications,” the letter noted.

    Loans secured for this property could have reduced her mortgage interest rate by as much as 1% – leaving James with lower monthly payments under the federal Home Assistance Modification Program (HAMP) since it was listed as containing just four units, according to Pulte.

  • More on that subject:

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • The Trump Administration has designated international drug cartels as unlawful combatants.

    President Donald Trump has finally named the enemy: Mexican drug cartels. Declaring them unlawful combatants and recognizing a “non-international armed conflict” marks one of the most consequential national security shifts in modern history.

    For decades, Washington treated cartel violence as a crime — a problem for prosecutors, not generals. Indictments were filed, assets seized, and sanctions imposed. But the cartels fought a different kind of war, one that combined terror, intelligence, and territorial control. Calling it “crime” guaranteed defeat.

    We refused to define the cartels as belligerents — and fought the wrong fight.

    According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, Mexico ranks among the world’s most violent conflict zones — behind only Palestine, Myanmar, and Syria. It is also the second-most dangerous country for civilians. Those numbers are not from a failed state overseas. They come from our southern border, where cartel wars spill into American communities daily.

    For decades, federal authorities insisted on using a law-enforcement lens. Agencies operated under Title 21, Title 50, and limited “detect and monitor” authorities. They punished crimes but never broke campaigns. The narrow scope bred strategic blindness. While U.S. prosecutors filed indictments and built cases, cartels corrupted institutions, coerced populations, and built empires.

    As the Marine Corps teaches: How you define the environment determines how you operate in it. We refused to define the cartels as belligerents — and fought the wrong fight.

    By every operational measure, cartels are hybrid threats. They control territory, command loyalty through terror, and run parallel governments. They tax, adjudicate, and even “protect” local populations. Their power rests on corruption and espionage: bribing officials, infiltrating agencies, and compromising law enforcement through human networks that resemble intelligence tradecraft.

    Cartels operate across land, air, maritime, subterranean, cyber, and electromagnetic domains. They deploy drones, tunnels, jammers, and encrypted systems. They are multi-domain actors running hybrid campaigns.

    Cartels don’t just smuggle — they destabilize. Mass migration has become a weapon of war: overwhelming institutions, hiding operatives, and masking foreign infiltration. Millions of illegal entrants from more than 170 nations have crossed under cartel supervision. The intent is not just profit. It’s demographic disruption.

    Under federal law, terrorism includes violence intended “to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or “influence government policy.” By that definition, Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation qualify as terrorist organizations.

  • Munitions plant explodes in Bucksnort, Tennessee. Which is a real place off I-40. “Accurate Energetic Systems, LLC (AES) is a certified Women-Owned Small Business specializing in the production, handling, and storage of energetic materials for military, aerospace, and commercial demolition sectors.” Chopper footage shows the place leveled.

  • Brand U.S.A., a government-subsidized American tourism program, just had its funds slashed 80% by the Trump Administration.
  • Kirishi oil refinery, the second largest in Russia, is hit once again by drones.
  • They also hit the Kstovo oil refinery, the fourth largest in Russia, yet again.
  • “Ukrainian drones hit multiple targets in Russia [including] the Feodosia oil depot in Crimea, a chemical plant Sverdlov in Dzerzhinsk and power plants in Belgorod and Klintsy.”
  • They also carried out a drone strike on a key oil pumping station in Efimovka. “The station [is] a key node on the Kuibyshev-Tikhoretsk pipeline that moves Urals crude to the Black Sea.”
  • Buyan-M missile corvette hit [in] Lake Onega.”
  • Finland’s President Alexander Stubb says that Russia’s economy is crumbling. “Inflation is over 20% which means that their [financial] reserves are close to zero.” Also: “In the past roughly 1,000 days, Russia has advanced only one percentage point of Ukrainian territory.”
  • “Amid violent attacks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in cities across the country, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has authorized the deployment of hundreds of Texas National Guard troops to help restore order.”
  • “Far-Left U. Chicago Prof Charged With Violent Felonies After ICE Facility Riots.”

    Eman Abdelhadi, an associate professor in the university’s Department of Comparative Human Development, was arrested Friday and charged with two counts of aggravated battery to a government employee, a Class 3 felony, and two counts of resisting/obstruction peace, a Class A misdemeanor, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office told Fox News.

    Radical sociologist Abdelhadi, who previously cursed out her employer while speaking at a “Socialism 2025” conference, is due in court again on Tuesday.

    It sounds like University of Chicago already has plenty of evidence to fire Abdelhadi for cause.

  • Gold and silver hit record highs this week. Maybe that silver to the moon post from four years ago was merely premature…
  • Car payment delinquencies are as high as they’ve ever been.
  • Pro-Tip: Don’t bring a shovel to a gunfight.
  • Antifa frog gets pepper spray in his air vent.
  • Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joins lawsuit to close the Texas Republican primary. Paxton might quite rightly have a conflict of interest here, since Democrats voting in he Republican primary would obviously favor his Senate race opponent John Cornyn…
  • “British judge gives men who protested against migrant sex offender longer jail sentences than migrant sex offender.”
  • Speaking of outrageous decisions by UK officials: “UK Spends £1 Billion in 2025 to NOT Generate Electricity.” That’s how much it cost to switch off wind farms that didn’t work…
  • Add Madagascar to your list of “countries with widespread protests against their government.”
  • Is Hasan Piker using a shock collar on his dog?
  • China using AI to removed gay couples from movies and replacing them with straight couples. I admit a certain curiosity as to what La Cage aux Folles would look like after such a transformation…
  • Want to turn off Google’s crappy AI on a search? Add udm=14 to the search string.
  • Qualcomm buys open-source electronics firm Arduino.” Qualcomm is one of the biggest semiconductor, and Arduino is one of the most popular open-source microcontrollers in the world.
  • “New Seawater Desalination Plant Planned for Galveston Bay.”

    EPCOR Utilities Inc. recently announced its intent to begin construction and eventual operation of a facility in Galveston Bay, a region that is home to almost eight million people.

    Beginning with a permit application with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), EPCOR is planning to construct a desalination plant on the San Leon Peninsula, which, according to a press release, will supply approximately 26.5 million gallons of fresh water per day.

    The Bayshore Desalination Facility is projected to be completed in approximately five years if the design and construction phases are allowed to proceed.

    Various government entities have been warning about potential water shortages for some time now, so it’s good to get ahead of the curve.

  • Stephen Green notes that marijuana is a factor in 40% of fatal car crashes. Don’t drive while drunk, and don’t drive while high…
  • Jimmy Kimmel’s ratings are down 71% from his post-suspension high.
  • ShoeOnHead reads minotaur milking porn so you don’t have to. Some choice pull-quotes:
    • Morning Glory Milking Farm [is] a popular romance novel about a young woman down on her luck who does what every young woman does when facing financial struggle. She starts an Only Fans. No, I’m just kidding. She wouldn’t degrade herself like that. She gets a job jerking off monsters.”
    • “I forgot to inform you that there is a new epidemic. An epidemic that many have yet to discuss and that epidemic is female Gooners. Now, for those of you unaware, Goonar is internet slang for someone addicted to porn, and smut is slang for dark romance novels, otherwise known as porn.” [sigh] I did a tiny bit of research on the term “gooner” when I first came across it in an Asmongold video, and Shoe is slightly off in her definition, as the most common use of the term seems to be someone who masturbates constantly without achieving orgasm.
    • “I actually read the book myself, and I’m not going to lie: the Nineteenth Amendment needs to be abolished.”
    • “I like how in this fantasy world, student loans still exist. Like, we can imagine a world with minotaurs and humans in a relationship, but we can’t imagine a world without student loans.”
    • She reads a goodly portion of the scene where the minotaur insists on paying for his handmaiden’s dinner. “Inside every woman there are two wolves or two bulls, the strong independent girl boss and the submissive doting housewife. And in the presence of a masculine man, or a farm animal, she will fold like a lawn chair and instantly return to factory settings.”
    • “Women are going to be picking up Animal Farm now, ‘like, where’s the horse cock?'”
    • One of the books Amazon recommended after she bought this one: Pounded By Produce.
    • “Are we really going to pretend that a story about a young woman getting a job milking mythical creatures to pay off her student debt is not funny? It’s funny. If that makes me a sexist misogynist, you got me. To act like you are so different and above the other Gooners is just it’s silly. I’m sorry, but you are no different than Joe Schmo jerking it to Fat Booty Latinas in Space 12.”
    • Just wait until she talks about women attending the “Sinners and Stardust” convention and actually sexually assaulting a man there. So if you’re a single man desperate enough to attend such a convention know that the odds are good, but the goods are odd…
    • “The women are like conquered and taken and overpowered by these monsters. And I think many of these women are reading these books containing monsters and not men because masculinity and dominance in men has been completely demonized in modern society. But the truth is many women still crave it. You see, the monsters in these stories have those like dominant masculine traits that women like so much, but they’re not human men. They have all these traits women desire without the problematic baggage human men bring without being the men they hate or have been told to hate. It is the perfect guilt-free slop.”
  • Rush is touring with a new drummer, and Grandpa Rick approves.
  • So remember that story I posted about an escaped convict who built a secret apartment inside a Toys “R” Us? They made a film about him.
  • Critical Drinker really liked the dog-POV horror movie Good Boy.
  • On the other hand, he thinks Tron: Ares is “complete arse. “I’ve got plenty of issues with Tron: Legacy, but that movie was a goddamn masterpiece compared to this.” “Not only can Disney not be trusted as the custodians of other people’s IPs that they bought their way into, they can’t even be trusted to manage their own fucking IPs at this point.”
  • Ridley Scott says that most films today are crap. on the one hand, he’s right. On the other hand, he’s also the director of Prometheus, so glass houses, stones…
  • Crazy Stephen Hawking AI videos.
  • An AI Gen Z LOTR. It’s a lot worse than it sounds…
  • Bosnian Ape Society on the new Renault Twingo.
  • Hitler Brings Peace To Israel.”
  • “Chicago Mayor Hoping His ICE-Free Zones Work Better Than His Gun-Free Zones.”
  • “UK Police Still Searching For Motive Of Terrorist Named ‘Jihad Jewkiller.'”
  • “The Three Surviving Members Of Hamas Starting To Think Oct. 7 Wasn’t A Great Idea.”
  • “ESPN To No Longer Cover Sports, Will Focus Exclusively On WNBA.”
  • Speaking of good boys: “Dog Leads Florida Deputy to Missing Elderly Woman.”

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





    Shoe0nHead Horrified At The Left Celebrating Charlie Kirk’s Murder

    Saturday, September 20th, 2025

    Another ostensibly liberal YouTuber comes to the conclusion that lefties celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk are actively evil “atomized bug people” that can’t be reasoned with.

  • “Charlie Kirk had many bad takes over the years. Like for example, the two most popular quotes I see people posting are the one where he advocated for stoning gays and black women are too stupid to be pilots. But guess what? Both those things, the two most popular quotes people are posting to justify this guy being murdered, are out of context. But idiots like Stephen King ran with it, then later had to apologize for spreading misinformation about a dead man.”
  • “These people will build a straw man of you in their minds. They get so fucking mad about it that they celebrate the real you dying. Horrifying.”
  • “But more importantly, even if everything was in context, who cares? Oh, he said this. Oh, he said this. I don’t care. There are many things he said that I disagree with. There are many things he said that I think are bad. Who cares? It is just a fact that nothing he said warranted his life being taken away. This is America. We have freedom of speech here.”
  • “One person may have pulled the trigger, but then we saw the reaction of many.” She then plays a sampler of clips of lefties ecstatically celebrating Kirk’s murder, including one who argued that his wife and children should also be murdered.
  • “There were thousands of videos like that. Some of these people posting with their full names and faces with hundreds and thousands of likes, thousands of tweets celebrating it with half a million likes. And it’s important to remember that all of those likes are a real person. Millions of people in this country apparently believe the acceptable response to speech they don’t like is murder.”
  • “They were teachers, professors, doctors, HR workers, healthcare workers, nurses, pediatricians, people who work with kids, people’s classmates, roommates. They are teachers showing our children the gory, horrifying video of Charlie’s murder on repeat. The hippie-dippy in this house we believe shitlib mask was ripped off and underneath was nothing but psychopathic bloodlust.”
  • She says the only time she ever saw anyone on “the right” celebrate a death was a dozen Stormfront losers, who were immediately condemned by the entirety of the Internet.
  • “This is different. It’s never been like this before. It’s never been this much. It’s never been this brazen. Normal people have to log into like an alternate Twitter account where they can post their more ‘unorthodox’ opinions. And these people are out here full face, full name, like ‘Hell yeah! Murder!”
  • “The smug, unearned confidence these people have to be openly sociopathic with their full name and face because they live under the pathetic delusion of being on the right side of history needs to end.”
  • “They will blame you for your death because words are violence.”
  • “So them killing you is just self-defense. That’s why they are using Kyle Rittenhouse as some kind of gotcha. ‘Oh, if you don’t condone political violence, why do you support Kyle Rittenhouse?’ They fundamentally don’t see the difference between killing someone over speech and killing someone over self-defense because these are the same things to them.”
  • “Why are most of them women? Most of the people celebrating are women. Like, it’s a good like 80/20 ratio all over the internet. What is going on, ladies?”
  • “Basically, the whole country is shook because last year they realized how many people would celebrate the murder of a president, and this year they realized how many people would celebrate the murder of them.”
  • “This is all the inevitable conclusion of the punch a Nazi thing from like 2017. Do you guys remember that? We always knew it was a slippery slope. That’s why we were against it. And they always say this dumb shit. Like, if you don’t want to be called a Nazi, stop being a Nazi. Even a congressman from my state, New York, was like, ‘Oh, if you want to stop being called a fascist, you should stop being a fascist.’ Yeah, that’s great. Except you’ve called everyone and their mother a fascist and a Nazi for the past like 15 years.”
  • She then reads a long, long list of all the things she’s personally being a called a Nazi or fascist over, including “making fun of Joe Biden eating ice cream.”
  • Quoting Blair White: “They don’t kill you because you’re a Nazi. They call you a Nazi so they can kill you.”
  • “I’ve been to the TPUSA AmericaFest in 2021. I actually went there planning to make a video making fun of it, but I had so much fun and met so many friends that I’m still friends with to this day.”
  • After Kirk was killed “I kept going to every single like lefty, liberal, left-wing person I know and like checking out what they have been saying about this. And besides maybe like four or five, every single one was being an unhinged psychopath about this, or saying some backhanded shit like ‘This is why we need gun control,’ which, first of all, we were just watching a whole bunch of people celebrate killing someone over political differences. You are never taking our guns now. That that is not happening.”
  • “I felt like I was in the middle of the ocean. I was trying to, like, grasp onto a flotation device, checking all of these accounts for their take. Like ‘Be normal, be normal.’ Nothing. Nobody. I’m just drowning in a sea of evil, apparently. Maybe I was just blind up until now.” So basically it’s as bad as conservatives have been saying for the last decade.
  • “This is how they would react to me, my family, my friends, you, your family, your friends that have ever stepped out of line from the nebulous, ever-changing definition of progressive.”
  • “These are people I thought were levelheaded. They were left-wing, but you know, like they were one of the good ones. Like you can joke with them. You know, they weren’t those like woke SJWs. Like they were cool. We can disagree and still be friends.”
  • “You know, your friend wouldn’t celebrate you being murdered, of course. But if they would celebrate an exact clone of you that wasn’t you, that had all the same opinions, or some of the opinions that you have, if they would celebrate that clone being murdered, they’re not your friend.”
  • “It’s just sick.”
  • “I would rather live in a world full of Charlie Kirks who would sit down and debate than a world full of people who agree with me, but would murder people who don’t.”
  • “You can’t say, ‘What if that was your dad or your brother getting killed for their opinions?’ Because they’ve already cut those people off. They’ve already cut those people off out of their lives. And posting videos and pictures of Charlie’s wife and young kids will not move these people at all because they hate their lives. They hate their families. They are atomized bug people.”
  • “From a political standpoint, not even a personal human standpoint, why are you celebrating the most popular college Gen Z political pundit dying? Like, why are you celebrating him becoming a martyr? Say goodbye to that young male vote. All the liberal Joe Rogans in the world are not fixing this.”
  • She ends with a Trumpism: “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
  • Previously.

    ShoeOnHead Rips The Dems

    Monday, November 25th, 2024

    Back before I was suspended on Twitter (I’m still suspended, since the Twitter/X appeals process is broken), I followed ShoeOnHead, who frequently had sane things to say about the lunacy of the left. I think she blocked me because I noted she was wrong about transexism, but this nice rant showed up in my feed recently.

  • “New York was closer to flipping red than Florida was to flipping blue.”
  • Where she’s coming from: “I voted for Bernie in the primaries in 2016 and I watched as the Democratic party did everything in their power to destroy this man. Twice. So it is safe to say I am a little biased when it comes to the Democratic Party.”
  • “You idiots! You morons. You imbeciles! Kamala Harris? Really? That’s who you threw up there? The one who dropped out before Iowa? The one who got blown the out by Tulsi Gabbard. Why didn’t you hold a primary? Aren’t you the saviors of democracy?
  • “Oh, big congratulations to Tim Walz on being the first white male DEI hire. It didn’t work. The DNC completely neutered that guy, reduced him to this weird token white man. ‘Hello, fellow men. I do play football.'”
  • A nice slam on the Liz Cheney/#NeverTrumper idiocy.
  • A discussion of how young came out in force to vote for Trump…and of feminists openly wishing for them all to die.
  • “‘We need a liberal Joe Rogan!’ You had a liberal Joe Rogan! His name was Joe Rogan!” Dave Rubin and Jordan Peterson (among others) have made this point as well.
  • “Democrats can’t have a Joe Rogan, because everything that makes Joe Rogan Joe Rogan is not allowed on the left.”
  • Plus a discussion of populism.
  • I’d advise watching the whole thing. You probably won’t agree with everything, but you might with a good 80-85% of it…

    Best Smug “Trump Can’t Win” Videos

    Tuesday, November 12th, 2024

    Tired of enjoying a nice heaping plate of schadenfreude at liberal dismay over Trump’s win? Well, I’m not! Enjoy some of the most confidently smug Democrats declaring that there’s no way Trump can win.

    Highlights:

  • The female “political analyst” who confidently told a liquor store clerk where she was buying champagne that Harris was going to win all the swing states plus Iowa due to abortion, only to cry “racism and misogyny” in the “after” video.
  • The Tik-Tok electoral votes map guy who confidently predicted Harris garnering 349 votes, including. “It’s gonna be a landslide.” Also: “Some people are telling me to turn Texas to blue.” Democrats have been getting high on the “Texas is about to turn blue” pipe dream for the last two decades…
  • Nikki Haley back during her Republican presidential primary campaign (Where she managed to win…Vermont. By 3,000 votes.): “If Donald Trump is the nominee, mark my words, we will see a President Kamala Harris.”
  • Bill Maher predicting Kamala winning the popular vote.
  • Some MSNBC talking head calmly asserting that “there’s no imaginable world in which Donald Trump would win a popular majority in America.”
  • Seems like Democrats lack imagination about a whole lot of things…

    LinkSwarm For October 25, 2024

    Friday, October 25th, 2024

    Israel hits Iran, everyone wants to delete illegal aliens, Kamala loses a one-person debate, WaPo refuses to pick Kamala over Hitler, the WNBA continues to bleed cash, and Tim Walz gets his ABBA on. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

    Reminder: Early voting in Texas is going on now and extends through November 1st, and Joe Rogan’s interview with Donald Trump is tonight.

  • Breaking: Israel hits Iran with “precise” strikes against military targets. Lots of strikes in Tehran:

    More from Livemap.

    And time to bring back this slice of history:

  • 67 Percent of Voters Favor Deporting Illegal Aliens.”

    A new Fox News poll shows that two-thirds of American voters favor deporting illegal aliens—a dramatic increase over the past decade.

    Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has made mass deportation a major policy promise throughout his campaign, as the open border policies of the Biden-Harris administration have allowed millions of illegal aliens to enter the U.S.

    The October 2024 poll of registered voters shows that support for deportation has increased dramatically since 2015. Among nonwhite voters, 57 percent now support mass deportations, while only 33 percent said they did in 2015.

    Additionally, 91 percent of Republicans now say they support deportations—a 21-point increase since 2015. Rural voters’ support has risen by 20 points, urban voters by 19 points, and men’s support increased by 16.

    Democrat support for deportations has increased to 42 percent from 34 percent in 2015.

    Voters were also asked if they were in favor of allowing illegal aliens who have jobs to apply for legal status. While 68 percent said they were in favor in 2015, it dropped to 58 percent in favor this year.

    Another Fox News poll shows that immigration is voters’ second top issue as they head into the November election. The economy is the number one issue for 40 percent of voters, while 17 percent said immigration and 15 percent said abortion.

  • Harris Finally Crashes and Burns on CNN.”

    is out of gas. The weather is choppy, the navigation system completely unreliable, and the best guess is that you’re still short of the runway. (Oh, and the captain had a stroke while in the cockpit a few hours ago, leaving only a flight attendant as the pilot. She refuses to read the instruction manual or listen to the passengers.) Yes, it’s easy enough to spin up lovingly bespoke metaphors for how the Harris campaign is handling the late stages of the 2024 race — a race they very much could still win, I must always emphasize — but I’ll conclude this one by saying that if last night’s Kamala Harris CNN town hall (with Anderson Cooper hosting in the Philadelphia suburbs) is any indication, the plane may already be disintegrating in midair, before it even hits the ground.

    You may have noticed that I’ve had a decidedly muted reaction to Harris’s other recent “serious” media interviews, whether Bret Baier at Fox News or Bill Whitaker on 60 Minutes, in the sense that while Harris was predictably awful in both sit-downs (almost relentlessly so), she was boring and unrevelatory in her awfulness. In other words, we learned nothing new about the depths to which she is capable of sinking performatively that we didn’t already know. They were water-treading exercises for the most part.

    Last night’s CNN town hall, on the other hand, was memorably bad. This is the moment her campaign dreaded, the moment when the fundamental emptiness and inadequacy of their candidate was revealed for all the world to see without helpful edits or someone to bail her out. There Harris stood exposed — with an unpersuaded audience and a moderator in Cooper who handled his task without showing any particular solicitude for her electoral fortunes — and she withered in the spotlight. (As Dylan might have said, “Even the vice president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.”) There are moments from this event — many moments, oh so terribly many of them — that will haunt Harris in retirement forever should she lose, the sorts of ghastly stammering failures destined to go into YouTube clip reels ten years later explaining “How We Got Here….”

    As for myself, I found Harris’s answer to Anderson Cooper’s pointed question about the border fence to be perhaps the lowest moment of her entire public career to date, and I mean that in the specific sense that nobody who watches it — not even her fiercest partisans — will be able to come away from it with anything save a reflex-level revulsion.

    “What was most remarkable about the disaster is how even CNN’s own analysts panned Harris’s performance as well, some with a palpable sense of disgust.”

    Some excerpts of that:

  • How bad is Kamala sucking? The Washington Post decides not to endorse a Presidential candidate.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Does Kamala Harris Really Want to Win Pennsylvania?”

    Next, after weeks of courting Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate, Harris rejected him for Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota – the state that gave us Gov. Jesse “the body” Ventura and Saturday Night Live’s Al Franken as a U.S. Senator.

    Another misstep for Harris. While Shapiro isn’t Biden, he is well known in greater Philadelphia and seems comfortable campaigning in Scranton and towns like it across the state.

    It still isn’t clear if Harris rejected Shapiro because he is Jewish and supports Israel’s right to defend itself or because he is a tireless campaigner, well-received on the stump, who might show her up. Did she reject Shapiro because picking him would offend “the Squad” in Congress and endanger the electoral votes of Michigan, home to a large Muslim population? Or did she spurn the Pennsylvania governor because she didn’t want her supporters murmuring: “We should’ve run him?

    Harris compounded her mistake by picking Walz, who represents the Democratic Party’s modern left wing. Walz won’t help Harris win votes in Pennsylvania; in fact, he makes it harder. She picked someone who is un-relatable everywhere, from Philadelphia’s neighborhoods to small town and rural Pennsylvania. And, he’s just plain “weird.”

    It gets worse. Her message, agenda, and policies are not resonating here.

    She has tried to stress that the economy is actually good – “Bidenomics is working,” she maintained. They tried charts, graphs, and “experts.” No one in Philadelphia’s neighborhoods is buying it, especially blacks and Hispanics, who are being crushed by inflation and violent crime.

    So Harris pivoted to a new message: she would “fix” the economy and “fight” inflation. Her now comically repeated line about being “raised in a middle-class family” draws blank stares, laughs, or anger, even among some in her usual base.

    It’s even worse in rural Pennsylvania, where Walz and “second man” Doug Emhoff tried a “real men for Kamala tour,” complete with ads and Zoom calls about why men should support her.

    Then they sent “Elmer Fudd” – aka Walz – out hunting. In newly purchased hunting clothes, using the wrong rifle (plus demonstrating that he didn’t know how to load it), Walz resembled something like King Charles attending the Indianapolis 500.

    Harris was against fracking – that is, before she was for it, as she now claims to be. No one in rural Pennsylvania is buying it. Her “values haven’t changed,” as she herself says. Rural Pennsylvanians know that her preferred policy would hurt the economy of northern, central and western Pennsylvania, to say nothing of the national economy and national security.

    Democrats want to win Pennsylvania, of course – but they have selected the wrong candidate, through the wrong method. Harris then dug the hole deeper by picking the wrong running mate. And to top it off, they’re running on a misguided, if not delusional, platform.

  • Black Philadelphia voters on Kamala Harris: “We all know she’s not black.”
  • “Black, Latino, and Asian Trump supporters shout down white, liberal Harris supporters in Lancaster.”

    The left-wing, liberal, and Democratic narrative about former President Donald Trump being a racist is falling apart.

    For years, labeling Trump as a racist was an integral part of Democrats’ political strategy. It was never really true, mind you. It was just baseless hyperbolic hysteria that was at the foundation of the Democratic political propaganda machine. They have used it against every Republican presidential candidate for the last 40 years.

    They used it to brainwash, scare, and manipulate racial minorities and white liberals in the previous two presidential elections, in which Trump was the GOP nominee. They wanted to create a narrative that the only people who supported Trump were a bunch of lowly, uneducated, racist white people. It worked in 2016, and it worked in 2020. It’s not working in 2024.

    The sanctimony of white, liberal Democrats is predicated on their unhinged arrogance of moral superiority involving race. The white, liberal Democrats think racial minorities cannot succeed in the United States without white, liberal Democrats saving them. The white, liberal Democrats think they are more intelligent, enlightened, and compassionate than Republicans. So, imagine their surprise when, outside the venue that hosted a town hall for Trump in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, it was black, Latino, and Asian Trump supporters shouting down Vice President Kamala Harris’s white, liberal supporters.

    I witnessed, firsthand, white, liberal Harris supporters screaming that Trump is a racist and then demeaning the many black, Latino, and Asian Trump supporters holding Trump signs and wearing MAGA hats and shirts. These smug, arrogant white people were trying to tell racial minorities what was best for them. It was a sight to behold, but not one that has not become commonplace in American society. It was a reflection of just how out of touch with reality white, liberal Harris voters are.
    Dominicans for Trump sign holders outside Trump town hall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Christopher Tremoglie)

    The crowd at the town hall was diverse, with a larger-than-expected minority presence, given the tall tales of Harris supporters’ fails regarding diversity and race among Trump supporters. It was immediately noticeable upon arriving at the town hall. Those in attendance were greeted by boisterous Asian Americans waving American flags in front of Trump posters, wearing red MAGA hats, and chanting the name “Trump!”

    A few hundred feet away, a group of Dominican Trump voters were cheering for the former president and shouting down anyone who dared insult the GOP nominee. They stood outside the venue holding signs that read “Dominicans for Trump” and “Boricuas for Trump.”

    A Harris supporter passed the group and chastised them, asking how they could be a minority and support a racist and a bigot. A person holding a “Boricuas for Trump” sign shouted back at them, asking the white Harris supporter who they thought they were telling a Dominican who to support. The Harris supporter kept walking. Other incidents played out similarly nearby.

    Later, this group gathered at a main intersection near the Lancaster Convention Center and engaged in a shouting match with a group of Harris supporters, who had gathered to protest Trump. There did not appear to be any mention of race, just two groups shouting back and forth at each other. However, again, I noticed the Harris supporters were white, and the most vocal Trump supporters were black, Latino, and Asian.

  • Trump Up 5 Points on Harris, Cruz Up 7 on Allred in Latest University of Texas Poll.”
  • Also: “Initial GOP Early Vote Turnout in Texas Substantially Higher Than 2020 Levels.”
  • But don’t get cocky! “Schumer-Backed Democratic PAC Makes $5 Million Texas Ad Buy Backing Allred….Schumer’s group, Senate Majority PAC (SMP) had mostly abstained from the Texas race, playing ball in other, seemingly more competitive races like in Ohio and Montana — much to Congressman Colin Allred’s (D-TX-32) chagrin. But clearly the calculus has changed for the group, which has now put substantial skin in the game in Texas.”
  • Betting odds break heavily for Trump.
  • “Polls: Trump Winning Latinos 49-38%, Has Historic 29% Share of Black Vote.” Poll caveats, cocky warning apply.
  • Trump works at a McDonald’s. Unlike Kamala. Naturally the left lost its mind…
  • Lizzo: “If Kamala wins then the whole country will be like Detroit.”

    I don’t think that line is the surefire closer she thinks it is…

  • Republicans break turnout records in Nevada.
  • “Democratic VP nominee Walz’s Minnesota ranked last for fiscal policy out of 50 states.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Look folks, there’s absolutely no proof that Democratic Vice Presidential candidate is gay.

  • The Democratic Party’s election dirty tricks begin. “Montana Dem Operative Caught Tampering With Ballot Box…The operative, Laszlo Gendler, has been paid by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), according to OpenSecrets.org, as Montana Talks reported. The DSCC is attempting to help incumbent Democrat Senator Jon Tester against GOP senatorial candidate Tim Sheehy.”
  • The University Of Michigan Doubled Down on DEI. What Went Wrong?

    A decade and a quarter of a billion dollars later, students and faculty are more frustrated than ever….

    A decade ago, Michigan’s leaders set in motion an ambitious new D.E.I. plan, aiming “to enact far-reaching foundational change at every level, in every unit.” Striving to touch “every individual on campus,” as the school puts it, Michigan has poured roughly a quarter of a billion dollars into D.E.I. since 2016, according to an internal presentation I obtained. A 2021 report from the conservative Heritage Foundation examining the growth of D.E.I. programs across higher education — the only such study that currently exists — found Michigan to have by far the largest D.E.I. bureaucracy of any large public university. Tens of thousands of undergraduates have completed bias training. Thousands of instructors have been trained in inclusive teaching.

    Michigan inaugurated what it now calls D.E.I. 1.0, it intentionally placed itself in the vanguard of a revolution then reshaping American higher education. Around the country, college administrators were rapidly expanding D.E.I., convinced that such programs would help attract and retain a more diverse array of students and faculty.

    Today that revolution is under withering attack. Energized by backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement and the right-wing campaign against “critical race theory” in public institutions, at least a dozen states have banned or limited D.E.I. programs at public universities. After the Oct. 7 attacks, as campuses across the country erupted with protests against Israel, critics accused D.E.I. programs of fostering antisemitism. In the fever of the 2024 campaign, Republican influencers and politicians have recast D.E.I. as an all-purpose boogeyman — the root cause of defective airplanes, the collapse of a Baltimore bridge and the near-assassination of Donald J. Trump.

    But even some of Michigan’s peer institutions have soured on aspects of D.E.I. Last spring, both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences said they would no longer require job candidates to submit diversity; such “compelled statements,” M.I.T.’s president said, “impinge on freedom of expression.”

    Michigan hasn’t joined the retreat. Instead, it has redoubled its efforts, testing the future of an embattled ideal. A year ago, the university inaugurated what it calls D.E.I. 2.0. At Michigan’s flagship Ann Arbor campus, the number of employees who work in D.E.I.-related offices or have “diversity,” “equity” or “inclusion” in their job titles increased by 70 percent, reaching 241, according to figures compiled by Mark J. Perry, an emeritus professor of finance at the university’s Flint campus and a D.E.I. critic. (The school’s own figures, which count the D.E.I. work force differently, show less growth over time and a much smaller staff as of last year.) When school began in August, brightly colored flags around campus promoted the goals of D.E.I. 2.0.

    According to a confidential report I obtained, a committee appointed by Michigan’s provost — and stocked with professors with D.E.I.-related appointments — urged the school this summer to continue using diversity statements in hiring and promotion, arguing that eliminating them “would be seen as a capitulation to the winds of political expediency.”

    In many respects, Michigan’s entire D.E.I. initiative can be understood as a sustained act of defiance against such pressures. Nearly two decades ago, voters in Michigan banned racial preferences in university admissions and hiring. When the Supreme Court outlawed affirmative action across the land last year — stripping selective colleges of their most powerful tool for building racially diverse classes — Michigan’s president, Santa J. Ono, went on PBS’s “NewsHour” to offer his university as the model for achieving diversity in a post-affirmative action world.

    But over months of reporting this year, I found a different kind of backlash building, one that emanated not from Washington or right-wing think tanks but from inside the university’s own dorms and faculty lounges. On Michigan’s largely left-leaning campus, few of the people I met questioned the broad ideals of diversity or social justice. Yet the most common attitude I encountered about D.E.I. during my visits to Ann Arbor was a kind of wary disdain.

    D.E.I. at Michigan is rooted in a struggle for racial integration that began more than a half-century ago, but many Black students today regard the school’s expansive program as a well-meaning failure. The university now has a greater proportion of Hispanic, Asian and first-generation students and a more racially diverse staff. But in a state where 14 percent of residents are Black, the school’s Black undergraduate enrollment has long hovered stubbornly at around 4 percent, before ticking up just past 5 percent this fall. (The figures are slightly higher if, as school officials strongly urged, you include students who identify as more than one race.) …

    Michigan’s own data suggests that in striving to become more diverse and equitable, the school has also become less inclusive: In a survey released in late 2022, students and faculty members reported a less positive campus climate than at the program’s start and less of a sense of belonging. Students were less likely to interact with people of a different race or religion or with different politics — the exact kind of engagement D.E.I. programs, in theory, are meant to foster.

    Social Justice is racist garbage that destroys everything it touches.

  • Pro-transsexual doctor commissions study on administering puberty blockers to children, then buries the study when she doesn’t like the results.

  • An Abrams and a Bradley were filmed engaging Russian troops inside Kursk Oblast. If any of you have a long standing Cold War-era bet on this, now is the time to collect…
  • Hezbollah launches a drone attack against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s house, though they cause no injuries. Honestly, this is a huge step up from their usual targeting of women and children, as a country’s political leaders are a legitimate war target.
  • From Ironic Department of Ironic Irony comes news that Communist Cuba is too communist for Communist China, who just cancelled a a bunch of trade agreements “due to the lack of significant reforms in the island’s economy.” (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Bad enough that social justice warriors want to turn your kids trans, but now they want to turn them furry.
  • Female Athletes Lost Almost 900 Medals to Trans-Identifying Men Worldwide.”
  • “Half of Millennials and Gen Z homeowners are, quote, trapped in their starter homes, which are now losing tens of thousands in value thanks to the same Federal Reserve that put them in a housing hell to begin with.”
  • Ammo.com sent over a report on defensive gun use in the U.S. “Although many dispute the plausibility of more than one million DGUs yearly, it is entirely plausible. With millions of gun owners in the U.S. and millions of unreported crimes, more civilians likely stop threats than are harmed by them. Furthermore, states with permitless carry and stand-your-ground laws experience reduced violent crime rates. Therefore, armed civilians are, at least, not a danger to society.”
  • Another one. “North Texas Teacher Arrested for Sexual Relationship With Former Student. Carroll ISD middle school teacher Angela Barnes was charged with sexual assault of a child and improper relationship between an educator and student.”
  • Chinese National Pleads Guilty To Illegally Exporting Semiconductor Manufacturing Machine.”

    Lin Chen pleaded guilty in federal court today to illegally exporting U.S. technology to a prohibited end user in China, in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). The plea was accepted by the Hon. William Alsup, Senior U.S. District Judge.

    In pleading guilty, Chen, 65, a citizen of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), admitted to acting on behalf of Jiangsu Hantang International Trade Group Corp., Ltd. (JHI), a company headquartered in Nanjing, PRC, to procure a wafer cutting machine on behalf of Chengdu GaStone Technology Co., Ltd. (GaStone), an entity located in Chengdu, PRC. Chen admitted to knowing that GaStone was designated on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Entity List on Aug. 1, 2014. Federal regulations restrict the export of certain items to companies, research institutions, and other entities identified on the Department of Commerce’s Entity List. Under applicable Department of Commerce regulations, wafer cutting machines, which are used to cut thin semiconductors used in electronics (also known as silicon wafers), require a license for export to end-users such as GaStone.

    According to the plea agreement, by no later than Dec. 4, 2015, Chen knew that GaStone was prohibited from receiving restricted exports without a license, including a DTX-150 Scribe and Break Machine, a machine for processing silicon wafer microchips. On approximately Dec. 10, 2015, Chen worked with a co-defendant to arrange the sale of a DTX-150 to GaStone by shipping it to the PRC in the name of JHI without an export license from Commerce. Chen used JHI’s status as an intermediary to conceal GaStone as the true end-user of the technology.

    That’s a slice-and-dice machine, not some cutting-edge process tech that’s embargoed to China. They might have been able to get that legally by just filling out the proper forms.

  • The last full-sized Kmart closes. I would say “Thanks, Joe Biden,” but this particular death, thanks to Walmart and Amazon, has been a long time coming.
  • “WNBA will lose $40 million this season. So naturally the players are thinking of opting out of their labor agreement to ask for more money… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Postcards From Barsoom has an extensive, reasonably compelling case that men gravitate toward jobs that allow them to compete with other men, mainly to impress women, and as become the majority in each of these fields, those particular arenas no longer convey status for achievement, because men do not win status by defeating women. Thus men who enter female-dominated fields for greater access to women are barking up the wrong tree, because even their co-workers will view them as low status. This theory has a certain amount of explanatory power, and posits that the feminization of academia begat social justice, not vice versa, but seems to me to be too totalizing an explanation for our current woes. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
  • It took 15 people to write this song.
  • “Frustrated Democrats To Consider Letting Voters Pick The Presidential Candidate Next Time.”
  • “‘You’re At The Wrong Town Hall,’ Snaps Kamala At Citizen Trying To Ask Her A Question.”
  • “Even Dominion Machines Refusing To Vote For Kamala.”
  • “Democrats Explain Trump Was Going To Be Hitler During His First Term, But He Forgot.”
  • “Worst Allegation Yet? Woman Claims In 1993 Trump Touched Her Inappropriately With Classified Documents While Praising Hitler.”
  • Venezuelan Gang Wiped Out After Attempting To Take Over Buc-ee’s.”
  • “LA Times Staff Resigns After Being Asked To Publish Facts.”
  • “Tulsi Gabbard Finally Realizes She’s Far Too Attractive To Be A Democrat.”
  • Jailbreak!

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • No tip jar begging this week because I think I have a job, and have already started working on it.

    Tab Clearing For April 6, 2024

    Saturday, April 6th, 2024

    A small handful of links that either didn’t make yesterday’s LinkSwarm, or weren’t quite right for it.

  • Why young men have checked out. A rant with a measure of truth:

    I was particularly struck by the phrase “fundamentally unwifeable.” Add “social justice” to “feminism” for the reason. As for “Disney Princess programming,” the Disney Princess thing has been around for over half a century. So why have things gotten so much worse on that front over the last 20 years?

  • On the flipside, here’s a 20-something girl complaining that she can’t afford rent. She apparently deleted the original tweet, but she said her rent had jumped from something like $1,200 a month to $1,600 a month, and she was having trouble affording food. Thanks, Joe Biden! Rent inflation is real, especially in blue cities where regulation prevents new housing being built to meet demand, but if your rent is that much, then you either need to move further out, find roommates to share rent with, or you need to consider moving to a less expensive city entirely.
  • Opioid Overdoses, Homicide Rates on the Rise in Austin and Travis County.”

    During an Austin City Council meeting on public safety, Austin-Travis County Emergency and Medical Services (EMS) spoke about the rising rates of opioid deaths in the county.

    “Travis County now has twice as many opiate overdose deaths than any other county in Texas, per capita,” said Steven White, acting assistant chief for Austin-Travis County EMS.

    White explained how the opioid crisis began in the community in 2016, “with a severe increase in 2017.”

    White elaborated that in 2018 there were about 30 overdoses per month, and “now we’re averaging about 100 overdoses a month.”

    He went on to show a heat map of where the overdoses are occurring, stating that “opioids do not seem to be contained by geographic barriers or financial barriers.”

    “It really gets into every part of our community and touches every family [and] at some point will be affected by the opioid crisis.”

    White also highlighted that “30 percent of all the opioid users who die of an overdose, at some point had contact with EMS in the previous 12 months before their death, which gives us an intersection point where we’re actually meeting these patients who have the potential to overdose and die.”

    Another statistic he presented is that “patients that receive Narcan in the field by EMS have a 10 percent chance of having a fatal overdose in the next 12 months.”

    This is your city on social justice…

  • Free goats.
  • Random Habitual Linecrosser I’m posting just so I can steal the phrase “Skittle Hair People.”

  • LinkSwarm For January 12, 2024

    Friday, January 12th, 2024

    Superman gets tired of Iran’s catspaws tugging on his cape, the Biden Recession has both inflation and budget deficits soaring, another polar vortex barrels down on Texas, and the crazy-eyed girlfriend of a corrupt Democrat shows up on the Epstein list. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • The Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen just had to keep fucking around, so now they’ve found out.

    The U.S. and Britain launched air strikes in Yemen on Thursday in response to the Iran-backed Houthis’ recent attacks against vessels in the Red Sea.

    The strikes came hours after White House national-security spokesman John Kirby called on the Houthis to “stop these attacks” and warned that the group would “bear the consequences for any failure to do so.”

    The militants have launched 27 attacks on vessels in the Red Sea since November 19, the U.S. military said earlier on Thursday. The group says the attacks are in protest of the Israel–Hamas war.

    The retaliatory strikes targeted a source of the group’s attacks, Bloomberg News reported, noting that heavy explosions were seen in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa and the port city of Al Hudaydah. The attacks were carried out with support from Australia, the Netherlands, Bahrain, and Canada, while the U.K. contributed aircraft.

    President Biden confirmed the strikes in a statement on Thursday evening, explaining that the action was “in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea — including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history.”

    “These attacks have endangered U.S. personnel, civilian mariners, and our partners, jeopardized trade, and threatened freedom of navigation,” he said, noting that more than 50 countries had been impacted by the attacks on commercial shipping, while crews from more than 20 countries have been threatened or taken hostage in acts of piracy.

    “More than 2,000 ships have been forced to divert thousands of miles to avoid the Red Sea — which can cause weeks of delays in product shipping times. And on January 9, Houthis launched their largest attack to date — directly targeting American ships,” Biden said.

    Suchomimus has taken a break from his Ukraine war work to do a video on the strike:

    Plus another one on the locations hit:

    Is there a Habitual Linecrosser video for this strike? Yes, yes there is:

  • The Biden Recession bites even deeper, with higher inflation and record food prices. And those are just the official numbers. Food inflation seems a hell of a lot higher than official numbers are letting on…
  • Plus the U.S. budget deficit soared 50% in December.
  • Trump prosecutor Fani Willis hired the married man she was committing adultery with to help prosecute Trump.

    Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis appointed a former romantic partner to lead the prosecution against the former president and his associates, a former Trump campaign official and co-defendant alleged in a court filing late Monday.

    “The district attorney and the special prosecutor have been seen in private together in and about the Atlanta area and believed to have co-habited in some form or fashion at a location owned by neither of them,” the court document submitted by Michael Roman’s legal representatives argues. Roman served briefly as a special assistant and researcher to President Trump.

    The submission does not offer any explicit proof of the DA’s connection to special prosecutor Nathan Wade, but instead claims “sources close to both the special prosecutor and the district attorney have confirmed they had an ongoing, personal relationship.” Wade was paid over half a million dollars throughout his involvement in the Trump election-interference case, which Willis has overseen and authorized.

    How long until the radical left argues that it’s perfectly normal with elected black female Democrats like Fani Willis and Kamala Harris to commit adultery with other Democrats to further their career, and it’s just those right-wing troglodytes who are hung up over it?

  • “Ex-girlfriend of disgraced NJ Sen. Bob Menendez took part in orgies with Jeffrey Epstein and victim Virginia Giuffre.” Before dropping one of those “that’s hot” comments, you might want to look Bob’s dirty, dirty girlfriend with her crazy, crazy eyes. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • And speaking of hoes, has feminism and “hoeflation” destroyed the west?

    It’s a problem in the western world that is rarely discussed in the media beyond puff-piece articles and glancing polls that avoid connecting the dots. The precipitous decline of dating, committed relationships and marriage along with a flatline in population in the past couple decades in the US is treated as a novelty issue rather than the threat to the stability of civilization that it actually is. History shows that without the traditional family structure, numerous ugly societal consequences follow.

    One could argue, though, that the situation is far worse than that. We may be heading into a future where families become a novelty, and many argue that the root cause is feminism and the hyperinflated delusions of progressive women.

    In order to understand the problem we have to look at the stats.

    More than 50% of American women are still childless by age 30. By age 35 fertility goes into steep decline with women having a 15% chance of becoming pregnant, and a less than 5% chance of motherhood at age 40. Meaning, the best window of opportunity for women to find a compatible partner and build a family is in their 20s.

    Feminists argue, though, that this is the time in a woman’s life when they should be building a career and having fun. Family life, they say, is an artificial prison “created by the patriarchy” in order to oppress the fairer sex. Corporate media and Hollywood entertainment often reinforce this narrative and encourage unrealistic life goals.

    The propaganda has generated what many refer to as the “Female Happiness Paradox.” Surveys show that increased power, job access and responsibility for women in society since the 1970s has also led to a diametrically opposed decline in overall happiness for those same women. The correlation suggests the exact opposite of what feminism originally promised and that the ideology has been a net negative.

    Though some will argue that a general decline in economic conditions is the real cause, surveys show that women have suffered a far more pronounced drop in happiness compared to men. Meaning, men were already acclimated to the struggles of the workaday world and their roles as providers and protectors. Women were happy until they joined men in the trenches.

    For men, the reaction has been to back away from the dating scene and the double standards involved. Over 63% of men under the age of 30 are now single; that’s up from 51% in 2019. The majority of single men say this is by choice and that they are seeking to avoid relationships altogether. Why? The consensus appears to be that modern western women cost too much money and cause too much trouble.

    Fear of failed marriage is one aspect that has the younger generation of men on edge, with family courts still largely in favor of women in divorce settlements and child custody. This is one reason why marriage rates have declined by 60% since the 1970s. However, the obstacles go well beyond divorce and into a new culture of female entitlement.

    The word on the street is “Hoeflation”: The dramatic increase in cost for men today to maintain a relationship with a woman while the quality of women continues to go down. That is to say, it is an increase in female expectations vs what they bring to the table in a relationship.

    In other words, women of the past used to have something to offer beyond sexual companionship, from greater femininity, greater potential for motherhood, less combativeness and narcissism, as well as a superior ability to raise children and maintain a home. Such traits are highly attractive to men even after 60 years of widespread feminism, but are seen as non-existent among women under 30 in 2023.

    It should be noted that “Hoeflation” seems to be directly linked to progressive influences, and not all women fall into this category. Unfortunately, around 71% of young women identify with progressive beliefs, as opposed to young men who are only 53% progressive. It should also be noted that progressive today means something a lot different from what it meant in the 1990s (progressive now means woke, or extreme leftist cultism).

  • Taiwan is having a presidential election.
  • Speaking of “too damn much foreign news this week,” Ecuador has exploded in a drug war.

    Terrified journalists being forced to kneel in a TV studio by gunmen pointing high-powered weapons at their heads as the cameras rolled, police officers pleading for their lives after being kidnapped on duty.

    The scenes which have unfolded in Ecuador show the extent to which this once peaceful haven in Latin America has descended into violence.

    Snip.

    Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, has ordered the armed forces to restore order in the country after days of unrest which saw two gang leaders escape from jail, prison guards held hostage, and explosive devices set off in a number of cities across the country.

    In the most dramatic attack, a group of armed men forced their way into the studios of TC Television in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, and tried to force one of the presenters to read out a message live on air.

    The gunmen were eventually overpowered by soldiers and have been arrested but the live footage of the stand-off between the hooded men and the armed forces while TC staff cowered on the floor has terrified Ecuadoreans.

  • “Ohio House Votes to Override DeWine’s Veto of Bill Banning Child Gender Medicalization.” An Ohio senate vote on overriding the veto is scheduled for January 24. Second Amendment victory: ” In Stunning About-Face, 9th Circuit Prohibits California from Banning Concealed Carry in Public Places.”

    From the court’s Order Granting Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction:

    California will not allow concealed carry permitholders to effectively practice what the Second Amendment promises. [The new law’s] coverage is sweeping, repugnant to the Second Amendment, and openly defiant of the Supreme Court. The law designates twenty-six categories of places, such as hospitals, public transportation, places that sell liquor for on-site consumption, playgrounds, parks, casinos, stadiums, libraries, amusement parks, zoos, places of worship, and banks, as “sensitive places” where concealed carry permitholders cannot carry their handguns. SB2 turns nearly every public place in California into a “sensitive place,” effectively abolishing the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding and exceptionally qualified citizens to be armed and to defend themselves in public.

    Slowly but surely, Bruen is stopping the gun grabbers dead in their tracks.

  • “Director of ‘Bronx Rises Against Gun Violence,’ Caught With Illegal Guns, Sentenced To Prison…Michael Rodriguez, 49, the now-former director of “Bronx Rises Against Gun Violence” was sentenced to ten years in state prison following his arrest last summer on drug and gun charges.”
  • Rand Paul declares himself Never Nikki.
  • Our government in action: “Big Gov’t Raids Small Amish Farmer Who Refuses To Participate In The Industrial Meat/Milk Complex.”
  • “‘A Significant Shift’: Blue Collar Democrats Switching To Republican In ‘Deep Purple’ Pennsylvania.”

    Nearly 59,000 registered Pennsylvania Democrats left the party in 2023; that makes more voters than fans needed to fill the capacity of the Franklin Field Football Stadium at the University of Pennsylvania.

    Of those nearly 59,000 who left the Democratic Party, 36,950 switched to the Republican party, and 21,644 switched their party affiliation to “other,” the category the Pennsylvania Department of State uses in its data to cover parties such as Green and Libertarian.

    “As the Democrat Party tilts further to the progressive left, more historically traditional, working-class families are moving to the Republican Party, both in terms of how they vote and how they’re registered,” conservative political strategist Charlie Gerow told the Epoch Times.

    Faster, please.

  • That’s one reason why Democrats want to put an abortion referendum on the ballot in November to drive Democrat turnout. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Scary traffic controller incompetence via Instapundit:

    DTO is the airport for Denton, Texas, a college town northwest of Fort Worth.

  • “Georgia Tech researchers claim they have created ‘the world’s first functional semiconductor made from graphene.’ Importantly, the research team’s epitaxial graphene is claimed to be compatible with conventional microelectronics processing methods and is thus a realistic silicon alternative. Moreover, this refined material achieves a desirable band gap for electronics applications and has latent potential for future quantum computing devices.” Higher band gap is necessary for switching a circuit from on to off; it’s what puts the “semi” in “semiconductors.”
  • The upper Midwest needs to get ready for the cicadapocalypse.

    Billions of insects are predicted to burst out of the ground in the United States during late spring, in an event which hasn’t happened for more than 200 years.

    The red-eyed, winged insects called periodical cicadas, emerge in 13 to 17-year cycles and are completely harmless.

    In 2024, two of these groups – called Brood XIII (meaning 13) and Brood XIX (19) – are predicted to burst from the ground together for the first time since 1803.

    The US states of Wisconsin and Illinois will be mainly affected as billions of the bugs making a loud clicking noise will fill the air, cover branches, sign posts and pavements for about a month later this year.

    Interesting how the BBC feels it has to explain what Roman numerals mean…

  • “Three Austin Police Department (APD) SWAT officers have been cleared by a Travis County grand jury following a deadly shooting last year.” As well they should be. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Another day, another machete wielding lunatic keeping Austin weird. Steve Adler may be out of office, but his legacy lives on…
  • “Scooter injuries nearly tripled across the U.S. from 2016 to 2020, with a concurrent increase in severe injuries requiring orthopedic and plastic surgery over the same period.”
  • The Texans host a playoff game tomorrow after winning three games each in the previous two seasons. But ESPN hates rookie quarterback phenom C. J. Stroud giving all the glory to God.
  • Darth Hoodie leaves the Patriots. Plus…
  • Nick Saban retires. That’s a lot of turnover among legendary winners in one week…
  • Echo: “When it comes to casting roles like this, you usually have to choose between fighters who can’t act, or actors who can’t fight. But unfortunately, Alaqua Cox can’t seem to do either…Because she can’t speak, she really needs to sell the performance with her body language and facial expressions. The problem is, she doesn’t seem to have any.”
  • “Alabama man strips buck naked, cannonballs into Bass Pro Shop aquarium, knocks himself unconscious.”
  • “History Made As United Airlines Reveals First All-Dachshund Flight Crew.” It really would be an adorable way to die…
  • Japanese Boobs 1, Feminists 0

    Saturday, June 18th, 2022

    From Japan comes the heartwarming story of radical feminists being defeated by the holy power of boobs:

    No country is too far from the grasp of social justice values to try to take hold, and sure enough, the country of Japan has been enduring its own attempts by the far left to infiltrate and take over the culture.

    Particularly, a feminist movement in Japan had been growing within it, but it would appear that the young women it was attempting to seduce are rejecting it thanks to several factors, but one of them is their breasts.

    Visual Aid

    No, I’m not kidding.

    According to Datosjam, feminists are losing ground in the land of the rising sun due to the fact that the movement is attacking women. Just like in the west, woke culture is attempting to eliminate femininity and make being a woman seem weak and problematic. It’s a narrative that has found a ton of success in the west thanks to decades of pushing it through mainstream culture, but in Japan, this narrative is failing.

    Another Visual Aid

    Apparently, Japanese women like their femininity. Specifically, their feminine bodies which the feminist movement over there is attempting to shame women for. Particularly their breasts.

    Yet Another Visual Aid

    An article by Japanese writer Raiden Bell described how feminists were attacking women with large breasts and telling them that in order to be less discriminatory with gender they would have to hide them.

    Hide large breasts? What happened to “My body, my choice?”

    Still another visual aid of what Japanese feminists evidently hate

    One of the controversies prompting an exodus occurred when an image posted by a business on social media using free advertisement images given to them by Japanese model Saya Akane caused an uproar. Feminists claimed that the image highlighted Akane’s breasts. The image actually shows no emphasis on her breasts. She is in modest office casual clothing and is speaking on a phone. Akane just happens to have a larger than normal breast size.

    The girl that evidently has feminists all hot and bothered.

    “Aren’t they crushing diversity in an attempt to embrace diversity?” asked Akane.

    Feminists went so far as to suggest that she reduce her breasts surgically and that not doing so is “selling your sex.” They hurled insults at her such as calling her a “typical penis-loving woman without honor” and “trying to take advantage of men’s sexual desires.”

    As woke culture has attempted to push on us here in the west, a woman attempting to appeal to the male gaze is the height of sin for a woman.

    Moreover, Japanese feminists have declared that larger breasts are “deformed” and “associated with mental disability.”

    I’m not seeing any deformity here.

    That was a bit too much for Japanese women who began rejecting the feminist movement and began stating that the constant criticisms are enough to move away from the movement. Funny enough, it didn’t stop there, and further rejection of feminism came from its criticism of an unlikely source.

    Manga artists tend to draw women with tiny waists and larger breasts, or at the very least, they tend to draw women in ways that make them more sexually appealing than normal. Feminists in Japan are naturally angry about this, but interestingly, data shows that around 70 percent of manga artists are women according to the article. Moreover, the majority of these artists are in their 20s and 30s.

    Warrior against wokeness

    To be anti-breast is to not only be anti-woman, but anti-human.

    Hey! You! Feminists! Leave those breasts alone!

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

    LinkSwarm for 11/26/21

    Friday, November 26th, 2021

    I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Enjoy a Black Friday LinkSwarm!

    

  • Kurt Schlichter says that the Kyle Rittenhouse case has redpilled a whole lot of normies:

    ou know, a few more rampages by inept alleged “white supremacists” like Kyle Rittenhouse – he only managed to shoot white criminals! – and everybody is going to be thoroughly awakened to the reality of the leftist scam. The trial that followed the Kenosha Kid’s act of social hygiene constituted only one tab in the big bottle of scarlet pills America’s been force-fed lately. Others include being confronted at work with mandates for vaxes that don’t act as advertised, as well as being inundated with racist CRT garbage, and having one’s kids come home from school with creepy porno crap that makes you wonder if they hit up the Lincoln Project lending library.

    There are more pills going on than in Hunter’s medicine cabinet.

    Why the festival of figurative pharmaceuticals? Because the left got out over its skis. It went too far, too fast, and now normal folks who just want to live their lives and usually show no interest in political/cultural controversies are showing up at school board meetings asking why the hell their kids are accusing them of slavery. Combined with a crusty old pervert in the White House who is causing economic inflation and international humiliation, and the left is in trouble. Deep trouble. See, the truth is getting out despite the media’s lies. Its pet political party is looking at being demolished next November. But instead of slowing down and taking stock, the Marxists are doubling down on failure knowing they only have their micro-majorities for a year. This genius strategy got them Glenn Youngkin and will get them many more based pols who are many times more hardcore.

    It is only going to get worse for them, which means it is only going to get better for America.

    Remember, leftism only succeeds when surrounded by a fog of lies. When the fog lifts, people reject it. And the media pumped out all the fog it could. There were people who literally did not know the collection of criminals and/or perverts Kyle exorcised were as white as Mitt Romney at a Cure concert. Really. That was the media’s doing, lying that the only reason Kyle didn’t want to have his brains bashed in by these scumbags was his pallor and reporting that nonsense accordingly. But when people watched the trial, they saw something entirely different from what they had been fed by the Enemy of the People, and it stuck. People were shocked – not people like us who are fully woke to the fact the media is nothing more than a collection of semi-literate, poorly-paid hack transcriptionists for the liberal elite – to see that they were being lied to, and hard. Not little lies. Not careless errors. No, these were calculated, intentional lies designed to push the party line. And their lies were revealed to all in that Kenosha courtroom.

    The liberal champions were Binger and Lunchbox, the Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dumbass of assistant DAs who were incompetent when they weren’t straight-up lying. And people saw it all. Normal people, the kind who used to have some faith in the people in charge of the system.

    Now they are like us. They got woke.

  • Everyone pushing the Russian Collusion hoax should be fired:

    As the Democratic National Convention descended into chaos in July 2016, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, co-founders of Fusion GPS, high-tailed it from Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia to stanch the political bleeding following the release of damning internal emails that showed party honchos had rigged the process in favor of Hillary Clinton.

    Simpson and Fritsch, serving multiple paymasters at the time including Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, had a plan to divert media attention away from the crisis: spin a dark tale of collusion between the Kremlin and Donald Trump to stop Hillary Clinton from winning the White House.

    Russian hackers were already blamed, without evidence, for infiltrating the DNC email system and giving the correspondence to WikiLeaks. Expanding on that accusation by revealing the secretive work of Christopher Steele, portrayed as a “former Western intelligence officer,” to friendly journalists successfully changed the subject.

    “They wanted to have some discreet conversations with a few reporters to let them know they might be able to help with stories about Trump, particularly on Russia,” Simpson and Fritsch wrote about themselves.

    Snip.

    This unfolding scandal is not only about how inaccurately the media covered Sergei Millian or the bogus Steele dossier. There was no collusion between the Trump presidential campaign and the Russians. Period.

    And everyone knew it at the time. Tom Hamburger knew it, Rosalind Helderman, everyone at MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and more knew it was fabricated garbage peddled by a well-known paid smear merchant who was disguising another paid political operative as a “western intelligence officer.”

    It was intentional, not “one of the most egregious journalistic errors in modern history,” as Axios’ Sara Fischer described it in a roundup of other news organizations that still refuse to acknowledge misleading reporting and editorializing on the Steele dossier—again, a red herring since coverage of phony election collusion exceeded beyond allegations contained in the dossier.

    “CNN and MSNBC did not respond to requests for comment about whether they planned to revisit or correct any of their coverage around the dossier,” Fischer reported. “The Wall Street Journal told Axios, ‘We’re aware of the serious questions raised by the allegations and continue to report and to follow the investigation closely.’” Mark Maremont, a Journal reporter, first disclosed Millian’s name in a January 2017 article, suggesting he was responsible for a “compromising video” on Donald Trump.

    David Corn, author of an October 31, 2016 article for Mother Jones titled, “A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump,” that was sourced directly by Steele and Simpson right before the election, told Erik Wemple, the Post’s media critic who commendably called out high-profile dossier propagandists in a lengthy series last year, that he has no plans to retract his previous reporting. “My priority has been to deal with the much larger topic of Russia’s undisputed attack and Trump’s undisputed collaboration with Moscow’s cover-up.”

    Fischer claims a “reckoning” is hitting newsrooms across the country. With the exception of a cowardly response by the Post’s editor, that’s about as accurate as the dossier itself. A true reckoning would involve more than a few editor’s notes or burying collusion coverage down the media’s deep memory hole.

    In any other honorable profession, one that still takes itself seriously and is capable of self-policing to preserve the tattered shreds of integrity and accountability that remain, mass firings, not faux “reckonings,” would empty newsrooms. Reporters, columnists, cable news hosts, and paid contributors would be shown walking papers. Editors would step down in humiliation. Public apologies, not mealymouthed caveats and explainers buried in the entertainment guide, would be plastered on the front page of every newspaper and website; talking heads would make amends to the victims—including Donald Trump—for this reckless, destructive hoax and also to their audience for intentionally misleading them for years and then announce their early retirement.

    Collusion between Donald Trump and the Kremlin to influence the outcome of the 2016 election never happened—but every news organization, big and small, contributed to spreading this lie. It’s breathtaking malfeasance on a scale unrivaled in American history. The media should not be permitted to proceed with business as usual.

    Fire them all.

  • Remember: The reason why accused Waukesha Christmas Parade Murderer Darrell Brooks Jr. was out on the streets to kill was because Soros-backed DA John Chisholm wanted him there.

  • Slow Joe and the Democrats: Not so popular.

  • A list of all 26 times Bill Clinton flew on the Lolita Expresss.
  • Poland’s Presidnet comes out against Flu Manchu vaccinations.
  • In depth meta-analysis of the use of Ivermectin to treat Flu Manchu. Maybe it only really helps in countries that have notable body parasites? (Hat tip: Maybe Borepatch? After so much turkey, everything blur together in the mind…)
  • “Jordan Peterson says he spoke to a senior government adviser who told him Canada’s COVID restriction policies are completely driven by opinion polls and not science.”
  • The Rittenhouse verdict showed the leftists aren’t wild about Constitutional rights:

    Despite whatever anger President Joe Biden might express about the jury’s verdict, the 12 jurors in this trial focused on the facts and the law, and chose justice, even after threats were made against them, against the city, and corrupt media narratives continued to circulate with the aid of social media giants which were still banning accounts who spoke in Rittenhouse’s defense. Together, these 12 jurors bravely chose justice over the mob.

    In doing so, these 12 displayed more courage than nearly all of our politicians and every single one of our media elite. Once again, we are reminded that the best of America resides not in our coastal power centers, our ivory towers, or even here in our nation’s capital. The best of America resides in the inherent fairness, righteousness, and bravery of her citizens.

    But it’s worth focusing on where the left goes next. Because they don’t intend to let this jury verdict be the last word. Hours after the verdict was handed down, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) was calling it “a miscarriage of justice” and calling for federal review of the verdict by Merrick Garland’s heavily politicized Department of Justice.

    The media narrative, meanwhile, has turned toward decrying “gun laws” and the ability of a 17-year-old to carry an “assault rifle,” and is openly conflating the right to self-defense with “vigilantism.” In other words, they’re saying it out loud: they’re coming for your guns, for your right to defend your family, and ultimately, for your sovereignty.

    In early November, the Supreme Court heard arguments in New York Rifle & Pistol Association Inc v. Bruen. The question before the court is whether New York’s concealed carry permit regime, which requires the petitioner to show a “genuine, specific need” to concealed carry a firearm for self-defense and vests the ability to judge that need in a state bureaucrat, violates the Second Amendment.

    During the argument, it became abundantly clear how the left views the Second Amendment — that is, a constitutional entitlement that grants each of us an unambiguous right to carry by virtue of our citizenship.

  • “Illinois Pension Shortfall Surpasses $500 Billion, Average Debt Burden Now $110,000 Per Household.”
  • The radical left is trying to live down to the worst paranoid fantasies of the Moral Majority crica 1985:

    A leaked audio recording revealed California teachers mocking parents over concerns about homosexual and transgender indoctrination at school, said a source who attended a recent teachers union conference in Palm Springs.

    The recording, obtained by The Epoch Times, captured two seventh-grade teachers, Kelly Baraki and Lori Caldeira from Buena Vista Middle School in Salinas, Calif., telling other teachers how to recruit students into LGBTQ clubs, also known as “Gay-Straight Alliance” (GSA) clubs, at school.

    “It was horrifying to listen to not just one teacher but really all of the teachers in all of these seminars, excoriating parents,” said the source, who goes by the pseudonym Rebecca Murphy.

    Murphy attended the California Teachers Association (CTA) conference in late October. She told The Epoch Times the teachers “mocked” parents for their concerns, and suggested they know better than parents about what’s best for their children.

    “They laughed at the parents,” Murphy said.

  • Every. Knee. Must. Bend.

  • Times Up for Time’s Up. “The vast majority of Time’s Up’s remaining staffers were laid off Friday.” #MeToo was never meant to take out powerful Democrats like Andrew Cuomo.
  • Sweden names it’s first female Prime Minister…and she resigned the same day.

  • Can the Supreme Court be trusted on the Second Amendment? It’s a very mixed bag. (Hat tip: KR Training.)
  • Republicans sue Harris County to stop the Democrats’ redistricting plan.
  • The Social Justice Warrior behind the effort to cancel Dave Chapelle resigns. “You come at the king, you best not miss.”
  • Things that make you go “Hmmm”:

  • The World War II armaments factory built in a tube line.
  • “Tonight on Most Shocking!

  • “Clever Business Owners Ward Off Looters With Kyle Rittenhouse Scarecrows.”
  • “Black, White Americans Join Hands Around Common Cause Of Launching Journalists Into The Sun.”