Well, I’ve had better weeks. In addition to my job ending, my dog had to get $1,700 worth of veterinary work done (removing and testing a lump on his chest, and while he was getting that I got his teeth cleaned). So feel free to hit the donation jar at the bottom of the post.
A prosecutor overseeing the Hunter Biden tax probe likely intervened to protect President Biden from Department of Justice scrutiny, Eileen O’Connor, former assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Tax Division, testified at the first House Oversight impeachment hearing Thursday.
The impeachment inquiry, which was formally opened earlier this month without a full House vote, builds on the committee’s months-long probe into Biden’s alleged foreign influence peddling.
U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware David Weiss led the investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes, which began in 2018, and was assisted by assistant U.S. attorney Lesley Wolf.
IRS whistleblowers who worked on the probe, and have since provided a trove of information to the committee, identified many deviations from standard procedure, which they claim were driven by Weiss and his staff as well as officials at main Justice in an attempt to slow walk or otherwise obstruct the probe.
The whistleblowers highlighted the fact that attorneys from the DOJ’s tax division suggested the removal of Hunter’s name from documents, including subpoenas, and pointed out that prosecutors at the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware prohibited IRS and FBI investigators from asking about or referring to “the big guy” or “dad” in witness interviews.
Wolf also ordered investigators not to escalate the tax probe into a campaign-finance probe, according to a document the GOP committee obtained from the whistleblowers. Specifically, she told them not to pursue the possibility that a hefty sum Hunter received from a major Democratic donor to pay his back taxes may have constituted an illegal campaign-finance contribution.
Why, it’s almost as if there’s a different rule for powerful Democrats than for other Americans…
“Adam Schiff Funneled Millions To Defense Contractors After Taking Donations.” Of course he did. “This financial maneuvering coincided with Schiff receiving $8,500 in contributions from PMA Group PAC and two family members of Paul Magliocchetti, founder and owner of the lobbying firm retained by both defense companies. In 2011, Paul Magliocchetti was sentenced to 27 months in prison for making illegal campaign contributions.”
Target closes nine stores in Portland, San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle and New York City, citing losses from crime.
States are fighting back against ESG companies trying to destroy their oil and gas industries.
“Oklahoma is a natural gas and oil industry state,” [Oklahoma State Auditor Cindy Byrd] said. “These things are very important to us, and we’ve seen that shut down over the last few years, which is really hurting Oklahoma.”
Increasingly, the environmental social and governance (ESG) industry is coordinating efforts among banks, insurance companies, and asset managers to cut America’s production of fossil fuels. It coordinates these efforts through a coalition of net-zero associations under the umbrella of the U.N.-affiliated Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ).
The net-zero clubs that are part of GFANZ encompass virtually all elements of global finance, including the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), the Net Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA), the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative (NZAMi), the Net Zero Asset Owners Alliance (NZAOA) and the Net Zero Financial Service Providers Alliance (NZFSPA). Members of these alliances pledge to work together to achieve UN goals of net zero CO2 emissions by 2050 or sooner.
We thought about investments, getting good returns, trying to make money with your money, and that was the prominent thought when I first got in office,” said Kentucky State Treasurer Allison Ball. “I remember when I first started coming to events, I began to hear about an initiative called ESG, and I thought at the time that this was academic; I didn’t really take it very seriously.
“In the course of the last couple of years, it began to become very aggressively pushed,” she told The Epoch Times. “There’s been an effort to really make it the only game in town, to really shift that mentality from investing to make money, making sure you’re getting good returns, to using investments as leverage to push certain mostly political ideas.
“Coal and oil and gas industries, those are signature industries in Kentucky,” Ms. Ball said. “And they’ve been targeted very strongly by the E part of ESG, so I began to see real impacts on the economy of Kentucky, my home area.”
The felony convictions of four former Navy officers in one of the worst bribery cases in the maritime branch’s history were vacated Wednesday due to questions about prosecutorial misconduct, the latest setback to the government’s years-long efforts in going after dozens of military officials tied to Leonard Francis, a defense contractor nicknamed “Fat Leonard.”
U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino called the misconduct “outrageous” and agreed to allow the four men to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and pay a $100 fine each.
California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein dead at 90.
“A group of five Harris County residents filed a petition in state district court on Friday seeking to remove Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo from office, arguing that she has abandoned her duties and responsibilities as the elected chief executive of the state’s most populous county….petitioning to remove Hidalgo under Texas Local Government code allowing for removal of an unfit or incompetent elected official.” She’s been on “mental health leave” since July.
“Prosper ISD Taxpayers Debate Priciest High School Stadium in Texas.” As in $94.8 million pricey. And that’s after they already built one for $53 million, the fifth priciest in the state, that opened in 2019. And they’ve already built two high schools that cost $200 million each, presumably with gold-plated microscopes and Tito Puente as the music teacher…
More Biden Crime Family evidence surfaces, another mysterious Chinese bio-lab (this one much closer to home than Wuhan), more blue city real estate disaster, and Tim Scott screws up. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
President Joe Biden vehemently denied ever talking business with his son, “or with anyone else” in the run-up to the 2020 election. In fact, Biden even fat-shamed an Iowa voter who approached the subject during the Democratic primaries. On the debate stage with Donald Trump, the former vice president peddled conspiracies of Russian interference when emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop revealed otherwise.
On Sunday night, the New York Post reported on anticipated testimony from Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer. The 48-year-old who went golfing with the Bidens in 2014 is expected to tell the House Oversight Committee how Hunter Biden put his father in contact with foreign businessmen and potential investors at least 24 times. According to the Post, such meetings were either in person or by speakerphone, with Hunter Biden often dialing in Joe.
Beyond those meetings, there are more than 180 other episodes where the president interacted with his son’s business partners, contrary to his campaign claims of “absolute” separation.
As the evidence for at least an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden mounts, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and co-host Ben Ferguson discussed the latest bombshell – 170 suspicious activity reports (SARs) from six banks over the past few years – on their podcast with House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY).
As Townhall reports, these SARs are submitted and sent to the Treasury Department when banks “have a strong suspicion” that a crime has been committed, so as to protect the bank.
As Comer emphasized, these are submitted “very seldom.”
If someone were to have two, the chairman explained, it would be hard for that person to open up a bank account.
Submitting an SAR, Comer added, also is “inviting the regulators to come in and regulate,” which is the last thing banks want.
The full transcript from Devon Archer’s sworn testimony before the House Judiciary Committee from Monday, July 31, has been released. During that testimony, Archer told Rep. Dan Goldman that Hunter Biden had been placed on the board of directors for Ukrainian energy company Burisma in order to “legally” intimidate people.
During that question period, Goldman asked Archer “So based on everything you saw, heard, and observed, did you have any knowledge of Joe Biden having any involvement with Burisma?”
Archer said that while he did not have “direct” knowledge, it was his view that Burisma would not last were in not for Joe Biden’s involvement. “My only thought is that I think Burisma would have gone out of business if it didn’t have the brand attached to it. That’s my, like, only honest opinion,” Archer said. He went on to say that the company was able to survive for as long as it did because Hunter was on the board.
“Just because of the brand,” Archer said. The “brand” refers to the Biden name. Speaking with The Post Millennial, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said that the brand was not only Biden, but the vice presidency during Biden’s tenure.
“How does that have an impact?” Goldman asked.
“Well, the capabilities to navigate D.C.,” Archer said, “that they were able to, you know, basically be in the news cycle. And I think that preserved them from a, you know, from a longevity standpoint. That’s like my honest—that’s what I—tht’s like how I think holistically.”
“But how would that work?” Goldman asked.
“Because people would be intimidated to mess with them,” Archer replied.
“In what way?” Goldman pressed.
“Legally,” Archer said.
Archer also spoke about the meetings during which Joe Biden would call in, or be called. “He put him on speakerphone, again, occasionally. Specifics, like, you know, dinner—you know, dinners occasionally.” Archer was asked to describe the dinners, and said “I remember a dinner in Paris with a French energy company that was—we were speaking to an advisor, and then—we were speaking to. And it was really a Rosemont Seneca Advisors type of—a Rosemont Seneca Advisors kind of a pitch, at the end of the day. And there was a talk, and he said that we’re at this—you know, we’re at this restaurant in Paris, and he put him on the speaker. So that did happen. There were other people there.”
That dinner, specifically, was attended by “myself; Hunter; Eric Schwerin; and then the executives from the French energy company,” Archer said.
Another was in “Beijing, at, you know, some restaurant,” Archer said, “—or Chengdu or something like I don’t remember the—I don’t remember specifics. This was just—it was not—t was like a, you know—especially with the time zone difference, there was—you know, there were meetings where his dad would call and he would be talking to him or put him on speaker. I’m not going to—you know, that’s—that happened.”
Archer said that the conversation at that dinner, with Jonathan Li, was primarily niceties. But it was his contention that getting the vice president on the phone, showing off that kind of access, was what those calls were all about. Archer testified that Hunter Biden would say things like “Hey, guys, my dad’s on the phone.”
Another call, which Archer revealed during questioning by Rep. Jim Jordan, took place in Dubai. During this impromptu meeting, Hunter Biden was contacted by Burisma’s CEO Zlochevsky, who said “We’re under pressure. We need to go—we want to talk to Hunter.” Hunter called DC, and Archer was “not in the earshot” of that call.
It was only 5 days after that call that Joe Biden “has a trip to the Ukraine, and he makes a statement: ‘It’s not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption. The Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform.” That was in 2015, and Biden withheld $1 billion in loan guarantees from Ukraine until such time as the prosecutor Viktor Shokin was fired.
Bill Stevenson, who was married to Jill Biden between 1970 and 1975, told Newsmax last week that the president’s brother, Frankie Biden, tried to intimidate him during his divorce with Jill, and claimed the family threatened him with repercussions.
“Frankie Biden of the Biden crime family comes up to me and he goes, “Give her the house or you’re going to have serious problems,”” Stevenson said. “I looked at Frankie and I said, “Are you threatening me?” and needless to say, about two months later, my brother and I were indicted for that tax charge for $8,200.”
When asked to clarify whether he thinks Joe Biden was behind the tax charge, Stevenson told host Greg Kelly: “I not only think it, but I know it,” adding that he “could not believe the power of Joe Biden and the Department of Justice. I couldn’t believe it.”
Kelly also noted the parallels between Stevenson’s case and Hunter Biden’s ongoing tax troubles – noting that Hunter was hit with just two misdemeanor counts for $2.2 million in unpaid taxes, while Stevenson and his brother were slapped with two felonies for just over $8,000 in unpaid taxes.
This is a weird, disturbing story: Mysterious Chinese bio-lab discovered in Reedley, CA in the central San Joaquin Valley.
Court documents detail the horrors and dangerous nature of an illegal lab found in Reedley, California, exposed several months ago by a city code enforcement officer. What was found inside prompted the fire chief to send a letter to city officials describing it as a “potential disaster for the city.”
An investigation into the warehouse was prompted by a simple garden hose that was illegally attached and coming out of a wall in the back of the building.
“Frankly, we knew that should not have been there and when she went to investigate, she found that there was activity or operation or something happening within that building,” said Reedley City Manager Nicole Zieba.
The city then obtained a search warrant to look inside what should have been an ordinary warehouse. Inside, they found thousands of vials, many of which contained bio-hazardous materials like human blood, and other unknown substances.
“There was over 800 different chemicals on site in different bottles of different acids. Unfortunately, a lot of these are being categorized under ‘unknown chemicals,’” said Assistant Director of the Fresno County Department of Public Health Joe Prado. “A lot of these labels have been removed from bottles so there was only so much testing we could do [on] those chemicals.”
Health officials also discovered nearly 1,000 lab mice, 200 of which were dead.
Prado said the warehouse occupants claimed they were “doing some testing on laboratory mice that would help them support [and develop] the COVID test kits that they had on-site.”
According to court documents, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested what they could and determined that at least 20 potentially infectious viral, bacterial, and parasitic agents were present, including E. coli, malaria, and the virus that causes COVID-19.
“Scientists Call for Full Retraction of Nature’s Proximal Origin Paper, as Fraud Accusations Mount.” Their response was simplicity itself: They lied.
A growing number of people, including prominent scientists, are calling for a full retraction of a high-profile study published in the journal Nature in March 2020 that explored the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
The paper, whose authors included immunology and microbiology professor Kristian G. Andersen, declared that evidence clearly showed that SARS-CoV-2 did not originate from a laboratory.
“Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” the authors wrote in February.
Yet a trove of recently published documents reveal that Andersen and his co-authors believed that the lab leak scenario was not just possible, but likely.
“[The] main thing still in my mind is that the lab escape version of this is so friggin’ likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario,” Andersen said to his colleagues, according to a report from Public, which published a series of Slack messages between the authors.
Anderson was not the only author who privately expressed doubts that the virus had natural origins. Public cataloged dozens of statements from Andersen and his co-authors—Andrew Rambaut, W. Ian Lipkin, Edward C. Holmes, and Robert F. Garry—between the dates January 31 and February 28, 2020 suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 may have been engineered.
” …the fact that we are discussing this shows how plausible it is,” Garry said of the lab-leak hypothesis.
“We unfortunately can’t refute the lab leak hypothesis,” Andersen said on Feb. 20, several days after the authors published their pre-print.
The rap on Tim Scott is that he is too nice to be a modern Republican, but that’s wrong – he’s too weak to be a modern Republican. The man consistently defaults to submission to the woke left, but the times call for a warrior and his brand is soft surrender. Yeah, it would be nice to live in an era where we have the luxury of a president who dodged the draft in the culture wars, but we do not live in that time. Tim Scott needs to stay right where he is, an affable but unaccomplished senator firmly within the tradition of the political puffballs that South Carolina’s GOP inexplicably turns out. Let him be nice somewhere where his alleged niceness won’t shaft us again.
It could have been different, but that would require a different man than Tim Scott. There are moments that define a candidate, moments where they have a choice and the choice they make makes or breaks them. Kamala Harris decided to take what is essentially a footnote within the Florida history standards and contort it into some sort of lie about how Ron DeSantis loves slavery. It’s one of those issues where the claim is so facially ludicrous that you have to wonder if Kamala is stupid or cynical – and come to the conclusion that she is probably both. But she went with it and DeSantis pushed back and we were moving on when someone in the regime media asked Tim Scott about it.
This was his decision point. It was an opportunity to show who he is. And Tim Scott whiffed.
Taking the wrong side in the social justice war is disqualifying. Scott has gone from being maybe my third favorite candidate in the field and a strong Veepstakes possibility to being behind Doug Bergrum and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Oakland residents are sick and tired of our intolerable public safety crisis that overwhelmingly impacts minority communities. Murders, shootings, violent armed robberies, home invasions, car break-ins, sideshows, and highway shootouts have become a pervasive fixture of life in Oakland. We call on all elected leaders to unite and declare a state of emergency and bring together massive resources to address our public safety crisis…
Failed leadership, including the movement to defund the police, our District Attorney’s unwillingness to charge and prosecute people who murder and commit life threatening serious crimes, and the proliferation of anti-police rhetoric have created a heyday for Oakland criminals. If there are no consequences for committing crime in Oakland, crime will continue to soar.
People are moving out of Oakland in droves. They are afraid to venture out of their homes to go to work, shop, or dine in Oakland and this is destroying economic activity. Businesses, small and large, struggle and close, tax revenues vanish, and we are creating the notorious doom-loop where life in our city continues to spiral downward. As economic pain increases, the conditions that help create crime and criminals are exacerbated by desperate people with no employment opportunities.
We are in crisis and elected leaders must declare a state of emergency and bring resources together from the city, the county, and the state to end the crisis. We are 500 police officers short of the number that experts say Oakland needs. Our 911 system does not work. Residents now know that help will not come when danger confronts them. Worse, criminals know that too…
There is nothing compassionate or progressive about allowing criminal behavior to fester and rob Oakland residents of their basic rights to public safety. It is not racist or unkind to want to be safe from crime. No one should live in fear in our city.
Speaking of blue city retail apocalypses: “Field Office, a Trophy Complex Unable to Find Tenants, Defaults on $73.8 Million Loan. Goldman Sachs and Lincoln Property stopped making payments.”
The owners of Field Office, a 290,375-square-foot office complex near the Willamette River, have defaulted on their $73.8 million loan after being unable to find enough tenants, becoming the latest office owners to throw in the towel on Portland’s struggling office market.
Field Office is owned by New York investment bank Goldman Sachs and Lincoln Property Co., a Dallas-based real estate firm with operations in Portland. The pair bought Field Office from local developer Project^ and National Real Estate Advisors, an investment firm based in Washington, D.C., for $118 million in April 2019, according to public records.
Funny how letting antifa/#BlackLivesMatter rioters and crime run rampant through your downtown destroys property values. #ThisIsYourCityOnSocialJustice
Black Florida State University professor who published numerous studies on “systemic racism” is fired for just making shit up. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
You’re a Texas republican congressman who’s also an ER doctor and you try to assist a teenage girl having a medical emergency? That’s a handcuffing.
A former employee of a large food service corporation is suing the company in federal court after it fired her for refusing to participate in a program that discriminates against white male employees.
Courtney Rogers worked for Charlotte, North Carolina-based Compass Group USA Inc. from her home office in San Diego, California.
The company had more than 280,000 employees and $20.1 billion in revenue in 2019, according to its LinkedIn profile.
“Back in 2018, NBA megastar LeBron James opened his I Promise School in Akron, Ohio with the noble goal of transforming the lives of at-risk students and parents in his hometown. But it appears that the school has some major challenges five years into its existence. According to a report from the Akron Beacon Journal, the I Promise School’s fall class of eighth graders has has not seen a single student pass the state’s math test in five years – since the group was in the third grade.”
In Friday’s LinkSwarm, I had a link that asked if Portland was finally sobering up.
Well, for a lot of people and businesses, it’s too late. Such as Kevin Howard, for whom the City of Portland refused to do anything about the homeless people breaking into his property and trashing the place.
And who then fined him because the place was trashed.
“This property was listed in January of 2021 for $795,000. Yesterday we sold it for $412,000,” said Howard.
A significant loss, but Howard says he had nothing left in the tank. The tiny piece of property off Southeast Powell Boulevard, a former pizza parlor, has been a nightmare for the past three years.
“The supposed homeless came in and kicked in the door, the front door, and lived in it,” said Howard. “And I waited until they came out, and I had to board it up.”
But Howard says that didn’t do much. They just broke in again and again, living inside and outside, even in his dumpster enclosure which they eventually set on fire. Howard says he got nowhere when he called the police.
“I said, ‘Well, what does a homeowner do? What does a property owner do?’ and they said, ‘Call Central City Concern,'” said Howard. “I said “What will they do?’ and they said, ‘Well, they’ll probably come out and give them a cup of coffee and some hot soup.'”
Howard looked into hiring a security guard, but that was too expensive at roughly $15,000 a month. So, he decided to get a fence, but the wait was four months.
“I said, ‘Why?’ and they said, ‘Because homeowners like mad are fencing their property to keep the, you know, the drug addicts and the homeless out,'” said Howard.
So, the trash piled up, and Howard tried to keep up, but it wasn’t enough. Last summer, the city hit him with a nuisance fine of nearly $540.
Howard paid the fine.
A month later, he got an even bigger bill, the original amount plus a penalty. The city told him they had lost his check. So, he paid the bill again, plus the extra $100.
“Two weeks later, they sent me another bill for 639 dollars and 71 cents,” said Howard. “I called them up, and they said, “Well, this might be a duplicate bill, but we’ve already put a lien on your property.”
“I just remember the phrase ‘The City That Works.’ The city that jerks, I mean, how can you be this dysfunctional?”
Easy. You let Social Justice Warriors take over your city.
Busy as hell and I have a cold, but I soldier on. LinkSwarm! Russian coup! Texas! Pedophiles! Portland! Braaaaiiiinnnnnns!
I cover the world!
“The owner of the Wagner private military contractor made his most direct challenge to the Kremlin yet on Friday, calling for an armed rebellion aimed at ousting Russia’s defense minister. The security services reacted immediately by calling for the arrest of Yevgeny Prigozhin…Prigozhin claimed early Saturday that his forces had crossed into Russia from Ukraine and had reached Rostov, saying they faced no resistance from young conscripts at checkpoints and that his forces ‘aren’t fighting against children.'” Unconfirmed reports of fighting elsewhere in Russia. Developing…
The City of Dallas is requiring employees to undergo taxpayer-funded transgender reeducation training any time one of their co-workers comes out as “transgender.”
According to internal documents obtained from the City of Dallas by The Dallas Express, “non-transitioning” employees are being forced to undergo reeducation training “to support an inclusive and productive workplace environment for all employees.”
The City of Dallas’ “gender transition toolkit” explains that a transitioning employee should find a “trusted” supervisor or manager as a “first point of contact” to help them through their workplace transition.
The document includes a list of gender terms and definitions. It then moves on to require employees to work with gender-confused co-workers, allowing the “transitioning” employee to use whichever bathroom or locker room at work they feel most comfortable with, ignoring the comfort of other employees.
Speaking of pedophiles: “A former CNN television producer who had pleaded guilty to luring a 9-year-old girl into illegal sexual acts was sentenced Tuesday to more than 19 years in prison and an additional 15 years of supervised release during a U.S. District Court hearing in Vermont. John Griffin of Stamford, Connecticut, pleaded guilty in federal court in December to using interstate commerce to entice and coerce the girl to engage in sexual activity at his Vermont ski house.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
In the summer of 2020, Portland, Oregon, became the poster child for American urban disaster zones. During the day, tens of thousands of citizens protested peacefully against police brutality following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But everything changed after dark. Nonviolent demonstrators with jobs, school assignments, and kids to raise went home; hundreds of anarchists swarmed in to take their place and waged a low-grade insurgency against the city. They fought pitched battles with the cops—throwing rocks, frozen water bottles, fireworks, buckets of excrement, and even Molotov cocktails. They attacked coffeehouses, immigrant-owned restaurants, mom-and-pop retail stores, banks, museums, churches, bus stops, and the Multnomah County Democratic Party headquarters with baseball bats, crowbars, and hammers. Most were military-age white males wearing all-black clothing and hiding their faces. The violence kept up, night after night, week after week, and month after month, into the winter, long after the rest of America had calmed down. My city had become the most politically violent place in the country, and I got worried e-mails from people I knew around the world—even in the Middle East!—asking me if I was okay and why on earth this was happening.
A crime wave followed. Shootings and homicides exploded 300 percent between 2019 and 2022, robberies rose 50 percent in 2022 alone, vehicle thefts hit record highs, and work-order requests for graffiti removal shot up 500 percent between 2020 and 2022. The City of Roses suffered 413 shootings in 2019 but 1,306 in 2022 and nearly twice as many homicides as San Francisco, though Portland is only three-fourths its size. Meantime, statewide crime actually declined from 2019 to 2021.
The homelessness crisis also intensified. The slow-motion collapse of Oregon’s mental-health infrastructure, a dramatic surge of cheap and deadly fentanyl and a far more potent and addictive form of psychosis-inducing meth, and a crippling housing shortage led to the formation of more than 700 tent cities in residential neighborhoods and business districts across the city.
But while it’s too soon to declare that Portland’s troubles have passed, the worst may now be over. Despite ongoing woes, Portland looks and feels much better than it did in dystopian 2020. The riots stopped, and the crime wave seems to have peaked, with shootings down by nearly 40 percent and homicides down more than 50 percent in the early months of 2023. A sober mood shift has taken over the city. Voters passed a ballot measure to restructure city government, while the three newest elected officials on the city council are steering Portland in a different direction. The city, county, and state are taking steps to reverse the decline.
Portland is suffering a serious livability crisis. Eighty-eight percent of respondents in early 2022 told the Portland Business Alliance that the quality of life is worsening. Portland is hardly the most dangerous city in America: the homicide rate in St. Louis is more than four times higher, with 65 murders per 100,000 people, compared with Portland’s 15 in 2022. Portland’s rate peaked at more than double the national average, but of all the cities with higher crime rates than Portland, only Chicago gets as many national headlines. That’s probably because Portland’s increase in crime was the worst in the country. No other city’s homicide rate rose so spectacularly. And unlike St. Louis, Baltimore, and other notorious hot spots, Portland was recently a destination city that touted its high quality of life as a reason to move there.
Of late, though, rather than attracting new residents, Portland has actually lost population, either to the suburbs or out of state. “I’ve never seen money move out of here,” commercial real-estate salesman Stu Peterson told Willamette Week. “Nobody ever wanted to leave Oregon. It’s a beautiful place. Most evacuees are high-wage earners who are fed up with the crime, taxes, and homelessness, in that order. There’s an ugly spiral.” Real-estate agent Justin Harnish described a client who left downtown Portland for the suburb of Lake Oswego after she saw a woman stab another woman in the face with scissors.
Accompanying the crime wave is a drastic staff shortage at the Portland Police Bureau. Portland now has fewer than 800 sworn officers, a smaller number than it had decades ago, when the city was barely half the size it is now. And with the surge in violent crime, the police have little time to deal with anything that isn’t life-threatening. Prioritizing shootings and other emergencies, they’re forced to neglect break-ins, stolen cars, vandalism, and just about everything else. The traffic police unit has been defunded, reduced to a single full-time traffic cop—not for ideological reasons but because the city has no one to staff that division.
Part of the blame rests with the months of demoralizing anti-cop violence in 2020, but Portland would probably be short of police officers anyway. Every city agency, from fire and rescue to the transportation bureau and the public defender’s office, faces staff shortages now. And while a shrunken police force didn’t cause Portland’s crime wave on its own, a police department that can barely react to anything but emergency calls aggravates the problem. Criminals behave as though they can get away with essentially anything and commit far more crimes than they would if they were investigated, arrested, and prosecuted swiftly. The Woodstock neighborhood, where Joe Biden won 88 percent of the vote, is considering hiring its own private security force.
Snip.
I spent more time talking to my neighbors that year than I ever had before or have since. A lot of us suddenly became friendlier outside our houses, and we weren’t talking about sports and the weather. Residents and business owners alike worried about where things were headed and expressed dismay at the city’s inability to defend itself. I didn’t talk with a single person who thought that everything was okay, that city hall was on top of it, or that the anarchists were not a menace. And nobody could understand why the homeless camps at the elementary school down the street or at the park hadn’t been cleared. No, I didn’t conduct my own scientific public opinion survey, but it was obvious that regular people were nearing the end of their rope and that the status quo was bound to be upended.
In 2021, that’s exactly what happened. A tsunami of outrage inundated the mayor, the city council, and the police bureau. Phones rang nonstop. Furious citizens shouted at meetings. Newspaper editors published scathing letters, and journalists at mainstream outlets covered distressed neighborhoods and interviewed disgruntled citizens while largely ignoring the activist set that booed every conceivable solution and told civilians that the problems were in their heads. Lawsuits against the city proliferated. Polls showed city council members languishing on political death row, with approval ratings in the teens.
Though most residents still wanted accountability for bad cops and citizen oversight of the police bureau, the complaints were primarily about crime, about how the police hardly ever show up anymore, and about disorder dragging neighborhoods down. Even some of the fashionable middle-class neighborhoods endearingly satirized in the Portlandia comedy series were enduring weekly gunfire.
In the fall of 2022, 82 percent of Portland respondents in an Oregonian poll said that they wanted more cops. If some Portlanders felt overpoliced a few years ago, hardly anyone felt that way after the chaos, with a mere 15 percent saying that they wanted fewer officers in 2021.
Before the city council elections got going in 2022, voters fired repeated warning shots in public opinion surveys. An overwhelming 85 percent of respondents said that they found the city council ineffective, with a clear majority describing it as “very ineffective.” For a while, it looked as though Portland was gearing up to fire every single official in a landslide election.
Two city council members, Dan Ryan and Jo Ann Hardesty, ran for reelection last year. Ryan managed to defy expectations and win despite the temper in the city, though it’s easy to understand why: he set aside his ideological views and changed with the times. Though he first ran during a special election in early 2020 on a campaign promising to cut police funding, he soon reversed himself. Anarchists vandalized his home seven times because he refused to cut the police budget.
Hardesty didn’t fare as well. Pushing bills to defund the police and opposing the cleanup of homeless camps, she put herself wildly out of step with her constituents. Mingus Mapps, a moderate on the council who had easily dispatched the left-wing populist Chloe Eudaly two years earlier, endorsed Hardesty’s challenger, Rene Gonzales, and bluntly said: “It is time to put ideology aside and elect people who will fight for Portland. I need colleagues who use debate, reason, and logic to solve our many crises.” Gonzales said, “Our once beautiful city is struggling in ways that were unfathomable a short time ago. . . . City hall’s ineffective, ideologically driven policies are ruining the city we used to proudly call home.” Gonzales won, and Portland replaced the city council’s last progressive firebrand with a centrist. It was the kind of event that marks the end of an era.
Sounds a lot like Austin, except for the sobering-up part. (Also, it’s good to read Michael Totten again. He seemed to disappear from view for several years. Probably because he was writing for The Bulwark…)
Speaking of Portland, the homeless drug addict who said that living on the streets of Portland was “too easy” is now back with her family and getting treatment. They thought she was dead…
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has laid out the devastating results of runaway government spending on the middle class and why it’s so important to claw back lost ground for the average American, who has “received a pay cut for 24 consecutive months … as inflation has persisted.”
He also noted the average American family has lost the equivalent of more than $7,000 in annual income.
There is a direct link between spending, borrowing and printing trillions of dollars, and these disastrous results for Americans.
President Biden has spent trillions of dollars the nation didn’t have.
These unchecked costs drove the deficit to record highs and pushed the debt over $31 trillion.
A former Connecticut Planned Parenthood honcho took his own life days after police failed to arrest him on child pornography charges — botching the raid by knocking down the door of the suspect’s New Haven neighbor.
Tim Yergeau, 36, the former director of strategic communications at the Southern New England branch of Planned Parenthood, died by suicide on Tuesday amid a child pornography investigation in Connecticut last week.
The Biden administration on Thursday unveiled a proposal that would prohibit schools from instituting policies that “categorically ban transgender students from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity.” The policy would allow schools to implement certain limitations in the interest of fairness or safety, however.
The proposed rule, which would impact any school or college that receives federal funding, would expand Title IX protections to include gender identity. Under the proposal, a “one-size-fits-all” ban on transgender athletes playing on teams that match their stated gender identity would be a violation of Title IX. The rule, which is likely to face challenges, will face a lengthy approval process.
This is, in fact, the exact opposite of the text of Title IX, which provides special protection for biological women, not men pretending to be women.
Under the radar, a package of bills is ramming through sweeping changes that will reorient our public schools around a new paradigm — subordinating academic basics to an obsessive, politicized preoccupation with race and social justice activism.
“Critical Social Justice” ideology (CSJ) — the vehicle for manipulating our young people into adopting this worldview — is laced strategically through a variety of bills, including “ethnic studies” (HF 1502), “Teachers of Color” (HF 320) and now the House and Senate omnibus education bills (HF 2497/SF 2684).
Taken together, this legislation will inject reductive, racialized thinking into every classroom in Minnesota’s approximately 500 school districts and charter schools; change the fundamental mechanics of education in our state; and give the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) and the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB) broad new powers that amount to an end-run around our state’s hallowed tradition of local control.
Here’s a story I missed earlier: “Kazakhstan Impounds Property of Roscosmos Subsidiary.” That’s the Russian company that’s the main operator of Baikonur spaceport. Haven’t seen any resolution to this, mainly because Russia is so broke thanks to mismanagement, sanctions, and an illegal war of territorial aggression.
Jay Leno drives the 1,025 horsepower 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170. I have an irrational desire to own something with a Hellcat engine, which I need like I need a hole in my head. Plus I like the look of the Shelby GT-500 Mustang better, and I’m not buying one of those either.
“Disney has proudly employed sex predators for years, and this act of aggression by DeSantis will force thousands of our proud pedo-American workers to leave the park to stay outside the 1,000-foot radius required by law,” said Disney CEO Bob Iger. “This is tyranny!”
More moving trucks left from California than any other state in 2022 for the third year in a row, while more Americans are flocking to Republican-led states like Texas and Florida, a new study published on Jan. 3 has found.
The study was conducted by the moving truck rental company, U-Haul, and found that Texas, Florida, and the Carolinas were the preferred destinations for one-way moving trucks in 2022, with those states ranking as the top growth states on the annual U-Haul Growth Index.
U-Haul’s Growth Index is compiled according to the net gain of one-way U-Haul trucks arriving in a state or city, versus those departing from that state or city each calendar year across the U.S. and Canada and is a strong indicator of what kind of job states and cities are attracting and maintaining residents, according to the company.
Texas is the top destination for U-Haul trucks for the second consecutive year and the fifth time since 2016, according to the study. That is followed by Florida, which has been a top-three growth state for seven years in a row. South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, and Idaho also saw strong growth rates in 2022, the study found.
I think I’ve posted a variation on this story just about every year I’ve published this blog…
From July 2021 to July 2022, 300,000 more people moved out of the state than moved in. New York had the largest population loss—in both percentage and absolute terms—experienced by any state during that period.
Sadly, this was both predictable and preventable.
In March 2021, a study of New York found that its already staggeringly high tax burden had worsened due to an increase in the top marginal tax rate to almost 15% for those in New York City. The study projected that the flood of people leaving would only accelerate—and it did.
Even before that study, the Empire State lost so many people that it cost New York a seat in Congress after the 2020 census. This exodus is a direct response to New York’s obscenely high taxes.
Just how bad is it? Compared with other states, New Yorkers:
Pay the highest total tax burden and highest share of personal income (14%) in taxes.
Endure the second-worst overall business-tax climate.
Face the highest individual income-tax rate and income-tax collections per capita.
Pay the second-highest state and local corporate income tax collections per capita.
Have the fourth-highest property taxes and local sales-tax rate (on average).
Pay the highest cigarette taxes and ninth-highest gasoline taxes.
Remember how I’ve noted that semiconductor memory manufacturers make money hand-over-fist in boom times and barely break even during busts? “Samsung Profits Plunge 69% As Global Chip Demand In ‘Full-Fledged Ice Age.'”
Turnabout is fair play: “U. Houston Prof Tells Students to Report Teachers Berating ‘White People or Christians to DEI Office.'”
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock takes pride in virtue signaling his city as a refuge for illegal aliens. Guess what?
Always keeping in mind Instapundit’s “Don’t get cocky!” warning, there are a whole lot of signs that this year’s midterm is going to be another Republican wave election along the lines of 2010 or 2014.
Here are some signposts for the impending Red Tsunami:
Remember how Democrats crowed how Roe vs. Wade was going to doom Republican electoral chances? Yeah, not so much.
Republicans made massive gains with independent women in recent weeks as Democrats ramped up their messaging on abortion ahead of the midterm elections.
Forty-nine percent of voters plan to vote for the Republican nominee to represent their House district while 45 percent said they’d back their Democratic opponent, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released Monday. Of particular note was a 32 point swing among independent women toward the GOP. In September’s iteration of the poll, Democrats boasted a 14 point lead among that demographic, but by October, Republicans held an 18 point advantage.
While Democratic officials and progressive commentators had suggested that the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade might lessen the expected electoral blow of the midterms, the swing toward the GOP among independent women — the group most heavily targeted by Democratic strategists — suggests that their focus on abortion might be to their own detriment.
In a TV segment last month, Republican operative Matt Gorman was rebuked by his fellow panelists for suggesting that abortion “is not in the top four of issues.”
Yamiche Alcindor of PBS and NBC insisted that on the campaign trail “abortion comes up 90 percent of the time” when she speaks with voters. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat and former senator who lost her re-election bid in 2016, shouted over other guests to declare “I hope Matt keeps saying that everywhere he goes — that abortion isn’t really an issue here in this election. I think it is exactly what infuriates women when they hear that.”
According to a study conducted by AdImpact, Democrats spent 73 million on messaging ads about abortion in September, which is “about a third of all Democratic television ad spending,” per NPR.
Twenty-six percent of voters in the Times/Siena poll identified the economy as the most important issue facing the country today. That was followed by inflation (18 percent), other (9 percent), the state of democracy (8 percent), immigration and abortion (five percent apiece), and then political division (four percent).
Only 24 percent of voters said the country was on the right track, while 64 percent indicated the opposite. Democrats presently hold the White House and majorities in both chambers of Congress, and President Joe Biden’s approval rating is nearly 20 points underwater.
So how do you explain a 32 point swing between two polls? A few possible answers: A.) Democrat’s loud, radical position on abortion is actually alienating independent women, B.) The crappy Biden economy is really starting to bite, or C.) Pollsters running biased polls to help Democrats simply stopped lying in order for their final electoral predictions to more closely match reality. Much as I’d like to believe A is the cause, I think C is the more likely culprit. Caveat: The sample was “792 likely voters nationwide,” which is a pretty damn small sample.
Democrats have no solutions to today’s crime surge.
Here’s how they shrug off the mayhem.
First: Deep denial.
Through Sept. 27, New Orleans suffered 208 homicides, up 44% versus that period in 2021 and 141% in 2019. The Crescent City has become America’s Murder Capital.
“I do not embrace that at all,” said Democratic Mayor La Toya Cantrell. “It isn’t based on what’s happening on the ground.” She later said that “our city is safer than it’s been in a long time.”
Crime books can be cooked: Curbing arrests can “erase” lawlessness by leaving it unrecorded. But there’s no faking a cadaver. Regardless, Cantrell scoffs at humiliating police data.
Then there’s the revolving door for violent criminals Soros-backed Democrat DAs have instituted:
100% gun control would not have stopped David Jakubonis who, last July 21, confronted Zeldin on the hustings, shoved a sharp keychain weapon beside the candidate’s neck, and said: “You’re done.”
Jakubonis was armed and threatened a congressman.
Regardless, he was free the next day before being arrested on federal charges.
Vincent Buccino savored pizza outside a Hell’s Kitchen eatery on Sept. 9.
An unprovoked attacker smashed a chair over his head and broke his arm.
The unidentified criminal remains at large.
Michael Palacios terrorized a Manhattan McDonald’s on Sept. 16. After harassing patrons, he yanked an ax from his backpack, menaced diners, and chopped up a table, chairs, and glass wall. He, too, was arrested and swiftly sprung without bail.
Palacios was arrested again on Oct. 11, for alleged graffiti and bicycle theft.
Once more, Palacios was freed without bail.
And if you dare to notice this, Democrats will call you a racist. “Democrats shout, ‘Racism!’ as often as people exhale.”
In July 2021, House Bill 1054 took effect in the Evergreen State after being passed by the Democratic state legislature and signed by the Democratic governor over the objections of [Chelan County sheriff Brian Burnett] and state law-enforcement associations.
Before they can pursue a vehicle, the new law requires that officers ensure that four conditions have been met: (1) An officer must have either a reasonable suspicion a driver is impaired due to drugs or alcohol, or probable cause to believe that he has committed certain kinds of violent crimes or sex crimes; (2) pursuit must be necessary to identify or apprehend the suspect; (3) the driver must be an imminent threat to the safety of others such that the risks of not pursuing him outweigh the risks of pursuit; and (4) a supervisor has authorized pursuit.
Burnett told National Review that these restrictions represent a threat to public safety. Anecdotally, that’s evidenced by Spitzer’s sojourn across the region and, statistically, it’s backed up by the data. Prior to HB 1054’s taking effect, the state recorded, on average, around 2,000 stolen vehicles per month. Since its passage, that figure has soared, reaching heights in excess of 4,000 per month.
“What we’re seeing on an average daily basis — whether it’s our jurisdiction or one of our neighboring jurisdictions — is there’s people that don’t stop for us all day long,” said Burnett. “It can be anything from a stolen vehicle, to somebody that we have probable cause on, or just a basic traffic stop, and, you know, next thing on it’s pedal to the metal and they’re off and running,” he continued.
Burnett and his fellow law-enforcement officials had foreseen these issues and lobbied against the bill, but he said lawmakers refused to take their concerns seriously.
“The response early on — because we have a Democratic-controlled Senate and House, and it’s a fairly large margin there — it was almost to the point of, I’ll call it arrogance,” remembered Burnett. The message the legislature sent to the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs was: “We don’t need you, we don’t need your opinion,” he added. “We were begging them and telling them and giving them reasons why: ‘Please don’t do this, it’s bad, bad policy,’” he said, but they ignored the pleas, because their majorities (57–41 in the House and 28–21 in the Senate) empower them to impose their will without compromise. But public opinion will probably assert itself eventually, given that crime is surging in the state: Washington set records for homicides in 2020 and then again 2021.
Democrats have a long history, stretching back at least into the 1970s, of soft-on-crime policies costing them elections. And Soros DAs intent on “bail reform” have made them even softer on crime than they were in the nadir of the 1970s.
The 40,000-foot view is bad enough, but it’s the steady drumbeat of discouraging race-by-race poll results that now has Democrats bracing for a punishing midterm.
In the battle to break the 50-50 tie in the Senate, Republicans have taken small leads in Wisconsin and Nevada, and Herschel Walker is still hanging around despite the October-surprise claims about his ex-girlfriend’s abortion. RealClearPolitics now puts Dr. Oz in the lead in Pennsylvania, after adjusting for historical polling errors, and projects a 52-48 GOP Senate majority.
In the House, counting “safe,” “likely” and “leans,” RealClearPolitics gives Republicans a 221-176 lead, with 38 more races considered toss-ups. In June, that outlet projected the GOP would gain 24.5 seats; now it forecasts a 27-seat pickup.
In reliably blue Oregon, a Republican is poised to take the governorship for the first time in 35 years. Michigan governor and lockdown enthusiast Gretchen Whitmer is up only now leading by just 5 points in the latest poll. Even the New York governor race has tightened up, with Quinnipiac putting Democrat Kathy Hochul up only 4 points — and independents breaking toward challenger Lee Zeldin 57% to 37%.
“I think we had three really good weeks in August that everybody patted themselves on the back,” an anonymous Democratic advisor to major donors tells Politico. “We were like, ‘Yeah, that should be enough to overcome two years of shitty everything’.” Now, he says, “It’s not looking great. The best we can hope for right now is a 50-50 Senate, but the House is long gone.”
Oddsmakers have similarly flipped red when it comes to the GOP’s chances of retaking the Senate, joining a longstanding bet that they’ll win control of the House.
Yes, Democrats “peaked” on election night in 2020 when they used massive voting fraud in a handful of districts to steal the election for Biden (along with a senate race or two) and then acted like they had a blowout mandate to impose social justice on the country.
The Democrat label is now toxic, and every time voters see Democrats speak, they seem to turn against them.
The Republican surge is animated by decisive debate victories on Friday in three key races: Georgia (Senate), Michigan (Governor), and Wisconsin (Governor). Georgia had been trending Democrat before the debate under the weight of Hershel Walker’s scandals, but likely no more.
Tudor Dixon, the Republican candidate for Governor of Michigan, seemed like a hopeless case, but now, on the strength of a decisive win in her debate with incumbent Democrat Gretchen Whitmer the race seems winnable. The Republican Governor’s Association, after waiting to commit, now is pumping millions into her campaign. Responding to Dixon’s surge, former president Obama has announced plans to campaign against her in Michigan.
And, in Wisconsin, Republican Tim Michaels clearly defeated a largely passive and obviously aging Democratic governor Tony Evers.
Walker was supposed to lose the debate because, as a football hero, he’s not necessarily very articulate. Coming up against an experienced pastor, Senator Raphael Warnock’s chances seemed dim. But Walker surprised everyone with a strong performance. Whatever the issue he pivoted to bring it back to inflation and Joe Biden. Surprisingly, on abortion he indicated new flexibility and backed it in cases of rape or a danger to the life of the mother. But, above all he seemed to have mastered his new trade of politics and was able to spar with the best of them.
The most important debate will come next week in Pennsylvania Senate race between Dr. Oz and stroke-impaired John Fetterman on October 25th. Fetterman won’t release his medical records and recent on camera interviews indicate that he mispronounces words and cannot easily understand what he hears unless it is printed out in front of him.
Whatever his medical prognosis, he cannot recover from his radical positions on pardoning and releasing one in three Pennsylvania prison inmates and on defunding the police.
Other than the Oz-Fetterman race, we now lead in all contests for seats currently held by the Republicans. North Carolina is close but Ted Budd holds a consistent lead. And, despite a less than stellar debate performance, JD Vance is ahead in Ohio.
“Every debate has tanked the Democrat in the polls.”
Things are so bad that Democrats are shifting money from safe seats to really safe seats.
Some “safe seats” aren’t very safe anymore for suddenly vulnerable Democrats, and that has panicked PACs moving campaign dollars to protect previously invulnerable seats.
We’re down to the wire in Election 2022, and stuff just got real.
Today’s news takes us to deep blue Oregon, where onetime shoo-in Kurt Schrader just got the rug pulled out from under him by his own Democrat Party as he fights off Republican Amy Ryan Courser. According to AdImpact (as spotted by Josh Kraushaar), party ad spending for Schrader in the 5th district was shifted to the 6th to boost Andrea Salinas against Republican Mike Erickson. [As noted in the comments below, Jamie McLeod-Skinner defeated Rep. Kurt Schrader in the Democratic Primary. -LP]
Maybe you’re thinking this kind of thing happens all the time, and it does.
But it doesn’t often happen that Democrats appear to be writing off a district that Presidentish Joe Biden won in 2020 by nine points, to shore up a district that Biden won by 13 points.
If 10-and-up is the Democrats’ new firewall, they’re in bigger trouble than even I imagined. Complicating things even more for Oregon Democrats, gubernatorial candidate Tina Kotek (looking to replace the outgoing and execrable Kate Brown) regularly polls behind Republican Christine Drazan.
Stephen Green notes that Oregon may be a special case because “Portland has served as Ground Zero for some of the craziest progressive ideas being put into terrible practice.” Wait, turning your city over to Antifa for endless riots isn’t popular with voters? Who knew?
You know who else thinks Democrats have gone to far pushing social justice? Would you believe the Lightbringer himself?
Former President Barack Obama slammed Democrats in a recent podcast, calling them “buzzkills” whose identity politics and cancel culture rhetoric force people to “walk on eggshells.”
Speaking with four of his former employees on the Pod Save America podcast, the former prez said that his fellow Democrats need to tone it down and understand that everyone makes mistakes, the Daily Mail reports.
“Sometimes Democrats are [buzzkills]. Sometimes people just want to not feel as if they are walking on eggshells, and they want some acknowledgment that life is messy and that all of us, at any given moment, can say things the wrong way, make mistakes,” he said, adding that Democrats should learn from he felt were his mistakes as president.
What does it say when the biggest beneficiary of white guilt and victimhood identity politics in political history says that Democrats have gone too far in that direction?
A sane party might be inclined to listen to him.
But the Democratic Party hasn’t been sane in a long, long time…
Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Biden’s vaccine mandate receives another blow in court, Biden stumbles his way through another press conferences, and a Joe Rogan podcast lays bare social justice perfidy.
After SCOTUS last week rejected the administration’s attempt to force corporations to abide by the mandate via OSHA, a federal court in Texas has issued an injunction against Biden’s jab mandate for federal workers, the other part of his administration’s attempts to force vaccines on reluctant Americans – a strategy that Biden has already abandoned in favor of providing at-home COVID tests to all Americans.
Biden issued both mandates by executive order back in September.
Trump-appointed Judge Jeffrey Brown of the US Court for the Southern District of Texas said the case was not about whether individuals should be vaccinated or even about federal power more broadly. Instead, he said it’s about “whether the president can, with the stroke of a pen and without the input of Congress, require millions of federal employees to undergo a medical procedure as a condition of their employment,” Brown wrote.
“That, under the current state of the law as just recently expressed by the Supreme Court, is a bridge too far.”
James Lindsay (AKA @Conceptual James) did an interview with Joe Rogan that may be as devastating to Social Justice Warriors as Rogan’s McCullough and Malone interviews were to the Official Flu Manchu Narrative. Some excerpts:
On Joe Rogan, @ConceptualJames discusses how Neo-Marxist indoctrination in schools has frightening parallels with the Chinese Cultural Revolution. pic.twitter.com/T9eFBMS3Kr
Biden had a press conference where he mixed some lies in with the usual rambling.
‘My plan cuts the deficit, and it boosts the economy by getting more people into the workforce’
Biden and his aides received intense scrutiny in the fall after they clung to a line that claimed the president’s spending plans would cost zero dollars — even after multiple analyses found that was not the case.
Biden seemingly recycled that line during his press conference Wednesday when he claimed more than once that his proposals would not add to the deficit.
The Congressional Budget Office found that the Build Back Better Act would add $3 trillion to the deficit by 2031 if its programs were permanent rather than allowed to expire on what critics have described as artificially short time frames designed to give the bill the appearance of costing less.
If the programs expired as written by Democrats, the Build Back Better Act would still add $367 billion to the deficit by 2031, according to the CBO.
Experts have also debunked Biden’s claim that the bill would boost the economy overall.
The Penn-Wharton Budget Model from the University of Pennsylvania found that Biden’s plan would reduce America’s gross domestic product over several decades and would even slightly lower hourly wages over the same time period.
Focus group shows that independents (people who vote for both Obama and Trump) hate Biden’s America.
these independents are “resigned rejecters” — deeply pessimistic about the state of the country, deeply disappointed by President Biden, and about as dissatisfied with the status quo as one can get.
Alice, a 60-year-old Latina from New York who works as a supervisor for homeless services, described her community as returning to an almost-lawless Hobbesian state* of the strong dominating the weak through force, violence, and intimidation: “I think they’ve taken us back to cave-man time, where you would walk around with a club — ‘I want what you have.’ You’re not even safe to walk around and go to the train station, because somebody might throw you off the train, okay? It’s a regression.”
Dickie, a 38-year-old white financial analyst from Texas concurred: “When Alice was talking about the cave-man thing, I can agree with that. I’ve had my bike stolen here in Austin, in a very gentrified neighborhood, four different times in the last seven, eight months. Things are kind of chaotic. I feel like there’s no rules, really.”
Twelve of the 14 said the level of crime is up in America today compared to a year ago.
If statements like that aren’t a flashing neon sign declaring “DO SOMETHING ABOUT CRIME!” I don’t know what is.
“How well do the SARS-CoV-2 shots work against the Omicron virus variant? The Danish study results shown in the graph found the Pfizer and Moderna shots provide some protection for a couple months, followed by a higher risk of infection than no shots at all. I don’t call that ‘working.'” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
An exiting resident laments the decline of Portland:
This small business owner in Portland is being forced to close his restaurant because of constant break-ins by homeless addicts. He says crime is rising not despite progressive policies but because of them. He’s right. pic.twitter.com/Hkm1YSejG1
Speaking of Democrat-run hellholes in the Pacific northwest: “Meet The Seattle Schools Woke Indoctrination Czar Who Married A Child Molester.”
Despite decades of the most aggressive equity programs anyone could ask for, Seattle’s racial disparities are among the worst in the nation – and they’re getting worse, not better.
At the forefront of Seattle Public Schools’ (SPS) initiatives was Tracy Castro-Gill, until recently its director of ethnic studies, who represented herself as a fierce Chicana who overcame homelessness and was willing to take on racism no matter who she had to battle, turning schools into vehicles for social change.
Castro-Gill, it turned out, was a perennially unhappy toxic liar, one who misrepresented her background to the point that her own father compared her to Rachel Dolezal, and who was ultimately pushed out of her job for repeated misconduct. A focus on racial oppression did not create resiliency, but rather despondency, with Castro-Gill and three other racial justice leaders going on paid leave from SPS for mental health issues in 2019 alone.
As Castro-Gill used children for politics in the workplace, her personal life also raised questions about the costs that can incur. She married a convicted child molester and moved her young daughter in with him. Then, her previous ex-husband told me, she pressured her child, who had serious mental impairments, to become gender-nonbinary.
The academic achievement of Seattle’s youth plummeted as she implemented initiatives like replacing math instruction with courses on “power and oppression.” But in this world, there was no such thing as failing: Those gaps were used to justify still more jobs and efforts like hers.
Meatloaf, RIP. For a guy I thought of more as a singer, he had a long, active, and actually pretty impressive acting career. (“His name is Robert Paulsen!”) Only a small number of you will get this:
Another mandate injunction, Democrats continue their popularity freefall, China seals more dirty deals, and Turkey melts down. It’s another Friday LinkSwarm!
A federal judge in Texas has issued a preliminary injunction, stopping a new rule from the Biden administration requiring healthcare workers to receive the COVID vaccine as the case moves through the courts.
The injunction came from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Amarillo. The case was filed by Attorney General Ken Paxton on behalf of the State of Texas against Xavier Becerra, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services secretary.
The injunction was sought against a federal rule that would have required employers that receive Medicaid and Medicare funds—namely hospitals and other healthcare providers—to require their employees to receive a COVID vaccine as a condition of employment.
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ordered that the federal government provide notice to all Medicaid and Medicare providers in Texas that the mandate “will not be implemented or enforced.”
“Healthcare facilities covered by the [Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services] Mandate have a tremendous reliance interest in Medicare and Medicaid funds. Therefore, Defendants unconstitutionally use Congress’s spending powers to ‘commandeer a State’s . . . administrative apparatus for federal purposes’ by conditioning Medicare and Medicaid funds on state surveyor compliance with the mandate,” wrote Kacsmaryk. “As a result, not only would the CMS Mandate prohibit Plaintiffs from enforcing its duly enacted COVID-19 vaccination regulations, but it would likely force Plaintiffs to administer a federal mandate that has a dubious statutory basis.”
“It is a ‘gun to the head’ and an unconstitutional use of Congress’s spending powers to compel Plaintiffs through ‘financial inducement’ to forgo exercising their police powers to enforce a federal statute.”
Democrat support from independent voters has fallen near the crucial 40% line, while almost half of all independent voters tell Gallup that they’re leaning Republican.
“If you’re a Democrat and you’re not terrified,” says The Dispatch’s Avi Woolf, “you should be.”
Well, I’m neither a Democrat nor terrified, but I am conservative and — at least for now — quite giddy.
Gallup recently updated its long-term party affiliation poll, which asks American voters one or two simple questions:
In politics, as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat or an independent?
(If they ID as independents) As of today, do you lean more to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party?
Currently, 31% say they’re Republicans, up slightly from the usual mid-20s to 30%. 41% told Gallup that they’re independent voters, in line with the average swing. Only 27% self-ID as Democrats, which is down from the more typical 29-32%.
As recently as May, Democrats were at 32% and the GOP at a dismal 25%.
But that’s before Presidentish Joe Biden had had a chance to do much other than send out FREE! MONEY! (handouts that helped cause our present inflation) and smile for the glowing press coverage. Since then, important parts of his agenda have taken hold and the malign incompetence of his cabinet has been fully revealed.
Apparently, Americans don’t think much of either.
But it’s the second question that should have Washington Democrats changing their shorts.
Indies, asked whether they lean towards the Democrats or the GOP, broke for the GOP 47% to 41%.
At this time in Barack Obama’s first term, the breakdown was a much more Dem-friendly 25R/41I/32D. And the Indy swing was exactly reversed, 41R/47D.
Yet the Democrats still lost a whopping 63 seats in the House and seven more in the Senate in the following midterm election.
Obama enjoyed immensely more personal popularity than Biden does — I know, I don’t get it, either — but couldn’t stop a GOP tsunami when his agenda proved unpopular.
Biden has both an unpopular agenda and a high unfavorable rating draped around his neck like a lead life preserver. And now voters are leaving his party in droves.
The woke are coming for all that sweet, sweet Medicare money.
Buried in the Department of Health and Human Services’s fiscal planning for next year is a proposal to establish bonuses for physicians who “create and implement an anti-racism plan.”
“The plan should include a clinic-wide review of existing tools and policies, such as value statements or clinical practice guidelines, to ensure that they include and are aligned with a commitment to anti-racism and an understanding of race as a political and social construct, not a physiological one,” the HHS writes . “The plan should also identify ways in which issues and gaps identified in the review can be addressed and should include target goals and milestones for addressing prioritized issues and gaps. This may also include an assessment and drafting of an organization’s plan to prevent and address racism and/or improve language access and accessibility to ensure services are accessible and understandable for those seeking care.”
I’m sure this will go over great with Medicare patients. “Mam, I can’t check on your osteoporosis until you check your privilege!” (Hat tip: Mickey Kaus.)
After Democrats abandoned trying to pass Biden’s giant leftwing “Build Back Better” porkfest this year, is the bill actually dead forever? South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham thinks so.
The South Carolina Republican said that the Congressional Budget Office score, which found the $1.75 trillion bill would add $3 trillion to the deficit, is what led to its demise.
‘I think Build Back Better is dead forever and let me tell you why: Because Joe Manchin has said he’s not going to vote for a bill that will add to the deficit,’ he said on Fox News’ Hannity Wednesday night.
‘Well, if you do away with the budget gimmicks, Build Back Better, according to the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] adds $3 trillion to the deficit.’
‘This is b******t. You’re b******t,’ the West Virginia senator yelled at Arthur Delaney, a reporter for HuffPost Politics, who asked him about reports that the child tax credit has become a major sticking point in his talks with the White House.
‘I’m done, I’m done,’ Manchin fumed as the questions continued.
‘Guys, I’m not negotiating with any of you all. You can ask all the questions you want. Guys, let me go,’ he told the press as he walked through the basement of the Capitol, muttering ‘God almighty’ as he walked away.
What is behind recent pessimistic appraisals of democracy’s future, from Hillary Clinton, Adam Schiff, Brian Williams, and other elite intellectuals, media personalities, and politicians on the left? Some are warning about its possible erosion in 2024. Others predict democracy’s downturn as early 2022, with scary scenarios of “autocracy” and former President Donald Trump “coups.”
To answer that question, understand first what is not behind these shrill forecasts.
They are not worried about 2 million foreign nationals crashing the border in a single year, without vaccinations during a pandemic. Yet it seems insurrectionary for a government simply to nullify its own immigration laws.
They are not worried that some 800,000 foreign nationals, some residing illegally, will now vote in New York City elections.
They are not worried that there are formal efforts underway to dismantle the U.S. Constitution by junking the 233-year-old Electoral College or the preeminence of the states in establishing ballot laws in national elections.
They are not worried that we are witnessing an unprecedented left-wing effort to scrap the 180-year-old filibuster, the 150-year-old nine-person Supreme Court, and the 60-year tradition of 50 states, for naked political advantage.
They are not worried that the Senate this year put on trial an impeached ex-president and private citizen, without the chief justice in attendance, without a special prosecutor or witnesses, and without a formal commission report of presidential high crimes and misdemeanors.
They are not worried that the FBI, Justice Department, CIA, Hillary Clinton, and members of the Obama Administration systematically sought to use U.S. government agencies to sabotage a presidential campaign, transition, and presidency, via the use of a foreign national and ex-spy Christopher Steele and his coterie of discredited Russian sources.
They are not worried that the Pentagon suddenly has lost the majority support of the American people. Top current and retired officers have flagrantly violated the chain-of-command, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and without data or evidence have announced a hunt in the ranks for anyone suspected of “white rage” or “white supremacy.”
They are not worried that in 2020, a record 64% of the electorate did not cast their ballots on Election Day.
Nor are they worried that the usual rejection rate in most states of non-Election Day ballots plunged—even as an unprecedented 101 million ballots were cast by mail or early voting.
And they are certainly not worried that partisan billionaires of Silicon Valley poured well over $400 million into selected precincts in swing states to “help” public agencies conduct the election.
What then is behind this new left-wing hysteria about the supposed looming end of democracy?
It is quite simple. The left expects to lose power over the next two years—both because of the way it gained and used it, and because of its radical, top-down agendas that never had any public support.
After gaining control of both houses of Congress and the presidency – with an obsequious media and the support of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, higher education, popular culture, entertainment and professional sports – the left has managed in just 11 months to alienate a majority of voters.
The nation has been wracked by unprecedented crime and nonenforcement of the borders. Leftist district attorneys either won’t indict criminals; they let them out of jails or both.
Illegal immigration and inflation are soaring. Deliberate cuts in gas and oil production helped spike fuel prices.
All this bad news is on top of the Afghanistan disaster, worsening racial relations, and an enfeebled president.
Democrats are running 10 points behind the Republicans in generic polls, with the midterms less than a year away.
President Joe Biden’s negatives run between 50% and 57%—in Trump’s own former underwater territory.
Less than a third of the country wants Biden to run for reelection. In many head-to-head polls, Trump now defeats Biden.
In other words, leftist elites are terrified that democracy will work too robustly.
After the Russian collusion hoax, two impeachments, the Hunter Biden laptop stories, the staged melodramas of the Kavanaugh hearings, the Jussie Smollett con, the Covington kids smear, and the Rittenhouse trial race frenzy, the people are not just worn out by leftist hysterias, but they also weary of how the left gains power and administers it.
Hey, remember all the way back to two weeks ago when I said that Turkey’s collapsing currency was something we should keep an eye on? Well, guess what? “Turkey Halts All Stock Trading As Currency Disintegrates, Central Bank Powerless To Halt Collapse.” ZeroHedge suggests that the collapse is engineered to disguise how much graft Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his cronies have stolen from the country.
The Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies has long brushed off questions about its role in China’s state surveillance, saying it just sells general-purpose networking gear.
A review by The Washington Post of more than 100 Huawei PowerPoint presentations, many marked “confidential,” suggests that the company has had a broader role in tracking China’s populace than it has acknowledged.
These marketing presentations, posted to a public-facing Huawei website before the company removed them late last year, show Huawei pitching how its technologies can help government authorities identify individuals by voice, monitor political individuals of interest, manage ideological reeducation and labor schedules for prisoners, and help retailers track shoppers using facial recognition.
Citing both interviews and direct access to internal Apple documents about repeated visits by Cook to China in the mid-2010s, the report describes a $275 billion deal whereby Apple committed to investing heavily in technology infrastructure and training in the country.
The non-binding five-year deal was signed by Cook during a 2016 visit, and it was made partially to mitigate or prevent regulatory action by the Chinese government that would have had significant negative effects on Apple’s operations and business in the country.
The Information details the nature of the Chinese government priorities included in the 1,250-word deal:
They included a pledge to help Chinese manufacturers develop “the most advanced manufacturing technologies” and “support the training of high-quality Chinese talents.”
In addition, Apple promised to use more components from Chinese suppliers in its devices, sign deals with Chinese software firms, collaborate on technology with Chinese universities and directly invest in Chinese tech companies… Apple promised to invest “many billions of dollars more” than what the company was already spending annually in China. Some of that money would go toward building new retail stores, research and development centers and renewable energy projects, the agreement said.
“Disgrace: Biden abandoned over 60,000 Afghan interpreters, support personnel — along with 14,000 Americans.”
“Trump’s Social Media Platform Gets $1 Billion Investment Boost, Dems Get Nervous.” It will be interesting to see how quickly TRUTH Social can get off the ground.
In yesterday’s post, I forgot to link to these Log4J memes. Enjoy!
Why New York City lags the rest of the nation in unemployment. Thank lockdowns, shutdowns, and insane government. “The economy is not a light switch. The supply chain is not a light switch.” The money quote “New York City is just not that amazing!”
Popular Mexican singer Vincente Fernandez died, and the woke couldn’t wait to crap on his grave:
If you had to tell the story of why Hispanics are abandoning the Democrats in droves using a single image, it would look something like this.
Did you know that an Israeli airstrike hit a Syrian port last week? Did you see anything about that in the news? Seems like the sort of thing the media would cover before they decided that a bunch of lunatics shouting at J.K. Rowling is more important.
Texas House Speaker Dade Phalen attends fundraiser for quorum-busting Democrats in the Rio Grande Valley (including State Reps. Terry Canales, Sergio Munoz Jr., Oscar Longoria, Armando Martinez, and Bobby Guerra, and State Sen. Chuy Hinojosa) while skipping a Republican event a mile away. Remind me again why Phalen is speaker?
“Pasadena Mechanic Sues City Over Parking Space Regulation Prohibiting His Business from Operating.”
There’s nothing this Austin City Council can’t seem to ruin, including the Trail of Lights.
Speaking of science experiments: What happens when you hit a gong with a baseball traveling at Mach 1.5? And you know there’s super-slow motion involved…
Whoa:
A Hutchinson, KS business just West of the Airport destroyed during 80+ mph gusts around 4:30pm.#kswxpic.twitter.com/Yd6ul9EeBo
At least 12 major US cities have already set historical murder records in 2021, even as three weeks remain in the year.
Philadelphia, the nation’s sixth largest city, recorded 523 murders as of Dec. 7, surpassing its formal grim milestone of 500 murders, which was set in 1990, police data showed.
The City of Brotherly Love had recorded significantly more murders in 2021 than New York City’s 443, despite having approximately six times fewer residents.
“It’s terrible to every morning get up and have to go look at the numbers and then look at the news and see the stories. It’s just crazy. It’s just crazy and this needs to stop,” Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, a Democrat, reportedly said after his city broke its own infamous benchmark.
Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis, Indiana; Louisville, Kentucky; St Paul, Minnesota; Portland, Oregon; Tucson, Arizona; Toledo, Ohio; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Austin, Texas; Rochester, New York and Albuquerque, New Mexico also had their deadliest years on record, according to ABC News.
Five of those cities topped notorious benchmarks that were set in 2020, the article said. All of them were led by Democratic mayors, as are the vast majority of US cities.
Funny how that happens.
Lots of those cities (including Philadelphia) have George Soros-backed DAs who seem intent on putting violent felons back on the street to continue terrorizing law-abiding citizens.
To the surprise of no one on the conservative side of the political aisle, the Dem-controlled cities that are run by BLM/Antifa fans have been experiencing…struggles with crime since they were gripped by the “defund the police” frenzy in 2020.
Many of these cities hurried to hit the reset button and re-fund their police forces in an effort to combat crime. Cops haven’t exactly been willing to rush back in droves to municipalities that were gleefully giving them the finger in the name of wokeness just a year ago, but at least the people in charge are admitting there’s a problem.
That stands in sharp contrast to the approach recently taken by prominent Democrats in a couple of America’s biggest crime-riddled hellholes: Chicago and Philadelphia.
Kevin has a story about Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s “thinking outside the box” solution to her city’s infestation of thieves. She’s opted for victim shaming:
I’m disappointed that they’re not doing more to take safety and make it a priority. For example, we still have retailers that won’t institute plans like having security officers in their stores, making sure that they’ve got cameras that are actually operational, locking up their merchandise at night, chaining high-end bags. These purses can be something that is attracting a lot of organized retail theft units,”
“If only she hadn’t worn that dress…”
Stupid stores with your wares that attract the eyes of lawless scum! Why can’t you hire some aging, overweight security guards and stop making your mayor look bad? Ingrates!
By the way, Chicago is having its worst murder year since 1994 while Mayor Mouthfoot is playing make-believe.
Let us move on to Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Thugs. Rick writes about the city’s district attorney, who wants the public to know that EVERYTHING IS FINE:
Larry Krasner, the Soros-backed District Attorney in Philadelphia, wants everyone in the city to know that he’s got things under control. Sure, there’s been a record spike in homicides, but besides that, everything in Philly is just peachy.
“We don’t have a crisis of lawlessness, we don’t have a crisis of crime, we don’t have a crisis of violence,” the district attorney told reporters at a Monday press conference. “It’s important that we don’t let this become mushy and bleed into the notion that there is some kind of big spike in crime. There isn’t. There is not a big spike in crime. … There is not a big spike in violent crime. Neither one of these things is true.”
Rick goes on to explain that Krasner is engaging in some political sleight of hand here. Krasner is able to say that crime isn’t spiking because he simply isn’t prosecuting criminals who would have been prosecuted in the past. Progressive DAs are almost always pro-criminal.
Oh, wait…Philly is also in the midst of a frightening increase in homicides. The city has suffered its highest body count since 1960.
So, there is no real problem as long as you ignore the dead guy on your lawn.
Crime rates will continue to spiral until Democrats become more concerned with protecting law-abiding citizens from violent felons than earning social justice brownie points, or until the citizens of blue cities finally reach their breaking points and are willing to throw the bums out.
