Posts Tagged ‘Rostov’

LinkSwarm For August 8, 2025

Friday, August 8th, 2025

The redistricting wars escalate to previously unseen heights, Paxton launches investigation of Democratic orgs backing the quorum busters, Ukraine hits a lot more Russian infrastructure, another spite prosecution from Travis County’s Soros-baked DA, and Saturday Night Live is just as profitable as NBC’s other late night shows.

It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • How it started: Texas Democrats sue in an effort to save one Commissioner Court’s seat in Galveston County. How it’s going: “Trump Orders New U.S. Census That Excludes Illegal Immigrants.”

    President Donald Trump has directed the Commerce Department to conduct a new census that excludes illegal immigrants from its population count.

    “I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” Trump said in a Truth Social post Tuesday morning. “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS.”

    The Constitution mandates a census be conducted every ten years to apportion congressional districts. Since the first census was conducted in 1790, the count has reflected each state’s total population, including noncitizens.

    It’s unclear whether Trump can instruct that illegal aliens be excluded from the census without the approval of Congress, as Article I Section 2 of the Constitution empowers the legislature to determine when and how censuses are conducted.

    When Trump tried to end the practice of counting illegal aliens in the census in his first term, he argued that the executive branch has discretionary power to determine who qualifies as a U.S. resident for apportionment purposes. The move faced legal challenges and was ultimately overturned by Joe Biden before it could take effect.

    Because House districts are apportioned “according to [states’] respective Numbers,” high-immigration states could lose congressional seats and electoral votes if illegal immigrants are not counted in the census. If noncitizens had been left out of the 2020 census, California, Florida, and Texas would have each lost a congressional seat, and Alabama, Minnesota, and Ohio would have retained one seat each they otherwise would have lost, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.

    Maybe this is a cunning ploy to force Democrats to argue before the Supreme Court that illegal aliens count as 3/5ths of a person…

  • Meanwhile, in Texas, the redistricting battle is white-hot following the latest Democratic State Representative’s quorum break. “AG Paxton Launches Investigation Into Soros-Funded Texas Majority PAC. This is the second investigation launched by Paxton in as many days seeking information from groups alleged to be supporting the Texas House Democrat quorum break.”

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced the launch of a formal investigation into Texas Majority PAC—funded by leftist billionaire George Soros—for its “role in potentially unlawful financial coordination and bribery of Democratic legislators who fled Texas to break quorum.”

    The Texas Majority PAC was founded by former staffers from Robert “Beto” O’Rourke’s unsuccessful campaign for governor and has since gained national attention. The PAC is largely funded by leftist billionaire George Soros. Latest reports indicate it has around $600,000 cash-on-hand.

    Paxton described the PAC as “radical,” with a mission aligned with other left-leaning organizations aiming to influence Texas politics.

    Paxton alleges that the PAC played a “coordinating role” in assisting with illegal fundraising operations and possibly bribing Texas House members. These actions, Paxton maintains, may have incentivized lawmakers to abandon their legislative responsibilities, an act that—if financially rewarded—could constitute bribery under state law.

    “If Texas lawmakers are bowing to the Soros Slush Fund rather than the will of the voters, Texans deserve to know. Getting financial payouts under the table to abandon your legislative duties is bribery,” Paxton stated. “Texas Majority PAC’s actions seem to indicate that it may be using its Soros-funded resources to break the law and fund the illegal abandonment of public office. If that’s the case as determined by this investigation, there will be a heavy price to pay.”

    As part of the ongoing investigation, Paxton’s office has issued a formal Request to Examine to Texas Majority PAC seeking documents and records related to the alleged activities.

    You know discovery for this is going to be lit…

  • That was the second investigation. The first? “Paxton Launches Investigation Into Beto O’Rourke Organization for Alleged Bribery of ‘Runaway’ Democratic Lawmakers. Powered by People may have violated bribery laws, Paxton alleged.”

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is launching an investigation into Beto O’Rourke’s organization Powered by People for allegedly “bankrolling” the Texas House Democrats’ ongoing quorum break.

    The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) asserts that according to “public reports,” Powered by People is potentially one the top funders of the recent quorum bust by Texas Democrats, who left the state in protest to House Republicans’ proposed redistricting map — alleging racist motivations and unconstitutional actions.

    Paxton said in a press release on Wednesday afternoon, “Any Democrat coward breaking the law by taking a Beto Bribe will be held accountable. Texas cannot be bought.”

    “I look forward to thoroughly reviewing all of the documents and communications obtained throughout this investigation,” he said.

    The OAG ordered on Tuesday that all quorum-breaking House Democrats must return by Friday morning when the House gavels in, per House Speaker Dustin Burrows’ (R-Lubbock) declaration, or else face removal from the membership.

    Did they return? They did not. Hence:

  • “Paxton Files Texas Supreme Court Petition to Declare 13 Democratic House Seats Vacant.”

    The Texas House again failed to meet a quorum on Friday afternoon, and now Attorney General Ken Paxton is taking additional legal action against 13 Democratic members that fled to other states.

    Paxton has targeted state Reps. Ron Reynolds (D-Missouri City), Vikki Goodwin (D-Austin), Gina Hinojosa (D-Austin), James Talarico (D-Austin), Gene Wu (D-Houston), Lulu Flores (D-Austin), Mihaela Plesa (D-Dallas), Suleman Lalani (D-Sugar Land), Chris Turner (D-Grand Prairie), Ana-Maria Rodriguez Ramos (D-Richardson), Jessica Gonzalez (D-Dallas), John Bucy (D-Austin), and Christina Morales (D-Houston).

    This follows Abbott petitioning the Texas Supreme Court to vacate Wu’s seat.

    I’m in Bucy’s district (TX-136), so I could theoretically run for his seat, assuming I was a glutton for punishment…

    The petition was filed with the Supreme Court of Texas (SCOTX), with the intention to have their seats declared vacant.

    “Because Respondents have abandoned their offices as State Representatives, the Attorney General, on behalf of the State, seeks a declaration that those positions are vacant.”

    The petition goes on to state that because the Democratic members named in the suit “have announced that they refuse to perform the duties of their offices, they have abandoned them, and this Court should declare their offices vacant.”

    It adds, “These actions aim to prevent the Legislature from exercising the legislative power conferred on it by the Texas Constitution, Tex. Const. art. III, § 1, depriving the people of Texas of a functioning government and, if allowed to continue, would create ‘an absolute supermajoritarian check on the legislature’s ability to pass legislation opposed by a minority faction.’”

  • Bret Weinstein offers pretty powerful testimony.

    “Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we must zoom out if we are to understand the pattern that we are gathered here to explore, because the pattern is larger than federal health agencies and the COVID cartel. If we do zoom out and ask, what are they hiding?”

    “The answer becomes as obvious as it is disturbing. They are hiding everything. It will be jarring for many to hear a scientist speak with such certainty. It should be jarring. We are trained to present ideas with caution as hypotheses in need of a test. But in this case, I have tested the idea, and I am as certain of it as I am of anything. We are being systematically blinded.”

    “It is the only explanation I have encountered that will not only describe the present, but also, in my experience, predicts the future with all but perfect accuracy. The pattern is a simple one. You can see it clearly and test it yourself. Every single institution dedicated to public truth-seeking is under simultaneous attack.”

    “They are all in a state of collapse. Every body of experts fails utterly. Individual experts who resist or worse in an attempt to return their institutions to sanity, they find themselves coerced into submission. If they won’t buckle, they are marginalized or forced out.”

    “Those outside of the institutions who either seek truth alone or who build new institutions with a truth seeking mission face merciless attacks on both their integrity and expertise. often by the very institutions whose mission they refuse to abandon. There is a saying in military circles, once is a mistake, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action.”

  • “HHS to Announce Proposed Rule Cutting Off Medicare, Medicaid Funding to Hospitals Offering Trans Procedures to Minors.”

    The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will publicly announce on Thursday its new proposed rule banning Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals that provide sex-trait modifications to minors, National Review has learned.

    If finalized, the rule — “Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Hospital Condition of Participation: Prohibiting Sex Trait Modifications for Children” — will “effectively end sex-trait modifications for minors nationally,” a senior administration official told NR.

    Thursday’s announcement marks the beginning of the process of convening meetings with Health and Human Services officials to flesh out the language and formalize the rule. CMS sits under HHS.

    So no longer will our tax dollars be spent mutilating children. Progress!

  • The Austin-American Statesman does some actual investigation of Austin city government, and actually finds a bit of improper waste and fraud.

    Austin’s top administrator, City Manager T.C. Broadnax, continued what had become a costly habit: charging lunches to his city credit card on a near-daily basis.

    Broadnax, one of the highest-paid city managers in the country with an annual salary of $488,800, expensed about 150 lunches during his first year on the job at a cost of about $3,300, according to an American-Statesman review of city discretionary spending. His go-to spot was Sweetgreen, a pricey salad chain where he averaged $20 per order.

    Broadnax is not the only city leader who regularly dined on taxpayer dollars in what appears to be a violation of city policy, the Statesman review found. And the spending went beyond food.

    The review covered food and travel spending records from the City Manager’s Office and City Council offices from May 2024 to May 2025 — the first year of Broadnax’s tenure — and found charges for business-class flights, high-end dinners and retirement parties costing thousands of dollars.

    The Statesman also tallied thousands of dollars spent on snacks and beverages, protein shakes and even chewing gum.

    Overall, the review painted a picture of a widespread culture of lavish spending at City Hall among both the city’s top appointed executives and elected leaders who approve the budget.

    Experts who reviewed the newspaper’s findings and city spending policies said many charges likely violated internal rules or common ethics guidelines.

    “Bring a sandwich for Christ’s sake,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.

    If that’s the worst they found, I’d suggest they never scrutinized Austin’s homeless services…

  • Ukraine hit two Russian oil refineries, including Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery in Samara and one in Ryazan.
  • And two more , one in Kstovo as well as the Adler oil depot in Sochi.
  • And another, this one the Afipsky oil refinery, where they evidently hit the cracking/fractional distillation tower, the most essential part of an oil refinery.
  • And another railyard, namely Tatsinskaya railroad yard in Rostov.
  • Hackers attacked Russia’s Aeroflot, cancelling lots of flights. All transportation options in Russia seem chancy these days…
  • Trump puts additional pressure on Russia by slapping 50% secondary sanctions on India over its purchases of Russian oil. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Sacramento charter school got $180 million it wasn’t eligible for, audit finds.”

    A state audit found that a Sacramento area charter school received more than $180 million in funding it was not eligible for, engaged in wasteful spending, and assigned teachers to classes they did not have the credentials to teach.

    The report from the California State Auditor found that Highlands Community Charter and Technical Schools did not meet the conditions set for its funding and also did not comply with state law in calculating daily attendance.

    The auditor also claims that Twin Rivers Unified School District failed to provide sufficient oversight of the charter school.

    According to the audit, Highlands receives K-12 funding despite serving adult students under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. According to the school’s website, it serves adults ages 22 and up at no cost, providing a high school diploma program, English language classes and career technical education.

    “By not offering the required amount of instruction at the schoolsite, requiring students to attend class at the schoolsite for the minimum amount of time required by law, or meeting requirements for nonclassroom-based instruction, HCCS was not eligible to receive the $177 million in K–12 funding it received in fiscal years 2022–23 and 2023–24. Further, Highlands received more than an estimated $5 million in overpayments, of which $3.5 million is in addition to the $177 million in disallowed funding, by not complying with state law in calculating its average daily attendance,” the audit states.

    The audit also alleges that Highlands engaged in “questionable transactions,” including violating prohibitions against gifts of public funds, not seeking board approval for some contracts and purchases, lacked clear hiring and compensation policies, hired and promoted unqualified individuals and in one instance, entered a contract for mentor services with the spouse of a Highlands director.

    The auditor’s report also indicates poor student performance under Highlands.

    “HCCS had a graduation rate of 2.8 percent in fiscal year 2023–24,” the audit noted. “CDE determined that Highlands’ schools’ graduation rates were so low that they dropped the overall statewide graduation rate for the 2023–24 school year by more than half of a percentage point, from 87 percent to 86.4 percent.”

    One possible reason for the poor student performance, the audit posits, is the student-to-teacher ratio, which was about 51 students for every one teacher.

  • Euroweenies: Lift the seige of Gaza or we’ll recognize a Palestinian state. Israel: I guess we’ll just have to occupy all of Gaza.
  • “Majority of Senate Dems Vote to Block Arms Sales to Israel.” Hatred of Israel (and, indeed, all Jews) is a central belief for the Democrat Party’s ideological core.
  • “US Imposes Sanctions on Both PA and PLO Members.” Good.
  • “Texas Roadhouse hit with civil rights complaint alleging DEI discrimination in hiring practices.”
  • J.D. Vance to the Dems: Just keep doing what you’re doing.

    Vice President JD Vance has weighed in on the left’s demented response to American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney ads and their unhinged claims that the “good jeans” pun is really Nazi eugenics propaganda.

    “My political advice to the Democrats is continue to tell everybody who thinks Sydney Sweeney is attractive is a Nazi,” Vance joked in an appearance on the “Ruthless” podcast Friday.

    “That appears to be their actual strategy,” Vance further highlighted, adding “It actually reveals something pretty interesting about the Dems, though.”

    Which is that you have like a normal, all-American beautiful girl doing like a normal jeans ad, right?” The Vice President continued, “To try to sell, you know, sell jeans to kids in America, and they have managed to so unhinge themselves over this thing.”

    “You guys, did you learn nothing from the November 2024 election?” An exasperated Vance asked.

    “Like, I actually thought that one of the lessons they might take is we’re going to be less crazy,” he continued.

    “The lesson they have apparently taken is we’re going to attack people as Nazis for thinking Sydney Sweeney is beautiful,” Vance urged.

    “Great strategy, guys. That’s how you’re going to win the midterms. Especially young American men,” he further emphasised.

    “Their course correction lasted about 30 seconds,” Ruthless co-host Josh Holmes chimed in.

    “That’s right, [it] lasted 30 seconds, somehow has gotten even crazier,” Vance responded, adding “it’s just so much of the Democrats is oriented around hostility to basic American life.”

  • Travis County is retrying former Army Sergeant Daniel Perry on another charge even after a gubernatorial pardon, because of course they they are.

    Judge Carlos Barrera has refused to move former Army Sergeant Daniel Perry’s “deadly conduct” case from Travis County’s criminal court despite concerns that he cannot be guaranteed a fair jury trial.

    A Travis County jury had previously sentenced Perry to 25 years in prison for murder after District Attorney Jose Garza prosecuted Perry for shooting and killing an armed Black Lives Matter protester. The event occurred in July 2020 during a protest in downtown Austin. Gov. Greg Abbott pardoned Perry in May 2024.

    However, even if a person is pardoned for a felony, they can still be prosecuted by the county attorney for additional misdemeanors stemming from the same incident.

    Thus, Perry is still being prosecuted for his actions, this time for “deadly conduct,” a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. Travis County Attorney Delia Garza’s Office—which is prosecuting Perry for this lesser charge—claims that the use of his vehicle leading up to the 2020 altercation endangered bystanders. Perry was driving for Uber at the time of the event.

    Soros-backed DA Jose Garza evidently finds it intolerable that an armed citizen was allowed to exercise their right to self-defense against a leftist member of a “protected class,” double-jeopardy be damned…

  • SNL loses money? “CNBC revealed SNL, Fallon and Meyers lose a combined $100 million a year, Thompson said, ‘(Lorne Michaels) cant keep doing that forever.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • “Gina Carano has received a settlement in the wake of her 2021 firing from Disney’s The Mandalorian.”

  • Old and busted: Hubcap thieves. The new hotness: Tire thieves.
  • What are you options if your new car turns out to be a lemon?
  • “5 years after iconic photo from BLM riots, St. Louis’s Mark McCloskey finally has his AR-15 back.”
  • Loni Anderson, RIP. Whatever her personal life (she was married four times, divorced three, and Burt Reynolds complained that she almost sucked his bank account dry), she was great on WKRP in Cincinnati.
  • Bad math and physics from movies.
  • Speaking of bad math and physics, here’s the pitch meeting for the new World of the Worlds movie, which was enjoying an impressive 0% Rotten Tomatoes score, but is now all the way up to a sizzling 4%.
  • “Awkward: Obama, Hillary Hire Same Hitman To Kill Each Other.”

    In the end, Black said he was able to settle the conflict and postpone any bloodshed without any deaths by simply explaining the situation to Obama and Clinton.

    At publishing time, the body of Vinny Black had reportedly been found dumped in a ditch on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., with authorities quickly ruling his death a suicide.

  • “Texas Gerrymanders Districts Into Giant Whataburger Logo.”

  • “Study Finds Possible Connection Between Current Heatwave And Giant Flaming Orb In The Sky.”
  • “Gina Carano Settles With Disney, Will Replace Pedro Pascal In All Movies.”
  • “Taco Yet To Meet Emotional Problem It Couldn’t Solve.”
  • Pomeranian 1, bear 0:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

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





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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 2 Comments »

    Russian Coup Update for June 24, 2023 UPDATE: Coup Already Over?

    Saturday, June 24th, 2023

    At such a remove from the actions in a vast country with no free news services, it’s hard to definitively say what’s going on with the Russian coup. So here are a variety of “state of play” snippets from various sources (Suchomimus’s discord, MSM, YouTube, Twitter, other social media, etc.). Some of these are rumors that may later turn out to be false, so treat with as many grains of salt as you deem necessary.

  • Wagner Group forces under Yevgeny Prigozhin continue their open rebellion against Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.
  • Livemap now has a separate map on the Russian coup up.
  • They evidently took full control of Rostov-on-Don without firing a shot, and reports are that many Russian regular soldiers there have gone over to their side.
  • Wagner forces headed for Moscow.
  • Reports of Russian aircarft hitting Russian gas and ammo depots along the way to deprive Wagner of them.
  • None of Prigozhin’s statements seem to directly attack Russian dictator for life Vladimir Putin.
  • Despite that, Putin declares that backstabbers will be punished.
  • Moscow is under lockdown, with checkpoints and military trucks in the streets, but actual tanks there seem very thin on the ground.
  • Traffic into Moscow has been halted.
  • Dumptrucks of sand are there to block the routes in.
  • But there are reports Wagner has already broken through:

  • Other reports of backhoes literally digging up the roads.
  • Rumors the government is relocating to St. Petersburg (Putin’s hometown).
  • More Internet restrictions have been instituted for Russians.
  • There are rumors that Wagner has been stockpiling fuel and ammo to do this for some time.
  • Even if not, Rustov-on-Don is the biggest logistical hub for the war against Ukraine.
  • “PMC Wagner reportedly in control of Millerovo airfield.” That’s some 60 miles north of Rostov-on-Don.
  • There are reports of Wagner shooting down at least one (and possibly two) Russian helicopter over Voronezh, where small arms clashes have been reported.
  • And bigger than small arms clashes:

    That’s supposedly Russia hitting a Russian oil depot.

  • A bit later: “Wagner PMC captured all key facilities in Voronezh.” Seems a fairly sweeping statement.
  • “Column of PMC Wagner has reportedly passed Yelets of Lipetsk region.”
  • Unconfirmed reports of unrest in Belarus, with soldiers there being tired of living under Putin’s thumb.
  • Reports that Putin-ally leader of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko flew out of the country, switched off his plane’s transponder, and turned it on again when he was over Turkey.
  • Chechen strongman and bought Putin ally Ramzan Kadyrov has evidently announced he’s opposing Wagner’s coup.
  • There are persistent rumors that Prigozhin wouldn’t have launched this coup without at least some support among powerful Russian oligarchs and command elements of the Russian military.

    • Here are some update videos. From Peter Zeihan on the Ukraine war:

    I think Zeihan is too optimistic about the hole Ukraine put in the Chongar bridge, and I think Russians will try to at least run supply trucks around it and hope it doesn’t collapse.

    From Suchomimus:

    Wagner reportedly has 25,000-50,000 men, plus tanks on transporters and anti-aircraft systems. “This isn’t a ragtag army.”

    Russia was “also building defensive positions near Serpukhov, 100 kilometers away from Moscow. So far the troops based around Moscow look like they do remain loyal to Putin.”

    Developing…

    Update: Is the coup already over?

    Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced a deal late on Saturday that Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin would depart for Belarus in return for being spared prosecution, after an abortive rebellion in which his troops made a dash for Moscow.

    The announcement, carried by the Tass news agency, came shortly after embittered warlord Prigozhin announced his men were turning back from Moscow to avoid a devastating civil conflict. In a voice recording posted to his Telegram channel, Prigozhin said his troops would turn back after advancing within 200 kilometers of the capital.

    It was the culmination of an extraordinary day, in which Putin had accused the Wagner group of “treason” and said that their uprising risked tipping Russia into civil war.

    Prigozhin, smarting over the Kremlin’s handling of the war in Ukraine, announced early on Saturday that his mercenaries had seized the major southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, a logistics hub for Putin’s war, and threatened to push on to Moscow. Wagner forces also appeared to be well established in the city of Voronezh, 500 kilometers south of the capital.

    Well, that’s a disappointment to all of us who thought it would allow Ukraine to liberate itself from a distracted Russia.

    Prigozhin’s coup didn’t even last the three days of the 1991 Soviet coup…

    Update 2: Oryx has a list of equipment lost during the coup.

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    Posted in Military, video | 22 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for June 23, 2023

    Friday, June 23rd, 2023

    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…
    

  • Dallas city employees are being forced to attend transexual reeducation camps.

    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.

  • “Foucault, Gayle Rubin, Pat Califia, Judith Butler… the list goes on. There’s almost no queer theorist who doesn’t also argue for pedophilia.”
  • 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.)
  • Sex club founder kicked out of sex club after revealing that Hunter Biden was kicked out of said sex club for being too big a scumbag. In other news, Hunter Biden was too big a scumbag for an LA sex club.
  • Your tax dollars at work: “Homeland Security is funding college programs that compare Christians and Republicans with Nazis to fight “‘terrorism.'”
  • Middle schoolers told to wear gay rainbow colors. Instead they revolted by wearing red, white and blue.

  • Completely unsurprising headline: “IRS Whistleblower Says Justice Department Slowed and Stymied the Hunter Biden Tax Investigation.” Also, water exhibits high degrees of wetness. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Is Portland sobering up?

    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…
  • “FBI Groomed Developmentally Challenged 16-Year-Old To Become A Terrorist, Then Arrested Him.”
  • Is Fox News going full woke?
  • “Guy who bought $37k in stolen human organs literally put “braiiiiins.” in the memo line on PayPal.” On the one hand, that’s really stupid. On the other hand, how could you not? (Bonus: Stolen body parts were coming from Harvard.)
  • European flopball match breaks out in the most vicious slap fight you’ve seen this side of Fire Island.
  • Not to walk on two legs, this is the law. Are we not dogs?

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ pet thread.)

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    Russo-Ukranian War Update for June 22, 2022

    Wednesday, June 22nd, 2022

    The general course of the Russio-Ukrainian War seems the same (Russia grinding out slow gains in the Severodonetsk front, while Ukraine gains back territory on the wings near Kharkiv and Kherson), but there are a lot of interesting stories out on the periphery of the conflict.

    First, the requisite map snap:

    (These snapshots are not the end-all and be-all of the situation, but back when I was covering the war against the Islamic State, I found that they were helpful in jogging my memory reviewing the course of the war at later dates.)

    Now some links:

  • ISW’s assessment.

    Members of the Russian military community continue to comment on the shortcomings of Russian force generation capabilities, which are having tangible impacts on the morale and discipline of Russians fighting in Ukraine. Russian milblogger Yuri Kotyenok claimed that Russian troops lack the numbers and strength for success in combat in Ukraine. Kotyenok accused Russian leadership of deploying new and under-trained recruits and called for replenishment of forces with well-trained recruits with ground infantry experience—though the Russian military is unlikely to be able to quickly generate such a force, as ISW has previously assessed. Despite growing calls for increased recruitment from nationalist figures, Russian leadership continues to carry out coercive partial mobilization efforts that are only producing limited numbers of replacements while negatively impacting the morale and discipline of forcibly mobilized personnel. Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) claimed that Russian authorities in Luhansk are arranging gas leaks in apartment buildings to force men who are hiding from mobilization into the streets. The Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) additionally reported that Russian soldiers in occupied Tokmak, Zaporizhia Oblast, are appealing to local Ukrainian doctors to issue them certificates alleging medical inability to continue military service.

    Ukrainian forces conducted a drone strike (likely with a loitering munition, though this cannot be confirmed) on a Russian oil refinery in Novoshakhtinsk, Rostov Oblast, on June 22. Russian Telegram channel Voenyi Osvedomitel claimed that the strike, which targeted Russian infrastructure within 15 km of the Ukrainian border, originated from Donetsk Oblast. Ukrainian forces have not targeted Russian infrastructure for several weeks, and this strike is likely an attempt to disrupt Russian logistics and fuel supply to Russian operations in eastern Ukraine.

    Though they also note that Russia has been using its anti-air capabilities to better deal with Ukrainian drones.

  • Ukraine attacked long-occupied gas platforms off the coast of Crimea. It also reportedly hit occupied Snake Island, though there seems to be some dispute over this.
  • Did a Russian cyberattack trigger the Freeport LNG explosion on June 8?

    Well, a June 14 press release from Freeport LNG notes that “the incident occurred in pipe racks that support the transfer of LNG from the facility’s LNG storage tank area to the terminal’s dock facilities. … Preliminary observations suggest that the incident resulted from the overpressure and rupture of a segment of an LNG transfer line, leading to the rapid flashing of LNG and the release and ignition of the natural gas vapor cloud. Additional investigation is underway to determine the underlying precipitating events that enabled the overpressure conditions in the LNG piping.” The statement added that federal authorities were assisting with its investigation.

    However, what was not explained is how a critical overpressure event could have occurred without safety systems kicking into action. Two LNG pipeline experts I talked to, who both asked to remain anonymous due to potential retaliatory damage to their business interests, say that pipeline corrosion and other material failures can cause critical incidents. Still, the FBI’s investigative involvement, the specific nature of this explosion, and the scale of damage incurred do raise major questions. The experts suggested that piping from a storage tank to a terminal, as in this explosion, should have extensive safeguards to prevent overpressure events. One expert was highly confident that control of pipeline flows would be undertaken from a networked control facility.

    That brings us to the Russian cyber unit involved in the targeting reconnaissance against Freeport LNG.

    Named XENOTIME by researchers, the unit has utilized boutique TRITON/TRISIS malware developed by the Russian Ministry of Defense’s Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics. That malware is designed for the seizure of industrial control systems and the defeat of associated safety systems. In 2017, GCHQ (Britain’s NSA-equivalent signals intelligence service) outlined the need for network compartmentalization to protect safety systems against this malware better. In March 2022, the FBI warned that TRISIS malware remained a threat.

    XENOTIME is assessed by the U.S. and British governments as a critical infrastructure-focused, advanced persistent threat actor. The unit’s modus operandi involves targeting industrial control systems and supervisory control systems in order to effect unilateral control of a network. XENOTIME has caused specific concern in Western security circles for its targeting of safety systems that would otherwise mitigate threats to life during a cyberattack. XENOTIME’s activity has escalated in 2022. Evincing as much, an April 13 U.S. government cybersecurity warning noted, “By compromising and maintaining full system access to [industrial control system]/[safety] devices, [threat] actors could elevate privileges … and disrupt critical devices or functions.”

    Snip.

    While the Freeport LNG explosion remains under investigation, multiple sources told me they were struck by the overpressure event along a key pipeline transit route and the evident failure of safety systems to engage. This fits with XENOTIME’s modus operandi.

    That’s an “interesting but unproven” in my book… (Hat tip: Jim Geraghty at NRO.)

  • “Switzerland Imports Russian Gold for First Time Since War.”

    More than 3 tons of gold was shipped to Switzerland from Russia in May, according to data from the Swiss Federal Customs Administration. That’s the first shipment between the countries since February.

    The shipments represent about 2% of gold imports into the key refining hub last month. It may also mark a change in perception of Russian bullion, which became taboo following the invasion. Most refiners swore off accepting new gold from Russia after the London Bullion Market Association removed the country’s own fabricators from its accredited list.

    While that was viewed as a de facto ban on fresh Russian gold from the London market, one of the world’s biggest, the rules don’t prohibit Russian metal from being processed by other refiners. Switzerland is home to four major gold refineries, which together handle two-thirds of the world’s gold.

    Almost all of the gold was registered by customs as being for refining or other processing, indicating one of the country’s refineries took it. The four largest — MKS PAMP SA, Metalor Technologies SA, Argor-Heraeus SA and Valcambi SA — said they did not take the metal.

    In March, at least two major gold refineries refused to remelt Russian bars even though market rules permit them to do so. Others, such Argor-Heraeus, said they would accept products refined in Russia prior to 2022, so long as there were documents proving that the gold had not been exported from Russia after beginning of the war, and that accepting them would not benefit Russia, a Russian person or entity anywhere in the world.

  • Though this piece is two weeks old, Frederick Kagan is not impressed with Russia’s Severodonetsk offensive.

    he fight for Severodonetsk is a Russian information operation in the form of a battle. One of its main purposes for Moscow is to create the impression that Russia has regained its strength and will now overwhelm Ukraine. That impression is false. The Russian military in Ukraine is increasingly a spent force that cannot achieve a decisive victory if Ukrainians hold on.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin is therefore trying to turn his invasion of Ukraine into a brutal contest of wills. He’s betting his army on breaking Ukrainians’ collective will to fight on in their country. His own won’t likely break. Fortunately, Ukraine doesn’t need it to. If Ukrainians can weather the current Russian storm and then counterattack the exhausted Russian forces they still have every chance to free their people and all their land.

    Putin amassed the wreckage of Russian combat forces into a lethal amalgam around the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk Oblast. That amalgam is crawling forward using massive artillery barrages to obliterate everything in its path allowing Russia’s demoralized and frightened soldiers to walk into the rubble.

    The Ukrainian defenders are wisely withdrawing in the face of this reckless barbarism, but at a high price to their own morale and their will to continue the fight. Ukrainian soldiers and citizens are criticizing their government for not supporting the troops on the front lines. Ukrainians are starting to doubt that they can prevail for the first time since they won the Battle of Kyiv. Delays in the provision of Western aid and refusals by the U.S. and other countries to provide certain needed weapons systems are helping to fuel those doubts. And now voices are rising in the West calling on Ukraine to offer concessions.

    All of which is exactly what Putin needs. He cannot defeat Ukraine militarily as long as Ukrainians retain the will to fight and the West the will to back them. So he attacks the will of both by forcing his own troops into the most vicious and brutal offensive of this war, hoping to persuade everyone that he’s finally harnessed the mass and power of Russia that Stalin wielded to defeat Hitler—and thus that resistance to his demands is futile. Putin also holds hostage critical export supplies of Ukrainian food and fuel, hoping to impose high enough costs on the West to persuade it to abandon Ukraine.

    Neither Ukrainians nor their friends around the world must give in to Putin or be deluded by the current mirage of Russian success and power he is presenting in the Battle of Severodonetsk. For mirage it is. Russia’s drive in Luhansk is the desperate gamble of a dictator staking the last of the offensive combat power he can scrape together in hopes of breaking his enemies’ will to continue the fight. and let him claim that he’s taken all of Luhansk Oblast. It is a historical rhyme with Hitler’s determination to seize Stalingrad in 1942 or to hold Kharkov in defiance of his commander’s advice. There are no Russian large reserves coming behind this force to carry its successes forward. On the contrary, Putin has created it only by denuding other key axes of the forces they need to defend against Ukrainian counterattacks. This offensive will likely culminate soon because even this slow, grinding advance will exhaust the forces conducting it. Putin will then be unable to launch another for quite some time.

    • I thought this would be a longer update, but I’m running out of day…

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