Posts Tagged ‘Scott Adams’

LinkSwarm For January 16, 2026

Friday, January 16th, 2026

More Somali fraud in Minneapolis, Democrats have always been at war with Hamas, the Caspian Sea is no longer safe for Russian assets, Texas tops the U-Haul destination list (again), MST3K gets sold, and Scott Adams departs this simulation.

It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

And yes, I’m still waiting on money from my 401K…

  • Iran news has died down significantly the last few days, but the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier group is moving to Mideast. It takes time to assemble a big stick…
  • Nick Shirley just released Part II of his look into Somali fraud.

  • FA phase: “Somali Suitcase Stash: Feds say $130 million moved from Ohio airport to Minnesota on way overseas.”

    Federal agents investigating a Somali immigrant operation that moved massive amounts of cash in suitcases from the Minneapolis airport to overseas have uncovered a new leg of the courier journey: the Columbus, Ohio airport.

    Homeland Security Department officials told Just the News that Transportation Security Administration officers tracked and flagged about $136 million in bulk cash in outbound luggage at the passenger checkpoints at John Glenn Columbus International Airport since November 2023.

    The cash movements were made by U.S. citizens of Somali origin who flew out of the Columbus airport en route to either the airports in Minneapolis or Atlanta, and the couriers always declared the cash as legally required on documents, officials said.

    “Typically, when they go to Minneapolis, they drop off the cash and then a subsequent courier travels abroad from Minneapolis to Dubai through Amsterdam,” one official familiar with the investigation told Just the News on Tuesday, speaking only on condition of anonymity.

    The officials said they appear to have uncovered a massive cash movement operation that gathered money from multiple Somali immigrant communities in the West, Midwest and South that eventually brought luggage filled with currency to Minneapolis for flights overseas.

    Just the News reported exclusively last week that TSA detected nearly $700 million in cash in luggage leaving the Minneapolis airport in 2024 and 2025, frequently headed on a route to Amsterdam and then Dubai where U.S. officials lost the tracking. The TSA agents routinely alerted investigators during the Biden years, but there was little interest in probing the money movements further until President Donald Trump took office last year.

  • Find Out phase beginning: “Congress moving quickly to investigate cash-in-luggage exodus from U.S. airports. Sen. Rand Paul also revealed that federal agents are probing the massive cash transfers that move through a network centered in the Minneapolis airport.”

    Federal agents investigating a Somali immigrant operation that moved massive amounts of cash in suitcases from the Minneapolis airport to overseas have uncovered a new leg of the courier journey: the Columbus, Ohio airport.

    Homeland Security Department officials told Just the News that Transportation Security Administration officers tracked and flagged about $136 million in bulk cash in outbound luggage at the passenger checkpoints at John Glenn Columbus International Airport since November 2023.

    The cash movements were made by U.S. citizens of Somali origin who flew out of the Columbus airport en route to either the airports in Minneapolis or Atlanta, and the couriers always declared the cash as legally required on documents, officials said.

    “Typically, when they go to Minneapolis, they drop off the cash and then a subsequent courier travels abroad from Minneapolis to Dubai through Amsterdam,” one official familiar with the investigation told Just the News on Tuesday, speaking only on condition of anonymity.

    The officials said they appear to have uncovered a massive cash movement operation that gathered money from multiple Somali immigrant communities in the West, Midwest and South that eventually brought luggage filled with currency to Minneapolis for flights overseas.

  • And the fraud isn’t limited to Minnesota: “Two scammers plead guilty to $68M Brooklyn adult day care fraud scheme.”

    Two Brooklyn scammers pleaded guilty on Thursday to defrauding a whopping $68 million from the state’s controversial Medicaid home care program by paying health care kickbacks for services they didn’t provide at three Big Apple businesses.

    Manal Wasef and Elaine Antao, both 46, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud for referring Medicaid recipients to two Brooklyn social adult day cares and a home health company in exchange for illegal kickbacks and bribes, the US Department of Justice announced on Thursday.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “Left Wing’s Protest Industrial Complex Wants Another ‘George Floyd’-Type Riot.”

    The latest iteration of the Democratic Party’s color-revolution-style operation was on full display in recent days as tensions erupted following the fatal shooting of a left-wing activist by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent during a federal enforcement sweep in Minnesota. This incident demonstrates that the protest industrial complex, funded by left-wing billionaires, has been on standby, waiting for a catalyzing event to ignite mass mobilization.

    MSM, the Democratic Party, and left-wing nonprofits are working hard to manufacture another ‘George Floyd’-type protest or riot by omitting key context about the woman shot and killed by an ICE agent. They conveniently left out her social justice “warrior” role in Minneapolis, including her reported involvement with “ICE Watch” and other operations to disrupt ICE raids in the sanctuary city. These details matter because MSM attempted to manufacture an outrage news cycle, while nonprofits create artificial multi-city protests aimed at shifting public opinion on ICE operations nationwide.

  • More find out: “Trump Threatens To Invoke Insurrection Act As Left-Wing Chaos In Minneapolis Spreads.”
  • This is a good question: “Why did all the Dems suddenly become anti-Hamas over the weekend?”

    Something very weird happened with the Democrats this past weekend.

    I first noticed when I saw this post on X from Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois which was, let’s just say, not exactly subtle.

    Apropos of apparently nothing, we’re getting a Shabbat Shalom from Pritzker on a random Friday night. That by itself that would be odd, but whatever.

    A whole lot of Democrats followed suit in their 180:

    Videos like that are a dime a dozen. If you’ve followed the anti-Israel campus protests over the past 2 years, you’ve seen leftwing mobs openly supporting Hamas proudly and loudly. Democrat politicians, meanwhile, have unequivocally supported the Palestinian Authority and Gaza Health Ministry, which are controlled entirely by Hamas. The support was so strong and so unanimous that Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania made headlines for breaking party lines with his support of Israel!

  • Legal Insurrection on a similarly mysterious flip. “Having Flipped Against Hamas, Dem Pols In Unison Now Back Iranian Protesters.”

    Something’s happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.

    We covered how Democrats politicians in unison and contrary to every message they’re sent since the October 7 Massacre, declared that public support for Hamas was unacceptable and antisemitic. We asked, What’s Behind the Democrats’ Sudden Pivot on Hamas and Antisemitism?

    The talking points just dropped.

    Now they’re condemning Hamas.

    The Democrats are pure phonies. pic.twitter.com/TUzc1ocsAJ

    — Gina Milan (@ginamilan_) January 10, 2026

    I think it’s an election set up, they are going to use the “Woke Right” against Republicans not only in the 2026 midterms, but particularly if JD Vance is the Republican nominee in 2028. His proximity and friendship with Tucker Carlson and the Groypers will be a major Democrat theme, but that can’t work unless Democrats switch gears from their anti-Israel, pro-Hamas — and yes antisemitic — persona.

    So they are up so to something. No one believes they had a change of heart.

    And now Democrats have come out supporting the protesters in Iran, despite doing everything dating back to Obama to keep the Mullahs in power.

    Snip.

    Little history on AOC and Iran:

    -She condemned Trump for killing top Iranian regime terrorist Qassem Soleimani

    -She condemned Trump for blowing up Iran’s nuclear facilities

    -She co-sponsored legislation to prevent the U.S. military from taking action against Iran

    Did Iran’s check to Soros bounce? Or does Iran’s hyperinflation and currency collapse mean that they can no longer keep paying off useful idiots?

  • “White House Amplifies Shocking Claims Of US Super Soldiers Deployed In Maduro Raid.”

    This account from a Venezuelan security guard loyal to Nicolás Maduro is absolutely chilling—and it explains a lot about why the tone across Latin America suddenly changed.

    Security Guard: On the day of the operation, we didn’t hear anything coming. We were on guard, but suddenly all our radar systems shut down without any explanation. The next thing we saw were drones, a lot of drones, flying over our positions. We didn’t know how to react.

    Interviewer: So what happened next? How was the main attack?

    Security Guard: After those drones appeared, some helicopters arrived, but there were very few. I think barely eight helicopters. From those helicopters, soldiers came down, but a very small number. Maybe twenty men. But those men were technologically very advanced. They didn’t look like anything we’ve fought against before.

    Interviewer: And then the battle began?

    Security Guard: Yes, but it was a massacre. We were hundreds, but we had no chance. They were shooting with such precision and speed… it seemed like each soldier was firing 300 rounds per minute. We couldn’t do anything.

    Interviewer: And your own weapons? Didn’t they help?

    Security Guard: No help at all. Because it wasn’t just the weapons. At one point, they launched something—I don’t know how to describe it… it was like a very intense sound wave. Suddenly I felt like my head was exploding from the inside. We all started bleeding from the nose. Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move.

    Interviewer: And your comrades? Did they manage to resist?

    Security Guard: No, not at all. Those twenty men, without a single casualty, killed hundreds of us. We had no way to compete with their technology, with their weapons. I swear, I’ve never seen anything like it. We couldn’t even stand up after that sonic weapon or whatever it was.

    Interviewer: So do you think the rest of the region should think twice before confronting the Americans?

    Security Guard: Without a doubt. I’m sending a warning to anyone who thinks they can fight the United States. They have no idea what they’re capable of. After what I saw, I never want to be on the other side of that again. They’re not to be messed with.

    Interviewer: And now that Trump has said Mexico is on the list, do you think the situation will change in Latin America?

    Security Guard: Definitely. Everyone is already talking about this. No one wants to go through what we went through. Now everyone thinks twice. What happened here is going to change a lot of things, not just in Venezuela but throughout the region.

    We are living in the far future year of 2026…

  • “Oregon to remove up to 800,000 voters from electoral rolls.”

    Judicial Watch sued in 2025 to clean up Oregon’s voter rolls.

    Confirmed by Portland’s Willamette Week, Secretary of State Tobias Read is now cleaning up those records, and the scope of the clean-up is HUGE.

    That process could lead to the cancellation of as many as 800,000 registrations. That’s the number of voters Read says are currently classified as ‘inactive’ on the voter rolls. To be clear, inactive voters do not receive ballots, but their names remain on the rolls.

    The cleanup comes as Oregon’s first-in-the-nation vote-by-mail system is under intense scrutiny. President Donald Trump, who blamed mail-in ballots, among other bogeymen, for his defeat in 2020, has amplified historical criticism of Oregon’s system.

    There’s nuance here. Essentially, because these voters haven’t cast a ballot in a certain number of years, they no longer get a handy-dandy mail-in ballot sent directly to their home.

    That doesn’t mean, however, that they can’t vote, or that they haven’t been involved in some level of electoral shenanigans.

    There are reportedly 167,000 people who haven’t voted since 2017 and will be taken off the rolls beginning this month. Another 640,000 are classified as inactive and will be reviewed after that.

    Remember that in 2024 President Trump only lost Oregon by some 320,000 votes…

  • “U.S. Experienced Negative Net Migration in 2025 for the First Time in 50 Years.”

    For the first time in 50 years, the U.S. experienced negative net migration in 2025 because of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal border crossings and heightened deportation efforts, an enormous victory for the White House as it faces renewed backlash against its heavy-handed enforcement tactics.

    The U.S. had net migration of -10,000 to -295,000 due to a combination of deportations, self-exits, and a significant drop in illegal immigration resulting from increased border security measures, according to a new Brookings Institution analysis. Those numbers represent a significant victory for President Trump, whose successful campaign focused primarily on his vow to reverse the record illegal immigration numbers facilitated by President Biden’s lax border policies.

    Brookings observes a decline in green cards issued, refugee inflows, temporary visas, paroles and notices to appear, and entries without encountering a border official in 2025 due to the Trump administration’s stricter approach. Those trends will likely continue in 2026 as the administration tightens green card eligibility, further limits visa issuances, and continues to reject applications for asylum or refugee status.

    The State Department announced Wednesday that it would pause immigrant visa processing from 75 countries “whose migrants take welfare from the American people at unacceptable rates,” the latest in a series of moves designed to decrease immigration from impoverished countries.

    Funny what you can do when you actually obey the law and implement the desires of actual citizens rather than Democrat Party elites…

  • “Trump Order Taking US Out Of UN Climate Orgs Caps Flood Of Corporate Exits.”

    President Donald Trump put another dent in the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) movement, withdrawing the United States from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and 65 other international organizations dedicated to climate and social justice.

    Trump’s order caps a recent trend in which many corporations have also canceled their decades-long commitments to left-wing global alliances, undermining what had been a highly influential worldwide movement that once included the world’s largest nations and companies.

    According to a White House statement, Trump’s Jan. 7 executive order directs “all Executive Departments and Agencies to cease participating in and funding 35 non-United Nations (UN) organizations and 31 UN entities that operate contrary to U.S. national interests, security, economic prosperity, or sovereignty.”

    On Jan. 8, the U.S. Treasury Department announced it would no longer provide funding to the Global Climate Fund, which financed many of the U.N.’s climate initiatives. The United States originally joined more than 190 other nations in the UNFCCC in 1992, when the U.S. Senate ratified the treaty.

    This was followed by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, in which countries committed to CO2 limits and reduction targets, and the 2015 Paris Agreement, which accelerated national governments’ commitments and spending to reduce global temperatures. The U.S. Senate did not ratify either of these subsequent accords.

    Thereafter, a number of net-zero corporate alliances emerged to align the private sector with climate initiatives. At its peak, this network included financial and corporate alliances, such as the Net Zero Banking Alliance, the Net Zero Insurance Alliance, the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, and others.

    These alliances operated under the umbrella of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, a U.N.-backed multi-trillion-dollar coalition. The Glasgow Alliance focused on financial institutions because they were not only financiers but also dominant shareholders of publicly traded corporations, and thus a critical means of leverage over the private sector.

    Net Zero Asset Managers members, for example, included BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, the world’s largest asset managers. These three firms alone are collectively the largest shareholders in more than 40 percent of publicly traded U.S. firms, and 88 percent of the S&P 500, according to a study by George Mason University business professors Sebahattin Demirkan and Ted Polat.

    Over the past several years, however, members have begun to exit these organizations amid a conservative backlash and allegations of conflicts of interest and collusion. Much of this backlash occurred in conservative U.S. states, where Republican lawmakers, treasurers, and attorneys general launched boycotts and antitrust investigations of banks and fund managers accused of colluding against oil, gas, and coal companies and of violating their fiduciary duties to investors.

    Vanguard quit Net Zero Asset Managers in 2022, and BlackRock quit in January 2025, after which the initiative announced it was suspending activities. In 2023, half of the Net Zero Insurance Alliance’s members quit en masse, facing risks of antitrust prosecution.

  • “Ukrainian Drones Hit Multiple Substations in Donetsk: Impacting Russia’s Rail Logistics.” A lot of Russian rail is electrified.
  • Ukraine hit three oil platforms in the Caspian Sea.
  • “Huge Missile/Drone Strike on Atlant Aero Drone Factory in Taganrog.” “This has been hit twice before.”
  • They hit the Nevinnomyssk Azot chemical plant with drones, and it’s been hit before. “It has the only units in Russia for the production of methylacetate and high purity acetic acid.”
  • Ukraine attacks four tankers with drones in the Black Sea. One wonder how much of Russia’s shadow fleet is even left…
  • Cargo ship Rona, possibly carrying weapons from Iran to Russia, sinks in the Caspian Sea. Looking at that rust bucket, you can well believe it sank without any help from Ukraine. Also, shouldn’t the mullahs be saving those weapons to use on their own people?
  • Are “AI layoffs” just an excuse to hide how badly companies are sucking?

    Despite breathless headlines warning of a robot takeover in the workforce, a new research briefing from Oxford Economics casts doubt on the narrative that artificial intelligence is currently causing mass unemployment. According to the firm’s analysis, “firms don’t appear to be replacing workers with AI on a significant scale,” suggesting instead that companies may be using the technology as a cover for routine headcount reductions.

    In a January 7 report, the research firm argued that, while anecdotal evidence of job displacement exists, the macroeconomic data does not support the idea of a structural shift in employment caused by automation. Instead, it points to a more cynical corporate strategy: “We suspect some firms are trying to dress up layoffs as a good news story rather than bad news, such as past over-hiring.”

    he primary motivation for this rebranding of job cuts appears to be investor relations. The report notes that attributing staff reductions to AI adoption “conveys a more positive message to investors” than admitting to traditional business failures, such as weak consumer demand or “excessive hiring in the past.” By framing layoffs as a technological pivot, companies can present themselves as forward-thinking innovators rather than businesses struggling with cyclical downturns.

    In a recent interview, Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli told Fortune that he’s seen research about how, because markets typically celebrate news of job cuts, firms announce “phantom layoffs” that never actually occur. Companies were arbitraging the positive stock-market reaction to the news of a potential layoff, but “a few decades ago, the market stopped going up because [investors] started to realize that companies were not actually even doing the layoffs that they said they were going to do.”

    When asked about the supposed link between AI and layoffs, Cappelli urged people to look closely at announcements. “The headline is, ‘It’s because of AI,’ but if you read what they actually say, they say, ‘We expect that AI will cover this work.’ Hadn’t done it. They’re just hoping. And they’re saying it because that’s what they think investors want to hear.”

  • Trump greenlights Bill proposing 500% tariff over Russia oil trade. US Senator Lindsey Graham said the Russia sanctions bill will allow US President Donald Trump to punish countries that ‘buy cheap Russian oil, fueling Putin’s war machine.'” This seems aimed at India in particular.
  • It’s not just Twitter: “Italian authorities are attempting to force the internet service provider Cloudflare to delete and block certain online services. Cloudflare is resisting and has turned to the U.S. government for support.”

    The struggle over control of information, censorship, and economic dominance in the digital space is increasingly becoming a fundamental civilizational question. That the European Union now sees not only the EU Commission but also national governments and security apparatuses siding with information diktats, against the fundamental principle of free speech, sends a dangerous signal to the world. The EU has effectively withdrawn from the circle of freedom-oriented state actors.

    Into this picture fits a recent report from Italy. A tweet by the founder and CEO of the internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare, Matthew Prince, has caused a stir.

    Prince reports that Cloudflare has been hit with a $17 million fine by a — as he calls it — clandestine cabal in Italy. The accusation: Cloudflare refused to participate in an Italian censorship mechanism at the behest of this group.

    Specifically, this concerns a system controlled by the Italian media authority AGCOM (Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni) called the “Piracy Shield.” This blocking system is officially aimed at combating illegal sports and media streaming services. The main targets are the economic interests of major players such as Italy’s Serie A football league, Sky Italia, DAZN, Mediaset, and other large European media and rights corporations.

    Private actors, comparable to the so-called “Trusted Flaggers” now familiar in Germany, operate on behalf of the Italian media sector within this system. They report websites, IP addresses, or suspicious domains to the Piracy Shield. The authority then compels internet service providers and infrastructure operators like Cloudflare to implement the corresponding blocks within just 30 minutes. Every advertising minute counts; piracy is indeed a dangerously significant economic factor. The question is: How do states and affected companies enforce copyright? Do they operate under the rule of law and avoid collateral damage, such as backdoor state censorship?

    According to Prince, all of this happens without a judicial order or prior review, bypassing due legal process entirely. The measures affect not only allegedly illegal content but also deeply intrude into the technical infrastructure of the internet.

  • “A middle school band director in the Abilene Independent School District has been busted for possessing child sexual abuse material. Lance Carl Mosley was arrested and charged with possession of child pornography.”

  • “U-Haul Growth Index: Texas Back on Top as No. 1 Growth State of 2025. Florida ranks 2nd for net gain of one-way customers; California last for sixth year in a row.” (Hat tip: Ted Cruz on Facebook.)
  • Life in deep blue Seattle: “McDonald’s rolls out store ‘no door’ policy – and bans ALL diners from eating in…The McDonald’s restaurant is located in downtown Seattle and it has been nicknamed ‘McStabby’s.’ And, it is situated in an area that has been plagued with crime in recent years.” This is your city on Democrats…
  • Yes, Democrats are totally rational: “Nebraska Democrat, best known for filibustering trans surgery ban, rips down America 250 exhibits at Capitol.”
  • Following Maduro’s capture, the CCP erased Zhongnanhai (where Xi Jingping lives) from maps. Yea, I’m sure that’s going to stymie the U.S. military…
  • Warning: Crappy Chinese EVs can now beat Ferraris in a drag race. Of course, there’s a much higher probability for the Chinese EV to catch fire…
  • This is a horrible idea: “Rockford Files Reboot Gets NBC Pilot Order.”
  • Scott Adams, RIP.

    Cartoonist, author and political commentator Scott Adams died Tuesday after a battle with prostate cancer. He was 68.

    His ex-wife and caregiver, Shelly, made the announcement on Adams’ livestream Tuesday morning.

    “Unfortunately, this isn’t good news,” Shelly said. “Of course, he waited ’til just before the show started, but he’s not with us anymore.”

    Shelly read aloud a “final message” that Adams “wanted to say” on the livestream.

    “If you’re reading this, things did not go well for me,” the message began. “I have a few things to say before I go. My body fell before my brain. I am of sound mind as I write this January 1, 2026.”

    After speaking about Christianity, Adams’ message said, “For the first part of my life, I was focused on making myself a worthy husband and parent as a way to find meaning. That worked — but marriages don’t always last forever, and mine ended in a highly amicable way. I’m grateful for those years and the people I came to call my family.”

    Snip.

    In his last decade and a half, however, Adams achieved wide influence through his business advice and political analysis.

    His 2013 best seller, “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big,” is one of the most influential and entertaining business books of recent years.

    In it, Adams introduced the concept of using systems, rather than goals, to achieve success in life. He also advised readers to accumulate skills — a “talent stack” — rather than traditional credentials.

    In 2015, Adams began commenting on politics after observing the first Republican presidential primary debate. When then-candidate Donald Trump responded to a moderator’s question that accused him of mistreating women by interjecting, “Only Rosie O’Donnell,” Adams took notice.

    A trained hypnotist, Adams predicted that Trump, then a huge underdog, would win the nomination — and the presidency.

    Adams drew ridicule for his bold claim. But he looked increasingly prescient as Trump dispensed with his opponents, the Republican establishment and — eventually — Hillary Clinton.

    Adams used what he called the “persuasion filter”: Rather than judging whether political rhetoric was true or false, he simply evaluated it based on whether it was persuasive.

    Snip.

    While he excelled at explaining Trump’s tactics to a growing audience of Trump-supporting fans, Adams was also interested in explaining how Democrats, and the left-leaning media, interpreted events.

    He explained that the country was often watching “two movies on one screen,” and argued — with great empathy for his opponents — that voters who felt genuinely frightened by Trump’s ascent had been led into an emotional cul-de-sac by cynical leaders.

    Snip.

    While he excelled at explaining Trump’s tactics to a growing audience of Trump-supporting fans, Adams was also interested in explaining how Democrats, and the left-leaning media, interpreted events.

    He explained that the country was often watching “two movies on one screen,” and argued — with great empathy for his opponents — that voters who felt genuinely frightened by Trump’s ascent had been led into an emotional cul-de-sac by cynical leaders.

    Leftists suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome forget just how funny and influential Dilbert was, and would have done much better listening to Adams’ explanation of how Trump works than their continuing full bore freakout. But that wouldn’t let them assuage their wounded ego with the certainty that they’re simply smarter and better people than Trump and his his deplorable followers in JesusLand…

  • Development plan for former EPIC City development that they now swear up and down won’t be limited to Muslims rejected by Collin County for inadequate documentation.
  • Shout Factory successor company Radial Entertainment buys all remaining ownership rights to Mystery Science Theater 3000.

    Radial Entertainment, the entertainment company formed from the merger of Shout! Studios and FilmRise, has obtained full ownership over the “Mystery Science Theater 3000” brand from creator Joel Hodgson’s Alternaversal.

    “MST3K” had been jointly owned by Alternaversal and Shout! Studios since late 2015. Radial’s purchase includes all brand assets and intellectual property and follows nearly two decades of Shout!’s multichannel distribution of “MST3K” content. The amount of the final buyout was undisclosed.

    Also: “Hodgson will remain involved with the property as brand ambassador and consultant.”

    I hope they can keep it going and not screw it up…

  • New woke Star trek is such garbage people won’t even watch it for free. “Paramount only hit 1,300 live viewers during free YouTube premiere.”
  • How realistic are nine of the most famous movie psychopaths. I have no way to judge the accuracy, but it’s a pretty good list…
  • The Houston Texans destroyed the Pittsburgh Steelers in the playoffs. The Texans have a legit great defense.
  • The Los Angeles Dodgers are MLB’s first $2 billion team.
  • “Democrats Warn Of Chilling Effect Voter ID Will Have On Rigged Elections.”
  • “Democrats Fear Iranian Love Of Freedom Could Spread To America.”
  • “Americans Now Living In Fear They Could Be Killed Just For Hitting ICE Agents With Cars.”
  • “Democrats Say Things Would Be Much Safer If Law Enforcement Would Just Stop Trying To Enforce The Law.”
  • “Somalis Demand Americans Stop Judging Them By The Content Of Their Character.”
  • “NATO Begs U.S. For Emergency Funding So They Can Defend Greenland From U.S.
  • “NFL Announces Each Quarter Of Playoff Game Will Be Broadcast On Different Streaming Service.”
  • “St. Peter Shows Scott Adams To His Glorious Heavenly Cubicle.”
  • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    LinkSwarm For May 24, 2025

    Friday, May 23rd, 2025

    Memorial Day weekend looms, $96 billion in green fraud, two terminal cases of prostate cancer revealed, Bernie admits Democrats are a threat to democracy, the Supreme smacks down the idea than transsexual rights are more important than democracy or free speech, plus Chinese doctor hanky-panky, revenge porn, a weed heist and a Nazi Muslim Only Fans model.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Joe Biden Diagnosed with Prostate Cancer.”

    Former President Joe Biden, the oldest president in U.S. history, has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, his personal office announced on Sunday afternoon.

    Biden, 82, was diagnosed last week after he had dealt with increased urinary symptoms and is currently reviewing treatment options.

    “Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms. On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone,” a spokesman for Biden’s personal office said in a statement….

    The Gleason score of 9 in Biden’s diagnosis suggests an aggressive form of cancer likely to spread quickly. He will likely require chemotherapy, hormone therapy, and forms of pain management to tackle the illness.

    What are the odds they’ve known he had cancer for years and didn’t tell the American public so the ghost in the machine could keep pumping out billions in graft? Speaking of which…

  • The Biden Administrations shoved $93 billion in graft green energy loans on its way out the door.

    During a blistering Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) was visibly floored after Energy Secretary Christopher Wright dropped a bombshell: the Department of Energy handed out a staggering $93 billion in loans and commitments during the final 76 days of the Biden administration, a figure that more than doubled the loan total from the previous 15 years combined.

    Kennedy, in classic fashion, drilled in with precision. “The 76-day period you’re talking about, that’s the period between the time that President Trump was elected and President Biden left office. Is that right?”

    “That is correct,” Wright confirmed.

    Kennedy didn’t mince words when he asked how any agency could properly vet such massive spending in such a short window. “How do you do due diligence on one loan, much less $93 billion?” he asked.

    Wright’s answer was damning.

    “I think it’s probably pretty clear it wasn’t done in many cases,” he said. “There were commitments made from businesses that provided no business plan, no numbers about their own financial solvency, or how this project actually worked.”

    The senator appeared almost incredulous and asked for clarity: “So, so you’re telling me that the Department of Energy in the 76-day period before their boss was gonna leave office, gave or loaned money to, to entities that had no business plan?”

    “Correct,” Wright replied bluntly.

    (Hat tip: Charlie Martin at Instapundit.)

  • Andrew Schultz gets Bernie Sanders to admit that the Democrat Party is a threat to Democracy.

    Andrew: Over the last four elections, Democrats – we felt – that we didn’t have a say on who could be president … I felt like the Democratic Party completely removed the democratic process from its constituents, and I think they need to have some accountability of that.
    Bernie: No argument here.
    Andrew: 2016 … it felt like they stole it from you. And I’ll be honest, it broke my heart when you supported them.


    Akassh [Singh]: Could we not also say ostensibly there hasn’t been a fair primary for the Democrats since 2008, are they not also a threat to democracy?
    Bernie: Yes. Fair enough. That is, yeah. I’m not gonna argue with that point.

  • The Supreme Court rules that, no, you can’t overthrow democracy just because someone disagrees with the radical transexual agenda: “Supreme Court Orders Maine House to Restore Vote of Lawmaker Censured over Post Criticizing Trans Athlete.”

    The Supreme Court ordered the Maine House of Representatives on Tuesday to restore the vote of a Republican lawmaker who was censured after she wrote an online post defending fairness in women’s sports and criticizing the intrusion of a trans-identifying male athlete into female competition.

    Maine Representative Laurel Libby filed the emergency appeal to the Supreme Court while a lawsuit over the social media post plays out. In the post written earlier this year, Libby criticized a male high school athlete who won a girls’ track meet, and included in the post the male student’s name.

    The Democrat-controlled Maine House decided that Libby’s post violated ethics in identifying the student, and when she chose not to apologize, Libby was subsequently banned from speaking and voting on the House floor.

    Supreme Court justices sided with Libby 7-2 with Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting.

    “The U.S. Supreme Court just restored the voice of 9,000 Mainers!” Libby said on X. “After 2+ months of being silenced for speaking up for Maine girls, I can once again vote on behalf of the people of House District 90. This is a win for free speech — and for the Constitution.”

  • Mexican National Indicted on Charges of Human Trafficking, Material Support for Drug Cartel. Maria Del Rosario Navarro-Sanchez allegedly trafficked humans and narcotics on behalf of the cartel.”

    A Mexican national was charged for allegedly providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization by the Western District of Texas — the first indictment of its kind in the nation.

    Maria Del Rosario Navarro-Sanchez allegedly assisted the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) with obtaining grenades, as well as trafficking humans, firearms, and narcotics “on behalf” of the criminal organization.

    The 39-year-old Mexican woman was charged by the court with “conspiracy to smuggle and transport aliens in the United States, straw purchasing and trafficking in firearms, bulk cash smuggling conspiracy, and conspiracy to possess a controlled substance with intent to distribute,” the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) shared on Friday afternoon.

    Navarro-Sanchez was joined in her indictment by two other co-defendants: Luis Carlos Davalos-Lopez and Gustavo Castro-Medina, also both Mexican nationals facing similar smuggling, trafficking, and straw purchasing charges.

  • The Democrat Party’s confederacy of dunces.

    Three hundred years ago, the remarkable satirist Jonathan Swift wrote, “When a true Genius appears in the World, you may know him by this infallible Sign; that the Dunces are all in Confederacy against him.”

    Now, you might not be President Trump’s biggest fan. Perhaps you are glad that he has returned to the White House but look forward to one of his capable lieutenants succeeding him in four years. But I would argue that never has a larger collection of absolute idiots assembled to oppose an American leader, and for that reason alone, Donald J. Trump is probably a genius. (And a very stable one at that!)

    Right now, Democrats are waging a public relations campaign in support of criminal illegal aliens. They are trying to make military-aged males with gang tattoos look sympathetic. Sure, many of them have been accused of engaging in human-trafficking, drug-smuggling, identity theft, and fraud, but Democrats say these “new” Americans are just like us. Sure, foreign nationals are regularly accused of rape and murder across the United States, but Democrats are quick to point out that “old” Americans commit heinous crimes, too. Sure, illegal aliens are a huge financial burden to the prison system, welfare programs, health care, public schools, and local communities, but Democrats insist that it’s “racist” to tell the truth out loud.

    While President Trump is rounding up violent criminals who have no right to be in the United States, Democrats are crying in front of cameras and promising to bring them back to a neighborhood near you. In four months, they’ve shown more love for foreigners who broke into our country than they’ve ever shown for American victims of transnational cartels!

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • “The Texas House voted overwhelmingly to approve a proposed state constitutional amendment that will allow denial of bail to certain violent suspects.”

    In a Monday bipartisan vote of 133 to 8, House members approved Sen. Joan Huffman’s (R-Houston) Senate Joint Resolution (SJR) 5 that allows judicial officers the discretion to deny bail to defendants charged with murder or capital murder, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery, aggravated sexual assault, indecency with a child, trafficking of persons, and continuous trafficking of persons.

    Bail may also be withheld for aggravated assault if the person caused serious bodily injury or used a weapon.

    Hopefully this will result in fewer citizens being killed by the criminals that Soros-backed prosecutors love letting back out on the street.

  • President Trump and congressional Republicans have ended California and other blue states war on internal combustion cars.

    Congressman Kevin Kiley’s resolution to save gas cars from extinction in 2035 in California has passed Congress and heads to President Trump’s desk, where he will sign the measure.

    The resolution revokes the EPA waiver secured in 2020 by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and eleven other states, aimed at getting rid of gas cars and attempting to switch to all-electric vehicles.

    Guess which party rules over the woke states blindly following Newsom’s disastrous proposal.

    1. California-Socialist
    2. Colorado-Democrat
    3. Delaware-Dummocrat
    4. Maryland-Dummocrat
    5. Massachusetts-Taxocrat
    6. New Jersey-Democrat
    7. New Mexico-Democrat
    8. New York-Democrat
    9. Oregon-Socialist
    10. Rhode Island-Democrat
    11. Vermont-Communist
    12. Washington-Communist
    13. District of Columbia-Stupidcrat

    Newsom sought the waiver from the Executive Branch. Now he’s suing the Executive Branch to say it doesn’t have the right to take away his waiver.

    Gavin Newsom’s presidential ambitions hardest hit…

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Two Israeli Embassy Aides Murdered Outside Capital Jewish Museum; Suspect Chanted ‘Free Palestine.'” Acceptance of Jew murder seems to be rapidly climbing the list of core Democratic Party ideological beliefs…
  • Curioser and curioser: “Father Of DC Shooting Suspect Was Democrats’ Honored Guest At Trump Congressional Address.”

    The father of the suspected gunman in the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers at the Capital Jewish Museum on Wednesday, was the honored guest of a far-left lawmaker at President Trump’s joint address to Congress back in March, the New York Post reported.

    Eric Rodriguez is an anti-Trump SEIU member who also spoke at a Democrat press conference ahead of Trump’s address.

    His son, accused killer Elias Rodriguez, 30, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder after allegedly gunning down Yaron Lischinsky, 28, and Sarah Milgrim, 26, who were about to become engaged.

    “Eric Rodriguez was our guest during the President’s Joint Speech to Congress, but we don’t know his family,” a spokesperson for Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.) told the Post Thursday night.

  • In the wake of the Biden announcement, Scott Adams announces that he too has metastasized prostrate cancer and only months to live. Presumably numerous other Scott Adams will continue to run on other simulations
  • “A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to revoke Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students.” Of course they have.
  • Trump Signs Cruz’s ‘TAKE IT DOWN’ Act Banning ‘Revenge Porn’ Into Law. Both President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump threw their support behind the bill prior to its passage.” Like many attempts to regulate cyberspace, the bill is long on good intentions and shorter on the ability to actually regulate a global Internet.
  • “Texas House Passes $140,000 Standard, $60,000 Elderly Homestead Exemption Increases.” Good. Business tax relief is evidently still pending.
  • Five Supreme Court justices recuse themselves from a case because they all had publishing deals with one of the companies involved. The last time that happened, Learned Hand was writing decisions…
  • Cop spawn-camps active shooter in Las Vegas.
  • Gun Owners of America Endorses Ken Paxton for U.S. Senate.” That’s a good endorsement, as anyone challenging an incumbent senator needs all the help they can get. It’s also insufficient; Jerry Patterson had the pro-gun vote locked up in his four-way Lt. Governor’s race against David Dewhurst, Dan Patrick and Todd Staples in 2014, and he still came in fourth place…
  • Interesting story about a leading married doctor in China who just got kicked out of his job and the CCP because he pulled strings for not one but two of his would-be baby mommas.
  • Was social justice games ruiner Sweet Baby Inc. created by the Canadian government? Some evidence suggests so, but this seems far from conclusive.
  • Bill Maher and Woody Harrelson’s Hollywood weed shop ransacked by thieves. Is this enough to finally make Maher vote Republican?
  • Asmongold has been highlighting the case of pro-jihad Twitch streamer Hasan Piker for quite some time now, saying that his support for terrorism could be a big danger to Twitch’s advertising revenue screens. Following the DC jihad shooting, Piker was called out by name on CNN
  • Good news! The movie adaptation of Howard Waldrop’s A Dozen Tough Jobs is going forward with a script by Joe R. Lansdale and George R. R. Martin producing.
  • Dispatch from the crazy years: “Hijab-clad Muslima who gave National Socialist salutes is OnlyFans model.”
  • I’m still not entirely convinced that D-Wave has a functional quantum computer, but their revenue is up 509%, so someone sure seems to think they do.
  • “Democrats Considering New Strategy Of Complaining Loudly Every Day About Trump.”
  • “Trump Asks When He’ll Get To See The Elves And Hobbits On His Middle East Tour.”
  • “America Is Just As Unprepared Now For A Giant Monkey Climbing Skyscrapers As We Were In 1933.”
  • “Experts Say AI Unlikely To Replace Government Bureaucrats As It’s Not Soulless Enough.”
  • “New Subscription Service Sends Dads A New Pair Of Cargo Pants Every 9 Years.”
  • This dog obviously lacks Red Bull:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

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





    LinkSwarm For September 20, 2024

    Friday, September 20th, 2024

    More Trump assassination details emerge, the Israel-Hezbollah front remains spicy, a huge Russian ammo dump blew up real good, more open borders shenanigans from the Biden-Harris junta, more woke Tolkien garbage, and China tries to pass off the most adorable fake pandas.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • “Hawley Releases Damning Report on Security Failures Leading Up to First Attempt on Trump’s Life.”

    Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) released a whistleblower report Monday on the law-enforcement failures leading up to the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump two months ago. The report was released one day after a suspect was apprehended in Florida for trying to kill Trump on his golf course in Florida.

    The Secret Service’s failures to secure Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13 were extensive and constituted one of the most consequential security debacles in U.S. history. Chief among them was law enforcement’s apparent choice to leave the rooftop of the American Glass Research (AGR) building unguarded, allegedly because of heat, before gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks climbed atop the building to carry out the attack, Hawley’s report states.

    The report is based on whistleblower allegations brought to his office in the wake of Crooks’s rampage. Before the report was published, Hawley sent multiple letters to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, questioning him about the most shocking details from the whistleblowers who contacted his office.

    Overseeing the Secret Service’s security operations at the rally was an unnamed lead agent who apparently has a history of incompetence and who directed the placement of certain items around the stage of the Trump rally that impaired visibility. The individual is allegedly known to be a low-quality agent and failed an examination on the way to becoming a Secret Service agent.

    Secret Service intelligence units were not at the Butler rally. If they had been there, they could have prevented or mitigated the communication breakdown between federal and local law enforcement, Hawley’s report says, a major allegation that he has not previously publicized.

    Ahead of the rally, the Secret Service’s counter-surveillance division did not conduct its typical inspection of the site and did not have a presence at the Butler campaign rally. A whistleblower told Hawley’s office that the counter-surveillance division would have arrested Crooks for carrying a rangefinder. The same whistleblower alleges that acting director Ron Rowe personally requested cuts to the counter-surveillance division, a claim Rowe has denied.

    At a congressional hearing in July, Rowe admitted to the Secret Service’s mistakes on the day of the Trump rally, including a decision to reject an offer from local law enforcement for drone support after the Secret Service was unable to fly its own. Hours before the shooting, Crooks flew a drone around the perimeter of the Trump rally for roughly 11 minutes, the FBI has determined.

    According to the report, a whistleblower with direct knowledge of the Butler planning process said that the rally was not slated to receive any additional security because Trump is not a sitting president or vice president. These additional resources would have included counter-snipers and counter-surveillance personnel.

    The Trump rally was considered to be a “loose” security environment, meaning that Department of Homeland Security personnel failed to police the area immediately surrounding the stage and were not placed at intervals around the perimeter, Hawley’s report asserts. Extra DHS personnel without the necessary training to work campaigns were pulled away from the department’s investigative team and reassigned to the Trump rally, a whistleblower told Hawley’s office.

    Up to this point, Hawley says, the Secret Service and DHS have not answered questions about the lead agent overseeing the Trump campaign rally, resources allocated to the Trump campaign, and the Secret Service’s lack of counter-sniper coverage on the AGR building.

    I think we need to know the name of this unnamed lead agent, and how many ties he has to the Obama regime…

  • What we know about the latest would-be Trump assassin.

    On Sunday, September 15th, 58-year-old Ryan Routh of Hawaii showed up to Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, where former President Donald Trump was golfing.

    Routh reportedly shoved the barrel of a scoped polymer SKS-style rifle through the fence with the intent to fire at President Trump, who was several hundred yards away.

    Nothing says “accuracy” quite like an old Soviet design they dropped for the AK-47.

    Authorities say Routh also had a GoPro camera, as well as two backpacks containing ceramic tile that he had hung on the fence (a type of ballistics armor is made of ceramic tile).

    Secret Service agents saw Routh and fired at him. He escaped in a black Nissan before getting arrested by local police on I-95 thanks to a photograph taken by a bystander.

    USA Today says Routh has a “complex history,” which is code for “the man was foaming at the mouth for leftist causes.”

    A profile for Ryan Routh on X dates to January 2020, where he posted a range of passionate opinions on issues including Black Lives Matter, Taiwanese sovereignty and supporting Ukraine in the war with Russia.

    Obviously he supported Palestinians and hated Israel.

    According to Fox News, Routh spent the majority of his life in North Carolina, where he owned a company called United Roofing.

    You won’t be surprised that Routh was in support of Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) in the 2020 election.

    In 2020, during the presidential primary, the X account said: ‘I was not supporting Bernie, but now I am; as sleepy Joe stands for nothing; no plans, no ideas, just as limp as hillary. Bernie…….give them hell…..fight to the death…’

    Routh reportedly donated to ActBlue, a major Democratic campaign fund, at least 19 times.

  • A lot of reports said would-be Trump assassin Routh fought for Ukraine and against Russia. Ukraine says they rejected him as a “Call of Duty Warrior.”

    Ukrainian military recruiters appear to have spotted almost immediately that Mr Routh, who had a long criminal record, was not promising material.

    According to an interview that he later gave to the Financial Times, he was rejected for service when he first reported to a Legion office on the Polish border at the war’s outset.

    “They said: ‘You’re 56, you’re old and you have no experience’,” he told the paper. “So why don’t you recruit and coordinate?”

    If that is what they told him, they probably intended him doing so having returned himself safely back to the US. Undeterred, however, Mr Routh continued on to Kyiv, where he became a familiar – if less than welcome – face on the Legion’s fringes.

    There were many such cranks in Kyiv at the time, latching on to the war to pose as international men of action and boasting of high-level contacts in the Pentagon or CIA.

    Regular Legionnaires did their best to avoid them, referring to them variously as “Call of Duty Warriors”, “Volun-tourists” and “Screamers” – the latter a reference to their reaction if coming under fire.

    But there was little to stop them promoting themselves on social media, as Mr Routh did prolifically, claiming to be an active recruiter for the Legion ranks.

    “Any gender, any age, any skill level to no skill level,” he claimed to Newsweek in 2022. “Yeah, if you wanna fight, come and see me and I’ll put you in a unit so you can go fight.”

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Kamala Harris: “As of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone, in any war zone around the world for the first time this century.” U.S. active duty soldiers in a combat zone: “Say what?
  • CBS polls restaurant patrons in Nevada and finds precisely one Harris supporter. Everyone else was for Trump. Presumably illegal aliens don’t eat out much…
  • “Oregon DMV admits that they’ve registered hundreds of illegal immigrants to vote since 2021.”
  • “PA Supreme Court rules that misdated ballots must not be counted.”

    The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has determined that the two biggest counties in the state do not have to count mail-in ballots that have either the wrong date or no date where indicated on the outer envelope. The ruling was 4 to 3, with those 3 justices writing a dissent in the case.

    The order from the court found that the lower court, which had ruled that those ballots must be counted even with the errors, lacked jurisdiction in the case because only Allegheny and Philadelphia Counties were mentioned in the case and not all of the state’s 67 counties.

    The order reads: “AND NOW, this 13th day of September, 2024, the order of the Commonwealth Court is VACATED. The Commonwealth Court lacked subject matter jurisdiction to review the matter given the failure to name the county boards of elections of all 67 counties, and because the joinder of Al Schmidt, in his official capacity as Secretary of the Commonwealth, did not suffice to invoke the Commonwealth Court’s original jurisdiction.”

    In practice, this means that in the coming presidential election, officials will not count any ballots that are either misdated or undated ballots. The jurisdiction issue could be addressed by the plaintiffs in the case before the election. The plaintiffs are listed as Black Political Empowerment Project, Power Interfaith, Make the Road Pennsylvania, OnePA Activists, New PA Project Education Fund, Casa San Jose, Pittsburgh United, League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania and Common Cause Pennsylvania.

    But don’t think for a minute this will keep Pennsylvania Democrats from trying to steal the election just like they did in 2020, as they won’t start “counting” absentee ballots until election day.

  • And speaking of Pennsylvania voting fraud: “Pennsylvania[‘s Luzerne County] bans drop boxes after woman caught with multiple ballots.”
  • “Ex-Border Patrol Chief Says He Was Instructed By Biden-Harris Admin To Hide Terrorist Encounters.”

    In a scathing revelation before Congress, former San Diego Sector Border Patrol Chief Aaron Heitke accused the Biden-Harris administration of covering up a sharp rise in encounters with suspected terrorists at the U.S.-Mexico border.

    During a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing titled “A Country Without Borders: How Biden-Harris’ Open-Borders Policies Have Undermined Our Safety and Security,” Heitke said he was muzzled from releasing critical information on the number of Special Interest Aliens (SIAs) — individuals with known or suspected ties to terrorism — apprehended in California.

    “I was told I could not release any information on this increase in SIAs or mention any of the arrests,” Heitke testified. “The administration was trying to convince the public there was no threat at the border.”

    According to Heitke, arrests of individuals with terror ties skyrocketed under President Joe Biden’s watch. The former Border Patrol chief revealed that before 2021, his sector had apprehended between 10 to 15 SIAs annually. By 2022, that number had shot up to over 100, with even more recorded in 2023.

    “Once word was out that the border was far easier to cross, San Diego went to over 100 SIAs in 2022, well over that in 2023, and even more than that registered this year. These are only the ones we caught,”

  • Scott Adams lays down some truth bombs:

    You’ll need to click on that to expand it. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • “US Secures Convictions, Guilty Pleas As CCP-Directed Spying Exposed.”

    For years, Beijing has been deepening its hold on America, drawing intelligence from the U.S. government while silencing critics with the help of agents embedded in U.S. society.

    The United States is now hitting back—and seeing results, according to experts.

    In early September, prosecutors arrested Linda Sun, former aide to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, accusing her of acting on behalf of Beijing in exchange for gifts and payouts valued in millions of dollars to her family.

    There has also been a marked increase in the rate of convictions or pleas in recent months. The Justice Department has brought forth dozens of CCP-directed espionage and foreign agent cases in the past four years, resulting in at least 13 convictions or pleas, with more than half of those taking place this year—including three in the past month. an Epoch Times review of the court records show.

    On Aug. 6, a Chinese American scholar posing as a pro-democracy activist was convicted by a jury for spying on dissidents for the CCP.

    On Aug. 13, a U.S. army intelligence analyst from Texas pleaded guilty to selling military secrets to the CCP.

    On Aug. 23, a software engineer who worked two decades at Verizon pleaded guilty to gathering intelligence on countless dissidents and organizations targeted by the CCP since 2012.

    Case documents reveal a broad range of criminal actions taken by agents, often different from what most may imagine to be spying. Beyond industrial espionage and covert influence campaigns, the regime has directed hacker rings, including a group that was charged and sanctioned this year for waging a 14-year campaign on the United States.

    “I feel that our nation must take every opportunity to stop these threats,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), chair of the cybersecurity subcommittee for the House Armed Services Committee, told The Epoch Times, noting that the U.S. intelligence community has identified Beijing as the number one threat to the United States.

    Bacon has experienced Chinese espionage attempts firsthand. Last year, he was hacked by CCP-linked hackers who also broke into email systems of State and Commerce department officials and dozens of other groups.

    “Can we ever say that whatever actions we are taking are enough? I don’t believe so as the threats are increasing in frequency, sophistication, and national security impact,” Bacon said.

    The CCP has long targeted people of Chinese descent—of whom there are more than 60 million people outside China—as potential assets in its intelligence operations.

    Among those charged by the DOJ in the foreign agent cases are officials of the CCP’s top intelligence gathering agency Ministry of State Security (MSS), Chinese citizens traveling to the United States under false pretenses, hackers residing in Asian countries; as well as asylees, permanent residents, and U.S. citizens of Chinese descent.

    Some reside in the United States while dozens of others charged are known to reside in China, and will now face arrest if they ever set foot on American soil.

    There are also many who are U.S. citizens that aren’t of Chinese descent. They include active military members, former law enforcement, and experts in competitive fields.

  • “Israeli Strike Kills Hezbollah Commander behind 1983 U.S. Embassy Bombing.”

    An Israeli airstrike in Beirut killed senior Hezbollah military official Ibrahim Akil on Friday, Israeli Defense Forces announced. Although Hezbollah has not confirmed the reports, Lebanese officials said earlier in the day that the strike killed at least eight and wounded 59.

    Israeli Defense Forces reportedly targeted two residential buildings in southern Beirut. Akil is the head of Hezbollah’s Radwan Force and Jihad Council, and is sanctioned by the U.S. Department of State for playing a role in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, in which a suicide bomber murdered 63 people, including 52 embassy employees. The State Department designated Akil a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in 2019, and offered a reward of “up to $7 million for information” about the Hezbollah leader.

    Good. Burn in Hell, terrorist scumbag.

  • Despite Israel’s recent successes against Hezbollah’s command and control, Hezbollah was still able to launch multiple missile attacks against northern Israel today. Indeed, the whole theater is quite spicy:

  • A few thoughts on Operation Grim Beeper.
  • “Two chiefs with the New York Fire Department have been arrested on bribery charges.” Those are Brian E. Cordasco, 49, and Anthony M. Saccavino, the same ones the FBI raided.
  • Shark Tank host Kevin O’Leary says that New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and California those states are now “uninvestable.” The taxes are too high and “the regulatory environment is punitive.”
  • American Transit Insurance Company [is] insolvent.” They insure hire cars, cabs, Uber, etc. “As in, ‘can’t pay their bills’ insolvent. As in ‘can’t pay claims’ insolvent.”
  • Ukraine just blew up a Russian ammo dump in Toropets so large that the explosion was visible from space. (More.) (And still more.)
  • Remember Thierry Breton, the eurocrat who got in a slapfight with Elon Musk over Twitter refusing the censor people and knuckle-under? He just resigned. “France’s European Union commissioner Thierry Breton abruptly resigned on Monday amid an ongoing dispute with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. He was slated to serve a second term after being re-appointed by French President Emmanuel Macron, The Guardian reports.” Evidently von der Leyen wants the Commission to be “gender balanced.” Social justice will oft social justice mar…
  • “The mayor of Atlantic City, Marty Small Sr., and his wife [La’Quetta Small] (the superintendent of schools) have both been officially indicted.” Despite both being Democrats, they weren’t indicted for fraud, but for brutally beating their own teenage daughter. Bonus: The daughter told principal Constance Days-Chapman of the abuse, and instead of telling the police, she told the abusive parents. She’s being charged, too.
  • Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Harris County’s revamped version of their unconstitutional socialist guaranteed income program.
  • Has technology killed bands?
  • Both North Carolina and parts of Europe got hit with some near-Biblical floods this week.
  • New Hobbit game obviously more woke bullshitAfter swearing for months they wouldn’t add AI to D&D, Hasbro to add AI to D&D.
  • “23andMe’s board quits en masse: A former tech darling is in turmoil after all seven of its independent board members resigned. 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki is now the sole remaining member following a disagreement over taking the company private.”
  • ESPN’s NBA reporter Adrian Wojnarowski retires. He was at the top of his profession, and reportedly walked away from a $30 million contract. But given Disney’s ongoing debacles, it’s quite possible they asked him to take a haircut or let him retire in advance of a layoff.
  • Jane says/Can you taste my fist today? Also, the tour’s been cancelled on the basis of chin music. A shame, really, since Jane’s Addition has a fairly unheralded role as the musical bridge between LA’s “hair metal” scene and the harder alt rock edge of acts like Nirvana.
  • “FBI Tries To Distract From Old Trump Assassination Attempt With New Trump Assassination Attempt.”
  • “FBI Says We May Never Know The Motivation Of The Would-Be Trump Assassin Who Was A Biden-Harris Supporter And Donated To Democrats 20 Times.”
  • “Biden Promises Next Trump Assassin Will Be A Woman Of Color.”
  • “DOJ Warns If Trump Is Elected He Will Do To Them All The Stuff They’re Doing To Him.”
  • “Media Assures Americans The Real Threat Is The Side That Keeps Getting Shot At.”
  • “Kamala Safe And In Stable Condition After Attempted Interview.”
  • “Rashida Tlaib Uninjured After Her Pager Mysteriously Explodes.”
  • “BREAKING: Israel Kills Thousands More Terrorists With Exploding ‘200 Free Hours of AOL’ CDs.”
  • It’s a LinkSwarm tradition to end with an amusing dog clip or story. So here are some pretty Chow Chows…painted up to look like Pandas in a Chinese zoo:

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • I’ve now been unemployed for one year, so feel free to hit the tip jar.





    LinkSwarm For January 27, 2023

    Friday, January 27th, 2023

    Democrats enabling sexual predators (yet again), more tanks for Ukraine information, and the unexpected return of Storm Drain Woman. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
    

  • Democrat-run California loves releasing pedophiles from prison early.

    Published in November of 2022, the story indicated “thousands of child molesters are being let out after just a few months, despite sentencing guidelines.”

    The story reported that more than 7,000 inmates convicted of “lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age” were released from prison the same year they were incarcerated.

    The Daily Mail’s analysis was conducted using a database—created in 1994 after the federal Megan’s Law was passed—requiring law enforcement to make public information regarding registered sex offenders. The news organization examined data in California through July of 2019.

    “Everyone should be really upset and frightened by this,” Dordulian said.

    According to Dordulian, child molesters are the least likely of criminals to be rehabilitated and are four times more likely to commit the same crime again.

    “Once they’re out,” he said, “they are going to re-offend and there’s going to be another child that is victimized by these people.”

  • California’s repeal of an anti-loitering law has enabled pimps and human traffickers.

    Senate Bill 357. Signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in July, the measure decriminalized loitering with the intent to engage in prostitution. The bill did not officially take effect until January 1 of this year; but, from the moment it became law back in July, these women say, the on-the-ground reality changed. “The minute the governor signed it, you started seeing an uptick on the streets,” Powell said. “And on social media, the pimps were saying: ‘You better get out there and work because the streets are ours.’”

    The pimps were right: police stopped making arrests for crimes that would no longer be charged. The anti-loitering statute had provided the grounds for officers to question women and children whom they suspected might be trapped in a prostitution ring. “As a police officer, you need probable cause to stop and investigate,” Powell explained. “So if I have a law that says you can’t loiter in this area, with pasties and a G-string, flagging down cars, I could stop you for that because you’re loitering. But if I just say I’m stopping you because you look kind of young, that’s a little weak. So, it takes away a tool.” Without the statute, police hands were suddenly tied. Henceforth, questioning the girls—and potentially provoking a violent confrontation with pimps—came to seem a Pyrrhic gamble, one that California’s police officers would now avoid.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Gavin Newsom’s wife’s films shown in school promote both the radical transexual agenda and Democrats.

    The films, which include “Miss Representation,” “The Mask You Live In,” “The Great American Lie” and “Fair Play,” are licensed to taxpayer-funded schools across every state and sometimes contain sexually explicit imagery and push students to feel “shame and sorrow” about American society split by privilege and oppression. They are paired with curricula that include discussion on Gov. Newsom’s comments within the films, urging them to gather their friends and vote for aligned politicians that support a “care economy” that “embraces universal human values.”

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Former Beaverton, Oregon Democratic mayor Dennis ‘Denny’ Doyle sentenced to six months for possessing child pornography. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Closer to home: “Prosper ISD [Dallas County Metroplex] School Board President Arrested for Indecency with a Child.”
  • George Soros’ right-hand political man is working hand-in-glove with the Biden White House. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Suchomimus has a video breakdown of which tanks from where are going to Ukraine.
  • Not mentioned: Morocco is sending upgraded T-72s.
  • Union membership hits record lows.
  • Scott Adams admits Flu Manchu vaccine critics were right.
  • When real life imitates The Babylon Bee: Illinois Democratic Governor “Pritzker Demands Black Queer History in AP African-American Studies.”
  • “Former Arlington teachers union president charged with embezzlement. A former president of the Arlington teachers union, who was ousted last spring, has been charged with embezzling more than $400,000 from the organization. Ingrid Gant, 54, of Woodbridge, was arrested yesterday (Monday) in Prince William County on four counts of embezzlement.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • “Thirty years ago, Guan County, Shandong Province launched the ‘Hundred Childless Days‘ campaign under the aegis of national family planning, known in the West as the ‘one-child policy.’ The birthplace of the “Boxers” was deemed to have too high a birth rate by the provincial government. County officials sought to correct this by ensuring that not a single baby was born between May 1 and August 10, 1991.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • EU: Eat the bugs, peasants.
  • The Five > All of CNN.
  • “Austin hair salon could shut down due to neighboring homeless camp.”

    North says they do not feel safe anymore, and she believes it all ties back to the large homeless encampment located only feet away from the salon.

    “Our safety started to become a big issue. We suffered from multiple break-ins. We’ve had our cars broken into. We clean up feces and needles on a weekly basis. It increased from that to, you know, people approaching us and threatening us with weapons, threatening rape, murder, all of those things,” said North.

    The salon has been up and running just off Ben White Blvd. for four years now. North says she has seen an uptick in crime for a while now, but the dangerous behavior from people living in this encampment picked up recently.

    “In the past year, it’s gotten increasingly worse and, in the past couple of weeks, it’s gotten to the point where I actually finally felt like this might shut my business down,” said North.

    Erin Mutschler, another co-owner of the salon, says they have called the police every time they have dealt with a situation like the one caught on video, but she says police often take 45 minutes to an hour for anyone to show up.

    The mayorship of Steve Adler is the gift that just keeps giving, even with him out of office… (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • “Former Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s entire legal team has asked a federal judge to withdraw from representing the city’s top prosecutor.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Stop! Hammertime!
  • Insurance companies are refusing to insure Hyundais and Kias because they’re too easy to steal.
  • How easy? This easy. All you need is a screwdriver and a USB cable…
  • Intel reports quarterly loss.
  • Follow-up: Democratic State Rep. Harold Dutton: “Don’t Blame Abbott, Houston ISD Takeover Plan Was My Idea.” (Previously.)
  • A Florida woman was pulled from a storm drain for the third time in two years. Maybe she was looking for David Icke’s lizard people. Also, she sounds like a real winner: “Police said her license had been suspended 17 times from 2007 to 2020.” (Previously.) (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Jay Leno broke his collarbone, several ribs and both kneecaps in a motorcycle accident. But it sounds like a freak accident: “So I turned down a side street and cut through a parking lot, and unbeknownst to me, some guy had a wire strung across the parking lot but with no flag hanging from it…I didn’t see it until it was too late. It just clothesline me and, boom, knocked me off the bike.” (There’s no evidence the line was strung there by Conan O’Brien.) “But I’m OK!…I’m working this weekend.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “Hillary Clinton Boasts Of Having No Classified Documents From Her Time As President.”
  • Assholes And Losers

    Monday, June 21st, 2021

    Critical Race Theory, like a lot of social justice/victimhood identity politics creeds, clothes horrible, racist ideas in the confounding camouflage of postmodern academic jargon. That’s one reason conservatives have had a hard time fighting it. Scott Adams says that labeling “Marxist” or “anti-white” isn’t getting the job done persuasion-wise. He suggests boiling down the poison of Critical Race Theory into something far more readily understandable: losers and assholes:

    Being accurate matters for science and for budgeting. Accuracy often requires details and nuance and context and all that stuff. But persuasion craves simplicity. Every detail you add to a clean message gives someone a reason to not accept it.

    We see this problem for the critics of Critical Race Theory. They try to argue it is a Marxist worldview, and 95% of the country isn’t quite sure that is true, and isn’t quite sure why that matters, exactly. Sounds bad, but perhaps not so bad for left-leaning people. And that’s who the right needs to persuade.

    Calling CRT “anti-white” might be close to the truth, but that doesn’t matter to persuasion. The “anti-white” critique sounds exactly like a Fox News talking point, and not something moderates would take se …

    That’s why I am A-B testing some new persuasion approaches. In this tweet I reframe CRT as sorting children into two classes: Losers and Assholes.

    The “losers” would be any non-white kids born into this oppressive racist system. The assholes are the white kids who allegedly benefit from the system and perhaps are not keen to change what works for them.

    That framing might well get the job done, though just asking parents “So, is your kid a loser or an asshole?” might bring sub-optimal results…

    (I have a lot of links on fighting Critical Race Theory building up in the virtual hopper, though there are other topic posts I need to finish first.)

    Election Fraud Update for December 7, 2020

    Monday, December 7th, 2020

    We are rapidly approaching the endgame on election fraud remedies. States must ratify their final electors by December 8 (the “safe harbor” date), and electors meet and vote on December 14. Either the Supreme Court will have stopped the steal by that date, or Joe Biden will officially receive enough electoral votes to be elected President.

  • President Donald Trump lays out the case for significant voter fraud having altered the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election:

  • Here is a complete transcript of the speech.
  • Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has agreed to hear arguments that Pennsylvania’s loose mail voting requirements violated both state and federal law. Moreover, hearing it within the “safe harbor period by Tuesday “may signal that the Supreme Court takes Kelly’s case, which was rejected by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court with prejudice last weekend.”
  • The mysterious case of four suitcases of ballots pulled out from under a table after counting had supposedly stopped:

    President Donald Trump’s legal team on Dec. 3 presented surveillance footage at a Georgia state legislature hearing that appears to show ballot-counting workers telling poll observers late at night on Election Day to leave before continuing to count and pulling out what appears to be boxes filled with ballots.

    In the hearing on Dec. 3, Jacki Pick, a lawyer who is volunteering with the campaign’s legal case, said the team received video footage from State Farm Arena’s vote-tabulation center in Fulton County, Georgia. The team said that GOP poll watchers weren’t allowed to watch the counting process in the poll center.

    According to Pick, an unusual occurrence took place later in the evening at around 10 p.m. local time: A woman—described as a blonde woman with braids—told workers to stop counting and notified everyone to go home.

    Describing the video footage, Pick said, “Everyone clears out, including the Republican observers and the press, but four people stay behind and continue counting and tabulating well into the night.” The four counted unobserved until about 1 a.m., according to the video.

    Pick said that video footage shows Fulton County election workers waiting at their scanning areas until GOP poll observers and reporters left the room before they started “scanning ballots,” ostensibly without any observation.

  • National Review‘s Rich Lowry says that there’s nothing nefarious going on. I’m not so sure.
  • Ruby Freeman and daughter/supervisor Wandrea “Shaye” Moss (involved in the suitcases full of ballots) are also involved in this video-captured thumb drive handoff:

    If that’s not suspicious activity, they’re certainly doing an amazing imitation of looking suspicious while doing something.

  • Freeman seems to have lawyered up.
  • “GA Rep Says Forensic Tests Run On Sequestered Dominion Equipment Found Votes Switched From Trump to Biden.”
  • “Whistleblowers Dispute Over 1 Million Ballots, Cite Dominion Tampering, Shipping Filled Ballots Across State Lines.”

    The Amistad Project has gathered whistleblowers and sworn declarations revealing over one million potentially fraudulent swing-state ballots, including completed ballots getting shipped across state lines, postal service workers being told to prioritize Biden mail, and officials tampering with Dominion systems to prevent an audit.

    In total, over 300,000 ballots are at issue in Arizona, 548,000 in Michigan, 204,000 in Georgia, and over 121,000 in Pennsylvania.

    The declarations state that unlawful actions by state and local election officials in swing states, and possibly U.S. Postal Service officials,” the Amistad Project noted.

    The evidence details “the failure of election officials in blue jurisdictions to maintain ballot chain of custody,” and include “photographs of individuals improperly accessing voting machines and a detailed eyewitness account of the breaking of sealed boxes of ballot jump drives and commingling of those jump drives with others.”

    In addition to voting machine tampering, the Amistad Project’s findings reveal efforts by Postal Service officials in at least three of six swing states. “Details include potentially hundreds of thousands of completed absentee ballots being transported across three state lines, and a trailer filled with ballots disappearing in Pennsylvania,” the group notes.

    The Amistad Project feels that one whistleblower, a USPS truck driver Jess Morgan, had “fraudulent ballots were mistakenly placed” in his Pennsylvania-bound truck.

    (Hat Tip: Cut Jib news at Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • “Up to 280,000 Ballots ‘Disappeared’ Overnight Along with Trailer, USPS Whistleblower Alleges.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Judge Orders Forensic Audit of Dominion Voting Machines in Michigan.” “‘Our team is going to be able to go in this morning at about 8:30 and will be there for about eight hours to conduct that forensic examination and we’ll have the results in about 48 hours, and that’ll tell us a lot about these machines,’ Trump election attorney Jenna Ellis told Fox News.” Maybe this will finally provide the Dominion smoking gun. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Did Dominion give Biden a 5% boost in Georgia?
  • “Biden Received ‘Mathematically Impossible’ Spike in Votes When Suspicious Ballots Counted in Georgia.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Trump campaign witness Melissa Carone’s testimony about Michigan fraud was evidently deemed worthy of Saturday Night Live parody.
  • “Arizona GOP finds 2% of duplicate ballots took votes away from Trump after judge allows sample to be examined.”
  • Wisconsin supreme court refuses to hear election fraud cases.
  • A breakdown in Georgia court orders relating to election fraud cases through November 30.
  • The Red Headed Libertarian summarizes the evidence:

  • A call for an audit in Maricopa County, Arizona:

  • More evidence of Georgia fraud:

  • Scott Adams makes the case for witnesses being denied their rights to observe elections by force:

    (Hat tip: Mark Tapscott at Instapundit.)

  • Twitter has evidently taken down this video:

  • Sydney Powell discusses election fraud with Mike Huckabee.
  • “Pair Charged With Voter Fraud Allegedly Submitted THOUSANDS of Fraudulent Applications on Behalf of Homeless People.”
  • George Soros Appoints Chair of Smartmatic Parent Company to Lead Open Society Foundations.” That would be Mark Malloch-Brown. (Hat tip: Cut Jib news at Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Mysterious Tower Of Missing Trump Votes Appears In Utah Desert.”
  • Let me know if I missed any important election fraud news in the comments.

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    LinkSwarm for September 11, 2020

    Friday, September 11th, 2020

    Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Nineteen years ago, radical Islamic terrorists carried out the deadliest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. Today not only is Osama bin Laden dead, but what’s left of al Qaeda has been relegated to minor players in a handful of regional conflicts (Yemen, Syria, etc.).

  • Kurt Schlichter says to expect Democratic shenanigans, but don’t panic:

    The media is filled with stories about how the Democrats are planning to refuse to accept Donald Trump’s impending victory, with speculation about cheating, lawsuits, and the odd military coup. Leaving aside the bizarre notion that our troops are eager to risk their lives to kill their friends and family for the benefit of the liberal establishment and the military-industrial complex – which the Democrats have suddenly embraced as something awesome – in order to impose that creepy old weirdo from the basement upon America, the challenges are real but they are also overblown.

    Don’t panic. Prepare. Work to get out the patriotic American vote. If we’re ready maybe this won’t descend into the chaos I describe in my novel/unintended documentary People’s Republic.

    Now, they will cheat. That’s baked in, and they are fully committed to it. That’s why they hate hate hate voter ID – it’s harder to cheat when you have to prove who you are. Voting-by-mail gets around that and offers all sorts of opportunities for mischief. They fully intend to try to leverage voting by mail to 1) get China virus paranoids and their usual lay-about voters to vote instead of just sitting home watching “Judge Judy,” and 2) manufacture the necessary votes to swing the election. The turnout issue is important to them because all the numbskulls driving their cars alone with masks on are all liberal. The Dems could have gone with explaining that going to vote for Biden confers immunity, just like rioting, but whatever. Now, the cheating aspect is another issue, but how great an impact cheating might have is open to question.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue. )

  • “Scott Adams: Trump Is The Most Successful Stand-Up Comic Ever; Democrats Want To Burn Down The Country Because They Don’t Get The Joke.”
  • Senate Democrats have blocked the latest coronavirus stimulus.
  • The taxcut for the rich Democrats love.

    Mr. Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer don’t agree on everything, but on this specific issue they speak with one voice: the $10,000 cap on deductions for state and local tax (better known as the SALT deduction) must go.

    The House of Representatives has already passed legislation removing the cap, allowing the amount of the deduction to rise. If the Senate turns blue in November, Democrats have promised to return to the issue. “I want to tell you this,” Senator Schumer said in July, “If I become majority leader, one of the first things I will do is we will eliminate” the SALT cap “forever.” It “will be dead, gone and buried.”

    The cap was introduced as part of the 2017 Republican Tax Cuts and Jobs Act…Almost 60 percent of the benefit of removal would go to the top 1 percent of households (of which 90 percent are white).

    (Hat tip: Mark Tapscott at Instapundit.)

  • The Democratic Party and the Iron law of Bureaucracy:

    Think on today’s Democratic Party, withered by the Clintons and then the Obamas and now Slow Joe Biden. Think about the obvious lies. Think about how loyalty uber alles has shaved off bits of their partisans’ souls, burned as offerings on the altar of someone else’s political ambitions. Think of the small death that takes place each day among those (supposedly) most fervent partisans.

    It’s no wonder that the Democratic Party is being taken over by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Black Lives Matter, and Antifa rioters. The Iron Law says that they’re the ones who will rise to the top.

    You see, all paths other than radical revolution are closed, at least for advancement. Who even talks about John Kerry anymore? And the media covers for all of these people so there is no possible correction.

  • The Trump Administration has cross-depotized Oregon State Police troopers “assigned to help the police in Portland have now been cross-deputize by the federal government. This means that the US Attorney’s Office can lodge charges against those arrested by deputized troopers,” bypassing antifa-friendly DAs. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Among those Portland arrestees:

  • “Portland Overtakes Mos Eisley As Most Wretched Hive Of Scum And Villainy.”
  • “Journalism’s New Propaganda Tool: Using ‘Confirmed’ to Mean Its Opposite.”

    But what is clear is that the “confirmation” which both MSNBC and CBS claimed it had obtained for the story was anything but: All that happened was that the same sources which anonymously whispered these unverified, false claims to CNN then went and repeated the same unverified, false claims to other outlets, which then claimed that they “independently confirmed” the story even though they had done nothing of the sort.

    It seems the same misleading tactic is now driving the supremely dumb but all-consuming news cycle centered on whether President Trump, as first reported by the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, made disparaging comments about The Troops. Goldberg claims that “four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day” — whom the magazine refuses to name because they fear “angry tweets” — told him that Trump made these comments. Trump, as well as former aides who were present that day (including Sarah Huckabee Sanders and John Bolton), deny that the report is accurate.

    So we have anonymous sources making claims on one side, and Trump and former aides (including Bolton, now a harsh Trump critic) insisting that the story is inaccurate. Beyond deciding whether or not to believe Goldberg’s story based on what best advances one’s political interests, how can one resolve the factual dispute? If other media outlets could confirm the original claims from Goldberg, that would obviously be a significant advancement of the story.

    Other media outlets — including Associated Press and Fox News — now claim that they did exactly that: “confirmed” the Atlantic story. But if one looks at what they actually did, at what this “confirmation” consists of, it is the opposite of what that word would mean, or should mean, in any minimally responsible sense. AP, for instance, merely claims that “a senior Defense Department official with firsthand knowledge of events and a senior U.S. Marine Corps officer who was told about Trump’s comments confirmed some of the remarks to The Associated Press,” while Fox merely said “a former senior Trump administration official who was in France traveling with the president in November 2018 did confirm other details surrounding that trip.”

    In other words, all that likely happened is that the same sources who claimed to Jeffrey Goldberg, with no evidence, that Trump said this went to other outlets and repeated the same claims — the same tactic that enabled MSNBC and CBS to claim they had “confirmed” the fundamentally false CNN story about Trump Jr. receiving advanced access to the WikiLeaks archive. Or perhaps it was different sources aligned with those original sources and sharing their agenda who repeated these claims. Given that none of the sources making these claims have the courage to identify themselves, due to their fear of mean tweets, it is impossible to know.

  • “Iran Caught Stockpiling Enriched Uranium Needed for Bomb.”
  • Good question:

  • A look at spolits between circuit courts on high capacity magazine confiscation.
  • Al Sharpton comes out against defunding the police. Just think crazy far to the left you have to go for Al “Race Hustling Poverty Pimp” Sharpton to call you out for your bullshit?
  • Kosovo, Serbia normalize economic relations in White House ceremony.” Is there nothing Nobel Peace Prize nominee President Donald Trump can’t do?
  • The Trump-brokered UAE-Israel peace deal is already paying dividends. Winners: Israeli airlines, and other Arab states moving to normalize relations. Losers: Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • More on the same subject:

  • How the Greek and Turkish air forces stack up against each other. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Eric S. Raymond notes that Kyle Rittenhouse was acting lawfully as a member of the the general militia under federal law.
  • Christopher Eisgruber, president of Princeton University since 2013, admits to running a systematically racist university. Sounds like he should be fired, doesn’t it?
  • Survey shows that professional sports is in big trouble. “Of all the sectors measured in the survey, professional sports suffered the biggest drop in support, falling all the way to 23rd on the list and settling barely above The Federal Government. The negative impressions by Americans now see sports underwater by double digits, with a 30%-40% favorable/unfavorable ratio.”
  • Speaking of getting woke and going broke, the Oscars are now implementing racial quotas.
  • New York City to allow indoor dining at a whopping 25% capacity.
  • Speaking of which is, is there any conceivable reason that all Texas restaurants shouldn’t be fully open for business?
  • Dwight should find this of interest: Smith & Wesson enjoys recording-breaking gun sales.
  • Speaking of Dwight, he forwarded this piece on would-be EV truck maker Nikola may have committed a wide range of shenanigans.
  • How Jerry Pournelle once plotted the overthrow of the communist government of Albania. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • There was a chemical fire in Williamson County yesterday. No one was hurt, but there was a 1 mile radius shelter in place order. It said “chemical plant,” but I think that plant makes aerial lift buckets and such.
  • The most dangerous walking path in Britain.
  • There was a chemical fire in Williamson County yesterday. No one was hurt, but there was a 1 mile radius shelter in place order. It said “chemical plant,” but I think that plant makes aerial lift buckets and such.
  • This is a parody:

  • Mouse problems:

  • Speaking of the mouse, would you believe that in 1981, Disneyland featured their own short-lived SciFi prog-rock band? (Hat tip: Karl Rehn.)
  • “Responding To Backlash, Netflix Clarifies Its Content Is ‘Mostly Pedophilia-Free.'”
  • “Hollywood Elites Rush To Normalize Pedophilia Before They’re All Outed By Ghislaine Maxwell.” “Nowadays, we’ve got so many letters crammed into the whole ‘LGBTQETC+’ thing, nobody even notices if we slide a ‘P’ in there somewhere!”
    

  • “Why White People Owning Dogs is Racist.” I think this is a parody, but it is getting increasingly hard to tell… (Hat tip: @txpoliticjunkie.)
  • Godfrey Elfwick: “Pretending to be black is a common side-effect of trauma, the official medical term being: Post Traumatic Ethnic Appropriation. I believe many white musicians in the early 90s suffered from it, no doubt due to the lack of trigger warnings on TV shows back then.”
  • Henry Rollins does acid.
  • “Upping The Ante: Protesters Now Attempting To Stop High-Speed Freight Trains.” (This is one case where The Newspaper Of Record is almost a year behind actual events.)
  • “Protests Erupt As Police Shoot Man Who Was Just One Gun Away From Being Unarmed.”
  • The mock Philip Glass is the perfect touch:

  • BidenWatch for August 3, 2020

    Monday, August 3rd, 2020

    Biden promises to shovel trillions into Social Justice and green energy ratholes, how Democrats plan to steal the election, more Slow Joe verbal stumbles, and a potential VP pick has a commie past. It’s this week’s BidenWatch!

  • “Joe Biden’s Costly, Radical Race and Gender Agenda.”

    Joe Biden says he wants equality. Who could be against that? But if just declaring yourself in favor of equality were enough, we would not still be arguing about equality in 2020. As always, when politicians talk about inequality, watch your wallet. And in this case, watch the Constitution, too.

    In the past week, the Biden campaign has announced plans of Castro-esque length aimed at racial equality and women’s equality. We suppose we should at least welcome Biden’s continued willingness to use that old-fashioned word “women.” But Biden is so stuck in the past that he would pronounce the Equal Rights Amendment already ratified based on state legislative approvals in the 1970s. The deadline for the expiration of those long-ago votes was so clear, even Ruth Bader Ginsburg considers them dead letters. Biden would go further, demanding Senate ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), a radical-feminist 1970s treaty under which even Scandinavian countries get hectored for allowing women to assume the primary role in child-rearing. Biden would also restore the Obama-era unilateral executive fiat under which domestic violence and sexual violence are made the basis for political asylum, a position with no basis in the immigration laws enacted by Congress, and no limiting principle.

    Human rights get rough treatment under the plans. Biden proposes to roll back due-process protections for the accused in campus sexual-assault cases. The secret ballot for union elections is to be replaced by reviving “card check” elections. Biden once posed as a pro-lifer reluctantly supporting legal abortion, while opposing — for four decades — taxpayer-funded abortion. So much for that. He pledges that “his Justice Department will do everything in its power to stop the rash of state laws that so blatantly violate Roe v. Wade,” and that he will “restore federal funding for Planned Parenthood,” restore U.S. funding to the pro-abortion United Nations Population Fund, and “restore the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate” to ignore the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision and restart the government’s assault on the Little Sisters of the Poor.

    Many of the proposals boil down to the same old thing: more federal spending of taxpayer money, more power and goodies for unions, more workplace regulations, more dividing people up by race. The price tag of all these initiatives adds up to some $7 trillion in new spending, most of it permanent. Right off the bat, a $2 trillion “accelerated investment” is pledged in a “clean energy future,” with the restriction that “disadvantaged communities receive 40 percent of overall benefits of spending in the areas of clean energy and energy efficiency deployment” — a telltale sign that this is more about spreading money around to favored constituencies than about “science.”

  • But don’t forget that Biden’s climate change is also going to bankrupt us.

    The Biden plan requires we eliminate all greenhouse gases from the electricity grid that powers the country by 2035. As is usual, Biden is an underachieving. We’re all supposed to be dead in 10 years if you believe the climate alarmists. This deadline is just more proof that no one does.

    As Reason editor Nick Gillespie pointed out, the current plan is just another way to pander to organized labor. He also correctly pointed out that there is no way we should be spending $2 trillion after all the pandemic spending. However, you can be sure that it will not deter Biden.

    However, the Guardian is also pointing out what serious opposition the plan will face. The program requires building tens of thousands of new wind turbines and millions of new solar panels. These numbers are likely an underestimate. Renewable energy sources are very low-density and not well suited to powering urban areas. There are also some areas of the country where neither would be particularly efficient.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Speaking of money: “How Biden’s Foreign-Policy Team Got Rich“:

    Sergio Aguirre and Nitin Chadda had reached the most elite quarters of U.S. foreign policy. Aguirre had started out of school as a fellow in the White House and a decade later had become chief of staff to U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power. Chadda, who joined the Pentagon out of college as a speechwriter, had become a key adviser to Secretary of Defense Ash Carter in even less time. Now, Chadda had a long-shot idea.

    They turned to an industry of power-brokering little known outside the capital: strategic consultancies. Retiring leaders often open firms bearing their names: Madeleine Albright has one, as do Condoleezza Rice and former Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen. Their strategic consultancies tend to blur corporate and governmental roles. This obscure corner of Washington is critical to understanding how a President Joe Biden would conduct foreign policy. He has been picking top advisers from this shadowy world.

    Snip.

    The problem for Aguirre and Chadda was that neither young man was a marquee name. Chadda realized that the latest crop of senior officials hadn’t yet started their own named consultancies. “The thought for us was to build a living and breathing platform, with those who are enthusiastic about serving again,” he said. Staying up late one night, they drafted a plan and came up with the first target they would pitch.

    Michèle Flournoy had served as undersecretary of defense for policy from 2009 to 2012. Both Aguirre and Chadda had known her well in the Obama administration. Since leaving office, she’d spent several years in consulting and was hitting her stride. With Flournoy as senior adviser, Boston Consulting Group’s defense contracts grew from $1.6 million in 2013 to $32 million in 2016. Before she joined, according to public records, BCG had not signed any contracts with the Defense Department.

    Flournoy, while consulting, joining corporate boards, and serving as a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center, had also become CEO of the Center for a New American Security in 2014. The think tank had an annual budget of about $9 million, and defense contractors donated at least $3.8 million while she was CEO. By 2017, she was making $452,000 a year.

    If a Democrat were to win office, she would likely become the first woman defense secretary. She had considered an offer to serve as deputy to Trump’s first secretary of defense, Jim Mattis, but ultimately withdrew from the vetting process and stuck to consulting. “That’s more of a labor of love,” she told me. “Building bridges between Silicon Valley and the U.S. government is really, really important.”

    Intrigued by Aguirre and Chadda’s idea of starting her own shop, she had one condition: find another big name, so it wouldn’t just be Flournoy and Associates.

    They needed another co-founder. Establishing a new firm was an investment and a risk, and many Obama officials were already spoken for, some headhunted by corporations or consultancies, others returning to academic appointments or finding respite in research institutions—many wearing all those hats at once.

    Flournoy could carry her own private practice, but she didn’t want a firm with her name on it alone. The trio reached out to defense and intelligence honchos, but with no luck. Then a particular Washington fixture came to light.

    He had been Vice President Joe Biden’s right-hand man for almost two decades and finished out the Obama administration as deputy secretary of state. He was known for his unimpeachable ethics. Having written Biden’s speeches for years, he had started to enunciate with the vice president’s drawl when he appeared on CNN. He had never cashed in on his international connections, years of face time with Saudi, Israeli, and Chinese leaders.

    His name was Tony Blinken. With his commitment to join Flournoy as founding partner, a new strategic consultancy was born. They called it WestExec Advisors.

    Add Avril Haines, another Obama alumnus, to the list of names.

    If you believe that personnel is policy, it’s worth reading the whole thing. WestExec sucked up a lot of defense contractor consulting cash.

  • CNN interviews Obama-to-Trump swing voters. 66% still pick Trump over Biden. Ignore the mandatory CNN condescension.

    They think a businessman is best suited to turn the country around economically. They feel Covid-19 was not Trump’s fault, and he’s doing the best he can to contain it. They conflate the Black Lives Matter protesters with the rioters attacking federal buildings and retail shops. They don’t want historic monuments torn down. And they dismiss defunding the police as ridiculous.

    These voters tell me they want America finally to be put first; they oppose immigration and trade policies they say give benefits to foreigners at their expense. And they want a non-politician who relentlessly fights back, after witnessing too many office holders fold in the face of special interests.

    These voters may sound like typical Fox News watchers, but, significantly, the overwhelming majority are not. Many are, instead, people who get their news disproportionately from local television, regional websites and Facebook. Compared to the kinds of people who seek out news from national cable channels, many swing voters reside in a national politics desert.

    Reading between the lines: “These people are beyond the reach of, or see through, the national MSM preference falsification system.”

  • Both President Trump and Biden are building out legal armies:

    The Republican National Committee (RNC) has pledged $20 million this cycle to oppose Democratic-backed efforts to ease voting restrictions while Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said his campaign has assembled 600 attorneys as a bulwark against election subterfuge.

    With a little more than three months until Election Day, the voting rules in key battleground states are the focus of bitterly partisan court fights that could influence the outcome of the presidential race. These include lawsuits to expand mail-in voting in Texas, extend vote-by-mail deadlines in key Rust Belt swing states and restore the voting rights of up to one million indigent Floridians with felony records.

  • “The Democrats Plan on Stealing the Election.”

    At present, the Democrats are attempting to unseat an incumbent president by devising a plan where their candidate doesn’t have to be seen in public for most of the general election campaign. They’re desperate to keep Joe Biden hidden until as many early and mail-in votes as possible are cast for him because they know that the first time he’s on his own in public he’s going to pull down his mask and start sniffing strangers, all the while barking, “Barack likes me!”

    On the rare occasions when the idiot in the basement is let off-leash by his wife and handlers, he’s babbling about President Trump trying to “steal” the election. He keeps saying it, too, most recently at a virtual fundraiser hosted by one of the celebrities Hillary Clinton thought would wish her to victory.

    Snip.

    In each one of these “steal the election” rants, Biden immediately rambles on about mail-in ballots. Again, that’s all they’ve got and they know it. That’s where the real election-stealing can happen and it’s not going to be done by the Republicans.

    The Democrats have shown — especially in the Trump era — that most of what they throw at the Republicans is just a bunch of twisted political psychological projection.

    For example, take the absurd notion that Dems have recycled from 2016. They are again insisting that President Trump won’t accept the election results, giving it a minor update, saying that he won’t leave the White House now that he’s the incumbent.

    This from the party whose vanquished alcoholic grandmother from 2016 is still going on television and saying that the election was stolen from her. Throw in Stacey Abrams and her ongoing psychotic break about being the real governor of Georgia and I think we can see which side has a difficult time accepting the results of an election.

    In fact, the violence we’re seeing now has more to do with hating Trump than it does with the death of George Floyd. The Democrats began their “peaceful protests” almost the moment Trump was elected and have been ranging back and forth between simple public incivility and violence ever since. It’s been one long tantrum about not accepting the 2016 election results.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • In fact, Democrats are actually wargaming Biden refusing to concede:

  • What President Trump got right and Biden got wrong about banning travel from China due to the Wuhan coronavirus:

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • “Bernie Sanders co-chair: Voting for Joe Biden like eating ‘half a bowl of s–t.'”.

    “It’s like saying to somebody, ‘You have a bowl of s–t in front of you, and all you’ve got to do is eat half of it instead of the whole thing.’ It’s still s–t’, ” Sanders co-chair Nina Turner told The Atlantic.

    Turner, a former Ohio state senator, was quoted in an article analyzing Trump’s paths to re-election, including by exploiting disaffected supporters of Sanders’ socialist campaign, which lost to Biden despite winning the first three state Democratic contests this year.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • UK’s Sunday Express has a poll up showing President Trump leading Biden by a couple of points:

    The third in a series of monthly Democracy Institute/ Sunday Express polls has given President Trump a surprise lead over his Democrat rival of 48 percent to 46 percent, his clearest lead yet.

    Crucially, President Trump has a lead of 48 percent to 43 percent in the swing states Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin which would put him back in the White House with an electoral college tally of 309 to Biden’s 229.

    Specifically, in Florida Trump has a 47 to 45 point lead, Minnesota (where the black lives matters protests began) a 46/45 lead, and New Hampshire a 46/43 lead.

    The polling suggests Mr Trump is emerging as the race leader because of a belief he is best in handling the economy.

    With a third of voters putting the economy as the top election issue and 66 percent thinking that the economy is bouncing back after coronavirus, voters believe that Trump is better for the economy by 57 percent to 43 percent.

    Snip.

    According to the poll 71 percent of Trump voters are “shy” to admit it compared to 66 percent a month ago.

    However, 79 percent of Trump voters are enthusiastic about their candidate compared to just 41 percent of Biden voters, two points lower than a month ago.

    Meanwhile, only 4 percent of Trump voters believe they could change their mind while 10 percent of Biden voters could switch.

    Usual poll caveats apply.

  • “Why Won’t Biden Accept an Interview With Fox’s Chris Wallace?” Well, the headline pretty much answers itself, doesn’t it?

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • And you may ask yourself: “What city am I in?”

    And here’s a Twitter thread on just that question:

  • California Democratic Representative Karen Bass has to explain remarks about how awesome Fidel Castro and the Church of Scientology were. (Presumably separately, as opposed to fused together as a Voltron of Suck.) (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Indeed, Bass went to Communist Cuba in 1973 with the far-left Venceremos Brigade.
  • Four from Scott Adams:


    

  • Losing the middle:

  • Evidently a staffer is now always ready to call time on a Biden interview when Slow Joe starts wandering off into Crazyland:

  • Heh:

  • Bill Clinton’s ex-pres secretary (not him, not her, yeah, him) wants you to know that Biden can still lose. But you have to wade through Democratic Party talking points to get to that, so I’ve saved you some time…
  • ‘Squad’ Member Tlaib Won’t Endorse Biden. She supported Sanders in the primaries.
  • “Biden Campaign Says He Is So Close To A VP Pick He Can Smell Her.”
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    Scott Adams Interviewed

    Tuesday, June 9th, 2020

    Here’s podcaster, tech investor and conservative orthogonal thinker Hotep Jesus (born Bryan Sharpe) interviewing Dilbert creator and persuasion expert Scott Adams on a wide variety of topics.

    A wide-ranging discussion of the Wuhan coronavirus, race relations, etc. Food for thought.