Posts Tagged ‘silver’

LinkSwarm For May 9, 2025

Friday, May 9th, 2025

The world’s first American Pope, India and Pakistan trade blows, Israel hits Syria again, Trump’s tariffs bring trade deals, more leftwing waste uncovered, Starbase becomes a real city, and a surprising amount about Disney.

It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Over two millennium in the making: “Cardinal Robert Prevost Named Pope Leo XIV, First American Pope in History.”

    Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was elected by the College of Cardinals to succeed the late Pope Francis on Thursday, taking the papal name Pope Leo XIV.

    Prevost, 69, is a native of Chicago. He is the 267th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church and the first American Pope in the Church’s history. A former prefect of the influential Dicastery for Bishops, Pope Leo XIV spent decades as a missionary in Peru. Leading up to the conclave, he was considered a compromise candidate and one of the frontrunners because of his missionary work and Vatican experience.

    French Cardinal Dominique Mamberti, another rumored candidate for the Papacy, announced Pope Leo XIV’s election on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to a roaring crowd. The newly elected Pontiff appeared to be emotional during the blessing he delivered from the balcony as he re-introduced himself to the world. Eagle-eyed observers noticed the Pope wore traditional garments for his introductory remarks, but he broke with custom by initially reading his speech from a piece of paper.

    Pope Leo XIV paid tribute to Pope Francis in his speech while reiterating the Church’s missionary zeal and charitable heart. He also touched on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and peace in his address.

    “We have to seek together to be a missionary church, a church that builds bridges and dialogue, always ready to accept, like this great piazza, with its arms, we have to show our charity, presence and dialogue with love,” he said.

    Pope Francis elevated Prevost to Bishop of Chiclayo in Peru in 2015 and named him a Cardinal in 2023 after the Church played an important role in maintaining stability in Peru amid political crises. He became prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops in January 2023, making him responsible for the appointment of Bishops, an enormously powerful role within the Church.

    Ordained in 1982, Prevost received an undergraduate degree from Villanova University in 1977 and then obtained a Master of Divinity from the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. He went off to Rome for degrees in canon law at the Pontifical College of St. Thomas Aquinas before joining the Augustinian mission in Peru in 1985.

    “With today’s election of His Holiness, Pope Leo XIV, I cannot help but reflect on what his Augustinian papacy will mean to our University community and our world. Known for his humility, gentle spirit, prudence and warmth, Pope Leo XIV’s leadership offers an opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to our educational mission,” said Villanova president Rev. Peter Donohue.

    He spent a notable portion of his career at the Augustinian seminary in Trujillo until returning to Chicago in 1999 to oversee the Augustinian province. Prevost later led the Augustinian order for two terms from 2001 to 2013 until he went back to Peru.

    Snip.

    The new Pope’s name, Leo, suggests a spiritual connection to Pope Leo XIII, a 19th century Pope known for his combination of supporting workers rights and opposing communism.

    Let’s hope he keeps up that “opposing communism” tradition…

  • Seeing that Leo XIV is from Chicago, the jokes are already flowing.
  • More union graft off the taxpayer: “Senate DOGE Caucus Leader Uncovers Federal Employees Cashing Taxpayer Checks While Doing Union Work.”

    In fiscal year 2019, the Office of Personnel Management reported that federal employees spent 2.6 million hours on union activities, costing taxpayers $135 million. The Biden administration temporarily halted OPM’s data reporting, but the Trump administration resumed it after a request from Ernst.

    “Through the course of the past 10 years and studying government efficiency and fraud, waste, and abuse, we have uncovered the issue of taxpayer-funded union time. It’s where we see federal employees—and they can legally do this right now—work during their regular workday, and do that as taxpayer-funded dollars going to their paycheck, but they’re not actually working on their duties as a federal employee,” [Sen. Jodi] Enrst said during a panel discussion on government bureaucracy at the The Hill & Valley Forum this week. “What they’re doing is working for their union, maybe to increase their wages or increase their benefits, on the taxpayers’ dime.”

    Ernst also sounded off on “egregious” examples of federal employee misconduct. “Federal employees who were caught, you know, one taking a bubble bath when he was on a Zoom call with other employees—he got ratted out, of course. Those that are on the golf course, we get those all the time,” senator said. Even more shocking cases included a HUD employee who was in prison for driving drunk during work hours, unbeknownst to her supervisor, and a remote worker who ran a full-time business while his mother answered his work emails.

    “Somehow her supervisor did not know she was in jail,” she explained about the HUD employee, adding, “And one of the most egregious was one federal employee that was working remotely that had started his own business, full-time business, and during the work hours, his mother was responding to his emails.”

    Last month, Ernst introduced the Taxpayer-Funded Union Time Transparency Act to revealed just how much federal employee unions are subsidized by tax dollars after the Biden administration paused the public release of the figures. Rep. Scott Franklin (R-FL) introduced companion legislation in the House of Representatives.

  • The graft thickens. “Foreign Aid Official Who Resisted DOGE Took Secret Payments After Steering Africa Money To Friend.”

    A foreign aid official who refused the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to his agency’s financial records may have had a reason to keep auditors out: he steered illicit contracts to a friend who sent him secret payments, according to a law enforcement affidavit obtained by The Daily Wire.

    Mathieu Zahui, chief financial officer of the African Development Foundation, refused to grant DOGE access to its books and told the White House that the agency would not acknowledge President Donald Trump’s appointee as chairman of the board. After a dramatic showdown in March, DOGE physically took over the building with U.S. Marshals, but control of the agency is now the subject of a lawsuit objecting to “swooping in with DOGE staff, demanding access to sensitive information systems” — an objection that reads differently in light of the criminal probe.

    For years, workers at the small, USAID-adjacent federal agency focused on Africa have told oversight bodies about allegations of self-dealing, procurement violations, and mysterious offshore bank accounts, many of them involving Zahui. But little was done about it, several told The Daily Wire.

    One action that raised eyebrows was Zahui’s insistence on directing both grants and contracts to a company in Kenya called Ganiam Ltd. According to spending records, it was awarded nearly $800,000 in contracts without competition. For example, a one-year, $350,000 contract for “transport, travel, relocation” services was executed in March 2020, when few people were traveling or holding conferences because of coronavirus.

    According to a search warrant application uncovered by The Daily Wire, USAID’s inspector general established by August 2024 that the company’s owner had secretly wired money to Zahui’s personal bank account at times that matched up with the federal contracts. To date, the Department of Justice has not charged either man with a crime.

    Ganiam Ltd. is owned by Maina Gakure, whom Zahui has known for decades. Both worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs in San Diego and later moved to Fairfax, Virginia. Gakure had been in charge of awarding contracts at the VA, then created his own company designed to get government construction contracts by taking advantage of a minority preference program. It was called Ganiam LLC and was based out of a house in Virginia. Gakure similarly created a company based in Kenya called Gakure Ltd. The African Development Foundation is permitted by law to give grants only to African entities.

    Overseas aid is just a gigantic bucket of graft for Democratic Party grandees. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)

  • Trump finally pulls the plug on the green energy scam.

    The Trump administration’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 seeks to eliminate over $15 billion in funding associated with Biden’s expensive and inane “Green New Deal” initiatives, specifically targeting “clean energy”, the “climate crisis”, and environmental programs.

    The White House said the energy budget proposal cancels more than $15 billion in carbon capture and renewable energy funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law that former President Joe Biden, a Democrat, signed in 2021. It also proposes to cancel $6 billion from that law for EV chargers.

    “The Biden Administration spent more than three years implementing these programs, but built only a small number of chargers because it prioritized over-regulating and ‘climate justice’ goals,” the White House said. “EV chargers should be built just like gas stations: with private sector resources disciplined by market forces.”

    The plan reorients Energy Department funding toward research and development of technologies that could produce an abundance of oil, gas, coal and critical minerals, nuclear reactors and advanced nuclear fuels, the White House said without further details.

  • Winning. “Supreme Court Allows Trump to Enforce Transgender Military Ban.”
  • “Nail salon employee pleads guilty after netting nearly a million bucks by outsourcing U.S. government tech jobs to China and North Korea.”

    Over the last three years, Minh Phuong Ngoc Vong, a U.S. citizen, pulled down $970,000 working at a nail salon in Bowie, Maryland.

    But Vong wasn’t just filing nails.

    He was also filing applications at U.S. tech companies for IT and development jobs, some of which had government contracts requiring security clearance. However, Vong wasn’t performing any of the duties at those jobs; he was outsourcing all his work virtually to China and North Korea.

    This alone is sketchy. But the reason he was caught shows the true severity of the crime.

    An unnamed Virginia-based tech company wanted to include him on a job that needed more security clearance, but when they submitted his credentials to the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency for a secret clearance, he was flagged as having another job with security clearance, namely working with the Federal Aviation Administration.

    The Virginia company fired him for having more than one job, but when the CEO showed his picture to the lead-developer, they realized that the man they hired was not the same one who was showing up to virtual meetings and doing the work.

    As a result of Vong’s fraudulent misrepresentations, these government agencies unknowingly granted Vong’s co-conspirators access to sensitive U.S. government systems, which they accessed from China.

    My respect for the hustle ends at creating gaping security holes for the commies.

  • Following India’s attack on terrorist bases in Pakistan, both countries have launched escalating attacks on the other.

    Friday has seen the border conflict between India and Pakistan escalate once again, with The New York Times describing that it has escalated to the most expansive military clashes in decades. Entire large expanses of border zones are swarming with drones overhead – a first in the history of the long-running rivalry.

    “There were reports of nonstop barrages along the border overnight into Friday, as well as reports of attacks by Pakistan into the Indian city of Jammu, a part of Kashmir,” the Times report says, citing that drone attacks have been exchanged along India’s entire western border.

  • One great benefit to India’s strikes: They evidently killed the mastermind of Daniel Pearl’s murder.

    India’s Operation Sindoor has not just avenged the deaths of the 26 people in the Pahalgam attack, but also had a far-reaching impact on the global fight against terrorism. The Indian Armed Forces’ precision strikes on Wednesday reportedly killed Abdul Rauf Azhar, the operational head of Jaish-e-Mohammad and mastermind of the IC-814 hijacking.

    Azhar was involved in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002. Hence, yesterday’s strikes on nine terror hubs in PoK and Pakistan delivered justice to the American-Jewish journalist.

    Remember: Jaish-e-Mohammad was at the heart of the last Indo-Pakistani dustup in 2019. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Suchomimus says that India’s missile strikes were quite precise.
  • An aside: As of this writing, there’s not a single entry on this Indo-Pakistani conflict on The Institute for The Study of War’s homepage. Look guys, I know you’re busy with Ukraine, Iran, and China, but given that this is a war between two nuclear-armed nations that just went hot, do you think you could spare an analyst or two to, you know, study it?
  • Somewhat related news: “India has agreed to remove all its tariffs on US goods entering the country.

    (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)

  • “Trump Announces ‘Full and Comprehensive’ Trade Deal with Britain, Final Details Still to Come.”

    President Donald Trump and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a historic trade deal between the two countries on Thursday that Trump says will include billions of dollars of increased market access for American exports, including beef, ethanol and other farm products.

    The president, speaking from the Oval Office, said the details of the deal with Britain will be finalized in the coming weeks, but said the close U.S. ally has agreed to “eliminate numerous non-tariff barriers” under the agreement, which Trump touted as a “great deal for both countries.”

    U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the deal would create $5 billion of opportunity for U.S. exports after Britain identified products it was importing from other countries that it could instead purchase from the U.S.

    Trump said the deal will also include a “historic” economic security component and said that Britain will “fast track” American goods through its customs process.

    Under the deal, the U.K. will still be subject to Trump’s 10 percent baseline tariff that he has imposed on all countries.

    Lutnick said the U.S. has agreed to lower its 25 percent tariff on imports of British cars to just 10 percent. He also indicated Rolls Royce engines and plane parts will be imported tariff-free, while Britain is set to buy $10 billion of Boeing airplanes. Meanwhile, tariffs on British steel exports will drop from 25 percent to zero.

    That’s the same British Steel that the UK government just took the main plant of which over from China.

  • If all that weren’t enough, “Israel carried out waves of airstrikes against terrorists and military targets in Syria, including the capital city of Damascus, after jihadists — reportedly backed by the new Islamist regime — launched attacks on the country’s non-Muslim Druze minority, killing at least 100 people in two days of fighting.”
  • Shockingly, dumping tons of deficit spending into the economy drives up the price of housing.
  • Democrats continuing to freak out at every Trump tweet (like the pope image) plays right into Trump’s hands.
  • “A bombshell ethics complaint has been filed against U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) accusing him of a pattern of mortgage fraud, voter fraud, and unlawful campaign filings stretching back over two decades.”

    According to the 20-page document, Schiff may have violated Maryland Code §7-401 and California’s Election and Tax Codes, including statutes that mirror the allegations recently leveled against New York Attorney General Letitia James—particularly in the realms of mortgage and insurance fraud.

    According to the complaint, “In 2009, Adam Schiff’s residence and voting registration was called to question in a House Ethics Committee hearing. Adam Schiff, despite claiming to live and represent the people in the state of California, filed and reaffirmed through refinancing documents, his primary residence at 8204 Windsor View Terrace, Potomac Maryland, 28054.”

    The complaint further alleges, “Adam Schiff is on the record having acknowledged the mortgage document filings [of Maryland as his primary residence] during a House Ethics hearing in 2009… He made the claim of ‘mistake,’ thereby acknowledging the appearance of possible mortgage fraud.”

    But the complaint doesn’t stop there. It outlines a disturbing pattern of what Maryland law defines as a “pattern of mortgage fraud,” involving repeated false representations of Schiff’s primary residence across multiple properties and years. Under Maryland Code §7-407(c), such conduct could constitute a felony punishable by up to 20 years imprisonment or a $100,000 fine—or both.

    Rules are for the little people…

  • “The Army cancels the M10 Booker, a ‘light tank’ that was too heavy.” I always thought the Booker suffered from “neither fish nor fowl” syndrome, and that was before the Russo-Ukraine War’s use of drones necessitated a radical rethink of the deployment of armored vehicles on the battlefield. (Hat tip: : Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Germany has a new chancellor.

    Friedrich Merz was elected chancellor of Germany after facing a historic loss in the Bundestag. In the second round, 325 lawmakers voted for Merz, bringing him past the 316-vote threshold. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has already demanded that Merz step down and call for new elections following his loss in the first round.

    Merz’s initial loss marked a historic moment, as it was the first of its kind in post-war Germany.

    The result came as a major upset, as Merz was widely expected to win, thanks to a coalition deal involving his party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU); its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU); and the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

    Evidently continuing unchecked, unassimilated Muslim immigration remains the highest priority of Europe’s ruling elites.

  • Different results in Romania.

    Romania’s prime minister will resign on Monday after a conservative opposition leader who aligned himself with Donald Trump scored a resounding first-round victory in the Black Sea nation’s presidential election.

    Bloomberg reports, that Marcel Ciolacu informed coalition partners of the decision to submit his resignation in a meeting Monday in Bucharest, according to people familiar with the decision who spoke on condition of anonymity. The government will be led by an interim premier until coalition parties choose Ciolacu’s successor. There are no current plans for an early election.

    The prime minister’s decision was a response to the electoral defeat of the coalition’s preferred candidate in Sunday’s first-round contest, in which George Simion of the ultranationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians secured more than 40%.

    He’ll face off against Nicusor Dan, the centrist mayor of Bucharest.

  • Trump’s NIH finally puts an end to Anthony Fauci’s dog torture.

    Trump’s new NIH director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is wasting no time reforming the corrupt NIH.

    As a part of a general phase-out of some animal testing, Trump’s appointees have closed the last remaining Fauci-supported and funded beagle lab on the NIH campus.

    We all remember the infamous experiments funded by Fauci’s NIH that forced beagles to have their faces eaten by sand flies, with their vocal cords cut to take away their ability to cry in pain:

    It angries up the blood, it does…

  • “Western Carolina University Refusing to Comply with Trump Order Protecting Women’s Spaces.”

    Western Carolina University is not changing its Title IX policy to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive action after the school was embroiled in a dispute last year over a male attempting to use women’s bathrooms.

    WCU administrators refused to update their Title IX policy to comply with Trump’s order restoring sex segregation to federally funded colleges and universities and have instead continued to allow males in women’s spaces, according to public records provided to National Review by right-leaning campus watchdog group Speech First.

    “For years, advocates have worried that Title IX procedures on campus have become weaponized – and these emails highlight that such concerns are indeed well-founded,” said Nicole Neily, acting executive director of Speech First.

    “Universities across the country are actively ignoring and resisting the Trump Administration on Title IX, which underscores the need for strong action from both Congress and the executive branch to provide clarity for administrators and safety for women and girls.”

    Far left college administrators don’t get to unilaterally redefine the statutory definition of “woman.”

  • Here’s a shocker: Democrat DA drops charges against Democrat accused of graft.

    The Harris County District Attorney’s Office (HCDAO) announced Friday that four felony charges pending against former Harris County Health Director Barbie Robinson had been dropped.

    “After an exhaustive review of the evidence concluded by career prosecutors, the HCDAO has determined that the State cannot prove any of the charged offenses beyond a reasonable doubt and that pursuing this case is not in the interests of justice,” according to an official statement from HCDAO.

    Robinson was fired from her post last September, and in November former District Attorney Kim Ogg announced Robinson would be charged with misuse of official information. In December, HCDAO charged Robinson with additional felonies, including tampering with a government record and two counts of fraudulent securing of document execution.

    The charges stemmed from allegations that Robinson used her private email to coordinate with International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) officials regarding a $31 million contract to craft a social services program called Accessing Coordinated Care and Empowering Self Sufficiency (ACCESS). IBM would later successfully bid to create the ACCESS project for the county.

    Before beginning her work for Harris County, Robinson served as the director of the Sonoma County Department of Health Services where she also worked with IBM to create a nearly identical program.

    According to emails obtained by the Texas Rangers, Robinson exchanged emails with IBM officials shortly after she was hired by Harris County. Communications included discussion of “sole-source” contracts that could be exempted from competitive bids.

    In July 2021, the county paid IBM $45,000 to put on a workshop to discuss the ACCESS program, and in November 2021 Robinson continued to use her personal email to coordinate with the company to craft a scope of work document in the weeks before the county issued a public request for proposals.

    Robinson had also drawn scrutiny in 2024 for communications surrounding a $6 million contract awarded to DEMA, a California-based company selected to run Harris County’s Holistic Assistance Response Teams.

    Scoring documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle showed that DEMA won the contract by a fraction of a point over a state-funded agency with experience in responding to 911 calls.

    Early in 2021, Robinson had been instrumental in bringing DEMA to operate COVID-19 testing sites in Harris County. That year, DEMA CEO Michelle Patino offered her a contract for legal consulting, even though Robinson is not a practicing attorney.

    The county has since severed ties with DEMA.

    Of course, Soros-backed social justice warrior Sean Teare defeated Ogg in the Democratic primary last year.

  • Joe Rogan and Tim Dillon are amazed at the tale of the Portland Stabbin Wagon, the taxpayer-paid ambulance that shows up to deliver needles to junkies.
  • VE Day was 80 years ago yesterday.
  • Warren Buffet is stepping down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO at the end of the year.
  • Starbase is now a real city.
  • “Sean Combs Was Once Celebrated at the Met Gala. He’s Now on Trial. He was lauded by Anna Wintour, was a regular guest at the gala, and his influence on the current exhibition is undeniable.” Diddy is the perfect poster boy for the Met Gala: A self-interested hedonist flaunting his wealth under the guise of virtue signaling.
  • Jaguar fires the ad agency behind their disasterous woke rebrand.

    Woke backlash has struck yet again and this time it’s among car giants Jaguar Land Rover who are currently on the search to replace their advertising agency after its controversial rebrand. Jaguar’s rebrand video went viral for all the wrong reasons back in December last year and were criticised for their new look which was described as “the biggest change in Jaguar’s history – a complete reinvention for the brand”. Despite the Jaguar vehicle being noticeably absent in the brand’s new relaunch video, other iconic brand images were left out too, including Jaguar’s classic leaping-cat icon.

    This was replaced with futuristic pink moonscape images, dotted with boulders and included a cast of diverse and eccentrically-dressed models. The result of this rebrand, however, was met with harsh backlash with many devoted Jaguar Land Rover lover’s not shy about their dismay towards the car company, resulting in Jaguar now launching a review for a new global creative account.

    Snip.

    But despite their best efforts to appeal to all, the results were met with loss particularly among its sales which plunged by more than 25% in 2024.

    The brand also recorded selling 33,320 cars in the same year – a stark drop from the 61,661 that were sold in 2022 and 161,601 sold in 2019.

    Funny how literally everyone but Jaguar leadership saw this coming.

  • Plus-size far left Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker dresses up for Star Wars Day and promptly gets roasted. “Sith Lard” and “Boba Fat” are two of the better ones…
  • Metaphor alert: Sovereignty defeats Journalism. Not since philly Eight Belles came up lame and had to be euthanized on the track during Hillary Clinton’s run against Obama in 2008 has there been such a potent horse-racing metaphor for the current moment…
  • It turns out that 2025’s Snow White lost even more money than Joker 2.
  • Speaking of Disney making bad decisions, after throwing a multi-year hissy fit over Florida’s so-called “don’t say gay” bill, they’re now building a new theme park in a country that outlaws homosexuality entirely.

    Disney strongly supports the gay community…so it’s building its newest park in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

    The UAE criminalizes homosexuality. The Ministry of Education, I kid you not, “explicitly prohibits discussing gender identity, homosexuality or any other behavior deemed unacceptable to the UAE’s society’ in class.”

    Islam is the state religion. Sharia is the source of law.

    Sharia law…so same-sex sexual activity is punishable by death.

    Consistency and integrity are for the little people…

  • Random person in New York City: “I tripped! I’m suing the property owner and New York City government!” City government: “Hey, we don’t own anything there. Take us off the suit.” Property owner: “Oh, you don’t own anything? Well, I looked at the deed map, and you’re right. So I’ve put up a fence over the sidewalk and the street parking the map says I own.” City: “No fair! Now we’re fining you!”
  • “Retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter Dies at 85.”
  • Dwight has an obituary up for Dr. Philip Sunshine, neonatology pioneer.
  • Ten years on, Robert Spencer remembers the jihad attack on the Everyone Draw Mohammed contest in Garland, Texas.
  • Well, that was quick: Provident Metals already has Pope Leo XIV silver rounds for sale.
  • Using the legal system for trolling: “Shedeur Sanders Fan Sues NFL for Emotional Distress Over Sanders’ Late Draft Pick.”
  • “Eagle Firing AR-15 Emerges From Vatican Indicating An American Pope Has Been Selected.”
  • “Trump Sends In Nicolas Cage To Reoccupy Alcatraz.”
  • “Trump Promises To Negotiate Peace In India As Soon As They Take Him Off Hold.”
  • “Bernie Sanders Unveils His New Gold-Encrusted ‘Beat The Oligarchy’ Dirigible.”
  • “Chipotle Announces Plans To Get Even Worse.”
  • “Nation Takes Somber ‘May The 4th’ To Remember Deceased Star Wars Franchise.”
  • “Corporal Klinger Finally Discharged From Army After Trans Military Ban.”

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





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    Posted in Budget, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud | 4 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for May 17, 2024

    Friday, May 17th, 2024

    More Biden corruption unearthed, the Biden Recession has canaries dying left and right, yet another Katy ISD teacher involved in child sex crimes, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge is being given another tomb raider to destroy. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Missouri AG Accuses Biden DOJ Of Coordinating With Trump Prosecutors.

    Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on Thursday as part of a probe into whether the Biden DOJ coordinated with Trump prosecutors.

    Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on Thursday as part of a probe into whether the Biden DOJ coordinated with Trump prosecutors.

  • More shady Biden accounts discovered.

    House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer dropped a bombshell on Thursday, revealing that his panel had unearthed new financial accounts tied to the Biden family investigation. Adding to the drama, Comer announced a fresh subpoena aimed at an undisclosed bank, ramping up the pressure in this ongoing probe.

    “This morning, I issued a subpoena for targeted financial information from a certain financial institution related to Jim Biden, Sarah Biden and Hunter Biden. This is a result of many of the documents that Devon Archer turned over,” Comer told Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business.

    The Oversight Committee began investigating the Biden family’s alleged shady business dealings over two years ago. In March, they called for Biden to testify before Congress, stating that “the committee has accounted for over $24 million that has flowed from foreign sources to you, your family, and their business associates.”

    “It is unbelievable,” Comer continued. “I don’t think you would find very many people that have a billion-dollar net worth that have as many different bank accounts as this Biden family had. Many of these were shell companies.”

    Those were “companies [whose] sole purpose was to launder the money that the Bidens were receiving from China, from Romania, from Russia,” Comer added. “And never one time through the course of this entire investigation, even during the depositions with Hunter Biden and the transcribed interview with Jim Biden, were they able to answer exactly what the family did to receive this money.”

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Don’t look now, but silver just broke the $30 mark for the first time in forever. A whole lot of investors think inflation is baked into the cake now.
  • IKEA says that the current economy is the worst they’ve ever seen. There are lots of other canaries keeling over as well…
  • “Hunter Biden Loses Bid To Halt Tax Evasion Court Proceedings As 9th Circuit Dismisses Appeal.” Will a member of the Biden crime family actually serve time for their misdeeds?
  • “Nearly Half of All Masters Degrees Aren’t Worth Getting. According to new research, 23 percent of bachelor’s degree programs and 43 percent of master’s degree programs have a negative ROI.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • If your farm is in the state of California, State Farm no longer wants your business.
  • Meanwhile, the government of San Francisco is buying booze for homeless people.
  • “Daniel Perry Pardoned by Gov. Abbott Following Parole Board Recommendation.”

    Gov. Greg Abbott has pardoned U.S. Army Sergeant Daniel Perry following a recommendation of pardon and restoration of his firearm rights by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.

    The board voted unanimously on the recommendation.

    Shortly after the recommendation was made, Abbott officially pardoned Perry.

    “The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles conducted an exhaustive review of U.S. Army Sergeant Daniel Perry’s personal history and the facts surrounding the July 2020 incident and recommended a Full Pardon and Restoration of Full Civil Rights of Citizenship,” Abbott wrote in a press release.

    “Among the voluminous files reviewed by the Board, they considered information provided by the Travis County District Attorney, the full investigative report on Daniel Perry, plus a review of all the testimony provided at trial. Texas has one of the strongest ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws on self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney. I thank the Board for its thorough investigation, and I approve their pardon recommendation.”

    Perry was convicted of murdering Air Force veteran and Black Lives Matter protester Garrett Foster in 2023. A Travis County jury deliberated for 17 hours before finding Perry guilty of murder but not aggravated assault of Foster at the intersection of 4th Street and Congress Avenue in downtown Austin, as well as threatening a crowd with his car during the 2020 protest.

    Perry, who was working as an Uber driver, shot and killed Foster with a .357 Magnum revolver after Foster approached the driver door of his Hyundai Ioniq.

    This dispassionate description hides the fact that Perry’s car was surrounded by a crowd of rioters, including the one who aimed a gun at Perry. This was a clear case of self defense that never would have gone to trial if Travis County’s far left Soros backed DA Jose Garza weren’t so in favor of radical left wing rioters and hostile the right of self defense.

  • Is the DOJ trying to protect Pfizer from a whistleblower lawsuit?

    The Department of Justice recently argued that a whistleblower lawsuit against Pfizer, filed by Brook Jackson, should be dismissed.

    Jackson, a 20-year veteran in clinical trial administration employed by a third-party vendor (Ventavia Research Group), worked on Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine trials in 2020. Alarmed by what she witnessed, Jackson raised concerns to her superiors, Pfizer, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in September 2020.

    She claimed the trial was being run, documented, and reported in a manner that violated Federal law and was potentially dangerous.

    Hours after contacting the FDA on September 25, 2020, Jackson was fired. Her sealed whistleblower complaint seemed to stall, with the FDA not investigating her claims. Faced with inaction, Jackson filed a lawsuit.

    As the case progressed towards discovery, the DOJ intervened, asking the judge to dismiss the case. Jackson argues that the government failed to articulate a legitimate reason for dismissal and did not demonstrate why the burdens of continued litigation outweigh its benefits.

    Disturbingly, a former FDA lawyer who worked at the agency when Jackson’s complaint was filed has moved to the DOJ and is now representing the government in its attempt to shut down the suit, raising concerns about regulatory capture and the use of government to shield companies from accountability.

    In 2021, the British Medical Journal published an article investigating Jackson’s claims and found them credible. The journal’s investigation concluded that Jackson’s account was supported by documentation and raised serious questions about the integrity of Pfizer’s vaccine trials and the FDA’s oversight.

    Other former Ventavia employees vouched for Jackson’s complaint, describing a “helter-skelter” work environment and lack of oversight.

    Despite evidence and corroboration, the FDA did not inspect Ventavia after Jackson’s complaint, and Pfizer did not mention any problems at Ventavia in its FDA submission for emergency use authorization.

    BMJ’s findings lend significant credibility to Jackson’s claims and raise serious questions about the integrity of Pfizer’s vaccine trial data, the adequacy of regulatory oversight, and, ultimately, the approved emergency use authorization.

    Follow the money…

  • Court throws DEI amendment to NY constitution, off November’s ballot. “The NY State Supreme Court (trial court) in Livingston County (near Rochester), granted summary judgment throwing the ERA off the November ballot, on the ground that the proponents of the legislation did not follow the constitutionally required procedure for advancing a ballot initiative for a constitutional amendment.”
  • “Katy ISD Teacher Arrested on 9 Counts of Possession of Child Pornography.”

    A Tompkins High School teacher has been arrested on nine counts of possession of child pornography.

    James Paul Stone was booked into the Fort Bend County Jail Monday.

    According to the Montgomery County Precinct 3 Constable’s office, thousands of images of child pornography were recovered from Stone’s residence, including several images that Stone admitted to producing himself.

  • Ah, not this crap again. “Venezuela Moves ‘Substantial Quantities’ Of Troops To Guyana Border.”
  • China’s latest car has every bit of the outstanding quality we’ve come to expect of products from China.
  • “Army of Leftist wackos storm Tesla factory like Orcs attacking Helm’s Deep.” This was in Germany.
  • Princeton pro-Hamas hunger strike collapses after nine days.
  • New York City raised the minimum wage to $16 an hour, and now restaurants are using Zoom hostesses from the Philippines.
  • “Nobody fucks with my snowy, psychotic hat.”
  • Google AI can’t understand or answer any questions about the Holocaust, but sure loves to spit some Hamas talking points.
  • Which is a bit worrying, given how hard Google is pushing AI:

    (Hat tip: Not the Bee.)

  • Comcast, Netflix and Apple+ are going Voltron to defeat Disney.
  • Spider-Man, Spider-Man/A Nick Cage Noir Spider-Man/Anime? No my friend/It will be live action/Whoa, Nick Cage Noir Spider-Man.
  • As a reward for destroying Indiana Jones, Phoebe Waller-Bridge is going to be given another tomb raiding franchise to destroy.
  • If you have mounds of money lying around, you can own Elvis Presley’s very first record.
  • Robert “Bob” Reale, of Reale’s Italian Cafe, RIP. It’s our favorite Austin Italian restaurant, and would come around and check on you while you were there.
  • “Latest Polls Show Biden Will Need Twice As Many Fake Ballots To Win Election This Year.”

    • Hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 3 Comments »

    Followup: Is The Silver Squeeze A Ruse?

    Tuesday, February 2nd, 2021

    Following yesterday’s story, I got pushback from readers that asserted the supposed WallStreetsBets silver squeeze was, in fact, a ruse from hedge funds to distract retailer investors from the GameStop and AMC squeezes.

    That does in fact seem to be the consensus at WallStreetBets.

    If you haven’t been browsing WSB or doing your own research, you’d probably think that the people on Twitter are correct in saying there is a silver squeeze happening and we should all get in on it. There are quite a few wsb-logo Twitter accounts pushing this. This is BS & the straight up the ANTITHESIS of who we are.

    By buying silver/going long on silver, you would be directly putting money into the pockets of the EXACT HEDGE FUNDS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF $GME 🚀 🚀 🚀 💎 🙌 The hedge funds are LONG silver NOT short silver.

    The media, Wall Street, normies, and every other non-WSB autist are trying to push you to buy silver. This would be a tragic, irreversible decision that not only will most likely not make you any money because the squeeze is fake, it will put you on the sidelines from this righteous and glorious war we are in.

    Another sign it’s a ruse: Citadel Securities, one of the primary hedge funds backers, evidently holds shares in 17 different silver companies.

    That’s one of the problems with a decentralized swarm attack: If nobody’s in charge, then it’s much harder to filter out the noise to determine the true direction of the swarm. That can be a strength, but it also makes the swarm vulnerable to ruses like this. Extracting a signal from the huge wave of noise in everyday financial transactions is a daunting problem under the best of circumstances even when giant hedge funds aren’t baiting friendly MSM outlets with elaborate ruses. (Or, I should say, when giant hedge funds aren’t baiting friendly MSM outlets with elaborate ruses even more than they usually are.)

    Whatever the source, many bullion dealers were reporting a huge run on silver due to a spike in demand, though physical silvere seemed to be doing much better than “paper silver” (i.e., the futures market). Today spot silver prices are back down in early trading.

    Remember, I said yesterday that a silver squeeze was unlikely to work.

    With that out of the way, here are some other WallStreetBets/GameStop/etc. news:

  • Adam Ford with Not The Bee explains the GameStop short squeeze, including more background detail on the origins of the squeeze than was in my original post:

  • Glenn Greenwald goes into more detail on the GameStop squeeze and Melvin Capital:

    The usual Greenwald leftwing caveats apply. (Hat tip: Zero Hedge.)

  • GameStop stock is back up this morning after Robinhood lifted restrictions on buying shares.
  • Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched an investigation into “Robinhood, Discord, Citadel and other trading apps that put curbs on stock trading” in GameStop.

    • Noon Update: And now GameStop, AMC and Silver are all way down right now. Never invest what you can’t afford to lose…

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    Posted in Economics, Texas | No Comments »

    Hi Ho Silver, Away to the Moon!

    Monday, February 1st, 2021

    Evidently the WallStreetBets crowd that carried out the Great GameStop Short Squeeze have decided that silver is their next target for making money:

    Silver Bullion Market is one of the most manipulated on earth. Any short squeeze in silver paper shorts would be EPIC. We know billion banks are manipulating gold and silver to cover real inflation. Both the industrial case and monetary case, debt printing has never been more favorable for the No. 1 inflation hedge Silver.

    Inflation adjusted Silver should be at 1000$ instead of 25$.

    Signs that the silver market was about to get hit by a GameStop-style short squeeze emerged Wednesday.

    That’s when comments began appearing on the Reddit forum r/wallstreetbets — the investor board now famous for tripling the video game company’s shares this week. People started egging each other on to pile into silver’s largest exchange-traded product. Banks have been keeping silver prices artificially low, they said, masking an actual shortfall of supplies. Help put an end to “THE BIGGEST SHORT SQUEEZE IN THE WORLD,” one poster said.

    To say there was a strategy would be overstating things. At about 8:30 a.m. New York time on Thursday, day traders bent on teaching some banks a lesson began flooding iShares Silver Trust. Their buying drove up prices of the underlying metal by as much as 6.8%, the most since August. And just like that, an ETF became the Trojan horse that helped the Reddit hoards break through the gates of the commodities world for the first time since they began upending equities.

    It rippled across the entire silver complex. Miners of the metal rallied. Futures gained. A record 3.1 million iShares Silver Trust options contracts traded. The volatility was unlike anything James Gavilan, a commodities market consultant with over two decades of experience in precious metals, had ever seen.

    It was “mind-boggling, breath-taking, it’s shocking really,” he said as prices continued to rise further.

    Another sign that they’re having a real effect is yesterday’s email missive from gold and silver dealer APMEX:

    In the last week, we have seen a dramatic shift in Silver demand from our customers. For example, the ratio of ounces sold per day was running about two times earlier in the week and closer to four times the average demand by the end of the week. Once markets closed on Friday, we saw demand hit as much as six times a typical business day and more than 12 times a normal weekend day. Combined with the extremely high demand levels, we are also seeing a surge in new customers. On Saturday alone, we added as many new customers as we usually add in a week.

    This morning spot silver is up over $30 an ounce, various stock brokers are evidently breaking down on the volume, and physical silver rounds are sold out at various silver dealers, even at $6 over spot (which is nuts).

    Another sign that the effect is real is that silver is rising but gold remains flat, an unusual circumstance that never seems to hold long for precious metals whose prices have historically risen and fallen together.

    Silver has always been populism’s precious metal of choice, with the bimetallist “Free Silver” movement of the late 19th century culminating the William Jennings Bryant’s famous “Cross of Gold” speech in 1896.

    Unlike GameStop stock, I actually own physical silver as an emergency hedge against hyperinflation, so the Reddit raiders already made me a little money. And there’s more than a grain of truth to inflation being higher than government indexes are letting on, largely thanks to the huge liquidity the Federal Reserve and other central banks have pumped into the world economy. I do think it is prudent for anyone with sufficient capital (i.e., you’ve paid off your car and credit card debts and have, at an absolutely bare minimum, three months of living expenses in the bank) to keep a certain amount of physical gold and silver in a secure location (and I suspect at least half of you are immediately going to think “gun safe”) you can easily access, just in case.

    But color me skeptical that not only can they get silver up to $1,000 an ounce (barring a runaway hyperinflation takeoff), but that they can have any long-term effect on the market. Tangible commodities are fundamentally different than shorted stocks. A big rise in the price of silver would trigger the reopening of dozens of currently shuttered silver minds around the world to meet demand.

    Silver is a truly global commodity in a way that GameStop stock is not. I am skeptical that the WallStreetBets crowd has an adequate grasp of the size of the global silver options picture. Traders in Tashkent and Singapore probably never heard about GameStop until this year, but they’ve watched the rise and fall of silver prices for a long, long time.

    I’m old enough to remember that there have been several rounds of apocalyptic bullion hype over the years. My father lost quite a bit of money betting on gold futures in the early 1980s, sure than inflation would continue to rise, but instead Paul Volker and Ronald Reagan managed to kill it dead.

    This was about the same time the Hunt brothers tried to corner the silver market. Silver started 1979 around $6 an ounce, and briefly peaked above $49 in January of 1980. By June of 1981 Silver was back to trading in single digits, and the Hunt brothers lost their shirts. (There are some parallels with the GameStop squeeze, namely that the Hunt brothers were doing a lot of their buying using options and credits, like some (but not all) of the WallStreetBets crowd.)

    The bullion market also has a way of defying your expectations. I was sure that the subprime meltdown in 2008 would send gold and silver soaring. Gold jumped in September, then settled back down below it’s September rates before ending up modestly up for the year. Silver actually ended the year down.

    The world economy is an enormously complex organism. You can temporarily jolt some parts of it, but then other parts compensate. Rising and falling prices are timing signals that constantly shift money around to make sure supply meets demand. Investing in silver means opportunity cost in not investing in index funds, Apple stock, or even Dogecoin (way up for the year, but down off last week’s peaks).

    By all means, hold gold and silver as a hedge against inflation. But don’t bet the farm on silver hitting that moonshot target of $1000 an ounce anytime soon.

    Edited to add: Read the comments. A lot of people are saying this is jamming from the hedge fund backers to take the pressure off GameStop and AMC, and not an organic push for silver from the WallStreetBets core crowd.

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    Posted in Economics | 15 Comments »