Back when I was doing regular Texas vs. California updates, this is the sort of video I would feature. It covers why Texas is doing so much better than Europe, though the framing misses a few things I’ve tried to highlight below.
Caveat: I don’t know who “The Economic Matrix” is, but what they’re saying is generally right, but a bit incomplete.
“This is Texas. To most of the world, it’s just one of 50 American states. But if you pulled it off the US map and dropped it into the global rankings as its own nation, it would sit eighth in the world, sandwiched directly between France and Italy, with a staggering GDP of $2.77 trillion. But that’s just the start. In 2025, the Texas economy was bigger than the equivalent of the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, and Austria combined.”
“Texas and Europe are separated by more than an ocean. They’re separated by two completely different ideas of how a state should operate. And right now, one of those ideas is winning by a distance that gets harder to close every year. In 2024, the Texas economy grew by nearly 4%. The entire European Union managed 1%, and the gap is only getting wider.”
“The EU spent most of the last 15 years in crisis mode. A sovereign debt collapse left Greece, Spain, and Portugal on the edge of ruin.” I covered the European Debt Crisis (especially among the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain)) as it was happening, and the thing to remember is that it was (and is) a deficit spending crisis. Like the federal government, European governments insist on spending more than they take in. Real austerity, i.e. cutting outlays until they match receipts, hasn’t failed, it’s been declared difficult and left untried.
“Years of near zero growth followed. The in 2022, Russia cut off the gas and sent inflation across the Euro zone spiking to 9.2%.” Here the video also avoids noting that another big inflation driver was the effects of the Flu Manchu lockdown across most EU economies.
“Through all of that, the Texas economy just kept climbing. The productivity gap tells the same story. Between late 2019 and mid 2024, labor productivity per hour in the Euro zone rose by 0.9%. In the US, it rose by 6.7%. Texas led that charge.”
“Look at the Permian Basin. Oil production nearly tripled in a decade while the rig count was cut almost in half because horizontal drilling and AI-guided extraction meant fewer rigs producing more oil. Same workforce, three times the output.” Oil industry-specific AI has very little do with the current general AI build-out bubble.
“There’s a mathematical reality that makes this trajectory almost impossible to reverse. At 1.5% annual growth, the EU takes roughly 47 years to double in size. At the 3.5% rate Texas usually averages, it takes 20. By the time the EU doubles once, Texas will have doubled twice. That gap compounds and it means every year the distance between these two economic models doesn’t just persist, it accelerates.”
“Mario Draghi, the former head of the European Central Bank, released a landmark report warning that without serious reform, the EU is heading toward what he called a slow agony. Leaders held a retreat to discuss it. Then they went back to their committees.” Future pain is abstract, while the electoral pain of trying to reform things is far more immediate.
“Since 2020, more than 200 companies have moved their headquarters to Texas. Tesla relocated to Austin in 2021. Chevron, one of the largest energy companies on Earth, announced its move to Houston in 2024. Charles Schwab, CBRE, SpaceX. More than half of these relocations came from California alone.”
“These are not satellite offices or mailbox moves. The reason they gave was simple. The regulatory environment in California made expansion too slow and too expensive. Texas made it fast, cheap, and permanent.”
“Spotify was founded in Stockholm, but listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Skype was built in Estonia and Luxembourg, then bought by Microsoft and absorbed into Redmond. ARM was designed in Cambridge, England, then acquired by a Japanese conglomerate and listed in New York. Europe keeps building the talent. America keeps cashing the check.”
“Beneath the growth stats and the corporate migrations, there’s one factor that explains this gap better than anything else: Energy. Texas produces more energy than almost any country on Earth. Not other American states, actual nations. Between 2007 and 2023, while the rest of the United States saw energy consumption drop by about 5%, Texas went in the other direction. Energy use in the state climbed by 21% and the industrial sector alone saw a 28% jump in demand. This was not a state focused on conservation or cutting back. Texas was building oil rigs, refineries, chemical plants, and massive wind installations, all at the same time.” Those wind farm installations were the result of subsidies, and they’re not really building new ones anymore.
“The reason Texas could pull this off comes down to one decision made decades ago. Texas built its own power grid, specifically to escape the slow motion gears of federal regulation. The result, solar capacity that grew 32% in just 2024, wind generation that leads every other American state, and a massive natural gas fleet running underneath it all to keep the lights on when the sun goes down, cheap, abundant, predictable, and fast to build.” Again, the solar build-out was aided by subsidies.
“For decades, the European energy models rested on one assumption. Buy cheap gas from Russia, build out renewables slowly, and keep industrial costs manageable. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, that assumption collapsed overnight. Wholesale energy prices went vertical. Industrial electricity costs in Germany suddenly hit three to four times what businesses in Texas were paying for the exact same power.”
“Look at what happened to BASF, the largest chemical company in the world. For over 150 years, their home was Ludwigshafen, Germany, a sprawling industrial complex on the Rhine that employed tens of thousands. After 2022, they announced billions in cuts to that site. Plants shuttered, thousands of jobs gone. But BASF didn’t disappear. At the exact same time, they were breaking ground on new facilities in Freeport, Texas. Same company, same products, two completely different decisions driven entirely by the price of electricity.” Probably not just electricity. Union work rules in Germany are considerably less flexible than those in right-to-work Texas.
“France tried to escape this trap by leaning into nuclear power, which once covered 75% of French electricity needs. But that infrastructure is aging. New reactor projects like Flamenville have run tens of billions over budget and more than a decade behind schedule, and the political will to build more has been stuck in debate for a generation. The old Russian gas model is dead. The nuclear renaissance has not arrived. And permitting a single wind farm in the EU can take 7 to 10 years.”
“In Texas, the same process often takes a few months. Energy prices act like a hidden tax on everything from manufacturing steel to running a server farm to heating a bakery. European businesses pay that tax every single day. And Europe does not have the gas, does not have the grid independence, and does not have the permitting speed to change that.” Actually, Europe does have oil and gas reserves it refuses to develop.
“Cheap energy is a huge piece of the puzzle. But the real accelerant for the Texas economy has been something even harder for Europe to copy. And it starts with one number. The average top personal income tax rate across 35 European countries is 38.5%. In Denmark, that number hits a staggering 60.5%. In Germany, France, and Italy, high earners face rates between 45 and 50%.”
“In Texas, the state income tax rate is zero. It’s always been zero, and the Texas Constitution actually makes it illegal for the state to introduce one without a direct vote from the public. This is not a temporary policy that a new government can reverse after the next election. It’s locked into the foundation of the state.”
“Texas still has high property taxes, so the total burden on a normal resident is not as dramatic as that 0% headline suggests. But for the people these economies are competing over, the math is brutal. A senior software engineer in Munich earns roughly €75,000 and takes home about $45,000 after income tax and social contributions. The same engineer in Austin earns $140,000 and takes home over $105,000. same skills, same screen, more than double the money in their pocket at the end of the year. Between 2020 and 2024, Texas startups pulled in over $46 billion in venture capital. In Q1 2025 alone, Texas tech companies raised nearly $3 billion, the biggest single quarter the state had seen in over 2 years, with massive deals in cyber security, defense tech, and biotech.”
“Compare that to the other side of the Atlantic. The entire European Union raised about $17.5 billion for AI funding in all of 2025. The US raised nearly $70 billion for generative AI alone by midyear. Not total tech, not all venture capital, generative AI alone. These two regions are not competing in the same category.”
“The EU’s regulatory framework was designed to protect consumers and level the playing field. GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation], the AI Act, 27 different national compliance regimes stacked on top of each other. The intentions were sound, but the unintended result is that the compliance costs favor massive American companies like Google and Microsoft, who can absorb them easily over smaller European rivals who can’t.”
“None of this means Texas has it all figured out, because the truth is it hasn’t. The most visible problem is housing. In 2019, a median Texas family earned 62% more than they needed to buy a median home. By 2023, that cushion had collapsed to just 7%. Not 62%, 7%. Over a third of Texas households now spend more than 30% of their income on housing.” That’s a national problem, partially engendered by the Flu Manchu shutdowns, partially by restrictive local building codes. “Affordable housing” blather snipped, since this is just more unnecessary government subsidy and intervention.
“The workers who actually build the Texas economy, the Tesla line workers, the nurses, the warehouse staff, can’t afford to live in the cities their labor is building anymore. They commute in from further and further out, and the roads, the housing, and the services all fall behind.” Partially true, partially false. Austin housing prices exploded, but have come down dramatically. Dallas and San Antonio prices spiked, then plateaued. Houston prices have continued climbing, but gradually.
“When a place grows this fast, the infrastructure simply can’t keep up.” True of Austin, less true of Houston, though having to rebuild certain interchanges is making things a nightmare for certain commuters.
Discussion of energy grid problems and the 2021 ice storm snipped, since I think we’ve covered those enough here.
“The problems in Texas are the problems of a place growing too fast. The problems in Europe are the problems of a place that is barely growing at all. In that sense, Texas and Europe have something in common. Both are stuck. The difference is that Texas is gridlocked because too many people are trying to get to work. Europe is gridlocked because too many committees are still deciding whether to build the road. Right now, Texas has its sights set on overtaking France, a G7 nation. At current growth rates, that gap closes faster than most people realize. And France’s response, like the rest of Europe’s, has been to wait and see.”
“The real question isn’t whether Europe can change. It’s whether it actually wants to change badly enough to feel the pain that comes with it. Because while Brussels is still writing the rule book, the game is already over for the economies Texas has already passed. The ones still in its path just haven’t checked the scoreboard yet.”
Left out of this coverage: Texas has a constitutionally mandated balanced budget, while the overwhelming majority of European nations keep running budget deficits to keep their cradle-to-grave welfare states afloat.
Not to mention a government run by Republicans rather than unstable coalitions including the Greens…
Iran Strikes: Day 14, lots of counter-drone measures, more welfare state fraud in California and Pennsylvania, a bishop raids the children’s fund, a new refinery rises in Brownsville, Old Glory 1, dirty antifa commie 0, caffeine is good for your brain, BuzzardFeed, and the cutest hotel greeters. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
President Donald Trump said that he thinks new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, whose father, the former supreme leader, was killed on the first day of the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran, is alive but “damaged.”
Khamenei has not been seen by Iranians since his selection on Sunday by a clerical assembly, and his first comments were read out by a television presenter on Thursday.
An Iranian official told Reuters on Wednesday that the newly appointed supreme leader was lightly injured but was continuing to operate, after state television described him as war-wounded.
“I think he probably is (alive). I think he is damaged, but I think he’s probably alive in some form, you know,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News’ “The Brian Kilmeade Show.” His remarks were published by Fox News late on Thursday.
Military targets on Iran’s Kharg Island – the loading site for most of the Islamic Republic’s oil exports – were “totally obliterated” by US airstrikes during a historic bombing raid in the Persian Gulf, President Trump announced Friday.
“Moments ago, at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The island, located about 16 miles off the Iranian coast, is one-third the size of Manhattan and controls 90% of Iranian crude oil exports.
Trump said the island’s oil infrastructure was not targeted but may be hit in future strikes, if the Iranian regime doesn’t allow ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
Most IRGC facilities have been bombed into oblivion, but the IRGC is still functioning as a Secret Police force, threatening Iranians with death if they take to the streets to protest or rise up against the regime.
Snip.
Iranian state media claim the overnight strikes on Basij checkpoints were meant to stir unrest inside the country.
“This is an attempt to undermine public confidence in Iran’s stable security apparatus. The enemy is trying to open a new internal front,” one outlet said.
Fars news agency reported that at least 10 security and Basij personnel were killed in attacks at several sites across Tehran.
At this point, the crucial war-winning strategy is to destroy the IRGC’s ability to intimidate a populace desperate to get rid of them.
loitering munition-type drones now appear to be operating over Tehran.
More than 10 checkpoints, as well as several mobile IRGC (IRGC) military vehicles in different areas of the city, are said to have been targeted and destroyed by drone strikes. (@etelaf10)
This type of weapon can patrol for a long time over an area, wait for targets to appear, and then strike. This is all the easier when enemy air defense systems are degraded or neutralized.
This could facilitate the emergence of a broader national uprising, by weakening the regime’s control at the street level.
Uncle Sam cues up more Whoop Ass: “The USS Tripoli, and the 2,500 Marines on the amphibious assault ship, are headed to the Middle East to bolster U.S. military power there as the war in Iran enters its third week.” Maybe they’ll be occupying Kharg Island in the near future, and we’ll let China beg us to sell them Iranian oil…
Iran also attacked a refinery in northern Iraq. Maybe Iran is trying to see if they can survive as a state that exports nothing but terror…
Communist China is facing a devastating energy crisis as massive gas lines stretch for miles across the country, with desperate Hong Kong residents rushing across the border to fill their tanks amid fears that escalating war with Iran could cripple global oil supplies.
The scenes coming out of China paint a picture of panic and desperation — exactly what happens when authoritarian regimes fail to secure reliable energy for their people. While President Trump’s America First energy policies have made us energy independent, China’s reliance on hostile nations like Iran has left them vulnerable and scrambling.
Hong Kong citizens, already suffering under Beijing’s iron fist, are now forced to join endless queues just to get basic fuel for their vehicles. The images are reminiscent of the Carter administration’s gas crisis — a stark reminder of what happens when nations don’t prioritize energy independence.
The Carter-era gas lines weren’t from a shortage of supply, they were from the federal government’s monkeying with allocation.
Medicare is federally administered, and hospices must be certified for reimbursements. But the state issues the licenses for hospices to operate.
Three years ago, California’s state auditor sounded the alarm that Los Angeles County had seen a 1,500% increase in hospice companies since 2010 – more than six times the national average relative to its elderly population.
Auditors estimated LA County hospices overbilled Medicare by $105 million in a single year.
The state revoked 280 hospice licenses, but things have only gotten worse since then.
The CBS News analysis reveals that over 700 of the roughly 1,800 hospices in LA County trigger multiple red flags for fraud as defined by the state.
It goes downhill from there:
There are about 1,800 licensed hospices in Los Angeles County, California, which is more than six times the national average for the county’s senior population.
Nearly 500 hospices are operating within a 3-mile radius, the densest concentration of agencies in the county.
89 companies are registered to a single building in Van Nuys.
The illegal alien voter fraud that Democrats swear up and down never happens happened again. “ICE arrests illegal migrant who allegedly fraudulently voted in seven federal elections.”
The Department of Homeland Security has announced the arrest of an illegal migrant who allegedly voted in seven federal elections since 2008, despite being deported over 20 years ago.
DHS said Mahady Sacko, who came to the United States illegally from the African country of Mauritania, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and the FBI in Philadelphia. He has been charged with voter fraud.
“This criminal illegal alien committed a felony by voting in federal elections dating back to 2008.”
If you’re waiting in long lines at the airport, you can thank Democrats love of illegal aliens. “Democrats Block DHS Funding Despite Airport Delays, Rising Iranian Threat.”
Senate Democrats have blocked another test vote on Thursday, pushed by Republicans attempting to end the ongoing 27-day partial government shutdown impacting the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Republican leaders contend that Democrat lawmakers refuse to negotiate in good faith and are only interested in abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a subagency under DHS.
Nairobi-based contractors have seen footage capturing bathroom visits, naked people, and intimate moments, according to an investigation from two Swedish newspapers.
That’s right. This report from the newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten claims Meta is outsourcing video to Sama, a tech firm in KENYA, where human workers pore over millions of hours of video to help train Meta’s A.I. assistant that is paired with the glasses.
See, A.I. isn’t really A.I. That’s just a marketing label. These programs are Large-Language Models (LLMs) that can search and summarize vast quantities of data in a split second, but they require an army of human input to train them so they can provide accurate answers to users. Once the programs run out of data provided by humans, they stall out.
Sama was also used by OpenAI to train its LLM. Why? Well, labor in Africa is CHEAP. If you can pay thousands of workers $2 an hour instead of $30 an hour to train your overhyped search bot, you save billions of dollars.
The other advantage is anonymity … for the companies, that is. If you were paying Americans to watch videos of fellow Americans undressing and having sex, they would probably report it to the media en masse.
What a shock that Facebook “smart glasses” are simply another way to invade your privacy…
“HUGE Storm Shadow Strike on Bryansk Electronics Factory.” Plus a look at the aftermath. “90-94% of its production goes into Russian weapons – semiconductors, circuit boards, power modules for missiles, radars, drones, aircraft and more.” And as we know, Russia has very little in the way of semiconductor production.
Russian planes can barely fly in the right direction. They are catching fire in midair. Technical failures are increasing. Emergency landings are happening one after another…There is a dramatic increase in both military and civilian plane crashes.
Hundreds of thousands of Russians are now afraid to even buy tickets. Flights are being postponed indefinitely. This is not a scene from a disaster movie. These images are from Russia.
And for millions of people, airports are now like giant open air prisons. The collapse of the system has reached such a terrifying scale that it can no longer be hidden.
A good bit of this was predicted when sanctions against Russian aviation came down in 2022.
Then there’s the story of civilians flown on an unheated military cargo plane in sub-zero temperatures…
Stephen Green: “I Have Seen the Future of Anti-Drone Warfare, and It’s Dirt-Cheap (Really!)”
Today’s news about Ukraine’s Sting counter-drone caught my eye, and what it might mean for U.S. and other Western forces going forward.
I vaguely remembered reading something about the Sting a year or more ago, but I just learned today that they’re both dirt-cheap and extremely effective — mostly at shooting down Russia’s Geran-2 one-way attack drones, which are licensed copies of Iran’s Shahed that have caused us considerable trouble in Operation Epic Fury.
Ukraine needs tons of these things, because Geran is essentially a terror weapon aimed in large numbers — currently 100 to 200 per attack — at Ukraine’s cities and infrastructure. Larger attack waves include anything from 300 up to just over 800 Geran-2s in one night.
So the concept behind Sting is simply enough: Make something cheap and fast to build, easy to use, yet still capable of knocking a Geran-2 out of the sky far enough out from its target for some degree of safety.
And a local startup firm called Wild Hornets delivered on all three counts.
A typical quadcopter design and just over a foot tall, Stings are made mostly from 3D-printed parts and can be assembled in about two minutes. Unlike some drones that must be launched into the air via catapult (really), Sting takes off vertically like a helicopter before tipping over and using its stubby wings to fly like a plane, with an intercept range of 15 miles or so. Vertical takeoff allows operators to deploy and launch in less than 15 minutes.
The Ukes designed themselves a mini Osprey. That goes boom. Nifty.
There’s a camera on board, which the operator then uses to fly into incoming Geran-2s. With a top speed of about 190 MPH, they’re fast enough to enjoy a reported 80-90% successful intercept rate — and better than 90% in more recent operations. There’s a faster — and presumably more difficult to intercept — jet-powered Geran-3, but they’re much more expensive to build, require more fuel, and have shorter range. Russia uses far fewer of those.
The best part of Sting? The basic model costs about $2,500 to manufacture, compared to an estimated $70k–$80k for each Russian-built Geran-2. The economics of mass drone warfare are brutal.
A federal jury in Philadelphia has delivered a resounding guilty verdict against two Pennsylvania brothers and a longtime associate, convicting them of masterminding one of the most elaborate and prolonged racketeering operations uncovered in recent years. The scheme, which prosecutors say drained more than $32 million from Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program while exploiting vulnerable foreign workers through the H-1B visa system, spanned over a decade and involved layers of deception across multiple states.
At the center of the criminal enterprise – self-dubbed the “Savani Group” – were brothers Bhaskar Savani, 60, a trained dentist from Ambler, Pennsylvania, and Arun Savani, 58, from Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. Bhaskar controlled the group’s extensive network of dental practices, while Arun oversaw finances and real estate holdings. Together, they built what U.S. Attorney David Metcalf described as a “complex web” of sham entities and fraudulent operations, amassing tens of millions through outright fraud “at every turn.”
A third defendant, Aleksandra “Ola” Radomiak, 48, of Lansdale, Pennsylvania—a longtime associate—was also convicted for her role, primarily in the healthcare fraud components.
The multi-faceted conspiracy encompassed several interlocking schemes:
Visa fraud and worker exploitation: The group filed numerous false H-1B visa petitions with the U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. These applications misrepresented job titles, duties, and other details to bring in foreign workers—most from India—who were dependent on the Savani Group for their legal status. Once employed, many were coerced into kicking back portions of their salaries and paying additional fees back to the enterprise, creating a captive, underpaid workforce.
Healthcare fraud against Medicaid: After the Savani Group’s legitimate dental practices lost their Medicaid contracts due to prior issues, the conspirators pivoted to using nominee-owned shell entities and sham dental practices. They fraudulently billed Pennsylvania Medicaid in the names of non-treating dentists for services that were either unnecessary, never performed, or grossly inflated. This alone resulted in over $32 million in improper payments, robbing taxpayers and depriving the healthcare system of vital resources.
Money laundering and tax evasion: Proceeds from the fraud were funneled through a sophisticated network of financial transactions, including concealment and transactional money laundering. The group also conspired to defraud the U.S. Treasury via wire fraud tied to false tax returns.
Obstruction of justice: When federal investigators closed in, the conspirators actively obstructed a grand jury probe.
Two cooperating government witnesses, Lynette Sharp and Seth Sikes, both pleaded guilty to one count of providing material support to terrorists and testified against [Benjamin] Song.
Sharp alleged Song admitted to shooting someone when she helped him evade law enforcement after the officer was shot.
Likewise, Sikes alleged that Song said, “Get to the rifles,” and testified he heard gunshots coming from behind him where Song was and turned to see a muzzle flash.
Sharp met Song in 2022, and Sikes met him in 2024 while Song was teaching martial arts at a Fort Worth community center.
Both witnesses testified that they became friends with the defendants.
“I love them,” Sharp said on the stand, after wiping tears.
Sikes testified he and others trusted Song, whom he described as a “very charismatic person” that people would follow.
Cameron Arnold (also known as Autumn Hill), Zachary Evetts, Bradford Morris (also known as Meagan Morris), Maricela Rueda, and Song face the most serious charges of attempted murder, discharging a firearm during a crime of violence, and providing material support to terrorists.
Other defendants facing lesser charges include Savanna Batten, Elizabeth Soto, Ines Soto, and Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada.
All have pleaded not guilty.
Sharp and Sikes said group members considered themselves victims of society or those who wanted to protect “marginalized” people.
This ideology led them to become caught up in protest culture, offering a rare glimpse into the inner workings of protestors known as Antifa.
Antifa is modeled after a group that worked as the violent arm of the Communist Party in Germany in the 1930s. Some symbols from the original group are still used by the movement today, such as the logo and the raised-fist salute.
Song, who received an “other than honorable” discharge from the Army, recruited Sharp and Sikes to train with the Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), often described as a left-wing alternative to counter the National Rifle Association (NRA).
Sharp and Sikes said they learned gun safety and practiced marksmanship. Various defendants in the Antifa case frequently trained with AR-style weapons, they said.
The First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals lifted a block Wednesday on a lower court ruling that prevented the Trump administration from deporting illegal migrants to “third countries” that are willing to accept them.
The Trump administration had appealed U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy’s ruling last week, after he ruled in February that the Department of Homeland Security’s deportation policy was unlawful and violates due process protections under the U.S. Constitution.
The administration argued Murphy’s order violated two previous Supreme Court rulings and created an “unworkable scheme” that threatened to derail negotiations with other countries, along with thousands of deportations, per Fox News.
California’s climate-cult-driven political leaders assumed gasoline demand would fade quickly as electric vehicles took hold. Acting on that prediction, they created conditions that forced refineries to close, blocked new projects, and added regulations expecting everyone would share their disdain for fossil fuels and reliable internal combustion engines.
But reality didn’t match their models. Tens of millions of drivers still rely on gasoline every day, and by shrinking supply faster than demand declined, our eco-activist bureaucrats created a fragile, high‑risk system.
Californians are being warned to brace themselves for the FO phase of the FAFO cycle.
Gavin Newsom’s green agenda and global oil turmoil will risk sending California’s gas prices above a wallet-crushing $8 a gallon — potentially returning drivers to the desperate fuel rationing not seen since the 1970s, state lawmakers and industry experts warned.
With drivers in the Golden State already facing the highest gas prices in the US, Southern California state Sen. Suzette Valladares has urged the governor to scrap California’s cap-and-invest program that charges oil makers for carbon emissions. She dubbed Newsom’s program the “cap-and-tax” scheme, and warned that closing any further oil refineries in the state could trigger economic collapse.
“It’s not scaremongering at all,” Valladares told The California Post of a report from the USC Marshall School of Business that found gas prices could reach $8 a gallon by the end of 2026.
The way things are going, it wouldn’t shock me to see California gas prices hit $8 a gallon this month…
Things that make you go “Hmmmm“: “FBI secretly seizes election records from Arizona’s largest county as voting probe expands.”
The FBI is expanding its criminal probe into suspected election irregularities, secretly obtaining a large tranche of voting records from Arizona’s largest county with a recent grand jury subpoena, multiple people familiar with the probe told Just the News.
The sources, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the grand jury probe, said FBI agents are receiving terabytes of electronic election data from Maricopa County, about a month after the bureau first disclosed an investigation into election irregularities by raiding a warehouse near Atlanta and seizing ballots from the 2020 election conducted in Fulton County, Georgia’s largest metropolis.
The subpoena comes five years after the GOP-led Arizona state Senate conducted a lengthy investigation into the 2020 election and concluded there were significant irregularities.
“As Democrats make anti-ICE messaging a centerpiece of their midterm election strategy, a new NBC poll shows that the Democratic Party is more unpopular than ICE. Of the 14 subjects surveyed—a list that also included “AI, that is Artificial Intelligence”—only Iran had a lower approval rating than the Democratic Party.”
Chairman and CEO Darren Woods said about the decision, “Texas has made a noticeable effort to embrace the business community. In doing so, it has created a policy and regulatory environment that can allow the company to maximize shareholder value.”
Its attraction to the state, according to ExxonMobil, is due in part to its de facto status as the company’s home, with 30 percent of the company’s global employee base and 75 percent of its domestic employee base located in Texas. The company is already headquartered in Spring.
“Texas’ legal and regulatory environment, including its modernized business statutes” was also referenced as a strategic reason for the relocation, along with the presence of the Texas Business Court, which ExxonMobil praised as “designed to resolve complex disputes efficiently.”
Thanks to Democrats’ soft on crime policies in California, not even luxury apartments are immune from rampaging mobs.
A group linked to a late-night street takeover forced its way into a luxury downtown Los Angeles apartment tower early Sunday, fighting with staff and leaving shattered glass and overturned furniture behind, according to police and video of the incident, according to the NY Post.
The disturbance happened around 3 a.m. at the Circa LA Apartments on South Figueroa Street, the Los Angeles Police Department said.
Authorities told KTLA that a crowd involved in a nearby street takeover moved toward the upscale high-rise and began vandalizing the property.
Video shows a large group gathering outside the building before targeting the lobby. One person is seen throwing an object at a suited employee who appeared to be working near the front desk. The worker initially stood outside but retreated inside as other staff gathered in the lobby.
The crowd soon forced its way into the building. Outside, several people smashed glass doors and windows, while one individual used a metal barricade to ram the entrance.
The Post writes that once inside, members of the group knocked over furniture and ran through the lobby as the scene descended into chaos. At one point, a person appeared to grab a box from the front desk while others rummaged through it before the group dispersed as sirens approached.
This is your city on Democrats…
“Michigan rep not seeking reelection because she can’t “be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ while remaining a member of the Democratic Party.” “Michigan State Representative Karen Whitsett announced she will not seek re-election and will not run for public office again, saying the decision is faith-based and rooted in her commitment to Jesus Christ and the authority of Scripture.”
I have compromised my relationship with Jesus for too long, and I’m grateful God did not give up on me. He gave me time to repent, turn, and be fully devoted to Him
That conviction includes the issues I cannot reconcile with Scripture: abortion, the normalization of the gay lifestyle, and the push to redefine gender.
Pope Leo XIV accepts San Diego bishop’s resignation over embezzlement scandal. Bishop Emanuel Shaleta stepped down from his post at Saint Peter’s Chaldean last month, the Vatican said in a bulletin Tuesday. Bishop Saad Hanna Sirop has replaced him in the interim.”
Shaleta has been charged with eight counts of embezzlement, eight counts of money laundering, and an “aggravated white collar crime” enhancement related to $272,000 in missing funds from the church, according to NBC News, and pleaded not guilty to all charges during a court appearance Monday.
Authorities allege that Shaleta spent months pocketing $30,000 in monthly cash payments from a tenant and hid the crime by moving money from a church account that held funds to help the less fortunate into the church’s operations account.
“PM who ran New Zealand into the ground during Covid flees country for greener pastures.” Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who locked down harder and longer than just about any other country, has emigrated to Australia. Hopefully a Bunyip or Drop Bear will eat her…
BlackRock is like a roach motel: Your money can check in, but it can never check out. “BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) is blocking investors from fully exiting its $26 billion HPS Corporate Lending Fund after redemption requests hit 9.3% of shares in Q1, well above the fund’s 5% quarterly cap. It marks the first time withdrawal requests have exceeded that limit.”
“Trump Set To Suspend Jones Act To Help Tame Oil Prices.” The century old Jones Act “that requires American-built ships to be used to transport goods between US ports.” I’m sure that right now Peter Zeihan is already working on a video to celebrate…
Unexpected South Carolina Democrat senate candidate Alvin Greene, RIP. They didn’t even mention his comic book…
Speaking of novelty candidates, Literally Anybody Else is running for mayor of North Richland Hills, a Metroplex city northeast of Fort Worth. That’s the name of the guy running: Literally Anybody Else. His cause for running against incumbent mayor Jack McCarty is “lying to the people about carport regulations.”
Ian McCollum examines whether force reset triggers will destroy the value of existing legal-to-own machine guns. The answer, from recent auction results, is probably not. Particularly eye-opening is two registered drop-in auto-sears, which allow conversion of certain modern sporting rifles to full-auto, went for $40,000 and $52,000. For what is essentially a stamped bit of metal.
Rick Beato has a theory that all those people building AI data centers are going to go bankrupt, because people can run AI tools and datasets on their own computers. He compares this to how recording studios who had borrowed money to buy expensive mixing boards circa 1999 went out of business when Napster crashed the music business. I think his larger point is correct, but I think a lot of musicians were already already into cheaper prosumer digital tools in the early 1990s.
Finally, my excessive Diet Dr Pepper habit is paying off! “Large Study Shows High Caffeine Intake Linked To Reduced Dementia Risk.”
BuzzFeed is buzzard feed. “BuzzFeed, the digital media empire that captured the attention of millennials in the mid-2010s through shareable listicles, viral video content and more, expressed ‘substantial doubt’ Thursday about its ability to continue operations.”
(Hat tip: Clownfish TV, from whom I’ve stolen the buzzard feed line.)
Critical Drinker is considerably less than impressed with The Bride! “Jesus Fuck Mothering Christ. I have seen a lot of crappy movies in my time, but I don’t think I’ve seen many that were so completely determined to waste such an insane amount of money and talent.”
Today’s Habitual Linecrosser:
“Aloha Snackbar.” I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that one before, but it’s still funny…
For some reason, Vladimir Putin seems to think he can force NATO to back down from supporting Ukraine against his illegal war of territorial aggression by launching various provocations. Here’s a roundup of recent NATO country responses to Russia.
First up: Cappy Army on NATO beefing up it’s defensive line against Russia:
“NATO is racing to build a multi-billion dollar 2,000 mile long defensive line that stretches across the entire European continent.”
“There are several names for the new fortification depending on the section you’re standing at. In the Baltics, it’s officially known as the Eastern Flank Deterrence Line, which is a 500 mile long network of bunkers and fortified border zones.”
“The Eastern Flank Deterrence Line is not mainly physical barriers, because the distance is far too great. Instead, it’s a network of computer sensors to fill these physical gaps. It’s not designed to completely defeat a potential Russian conventional advance. It’s made to slow down and channel the enemy’s forces into these predetermined kill zones.”
“The Army and NATO’s focusing their efforts at the places deemed most vulnerable in the Baltics. Here they’re deploying a layered modular barrier system that runs 30 miles deep.” First they hit sensors lines, then get a dose of HIMARS and artillery, then drone swarms in the air and on the ground. “Estimates are these methods will have to kill or wound 70% of the attacking force to be successful.”
The length of the entire defensive line is roughly the length of the U.S.-Mexico border.
“It’s designed this way to cover large sections of land that may not already have trenches pre-plotted artillery and mortar kill zone are linked to a network of sensors and then anything that makes it past that runs into rows of landmines, then physical obstacles, including anti-vehicle ditches and rows of concrete dragons teeth. These are strategically placed at the high-speed avenues of approach that lead directly to the Baltic state capitals.”
“The second line of defensive positions in the network is over 600 bunkers of distributed firing positions, trenches, and roadblocks. Infantry and anti-tank javelin teams fight from here.”
“The European Deterrence Initiative in the United States requested $2.9 billion from America in 2025 to deter Russia. Poland’s portion of the defensive line will cost over $50 billion with much of that funding coming from the EU. And the Baltics and Finland are spending a combined billions of dollars more as well.”
“Similar to the Cold War doctrine, [Baltic forces are] a kind of tripwire force here. Troops stationed here jokingly refer to themselves as tactical speed bumps.” The idea is to buy time until reinforcements arrive.”
“In Estonia, there’s only 127 miles from the border with Russia to the capital city.”
“The defining issue along the defensive wall is manpower. The shortage of manpower is what has shaped all of the decisions for how this fortification is being built. The Estonian army has roughly 6,000 active soldiers with a NATO force of 2,000 UK and French troops also deployed here. And if we look across the whole Baltics, we see that there’s roughly 29,000 active duty soldiers total here. This does not fully take into account reserve forces or air power advantages, but it outlines the basic tactical problem.”
In Poland the defensive line continues under the name Eastern Shield. “This runs from the Kalinigrad enclave down along Belarus and towards Slovakia, which is another 500 miles.”
“Poland’s Eastern Shield has an entirely different strategy than the Baltics. They expect to absorb the first hit and then fight a long, protracted war on their own soil if they have to. The shield here does not have the benefit of being built around geographic obstacles like in the Baltics. This is why you see full-length anti-tank ditches and multi-mile long trench systems laid out in depth.”
“The scale of the project is gigantic, with 8,000 combat engineers working to lay 10,000 concrete dragon’s teeth and over 800 miles of layered anti- vehicle barriers backed up by massive amounts of artillery. Terrain denial is the focus on this stretch.”
“Manpower and mass is less of a problem on this section of the front, because in Poland there’s 280,000 well-trained and equipped active forces with an additional 10,000 American soldiers already stationed there before reinforcements arrive.”
“The defining piece of this part of the puzzle is the anti-air assets, with 48 Patriot air defense launchers provide a protective umbrella for forces massing here.”
“The logistics backbone is being built here. Poland would be the transit region into the Baltics and much of the large stockpile of fuel and ammo are positioned here because they have the space.”
NATO has a more difficult problem defending Poland than the Warsaw Pact did when Moscow called the shots. “Today’s NATO and EU is an alliance of sovereign states that must coordinate instead of obey. This makes rapid unified action more difficult.”
“The US Army themselves acknowledge Russia has the advantage in manpower and equipment on this front, and that Russia can choose the time and place of the attack.” I sincerely doubt Russia has the equipment or manpower advantage now that Vlad’s Big Adventure has run through Soviet-era tank stockpiles and slaughtered Russian manpower to gain tiny slivers of Ukrainian territory.
A history of static defenses snipped and Cold War defensive realities snipped.
NATO General Chris Donahue: “The massive momentum problem that Russia poses to us, we’ve developed the capability to make sure that we can stop that mass and momentum problem.”
In their panic over Ukraine slowly destroy both their Black Sea fleet and their shadow fleet, Russia has managed to piss Turkey off:
“After Russian forces increased their activity and provocations over [the Black Sea] and NATO country’s airspace, Turkey was the first to act and shot down Russian surveillance drones without warning.”
“As more accidents followed, the Russians are now at risk of facing the Turkish wrath, getting all their trade cut off outright without any strikes needed.”
A Russian drone with transponder equipment was found on the ground in a Romanian forest. “With a wingspan of roughly 2 meters, Romanian authorities assessed that the device had been used to monitor NATO facilities or track military aid deliveries to Ukraine.”
“Three separate Russian drones violated Turkish airspace, pushing the country closer to decisive action. The first incident occurred when a Russian drone entered Turkish airspace from the Black Sea. Turkish air defense reacted swiftly and F-16 fighter jets intercepted the target, ultimately shooting it down with an M9X sidewinder missile.”
“The second incident was even more alarming when a Russian Orlan reconnaissance drone crashed near the city of Izmit just 50 kilometers from Istanbul.”
“The third case involved debris from a Russian Merlin reconnaissance drone discovered in western Turkey. The Merlin can remain airborne for up to 10 hours flying at altitudes of up to 5 kilometers and carrying advanced opto-electronic sensors. Its presence again pointed to sustained intelligence gathering activity rather than an isolated malfunction.”
“If Ankara were to sight repeated Russian drone incursions as a security threat, it could even restrict civilian Russian shipping through the Bosphorus in retaliation. The consequences would be severe as such a move would devastate Russia’s Black Sea trade and challenged the 1936 Montreux Convention, guaranteeing free passage for merchant vessels.”
“Russian drone operations continue, Ankara appears willing not only to shut down the sky over the Black Sea, but also to potentially escalate further and close the boss for us, making it clear that spying on NATO members in the region will carry real and costly consequences.”
“Russia’s shadow fleet is coming under mounting pressure in the Baltic, as interceptions increase and European states move more aggressively against sanctioned vessels. However, now Russia is responding by placing Wagner mercenaries on board these ships, bringing one of its most violent forces directly into Nato-monitored waters.”
“The European Union has just released a new sanctions package targeting forty-one additional shadow fleet vessels, bringing the total to more than six hundred ships now barred from European-linked ports, insurance, and services. These ships are losing access to harbors, maintenance, and technical certification, which forces Moscow to rely on improvised routes that squeeze through increasingly narrow corridors.”
“Beyond oil, these vessels also move sensitive cargo linked to Russia’s war effort, which makes each interception far more consequential than a financial loss alone, and as enforcement tightens, the risk shifts from paperwork violations to direct seizure.”
This shift became visible when Swedish authorities detained the Russian cargo vessel Adler after it entered Swedish waters with unresolved documentation issues. The ship’s owner is sanctioned for transporting materials linked to Russia’s weapons production, and when Adler suffered engine trouble in Swedish waters, the crew could not produce clean documentation. Swedish authorities boarded immediately, as the detention came amid growing reports that Russia has begun placing Wagner mercenaries on board shadow fleet vessels, raising the stakes for any inspection or boarding operation, and signaling that European states are no longer intimidated by the possibility of armed Russians on these vessels.”
“According to Danish maritime pilots, once Wagner personnel are on board, they often restrict access to the bridge and interfere with communication between captains and port authorities, and push for routing that avoids areas where inspections are common.”
“For Moscow, Wagner functions as a last-line enforcement tool. Their role is to ensure that vessels keep moving even when legal and operational risks become unacceptable by normal commercial standards. Crews bullied, beaten, or threatened by the mercenaries may even quietly signal nearby NATO ships for help, or attempt to sabotage equipment to force an emergency stop in Western waters, with the Adler’s crew possibly sabotaging the engine before they reached a Russian port, and Wagners would come on board. On top of that, owners of leased ships may object to hosting armed Russian soldiers, whose presence massively increases legal liability and operational danger.”
The case of Adler matters because it highlights how the shadow fleet is being used not only for oil, but for moving weapons and military-linked cargo. Western officials assess that a substantial portion of Russia’s imported ammunition components, explosives precursors, and sanctioned industrial equipment now arrives by sea, precisely because land routes and air transport are more exposed to interception. If vessels like Adler are increasingly detained or disrupted, Russia does not just lose revenue but risks bottlenecks in the supply chains that feed its weapons production.”
NATO hasn’t been backing down in the face of repeated Russian provocations. Putin is playing an increasingly weak hand badly.
The Schumer Shutdown continues, “No Kings” rallies turns out to be a shuffling parade of elderly white dorks, Ukraine continues destroying Russia’s oil infrastructure, that Dutch chip company seizure has bigger ramifications than I anticipated, Canada wants to steal people’s homes, an NBA gambling scandal erupts, and you have a chance to buy a painting from the Iron Lady Collection.
Senate Democrats killed a bill proposed by GOP Sens. Ron Johnson (WI) and Todd Young (IN) that would have paid government essential workers during the extended shutdown.
It failed 54-45. It needed 60 votes to advance.
Only Democrat Sens. John Fetterman (PA), Raphael Warnock (GA), and Jon Ossoff (GA) voted with the Republicans.
“Democrats have voted down the stopgap bill 12 times.”
“How Did California Spend Billions on Homelessness Only for It to Get Worse? Two New Criminal Cases Offer a Clue.” Honestly, the first sentence supplies its own answer even without the second.
How did California manage to spend $24 billion in taxpayer money to address homelessness over the past years, only for the problem to get substantially worse?
The state has not offered any explanation since that figure was revealed in a state audit released earlier this year. But the arrest of two California men on Thursday suggests that at least some of the money may have been stolen through fraud.
Cody Holmes, the former chief financial officer at a downtown Los Angeles-based developer of affordable housing, was arrested on a federal criminal complaint charging him with mail fraud. In a separate case, Steven Taylor is accused of defrauding lenders to aid his property-flipping business. He is charged with seven counts of bank fraud, one count of aggravated identity theft, and one count of money laundering.
The arrests come as part of a larger federal investigation into homelessness funding fraud in the Golden State.
“Accountability begins today,” said acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli when he announced the arrests on Thursday. He said the two cases are part of a pattern of the larger misappropriation of billions in state funds meant to combat homelessness.
An audit released by the state in April revealed that California has spent more than $24 billion over the past five years to address the state’s homelessness crisis. The acting U.S. attorney formed a Homelessness Fraud and Corruption Task Force earlier this year to investigate where those tax dollars have gone.
“The two criminal cases announced is only the tip of the iceberg and we intend to aggressively pursue all leads and hold anyone who broke any federal laws criminally liable,” Essayli said.
Holmes, 31, is accused of fraudulently obtaining $25.9 million in state grant money for Shangri-La Industries, the developer of affordable housing for which he served as CFO. That money was intended to be used to purchase, construct, and operate homeless housing in Thousand Oaks under a state project called “Homekey.”
Holmes allegedly knowingly submitted inflated, fake bank records to the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), to falsely prove the company had the capacity to fulfill homeless housing projects. However, authorities say the bank accounts that Holmes said contained these funds did not exist.
Holmes is now accused of using more than $2 million in state grant money to pay credit card bills that he was associated with, including purchases at luxury retailers.
HCD had previously paid millions of dollars to Shangri-La to buy, build, and operate housing for the homeless in Redlands and King City, among other California cities.
If convicted, Holmes faces up to 20 years in federal prison.
Meanwhile, Taylor, 44, is accused of using fake bank statements and false cash representations to obtain loans and lines of credit to operate his real estate business from August 2019 to July 2025.
The Brentwood man is also accused of lying to lenders about his intended use of various properties. He allegedly lied to the lender behind his purchase of a Cheviot Hills property, telling the lender he intended to renovate and use the property himself. However, he apparently had already contracted to sell the property, which he bought for $11.2 million thanks to a loan acquired through the use of fake bank statements. He was contracted to sell the property to a homeless housing developer who was purchasing the property with public funds from the city of Los Angeles and the state of California for $27.3 million in a double-escrow transaction hidden from the victim lender and others.
If convicted, Taylor would face up to 30 years in federal prison for each bank fraud count, up to ten years in federal prison for the money laundering count, and a two-year prison sentence for the aggravated identity theft count.
I’m sure this is only the tip of the Homeless Industrial Complex iceberg…
Speaking of homeless industrial complex fraud: “FBI raids homes of Charlotte activist Cedric Dean in health care fraud investigation.”
The FBI raided the home of Cedric Dean, a well-known community activist in Charlotte’s Palisades neighborhood, on Thursday.
The search is part of a federal investigation into an alleged multi-million dollar health care fraud scheme, according to federal court documents released to Queen City News.
A spokesperson for the FBI confirmed on Thursday that agents were “engaged in court-authorized investigative activity,” but did not offer further details.
Court documents obtained by QCN reveal that Dean and his company, Cedric Dean Holdings, are accused of fraudulently billing Medicaid for mental health services that were never provided. Investigators said Dean targeted vulnerable people, including those experiencing homelessness, in exchange for their Medicaid information, offering food or temporary shelter in return.
Dean allegedly submitted inflated or false claims to Medicaid, sometimes using fake diagnoses, and paid staff and recruiters through services like CashApp. Authorities said his company billed roughly $1 million per month and operated without enough staff to actually provide care.
“They’ve lost culture… Calling someone a Democrat is an insult,” Travis noted, adding “Calling someone a Kamala voter is an insult. This is white, black, Asian, Hispanic: young men across America are over the BS that they saw at this No Kings rally.”
“Look at the dance. These are huge dorks. They have no power. They are losers. No one wants to hang out with them,” Travis continued, pointing to the event as emblematic of the party’s disconnect.
“They’re old, 1960s protesters who now are on the side that they used to protest against. They don’t realize that the world has shifted around them and they are awkward lunatics,” he further emphasized.
No Kings? They don’t mean it, as they rebranded as “No Tyrants” in countries with monarchies.
“Ukraine hit Russia’s Novokuybyshevsk refinery in Samara, one of Rosneft’s key plants, processing 8.8M tons of crude annually, about 3% of Russia’s total refining capacity,” some 1,000km from Ukraine.
Hamas is carrying out the terms of the ceasefire every bit as well as you would expect. “After Attack on Troops, Israel Hits Hamas Terror Targets in Gaza BBC. Hamas carried out ‘multiple attacks against Israeli forces beyond the yellow line.'”
Israel struck terrorist targets in southern Gaza after Hamas terrorists attacked its troops located inside the agreed ceasefire line, violating the U.S.-brokered agreement. “The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out airstrikes in the Rafah area on Sunday morning in response to violations of the ceasefire by Hamas,” the Israeli TV channel i24NEWS reported.
In response to Hamas’s action, the Israeli military targeted terror tunnels used in the sneak attacks. “Earlier, an IED or anti-tank explosion struck near an IDF engineering vehicle in the same area,” the broadcaster added. “Reports from Gaza indicate the strikes targeted Hamas positions shortly after the terror group fired an anti-tank missile at IDF forces.”
Trump’s genius wasn’t getting an agreement that would bring lasting peace for all time, it was getting the remaining living hostages out before Hamas inevitably violated the ceasefire.
“Palestinian illegal alien arrested by FBI for participating in October 7th terror attack.” “The complaint described the man, identified in court documents as Mahmoud Amin Ya’qub al-Muhtadi, as an operative for a paramilitary group in Gaza that has fought alongside Hamas.” Naturally, the media refers to him as “Louisiana Man.”
“Haitians who replaced American workers in tiny Pennsylvania town will be unemployed as factory shuts down.” “Many of these migrants were employed by a meatpacking plant known as Fourth Street Barbecue, also operating under the name Fourth Street Foods. They displaced native-born workers, drained local resources, and wired their paychecks overseas to third-world countries.”
One day after German tabloid newspaper Bild reported that Volkswagen had suspended production of the Golf at its Wolfsburg factory due to a worsening semiconductor shortage caused by a supply stoppage of Nexperia chips, the Dutch chipmaker, recently seized by the Netherlands government, warned Japanese automakers on Thursday that it may no longer be able to guarantee chip supply. The chip crisis spreading from Europe to Japan has set off alarm bells across the industry.
Bloomberg reports that the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA) has confirmed that its members, Toyota, Nissan, and Honda, have received warnings from Nexperia about chip supply woes and are working with customers to mitigate disruptions.
JAMA cautioned that chip shortages could have a “serious impact” on global auto production and urged governments to reach a “prompt and practical solution.”
“The chips manufactured by the affected manufacturers are important parts used in electronic control units, etc., and we recognize that this incident will have a serious impact on the global production of our member companies,” JAMA wrote in a statement, adding, “We hope that the countries involved will come to a prompt and practical solution.”
There’s something weird going on here. Any global manufacturing giant worth it’s salt should have second-source contingency plans for such lowly parts as semiconductor discretes. Even in Europe, there are other discrete manufacturers like Infineion and STMicroelctronics. Somebody (or a whole lot of somebodies) dropped the ball here.
“In just 7 minutes, thieves allegedly mounted a ladder, stole priceless jewels from the Louvre and fled on motor scooters.” No painstaking disarming of the alarm system? No sophisticated computer intrusion? No hanging from a cable to avoid triggering the floor alarm? Just smashing windows and cases with brute force? The ghosts of a century’s worth of French screenplay writers sigh in disappointment…
Welcome to Richmond, British Columbia, a suburb of Metro Vancouver.
This is a letter the city sent to residents to notify them that their home might belong to the natives who once camped there 200 years ago.
Please take note that the recent BC Supreme Court decision of Cowichan Tribes v Canada, 2025 BCSC 1490 made some very important decisions which could negatively affect the title to your property. A briefing paper prepared by City of Richmond staff is attached for your reference.
If you look at the draft map attached to the briefing, your property is located within the Claim Area outlined in green. For those whose property is in the area outlined in black, the Court has declared aboriginal title to your property which may compromise the status and validity of your ownership – this was mandated without any prior notice to the landowners. The entire area outlined in green is claimed on appeal by the Cowichan First Nations.
Snip.
A liberal female judge issued an 863-page ruling ordering that private properties, some of which have been in families for generations, must return to the hands of a nomadic tribe that once loosely lived on the land hundreds of years ago, long before anyone who is currently alive was ever born.
This matter was so important to the judge and other liberal allies that it was the “longest trial in Canada’s history.” It is also seen as setting a precedent for confiscating property across the nation.
Now you know why the radical left keeps pushing those bullshit “land acknowledgements.”
A tenured professor at the University of Texas at Austin says he was dismissed from his senior administrative post due to “ideological differences,” marking the latest shake-up in Texas’ statewide effort to reform higher education and curb campus DEI influence.
Last week, Art Markman posted that UT leadership had dismissed him in late September as academic affairs senior vice provost.
Climate activist David Bookbinder admits its a shakedown. “Essentially, the tort liability is an indirect carbon tax. You sue an oil company, an oil company is liable, the oil company then passes that liability on to the people who are buying its products.”
NBA gambling scandal: “ESPN is reporting the arrest of Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups. Also arrested: Terry Rozier, guard for the Miami Heat.”
Billups, an NBA Hall of Famer, has been charged with partaking in an alleged illegal poker ring tied to the Bonanno, Genovese and Colombo crime families, sources told The Post.
A total of 31 people across the country are charged with running rigged games, which took place in Manhattan, the Hamptons and Las Vegas, sources said.
The players involved were being paid by mobsters to play in card games fixed with technology and card shuffling machines to give the house the advantage, sources familiar with the case said.
The athletes were told to take a dive when they had to and win when they were told. It didn’t appear as if they were attempting to pay off any debts, sources said.
Rozier is being charged with point-shaving.
Director Blue has a lot more details about the mob guys running the games, and the sophisticated technologies used, like special contact lenses to read marked cards, cryptocurrency money laundering and x-ray tables.
The Critical Drinker walks through every Disney Star Wars film, how much they cost, and how much they made or lost. Since they received substantial tax credits for filming in the UK, they evidently had to submit real numbers rather than the usual Hollywood Accounting bullshit. The Force Awakens evidently cost $638.9 million to make, which would probably rank it as the most expensive film of all time.
First a caveat that this video channel has a lot of “Russia is done for” content, so this video, being more in that line, deserves several grains of salt. But it makes a compelling case that Russia’s repeated Baltic provocations have now handed Denmark the legal means, reason and will to completely shut down Russia’s shadow fleet, and thus their last real economic lifeline.
“The blow that will finish off Russia is being dealt in an office in Copenhagen, hidden in the cold lines of an environmental law. Denmark has proven that the ghost shadow fleet Russia established to launder billions of dollars in oil revenues is not only an environmental killer, but also a secret base for drone attacks targeting NATO capitals.”
“With intelligence provided by Denmark, the 18-year-old tanker Boracay linked to Russia was seized by French commandos off the coast of Breast last week. It was reported that the ship was believed to have been involved in a recent drone attack on Copenhagen airport.” “Attack” is probably slightly overstating the case, but “illegal incursion of sovereign airspace” isn’t.
“From this moment on, Denmark moved to lock the Baltic Sea to Russian tankers.”
“On October 6th, the Danish government announced that it was tightening environmental and security inspections of oil tankers, especially old and high-risk vessels passing through its waters or anchored at Skagan Red, an important port between the Baltic and North Seas. However, this goes far beyond a simple security inspection. Danish Industry Minister Morten Bodskov was even more outspoken, saying, ‘We must put an end to Putin’s war machine.'”
“This also applies to the Russian shadow fleet. Authorities will now board and inspect ships that cannot be considered to be on a peaceful voyage, including those that are anchored. In other words, this decision allows Danish forces to raid any ship they suspect.”
Discussion of St. Petersburg, Kalinigrad, and how oil from Russia’s Siberian fields flows there for export snipped, as I’m pretty sure all my readers are familiar with this by now.
The Danish straits, “consisting of the Skagarak and Katagat, is Russia’s economic lifeline and at the same time its weakest link. This is precisely the weak link that Denmark is targeting.”
“In 1974, [the] Helsinki Convention [was] signed as a measure against the Baltic Sea’s increasing industrial pollution. A rare example of cooperation between the Eastern and Western blocks at the time, this agreement aimed to protect the Baltic Sea’s ecological balance. The agreement gave the signatory countries, including Denmark, the authority to [intervene] against ships passing through their waters that posed a serious threat to the environment.”
“According to real-time oil market data from financial agencies like Bloomberg, daily oil exports via the Baltic route were generating an average of $250 to $350 million in revenue for Russia. This revenue stream is now being systematically dismantled. This translates to a massive $10 billion monthly black hole or delay in the Russian federal budget.” Remember that the entire Russian yearly budget for 2024 was estimated to be $357 billion, so that would equal about 1/3rd of Russia’s entire budget.
“This was an inevitable consequence of NATO placing the region under an iron dome, forcing Russia into a corner and prompting reckless counter moves.”
“The Western Alliance, which turned the Baltic Sea into a strategic NATO lake with the participation of Finland and Sweden, did not leave this doctrine on paper. It backed it up with concrete and formidable military power that would prevent Russia from even breathing.”
“The most frightening symbol of this power was the world’s largest warship, the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, and its accompanying strike group, which docked on the British coast in August 2025 and anchored in the North Sea. This 100,000 ton floating fortress, carrying more than 90 F-35 and F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets stood just west of the Danish Straits like a nuclear shield, preventing Russia from embarking on any military adventure.”
“But it was not alone. It was accompanied by the HMS Diamond, a type 45 destroyer belonging to the British Royal Navy and one of Europe’s most advanced air defense ships, and the FGS Hessen, the German Navy’s most modern frigate. This deadly trio supported by NATO standing Maritime Group 1 effectively trapped the Russian Baltic fleet in its bases in Kalinigrad.”
Snipping a description of various NATO flying assets, most of which (save the B-2) are probably flying overlapping NATO air patrol missions most of the time.
“In September 2025, NATO air radars sounded the alarm repeatedly. On September 22nd, German Eurofighter jets and on September 25th, Hungarian Gripen jets were forced to intercept Russian Su-30 and MiG-31 fighter jets flying over the Baltic and dangerously approaching civilian flight routes.”
“These were the desperate struggles of a cornered bear. As military provocations increased, the concrete dangers posed by the shadow fleet reached a level that could no longer be ignored.”
“According to a shocking report published just this week on October 5th, 2025, by the Danish Defense Intelligence Service, FE, Danish helicopters and ships patrolling the Danish Straits were repeatedly targeted by Russian warships using radar lock. This constitutes an extremely dangerous military provocation, implying that the next step could be firing. The report clearly stated that these actions were a hybrid warfare tactic aimed at applying pressure without crossing the line into armed conflict.”
Section on Russia and China’s undersea cable and pipeline sabotage snipped.
The final straw: “Russia was using civilian tankers belonging to its shadow fleet as launch platforms for kamikaze drone attacks on targets in Europe.” Again, see caveat above.
“Acting on this intelligence bombshell, the French Navy launched a breathtaking helicopter operation on the tanker Borachai sailing in the Bay of Bisque on the morning of September 30th.”
“A search of the ship’s cargo hold revealed at least six explosive-laden kamikaze UAV launchers hidden inside special containers tucked between oil tanks.”
“This was irrefutable concrete evidence that Russia had used a civilian ship for a military attack against a NATO country.”
“This chain of evidence, these accumulated provocations, and this final brazen move were the ultimate trigger that spurred Denmark into action, transforming that 50-year-old environmental law into a national security weapon.”
“Here, Denmark is putting the 1974 Helsinki Convention, Helcom, and International Maritime Law on the table rather than imposing a military blockade, which would be a cause for war.”
“The new legal framework grants Danish authorities the power to stop, inspect, and block the passage of uninsured, old, and poorly maintained tankers identified as belonging to the Shadow Fleet.”
“The operation will proceed as follows. A vessel belonging to the Danish Navy or Coast Guard will approach a suspicious tanker and request an inspection. Inspectors boarding the vessel will check its compliance with international maritime standards, namely the SAS, Safety of Life at Sea, and MARPOL [International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, 1973 as modified by the Protocol of 1978] conventions. It is known that almost all shadow fleet vessels do not meet these standards.”
“If it is determined that insurance policies are fake or insufficient, emergency equipment is not working, personnel are inadequate, or the structural integrity of the vessel is at risk, the vessel will be labeled unfit for passage and will not be allowed to proceed.”
“Following the Boracay case, these inspections will now also include checking for suspicious military modifications or illegal cargo on board.”
“This is not an actual seizure or military intervention. It is a completely legitimate, internationally legal and unavoidable bureaucratic strangulation operation. Russia’s objection to this inspection amounts to an admission that its own ships are rotten and dangerous.”
“This is a flawless legal checkmate that strikes Putin with his own lies.”
The video goes on to suggest that this will be the final straw of cascading failure that breaks the Russian economy. Maybe, but we’ve heard these arguments before.
Also skipping over the argument that if Russia can’t export oil, they have to shut the pipelines off and their Siberian oil infrastructure will freeze in the ground. Peter Zeihan has been making this argument for years as well, but knowing the Russians, they could just dig a big hole in the ground to temporarily dump their crude into to avoid that happening.
“This legitimate step taken by Denmark following the Boracay plot could be the spark that ignites the beginning of the end of the war, illuminating the path to the Kremlin’s collapse. Vladimir Putin lost this war, which he could not win with missiles and armies, to an anonymous bureaucrat holding a folder in Copenhagen.”
Maybe. It’s certainly going to cut one of Russia’s final hard cash pipelines. But Russia has defied expectations of imminent economic collapse for over three years now. At some point, Russia’s failed illegal war of territorial aggression will finally break the country, but no one on the outside has had a good track record of predicting when…
Just like in 1992 or 2020, another bout of “mostly peaceful protest” in a Democrat-run city has turned into a multi-day spree of rioting and looting. So here’s a roundup of leftwing riot news from the pro-illegal alien felon riots in Los Angeles and elsewhere:
The mayor of Los Angeles is imposing a nighttime curfew to curtail the continuing anti-ICE riots and combat looting and vandalism amid the chaos.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass (D.) announced a curfew beginning at 8 p.m. Pacific time in downtown Los Angeles and lifting at 6 a.m. She warned violators that law-enforcement officers would arrest them.
“I issued a curfew starting tonight at 8pm for Downtown Los Angeles to stop bad actors who are taking advantage of the President’s chaotic escalation,” Bass said.
“If you do not live or work in Downtown L.A., avoid the area. Law enforcement will arrest individuals who break the curfew, and you will be prosecuted.”
Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom (D.) have faced criticism for allowing the riots against Immigration and Customs Enforcement to get out of hand and for taking a soft-handed approach. Both Democrats have attacked President Trump and his administration for quickly sending in the National Guard to quell the violence after local law enforcement was overwhelmed.
“If I didn’t ‘SEND IN THE TROOPS’ to Los Angeles the last three nights, that once beautiful and great City would be burning to the ground right now,” Trump said Tuesday morning on Truth Social.
Trump and Newsom have exchanged heated rhetoric over Newsom’s handling of the rioting and Trump’s decision to quickly intervene. Newsom has cast Trump as an authoritarian, wannabe dictator for mobilizing the National Guard to stop the violence.
How dare Trump enforce public order and deport illegal alien felons?
In the coming days, you’re going to see an enormous effort by the Democrats and large swaths of the media to declare that if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had never tried to enforce immigration law in Los Angeles, the city would not be beset by so much widespread violence and unrest this past weekend. Implicit in that argument is the idea that Los Angeles city and county are so primed for violence, such a powder keg of anarchic malcontents, that the U.S. government must simply throw up its hands and concede that it cannot enforce immigration law there. You see, this reflects how the likes of Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass approach governing — when a task is too difficult, they just don’t even make the attempt.
In the minds of the progressive Democrats who run the city and county of Los Angeles and the state of California, ICE efforts to arrest and deport those who have entered the country illegally are unpopular among their constituents and, therefore, must be illegitimate.
That is not how it works, of course.
I sometimes think that news organizations in Los Angeles don’t want to give their audiences and readers a clear picture of what’s actually happening in their city. Here’s the opening sentence of an article published online by the Los Angeles NBC affiliate Friday afternoon: “A group of people were seen outside of a business named Ambiance in the Fashion District of downtown Los Angeles.”
Hey, remember those basics of journalism, the who, the what, the when, the where, the why, and sometimes the how? Are we just not doing any of that anymore?
The next sentence reads, “Essayli tells NBC4 that the FBI was working along with other federal agencies to serve a search warrant, which were [sic] signed by a judge, because they have probable cause to believe this employer is using fictitious documents for some of its workers.”
There’s nothing indicating to readers that “Essayli” is Bilal A. “Bill” Essayli, the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, the chief federal prosecutor for the region.
Mayor Karen Bass issued a statement Friday afternoon declaring, “We received reports of federal immigration enforcement actions in multiple locations in Los Angeles. As mayor of a proud city of immigrants, who contribute to our city in so many ways, I am deeply angered by what has taken place. These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city. My office is in close coordination with immigrant rights community organizations. We will not stand for this.”
Throughout the day, Bass issued one statement after another that kept referring to “immigrants” — refusing to even acknowledge the distinction between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants.
California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a statement Friday contending, “continued chaotic federal sweeps, across California, to meet an arbitrary arrest quota are as reckless as they are cruel. Donald Trump’s chaos is eroding trust, tearing families apart, and undermining the workers and industries that power America’s economy.”
What makes these law enforcement actions “chaotic” and “reckless”?
The following morning, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons contended that an angry crowd of Los Angeles residents had assaulted federal agents, and the Los Angeles Police Department had an inexplicably delayed response:
As rioters attacked federal ICE and law enforcement officers on the L.A. streets, Mayor Bass took the side of chaos and lawlessness over law enforcement.
Our brave officers were vastly outnumbered, as over 1,000 rioters surrounded and attacked a federal building. It took over two hours for the Los Angeles Police Department to respond, despite being called multiple times. The brave men and women of ICE were in Los Angeles arresting criminal illegal aliens including gang members, drug traffickers and those with a history of assault, cruelty to children, domestic violence, robbery, and smuggling.
The protest was outside the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building. The headquarters of the Los Angeles Police Department is three-tenths of a mile away, an eight-minute walk.
If you are a Californian, the current LA riots are an example of your tax dollars hard at work.
The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Right—CHIRLA—is one of the key players in fomenting the violent response to immigration enforcement actions. It’s an LA-based nonprofit with a… pic.twitter.com/PSzSsdu0hg
Another downtown Los Angeles press conference on Friday featured speakers from Unión del Barrio and Centro CSO, Facebook video shows. Unión del Barrio’s Ron Gochez told his audience about the need to resist ICE “by any means necessary.”
“If we organize, we can kick their asses out of every single ghetto, every single barrio, anywhere where our people are,” Gochez said, drawing applause.
“Who gives a damn about legality, when these people have their boot to our neck,” Gochez said, referencing immigration law. “We have … every single obligation, moral, historical, we have every reason to defend our people, to defend our community, to defend our families by whatever means necessary.”
Unión del Barrio describes itself as “entirely self-financed through membership dues, community contributions, and local fundraising” on its website, while Centro CSO says it is a member-funded grassroots group. The organizations did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)
The Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) helped spread SEIU’s graphic about CHIRLA’s Friday press conference on X. “Citizens who know their rights can disrupt and slow ICE incursions, as well as pressure local authorities to take action,” another Friday X post from the group reads. The DSA chapter did not respond to a request for comment.
Snip.
The 50501 Movement, formed in response to the second Trump administration, promoted the protests on Bluesky throughout the weekend, including the Friday 4 p.m. gathering. 50501 National Press Coordinator Hunter Dunn posted about being personally among the protesters.
LAPD did the meme and called the leftwing arson and looting sprees “mostly peaceful.”
More mostly peaceful: “Illegal alien charged with attempted murder for throwing Molotov cocktail at officers in LA riots.”
The Other McCain looks at the left’s current love for illegal alien criminals, and reaches back into history to remember Sweden-Kampuchea Friendship Association.
Voters elected Donald Trump for a reason, and if Chris Van Hollen, Will Bunch or anyone else thinks they’re going to fool the electorate into sharing their sympathy for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, they’re simply delusional. But we have often seen the Left enthralled by such delusions.
Jan Myrdal, Marita Wikander, Gunnar Bergström and Hedvig Ekerwald were Swedish socialists who enthusiastically supported Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, a widespread sentiment in Sweden at the time:
The Indochinese revolutionary movements enjoyed widespread support in Swedish society, particularly among supporters of the Swedish Social Democratic Party. When the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh [in April 1975] and expelled its inhabitants, 15,000 Swedes greeted their victory by spontaneously celebrating in the center of Stockholm.
The arrival of Year Zero in Democratic Kampuchea was, as we now know, the beginning of one of the most murderous tyrannies in all human history. The best estimates are that Pol Pot’s communist regime killed about 1.5 million people, nearly 25% of the country’s population.
The first widely noticed account of the ongoing massacre in Cambodia was published by the Reader’s Digest in February 1977, and immediately sparked widespread controversy. The Left, having embraced the Communist regime in Cambodia, denounced the Reader’s Digest account as “propaganda.” To quote Wikipedia:
According to Joel Brinkley, “Khmer Rouge apologists [among Western academics] easily outnumbered those who believed a tragedy was under way.” . . .
[H]uman-rights activist David Hawk . . . claimed that the West was indifferent to the atrocities taking place in Cambodia due to “the influence of anti-war academics on the American left who obfuscated Khmer Rouge behavior, denigrated the post-1975 refugee reports, and denounced the journalists who got those stories.”
In the prevailing worldview of the intelligentsia, the Communists must be good, because America was bad. Therefore, reports about atrocities in Cambodia (based on accounts from those who had escaped) must be false or exaggerated. Such was the background of the August 1978 trip to Cambodia by Myrdal, Wikander, Bergström and Ekerwald as a delegation from the Sweden-Kampuchea Friendship Association (SKFA). They spent two weeks as guests of the Khmer Rouge, even having dinner with Pol Pot, and “returned to Sweden where they undertook a speaking tour and wrote articles in support of the Democratic Kampuchea regime.” Bergström expressed the belief that, under the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia could become “a very special model for the third world … an ideal society with no oppressors.” And this, keep in mind, was a brutal regime that killed a higher percentage of their national population than any known dictatorship in all human history. Among the victims were Marita Wikander’s husband. She had married a Khmer Rouge diplomat, who returned to Cambodia in 1977. During the SKFA trip to Phnom Penh in 1978, she asked to see her husband. The request was denied. It wasn’t until years later that she learned he had been executed by the regime shortly after his return to Cambodia. Such an “ideal society“!
The analogy to current liberal politics is obvious enough. Viewing Trump as the Sum of All Evils, liberals reflexively attack any policy advocated by Trump. Therefore, if Trump wishes to deport criminal illegal aliens, liberals must defend criminal illegal aliens: “Free Kilmar!”
It just wouldn’t be a “mostly peaceful” leftwing riot without widespread looting:
Evidently looting Apple stores is now so common that iPhones now have a store setting that sets alarms and tracking off if stolen, rendering them useless to looters:
Los Angeles is grappling with a wave of violence and destruction that has left local business owners reeling, as captured in a viral TikTok video from NewsNationNow, posted on 10 June 2025.
The video features a furious LA business owner, Monty, owner of Bargain2Perfumes, whose store was ransacked during protests against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. ‘This is ridiculous.
This doesn’t look like they’re protesting ICE or anything… Just looting the stores,’ he told NewsNation, echoing sentiments shared across X posts.
Yet, California Governor Gavin Newsom has repeatedly called these events ‘peaceful protests,’ a stark contrast to the reported £80 million ($107 million) in property damage since 6 June 2025, including looted stores, torched vehicles, and vandalised buildings.
So President Trump chose criminal deportation, law and order, and tough on crime.
California Democrats Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass chose lawsuits and states’ rights.
Who do you think won this latest round? I’d say Mr. Trump 10, Democrats zero.
It’s just hard to believe that removing illegal alien criminals who have committed sexual assault and murders would be attacked by one of our two major political parties.
But that’s the state of play among Democrats. Shame on Governor Newsom in particular.
And good for Senator Fetterman for being just about the only Democrat to stand up and say that peaceful free speech is good, but violent protest is not. And Democrats should not be defending violent protests.
And Mr. Trump’s border tsar, Tom Homan, is absolutely right that Mr. Newsom and Ms. Bass should be thanking ICE for making California a safer place.
In an interview with Greta Van Susteren, Mr. Homan said, “What angers me the most” is that “people aren’t looking at the facts. ICE arrested significant public safety threats in the last few days in L.A. We arrested a murderer — a Vietnamese national who murdered teenagers at a graduation party.”
He added that “we arrested several sexual predators — child sexual predators — we arrested people convicted of armed robbery, arrested people for domestic violence and all sorts of public safety threats.”
And as protesters and trouble makers turn to violence to oppose ICE’s safety actions, remarkably the Democrats chose to support the rioters committing arson, and looting, smashing police cars, throwing rocks at ICE agents, spitting on the American flag and setting it on fire, and spray-painting “Death to America” graffiti on government buildings.
Mr. Trump’s rapid action to protect public safety and avoid a truly vast insurrection by bringing in the National Guard and Marines was a stroke of genius.
The chaotic anti-ICE riots aren’t just confined to California; anti-ICE agitators have taken their lawlessness to the East Coast. On Saturday, New York City joined Los Angeles in becoming a flashpoint for radical protests, as demonstrators clashed with law enforcement after a mob of nearly 150 people tried to block federal officials from conducting an immigration raid in Manhattan.
More than 20 anti-ICE protestors were arrested after interfering with immigration authorities trying to carry out lawful operations. The activists were actively obstructing the removal of criminal illegal immigrants. At one point, the mob attempted to block a white van from exiting the area. It successfully forced it back into the building’s parking garage after agitators threw themselves at the vehicle. The New York Police Department (NYPD) arrived and started pushing protesters back onto the other side of the street. Authorities warned protestors to disperse or get arrested
Even here in Austin, protestors were demonstrating the usual left-wing idea of “peaceful”:
While the Austin protest was largely peaceful, it ended with a dozen arrests and a standoff between demonstrators and state and local police who deployed tear gas and pepper ball projectiles against a smaller group of protesters after they graffitied a federal building and threw rocks at officers.
Snip.
Laiba Khan, an organizer with the Austin chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, said the group organized the protest specifically because of the Trump administration’s response to the LA demonstrations.
Quoting that not because it’s important, but just so I have the tags ready the next time these Austin commies burn something else down.
Trace Gallagher on Fox News sums out just how bad these riots look for Democrats:
“If the goal is to lose elections in perpetuity, they have devised the perfect plan.”
The Babylon Bee appreciates illegal alien rioters making things easier for ICE:
Remember to stay away from riot areas, and make sure your carry gun is properly oiled and loaded…
The Trump witchunt trial is suspended, PA Democrats give up the steal, the ruble collapses, a real estate developer is busted for bribery, thrash metal TDS, and an unexpected voice of sanity and reason from…Cenk Uygur?
Judge Juan Merchan indefinitely postponed the sentencing hearing in President-elect Donald Trump’s New York criminal case, which had been planned for next week, in light of Trump’s election.
Merchan is giving Trump’s legal team more than a week to file its motion asking for a dismissal under the argument that his return to office provides him a new host of immunity-related defenses.
Trump’s lawyers will be required to file by December 2, after which Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will have until December 9 to respond.
Snip.
While Trump could face up to four years in prison, the more likely sentence in the case — should it move forward — would be probation, which could include some combination of a fine or community service, as the former and future president is a first-time offender.
“Just as a sitting President is completely immune from any criminal process, so too is President Trump as President-elect,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in a letter filed Tuesday.
Trump’s team had requested a December 20 deadline to file.
Bragg, for his part, has argued in favor of freezing the case for the entirety of Trump’s term in office, and then revisiting the sentencing at the end of Trump’s tenure.
But Trump attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove have argued dismissal of the case “is necessary under the Constitution and federal law to facilitate the orderly transition of Executive power — and in the interests of justice — following President Trump’s victory in the Electoral College and the popular vote in the 2024 Presidential election.”
To paraphrase Instapundit, we’ve entered some sort of hellworld where Cenk Uygur is a voice of moderation and reason, calling out far left pollster Allan Lichtman for blowing his election call, whereupon Lichtman shrieks that Uygur is committing “blasphemy” against him. Everyone and their dog has posted this, but I’m linking to the Asmongold clip because his seems to be the shortest.
US President-elect Donald Trump’s administration is preparing to reinstate its “maximum pressure” strategy against Iran, targeting Tehran’s economic stability and its ability to support militant proxies and nuclear development, The Financial Times reported on Saturday, citing sources close to the transition team.
The sources revealed that the administration plans to impose stricter sanctions, particularly on Iran’s oil exports, which serve as a critical revenue source.
The anticipated sanctions could drastically reduce Iranian oil exports, which currently exceed 1.5 million barrels per day, up from a low of 400,000 barrels per day in 2020. Experts suggest that these measures would severely impact Iran’s economy. Bob McNally, an energy consultant and former US presidential adviser, indicated that reducing exports to a fraction of current levels would leave Iran in a far worse economic position than during Trump’s first term.
In a followup to yesterday’s story, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has ordered state entities to divest from investments in Communist China. “One investment group specifically highlighted in Abbott’s letter is the University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Company (UTIMCO), which manages billions of dollars in assets for both university systems. UTIMCO has come under scrutiny after a Texas Scorecard investigation revealed its investments in more than 50 Chinese companies.”
El Salvador’s gang prison doesn’t play around. A whole lot of this would (rightfully) be considered cruel and unusual punishment, but we should veer more in this direction rather than putting illegal alien rapists up in hotels…
Sherman Roberts, who led the City Wide Community Development Corporation, was indicted four years ago for a bribery scheme involving former Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway and former City Council Member Carolyn Davis for their support of loans and low-income housing tax credits for his apartment projects.
He now faces up to five years in prison and is expected to be sentenced in March.
Roberts paid Davis several thousand dollars in cash, and promised future payments after her council tenure ended, in return for Davis’ support of his projects — Serenity Place, Runyon Springs, and Patriot’s Crossing — according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas.
Roberts was a Democratic Party donor, but in fairly piddling amounts for a real estate developer…
The DOJ wants Google to sell off Chrome. Well, that would be a start in addressing their monopoly position in Internet searches, but would hardly be sufficient. They should also have to spin off YouTube. And because consumers were directly harmed by their monopoly, they should be required to add 2GB of storage a year for every Gmail user for 20 years, he said self-interestedly. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The time of the turning: “Sold-out NYC crowd ERUPTS, chants USA as President Trump attends UFC 309 with Elon Musk, RFK Jr, Speaker Johnson.”
Shocking news from the world of science: Weed isn’t good for you. “According to their findings, exposure to cannabis was associated with a range of cancers – breast, pancreatic, liver, thyroid, testicular and lymphoma – that also develop quickly and are more aggressive.”
Sweden’s Gender Equality Minister Paulina Brandberg is deeply afraid of…bananas.
Because the ground invasion wasn’t enough, the Biden Administration has been flying illegal aliens into American cities, wages for Americans are down, San Francisco continues inching toward sanity, some crime news, and Fisker looks farked. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
A Freedom of Information Act lawsuit has revealed that the Biden administration has flown at least 320,000 migrants into the United States in an effort to reduce the number of crossings at the southern border, according to Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies.
“The program at the center of the FOIA litigation is perhaps the most enigmatic and least-known of the Biden administration’s uses of the CBP One cellphone scheduling app, even though it is responsible for almost invisibly importing by air 320,000 aliens with no legal right to enter the United States since it got underway in late 2022,” wrote Bensman.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had initially refused to disclose information about the flights, which use a cell phone app, CBP One, to arrange.
“Under these legally dubious parole programs, aliens who cannot legally enter the country use the CBP One app to apply for travel authorization and temporary humanitarian release from those airports. The parole program allows for two-year periods of legal status during which adults are eligible for work authorization,” Bensman continues.
The flights resulted in illegal immigrants being placed in at least 43 American cities from January through December 2023.
Under the terms of their release, migrants are able to remain in the US for two years without obtaining legal status, and are meanwhile eligible for work authorization.
How many Americans realized they were voting for this invasion when they voted for Biden?
A new witness could testify Fani Willis warned lover Nathan Wade’s former business partner to stay quiet about their affair, an explosive new court filing claims.
“They are coming after us. You don’t need to talk to them about anything about us,” Willis is alleged to have warned Terrence Bradley in a September 2023 phone call.
The call was overheard by Cobb County, Georgia, prosecutor Cindi Lee Yeager, according to court papers filed Monday by Trump co-defendant David Schafer.
The tide continues to turn in San Francisco. “‘Progressivism Is Out’: San Franciscans Pass Ballot Measures Requiring Drug Testing for Welfare, Expanding Police Surveillance.”
San Francisco voters who’ve grown tired of the crime, homelessness, and drug use plaguing their left-wing city overwhelmingly approved a pair of ballot measures on Tuesday that will expand police powers and require welfare recipients to be screened for drugs.
Proposition E, which authorizes police to use surveillance equipment — cameras, drones, and even facial-recognition technology — without prior permission from an oversight body, passed with 59,818 votes, or 59.9 percent. The proposition will also loosen restrictions on police chases and require that officers spend less time on paperwork and administrative duties.
Proposition F, which mandates that anyone receiving public-assistance benefits be screened for a substance-abuse disorder, passed with 63,295 votes, or 63 percent.
As part of the proposition, public-assistance recipients found to be drug-dependent could be offered treatment. If it is made “available at no cost, the recipient will be required to participate to continue receiving” public benefits, according to the proposition.
“Progressivism is out—for now,” the San Francisco Chronicles’ website read in bold letters on Wednesday morning, “Voters make it clear: S.F. can no longer be called a progressive city.”
The approval of both propositions was a big win for San Francisco’s embattled mayor, London Breed, who placed both measures on the primary ballot in an effort to tamp down on crime and to take aim at drug addiction and overdose deaths in the city. She told reporters on Tuesday that passage of the two measure will allow her administration to “continue the work we’re doing” to improve public safety, according to the Chronicle.
With San Francisco turning slightly sane, Austin may vie with Seattle, New York and Chicago for the title of America’s Most Insane Radical Leftwing City.
In June 2023, The Daily Signal’s Fred Lucas reported that the Indian Health Service (IHS), which falls under the Department of Health and Human Services, is collaborating with the ACLU, Demos, and several other left-wing organizations to register new voters. In order to expand the reach of these efforts, the Biden administration designated an Arizona-based Indian Health Service (IHS) facility as an official voter registration hub in October.
According to Arizona Democrat Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, Native Health of Phoenix, which caters to “urban Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and all other individuals,” will “assist individuals in the voter registration process.” The administration confirmed that the IHS facility would be one of five designated as voter registration sites by the end of 2023.
Much like young voters, Native Americans heavily favor Democrats.
4. Department of Agriculture
The USDA is another federal agency directing its efforts at potential Democrat voters. Earlier this month, emails obtained by The Daily Signal show the agency was colluding with Demos as early as August 2021 to work on turning out voters.
As The Federalist’s M.D. Kittle reported, the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service “encourages all state agencies administering the child nutrition programs to provide local program operators with promotional materials, including voter registration and non-partisan, non-campaign election information, to disseminate among voting-age program participants and their families.”
One of the “ideas” recommended by the agency is for “[s]chool food authorities administering the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) in high schools, and adult day care centers and emergency shelters participating in the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) to promote voter registration and election information among voting-age participants and use congregate feeding areas, such as cafeterias, or food distribution sites, as sites for the dissemination of information.”
Sweden officially became part of the NATO alliance Thursday, two years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused the nation to overhaul its non-alignment policy.
Snip.
“It’s official – #Sweden is now the 32nd member of #NATO, taking its rightful place at our table. Sweden’s accession makes NATO stronger, Sweden safer, and the whole Alliance more secure. I look forward to raising their flag at NATO HQ on Monday,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on X Thursday. Hungary ratified Sweden’s ascension into the alliance last week, becoming the final NATO country to do so.
The nordic country applied for NATO membership in May 2022, about three months after Russia began its war in Ukraine. The admission of Finland and Sweden expands NATO to 32 members.
As Peter Zeihan noted, “in the Swedish military, every day you wake up, you prepare for one thing: the war with the Russians.” Good job, Putin!
Blaze Media journalist Steve Baker was arrested by the FBI and brought to a Texas federal courtroom in handcuffs, a belly chain and foot shackles to face four nonviolent misdemeanor charges for being at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021…
“There’s nothing in there about my behavior,” Mr. Baker told The Epoch Times. “It’s all about my words. Everything. It’s all about stuff I said before, stuff I said after, and that’s it. No more complicated than that.”
Mr. Geyer said his client’s arrest shows an “unprecedented shift in Department of Justice policy [after it] had spent decades adhering to special protections for journalists.”
Speaking of people who shouldn’t be getting taxpayers subsidies, Harvard “We Hate Jews” University wants $2 billion in taxpayer-backed bonds.
Recall effort against Dallas’ Democrat-turned-Republican mayor Eric Johnson fails. Number of signatures to have a recall election: 103,595. Number of signatures submitted: Zero.
Congratulations on surviving the first 1/6th of 2024! The Big Guy is exactly who we knew he was all along, Houston police screw up, some big crime stories, Wayne LaPierre is found guilty, and the world’s saddest Oompa Loompa. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
“Remember when Joe Biden told the American people that his son didn’t make money in China?” asked Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) in a video posted to X. ““Well, not only did he lie about his son Hunter making money in China, but it also turns out that $40,000 in laundered China money landed in Joe Biden’s bank account in the form of a personal check.”
Today, a U.S. District Court issued its final judgment in Texas v. Garland, which was a challenge to the U.S. House’s proxy voting rule under the Quorum Clause of the Constitution. In its final judgment, the Court concluded that U.S. House members must be physically present for their vote to comply with the Constitution’s Quorum Clause. Attorneys from the Texas Public Policy Foundation argued the merits at trial in January of this year.
The lawsuit was originally filed with the State of Texas in response to Congress’ unlawful passage of the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill in December 2022. The U.S. Constitution requires a quorum, or a majority, of House members to be physically present for the U.S. House of Representatives to conduct business. As less than half of the members were present when the legislation was passed, with the rest voting by proxy, this legislation never should have passed, and the president should not have signed it.
“This meticulous, 120-page opinion was written after a full trial on the merits,” said TPPF senior attorney Matt Miller. “The Court correctly concluded that the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 violated the Quorum Clause of the U.S. Constitution because a majority of House members was not physically present when the $1.7 trillion spending bill was passed. Proxy voting is unconstitutional.”
This basically says that every bit of that $1.7 trillion spending was unconstitutional, along with any laws, etc. passed in that omnibus. Just how do you back out all that money that’s been spent, assuming this is upheld?
Record meth bust in Eagle Pass. “The U.S. Customs and Border Protections (CBP) have seized six and a half tons of methamphetamine, over 13,000 pounds, at the Eagle Pass Port of Entry, making it the largest ever seizure in a single enforcement action.”
Mitch McConnell announced on Wednesday that he will step down as the Senate Republican leader in November, ending his tenure as the longest-serving Senate leader in history.
“This will be my last term as Republican Leader of the Senate,” the 82-year-old veteran of the chamber said to his colleagues on the Senate floor. “I’m not going anywhere… It’s time for the next generation of leadership.”
He’ll leave the senate when his term ends in 2027. You can condemn him as the ultimate swamp creature, or praise him for his effectiveness at things like getting Trump’s Supreme Court picks confirmed. It’s two sides of the same coin. I’m not sure he was as effective as Trent Lott or Howard Baker.
Houston Police Department Chief Troy Finner called it a “dark day” at a press conference for the Houston Police Department, announcing that 4,107 adult sexual assault cases were wrongly closed without investigation.
A case management code “suspended for lack of personnel” was used, which led to closing the cases without actually investigating them.
Finner said he was first made aware the code even existed in 2021 and instructed HPD’s special victims division to stop using the code; however, he found out on February 7, 2024 that it continued. HPD first began using the code in 2016.
He said he immediately ordered a review of all cases suspended using this code dating back to 2016, which will take at least 30 days to complete. While the number of cases they have today is 4,017, he says it is “fluid and subject to change.”
60 Minutes gets to enjoy some of that vibrant Muslim diversity in Sweden to the sides of their faces.
60 Minutes goes to Sweden to make a heart warming special about diversity, but see a different situation, then this happens. pic.twitter.com/oUd2ZuJ0RV
“After five days of deliberations, a jury in New York on Friday held the National Rifle Association liable for financial mismanagement and found that Wayne LaPierre, the group’s former CEO, corruptly ran the nation’s most prominent gun rights group. The jury determined that LaPierre’s violation of his duties cost the NRA $5,400,000, though he already repaid roughly $1.5 million to the organization.” Here’s the thing: While they prosecution was unquestionably politically motivated, LaPierre did run a crooked ship. In the long run, forcing Wayne and his corrupt cronies from office has done the NRA a huge favor.
Argentine President Javier Milei just ended his country’s budget deficit in nine weeks. If Trump and the Republicans manage to control both houses of congress next year, there’s no reason they can’t balance the budget…assuming they have the will.
“Austin Fire Department Chaplain Dismissed for Comments on Transgender Athletes Sues for Free Speech Violation. A chaplain for the Austin Fire Department was dismissed from his position after expressing beliefs on his personal blog about protecting women’s sports.”
After a volunteer chaplain of the Austin Fire Department (AFD) was fired for posting on his personal blog that men and women are biologically different and should not compete against each other in sports, a lawsuit was filed in an effort to protect his rights to free speech and religious freedom.
The Alliance Defending Freedom said in a press release that it filed a motion Tuesday on behalf of Dr. Andrew Fox, who served in a voluntary capacity as chaplain for AFD before he was dismissed in 2021.
Unlike APD, AFD public and union leadership has been infected by social justice. Dr. Fox appears to have a very strong case on viewpoint discrimination grounds.
White TV host tries to race-bait Jerry Seinfeld for hosting “mostly” white male comedians on his show. It doesn’t go well for him.
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bipartisan bill into law authorizing the release of grand jury transcripts from an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. The new legislation, signed by the Florida governor on Thursday, will allow a public release of the jury’s transcripts from the 2006 probe into Epstein’s abuse of underage girls. The new measure goes into effect July 1.”
Weird Austin crime story: “Prominent local businessman arrested in Austin, accused of arson.”
A prominent Austin businessman and founder of Continental Automotive Group, or CAG, was arrested Thursday on charges of Felony Arson and a State Jail Felony offense of Burglary.
Dorsey Bryan Hardeman, 75, is accused of starting a fire at a downtown Austin building on Sunday, according to an arrest affidavit.
According to Travis County court records, Trey Collins with the Minton, Bassett, Flores & Carsey firm has been retained as the attorney representing Hardeman. Sam Bassett told KXAN the office has just begun its work and “it is premature to comment. However, we will provide Mr. Hardeman an appropriate and vigorous defense.”
The affidavit said the Austin Fire Department responded to a building fire at the former Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop on 400 Nueces St. on Feb. 25.
Once the fire was contained, fire investigators determined the incident to be incendiary and found metal shavings on the ground below the door suggesting the door lock had been drilled out, records state.
The affidavit states fire investigators watched video surveillance from the building, which showed an older man entering the building with a red container consistent with a plastic gas tank.
Multiple cameras inside the building show a man pouring liquid from the red container and dropping multiple matches on the ground, the affidavit said.
Records show the man arrived at the location in a white 4-door Mercedez SUV.
Investigators interviewed the owner of Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop who told AFD Hardeman was the owner of the property next door and had previously asked about purchasing the property at 400 Nueces St.
This is not what people refer to as “the perfect crime.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Remember Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me? It turns out McDonalds didn’t destroy his liver, a decade of alcoholism did.
Imagine a timeline in which Russia became a normal country.
Imagine, instead of Putin and a corrupt oligarchy, that Russia had a functioning democracy and a viable economy. It wouldn’t need to be perfect, just something as functional as that seen in, say, Poland or Hungary. There would still be controversies and scandals, but Russia wouldn’t be an international pariah, and would still be fully plugged into the global trade system.
And a normal country wouldn’t have launched an illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine.
In such a timeline, old Russian foes Finland and Sweden would never see the need to join NATO. And Russia wouldn’t be getting U.S. bases right on its border.
The US will gain access to 15 military bases along the border with Russia under a defence deal to be signed with Finland next week.
Russia would regard the presence of Nato infrastructure near its borders as a threat, said Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman.
“This will certainly lead to tension. We can only regret this,” Mr Peskov said.
The treaty must be approved by Finland’s parliament.
Elina Valtonen, the country’s foreign minister, will be present in Washington during the signing to meet Antony Blinken, the United States secretary of state.
Washington signed a similar pact with Sweden on Dec 6 that gives the US access to 17 military bases.
Concerns raised by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 led both Finland and Sweden to abandon their military non-alignment and apply for membership in the Nato.
Finland joined in April, while Sweden is still waiting for its bid to be ratified by Nato members Hungary and Turkey.
To be sure, the U.S. already has some access to the military bases of NATO members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. But Finland is much larger than all three combined, and has a vast border with Russia. And the Finns, as I’ve noted before, are no pushovers, having fought the Soviet Union to stalemate during The Winter War.
And now you add American force projection to Finland, and there chances of Russia securing its vast northern flank in any potential war against NATO is essentially nil. Plus it puts St. Petersburg at risk of being captured in a swift pincer movement.
And with real U.S. Air Force support, Russia will be completely incapable of establishing or maintaining air superiority. Ukraine has already made it prohibitively dangerous for Russian aircraft to overfly their territory. How well do you think Ivan will fare when he has to go up against F-22s and F-35s? (And yes, there are already F-22s in Estonia. And Finland and Poland already have F-35s on order.)
Of course, Russia could have avoided all this by not launching an illegal war of territorial aggression in Ukraine. But that would require it being a normal country, which is evidently too much to ask…
