Democrats still want to trans your kids, censorship shellgames squashed, Google is declared a monopoly, socialists behave badly, more illegal alien depravity, some 2026 contenders jump in, pie-in-the-sky plans for high speed rail in Texas bite the dust, more Cybertruck drag-racing, and a Very Good Boy indeed.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Yes, Democrats are still all in on transing your kids. “Dad shares horrifying story of his daughter being groomed and transitioned behind his back at school.”
Just yesterday, a dad named Dustin Gonzales in the Jeffco Public School District of Colorado spoke at a school board meeting and shared a heartbreaking story that’s now all too familiar: his daughter was groomed by teachers and gender-transitioned behind his back.
Dad claims his daughter changed her gender identity secretly with a school therapist, who kept him in the dark about it.
The school didn’t ask me or inform me, they replaced me. By the time I found out, I was already labeled ‘the problem.’ My objections weren’t treated as concerns, they were treated as opposition. my voice was dismissed as ‘hateful,’ my presence undermined.
The father claims the school then got the therapist and an investigator involved, to separate the girl from her dad.
I’m here to make sure what happened to me, to my family, never happens to another parent in this district.
The father is now at risk of losing his daughter as a result of a new Colorado bill that would take kids away from parents who aren’t “affirming.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has just killed the Biden administration’s last-ditch effort to shelter the government’s Ministry of Truth, the Global Engagement Center (GEC).
In a new op-ed published by The Federalist (a target of the GEC along with yours truly), Rubio writes;
GEC was supposed to be dead already. But, as many have learned the hard way, in Washington, D.C., few things ever truly die. When Republicans in Congress sunset GEC’s funding at the end of last year, the Biden State Department simply slapped on a new name. The GEC became the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R-FIMI) office, with the same roster of employees. With this new name, they hoped to survive the transition to the new administration.
Today, we are putting that to an end. Whatever name it goes by, GEC is dead. It will not return.
Alphabet’s Google illegally dominates two markets for online advertising technology, a judge ruled on Thursday, dealing another blow to the tech giant and paving the way for U.S. antitrust prosecutors to seek a breakup of its ad products.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, found Google liable for “willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power” in markets for publisher ad servers and the market for ad exchanges which sit between buyers and sellers.
The decision clears the way for another hearing to determine what Google must do to restore competition in those markets, such as sell off parts of its business at another trial that has yet to be scheduled. It is the second court ruling that Google holds an illegal monopoly, following a similar judgment in a case over online search.
Publisher ad servers are platforms used by websites to store and manage their digital ad inventory. Along with ad exchanges, the technology lets news publishers and other online content providers make money by selling ads. Those funds are the “lifeblood” of the internet, Brinkema wrote.
“In addition to depriving rivals of the ability to compete, this exclusionary conduct substantially harmed Google’s publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web,” Brinkema wrote.
However, antitrust enforcers failed to prove a separate claim that the company had a monopoly in advertiser ad networks, she wrote.
U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi called the ruling “a landmark victory in the ongoing fight to stop Google from monopolizing the digital public square.”
“A 13-year-old boy in California was allegedly sexually abused and murdered by his soccer coach and, as it turns out, the soccer coach was an illegal alien. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has lodged a detainer with the Los Angeles County jail for Mario Edgardo Garcia-Aquino, a 43-year-old Salvadoran citizen living unlawfully in the United States, the agency confirmed Wednesday to the Daily Caller News Foundation. Garcia-Aquino is accused of killing 13-year-old Oscar ‘Omar’ Hernandez, a San Fernando Valley, California, resident found dead earlier in April.”
Evidently the cartels have expensive taste. “A federal grand jury has charged two men who allegedly tried to smuggle five high-caliber sniper rifles to Mexico last month, and prosecutors are seeking the forfeiture of the firearms, five .50-caliber Barrett long guns and four magazines for .50-caliber bullets. Wednesday’s charges of unlawful smuggling of goods from the United States stem from the March 12 arrest of Oscar Sanchez Gonzalez and Arturo Martinez Aguilar as they allegedly attempted to drive to Mexico over the Calexico West port of entry.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Smith says people asking him to run is an indictment of the Democratic Party.
“I have no choice, because I’ve had elected officials, and I’m not going to give their names, elected officials coming up to me. I’ve had folks who are pundits come up to me. I’ve had folks that got a lot of money, billionaires and others that have talked to me about exploratory committees and things of that nature. I’m not a politician. I’ve never had a desire to be a politician,” Smith told ABC News’ “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.
Smith reiterated that because of the number of people asking him to consider a run, he has to leave the door open.
Smith usually strikes me as a moderately annoying “hot take” artist, but he has been condemning the Democrat Party about their lurch to the right on several issues, and has discussed that with the likes of Dave Rubin. Smith has no business running for President, but would be immediately be a more sane alternative than anyone else named as a Democratic front-runner.
When police raided a factory in Georgia, they found dozens of Chinese nationals being kept in near slave-like conditions, and authorities say they were pressed into service by a forced labor trafficking ring.
Last month, agents from several agencies raided Wellmade Industries in Cartersville, Georgia, 40 miles north of Atlanta, and what they found shocked them, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Federal officials said that around 60 Chinese nationals were being held in tiny rooms and forced to work long hours in the flooring manufacturing plant. The exploited workers at Wellmade are just a few of the many exploited workers the Trump administration has rooted out.
ICE Homeland Security Investigations Atlanta Special Agent in Charge Steven N. Schrank said the conditions these workers were living in was “horrific,” and noted that he and his fellow agents were investigating eight other locations for similar offenses.
Three Wellmade Industries officers were arrested, including company owner, Zhu Chen, his nephew, Jiayi Chen, and company associate Jian Jun Lu.
At the bond hearings for the suspects, assistant district attorney Austin Waldo claimed that officials of the company immediately confiscated the workers’ travel and ID documents as soon as they arrived at the plant to make it harder for them to leave.
Well, this would have made my Nvidia roundup had it dropped a day earlier, and not in a good way. “Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang boarded a private jet to Beijing shortly after the U.S. Commerce Department announced new export licensing requirements for the company’s H20 AI chips for the Chinese market. Once there, Huang met with the head of a Chinese state-backed trade body, where he reaffirmed Nvidia’s commitment to the Chinese market despite a deepening trade war.”
Baltimore student: “Hey, doesn’t Maryland law require a United States flag in every classroom?” Baltimore County Board of Education: “Hey, you’re suspended and we’re calling the cops on you.”
The East Plano Islamic Center’s planned development faces continued scrutiny from Texas officials.
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn is calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate EPIC for potential religious discrimination.
In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, Cornyn expressed concern that a “master-planned ‘community of thousands of Muslims’” could violate the Fair Housing Act of 1968 by discriminating against Christians, Jews, and other non-muslim minorities.
“Religious discrimination, whether explicit or implicit, is unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments,” wrote Cornyn. “Religious freedom is a cornerstone of our nation’s values, and I am concerned this community potentially undermines this vital protection.”
Sanity in the UK: “U.K. Supreme Court Rules Males Don’t Qualify as Women Under Anti-Discrimination Law, in Landmark Ruling.”
The United Kingdom’s supreme court ruled Wednesday that males who identify as women do not fall qualify as women under anti-discrimination law, a monumental decision that will have major consequences for British law.
The high court defined “woman” based on sex rather than gender identity, keeping it within the bounds of scientific reality rather than giving into the demands of left-wing activists. The ruling specifically addressed the question of whether transgender-identifying males who obtain a gender recognition certificate — a legal document acknowledging them as women — enjoy the same protections extended to females under Britain’s 2010 Equality Act, an anti-discrimination law that covers nine protected characteristics and applies to various sectors of British life.
“The unanimous decision of this court is that the terms ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological women and biological sex,” said Lord Patrick Hodge, deputy president of the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court, in announcing the ruling.
Bad news: A house exploded two miles from me. I actually heard it, and thought that one of my dogs had run into a wall or something. Worse news: The house belonged to Sara Felix, who I know from the Austin science fiction community, and her husband was in the house at the time. The silver linings are that he’s now out of surgery, though badly burned, and that the family hadn’t actually moved into the house, and were still living in their old house in the same general area.
When your band name stops being ironic: “New Pornographers Drummer Joe Seiders Arrested for Possession of Child Porn.” I have a few of their albums I bought 15 years ago. I considered embedding “Breakin’ the Law” for ironic effect, but it’s a lousy song. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
A foster mom in Missouri is facing multiple charges of abuse and is accused of trading a teenage girl she was guardian of for a pet monkey, authorities said.
Brenda Ruth Deutsch, 70, of Lincoln County, was charged with two counts of abuse or neglect of a child and one count of endangering the welfare of a child, according to Lincoln County Prosecutor Mike Wood. She was taken into custody last weekend.
Deutsch has fostered more than 200 children for about 15 to 20 years, Wood told NBC News.
While it’s tempting to chalk this up to more “annals in human depravity,” given the age of the alleged perp, I have to wonder if some mental illness/senility/Alzheimers was involved.
Anderson Ronaldo Reyes Giron — a member of the “Most Wanted” list — was taken into custody on April 2 by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and the Texas Highway Patrol for charges related to deadly conduct from shooting a firearm in Travis County, as well as theft of property in Williamson County. He’s originally from Honduras, from which he came illegally, and was arrested by the Austin Police Department in August 2024 for the afore-listed charges before being let out on bail.
Thanks again, Austin.
“Governor Greg Abbott, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), and the Texas National Guard continue to work together with the Trump Administration to secure the border; stop the smuggling of drugs, weapons, and people into Texas; and prevent, detect, and interdict transnational criminal activity between ports of entry,” a press release from Abbott’s office stated upon announcement of Giron’s arrest.
Giron has been wanted since February 2025 when Travis County issued a warrant for his arrest following the firearm violation, and then when Williamson County similarly filed a warrant after his theft incident.
Former Texas Congresswoman Mayra Flores has officially thrown her hat into the ring to challenge the indicted Congressman Henry Cuellar (R-TX-28) and his 20-year-plus tenure representing Texas’ 28th Congressional District in Washington, D.C.
“I am deeply honored to announce my candidacy for Congress—a chance to serve the people and uphold the values that make our nation great,” Flores posted on X upon announcement of her challenge to Cuellar’s seat.
The first female Mexican-born former congresswoman, Flores comes to the drawing board with experience in Texas elections — first scoring a seat in a special election to represent the Lone Star State on the federal stage after Democratic Congressman Filemon Vela resigned in 2022, allowing her to flip the historically Democratic 34th Congressional District. Flores flipped parties from Democratic to Republican in the early 2000s, primarily citing pro-life motivations.
She also ran against Rep. Vicente Gonzalez twice (D-TX-34), losing first in the 2022 general election and second in 2024, although she notched her numbers up significantly the second time around — losing the election by a 2 percent margin.
Cuellar maintained his seat during the 2024 general election against Republican candidate Jay Furman with nearly 52 percent of the vote — a race rumored as potentially dangerous for Cuellar due to his indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that year after an FBI investigation in 2022 for alleged bribery and money laundering in coordination with his wife, Imelda Cuellar, and the country of Azerbaijan.
TX-28 favors Democrats with a rating of D-51% per The Texan’s Texas Partisan Index, although President Donald Trump made history in the district during the November election — winning Webb County’s presidential vote, the first Republican president to claim victory there in a century.
Until Flores’ announcement, the only other notable contender for Cuellar’s seat was Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina, who flipped parties in December 2024.
For more on Cueller’s indictment, see here and here.
“With Attorney General Ken Paxton officially running for U.S. Senate against Sen. John Cornyn, the race to replace him is heating up. After former U.S. Attorney John Bash became the first to enter the race, State Sen. Mayes Middleton has now launched his own campaign for Texas attorney general, pitching himself as a conservative fighter ready to take the reins.” I regularly get press releases from Middleton’s office, and he seems a pretty solid conservative.
The U.S. Department of Transportation officially terminated a $63.9 million federal grant intended for the planning and development of a high-speed rail line between Dallas and Houston.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the move will save taxpayers millions while allowing Amtrak to focus on improving existing operations.
Personally, I’d kill Amtrack and hand the assets to the states to subsidize if they felt like.
Originally pitched as a private venture, the Texas Central Railway project aimed to connect two of Texas’ largest cities with a 205-mph bullet train, promising a 90-minute travel time.
The project has faced strong opposition from landowners and lawmakers since it was proposed in 2009.
As cost estimates soared from $12 billion to over $40 billion, the project became increasingly reliant on federal funding.
Duffy was blunt in his assessment: “Underwriting this project is a waste of taxpayer funds and a distraction from Amtrak’s core mission of improving its existing subpar services.”
“If the private sector believes this project is feasible, they should carry the pre-construction work forward, rather than relying on Amtrak and the American taxpayer to bail them out,” Duffy added.
State Sen. Charles Schwertner (R-Georgetown) posted on X, “Thank you to President Trump and Secretary Duffy for standing up for taxpayers and terminating the $63.9 million grant to Amtrak for the proposed high-speed rail project between Houston and Dallas.”
Even the $10 billion version was a boondoggle that wouldn’t have made money and required taxpayer subsidies to stay afloat, and more likely never would have been completed anyway. High speed passenger rail works in Japan because they already had high urban density and an existing rail system and culture to support it. Texas has none of those things, and even if it was built it would never be profitable here (or just about anywhere else).
And just to drive the point home: The highest density high speed rail in Japan seats 1,634 passengers. Assume passengers pay $100 a ticket each way, the train is entirely full, and the Texas high speed rail train runs six times a day (all optimistic and unlikely assumptions), 365 days a year, and you get $357,846,000 a year in gross revenue, which means, even without the including the cost to run the train, it would take just under 112 years to make back the initial investment.
Despite his new position as a vice chair of the DNC, gun control weasel David Hogg wants to primary old Democrats. In this particular task I wish the little weasel the best of luck.
This is your mayor on social justice. “The mayor of South Fulton faces an eviction action at an Atlanta apartment complex, Fulton County court documents show, adding another development to what’s been a turbulent year so far for the city leader. Mayor Khalid Kamau, who has gone recently by Mayor Kobi, has had eviction proceedings initiated against him in Fulton County Magistrate Court by an apartment complex at 6200 Bakers Ferry Rd. Court documents show the complex filed to initiate eviction after alleging Kamau failed to pay rent in March.”
Snip.
Documents show the amount of past due rent was listed at $1,663.77. A late fee of $100, utilities of $39.77 and “other fees” amounting to $175 are also being sought.
Kamau has been at odds in recent weeks and under scrutiny from the South Fulton City Council over his spending and alleged “abuse” of the position.
He in turn has defended himself from what he has termed the City Council’s “overreach” after his access to city buildings was revoked and his budget frozen in February, and said he has faced resistance from the council throughout his tenure.
The move by the city council came after reports on the mayor’s trips — which spanned four continents in four months — as well as updates at City Hall that included a film studio and refurbished conference/pool table room. The City Council voted to redistribute several pieces of new electronic equipment to the city IT department and send back the film studio.
I know you’ll be shocked, shocked to learn that Kamau is a Democratic Socialist…
Your feel-good dog story of the week: A dog named Buford kept a two-year old boy safe after the latter wandered seven miles from his home. Another article states that Buford is an Anatolian Pyrenees.
I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.
With layoffs left and left across America’s newsrooms, there’s lots of hand-wringing over the state of newspapers and “journalism” these days. Notably absent from these laments are any mention of leftism, wokeness, or the naked contempt today’s MSM journalists display again and again for ordinary Americans. Indeed, it’s such a long running theme on this blog that I had to wade through years of Media Watch-tagged posts to find one of the many specific takedowns of that contempt, but it was this one.
Our ruling elites seem unable to come to grips not only with President Trump pantsing them at every turn, but that their own smug sense of superiority and entitlement is what led to his rise in the first place. They don’t do “humble.”
Their smug sense of superiority shines through in every imperious announcement and self-satisfied Facebook post. That smug is the reason ordinary Americans love watching President Trump humiliate the media.
Snip.
The same people love to conflate contempt for their biased selves into contempt for the freedom of the press and the First Amendment. This is patently false. Ordinary Americans love the First Amendment. It’s the current smug, biased, dishonest incarnation of the MSM that we hate.
Look in the mirror. We don’t hate the free press. We hate you. Personally. And our loathing for you smug pricks dates back to long before Donald Trump ever threw his hat into the ring…
Ace of Spades offers up similar thoughts, including this reaction to ideas for media subsidies: “Fuck you. I will literally join a guerilla warfare unit before I allow you to take my money to propagandize against me.”
We’re not the only one celebrating the demise of the woke, left-leaning, Democrat-boosting MSM. After drinking the rich, zesty tears of Taylor Lorenz kvetching about How Horrible This Happened To Our Beloved Media, Matt Walsh offers similar thoughts.
“She’s basically telling us why the media falling apart. It’s Christmas morning but she wants us to be sad about it.”
“Feeling sorry for a journalist it it’s like feeling sorry for a tick that you just pulled off of your dog’s ear.”
“The journalism profession has completely discredited itself. It has unabashedly become a form of left-wing advocacy. And on the right we’ve been saying this forever, to the point that it just becomes background noise.”
“It’s far beyond bias.”
“People in the media like Taylor Lorenz have been ignoring us, and laughing at us and all that. Well, here you go. This is what happens. Now you’re all losing your jobs, now you’re all broke, and these entire, once prestigious, storied companies and outlets and publications are are going under.”
“Many of these people just have no integrity. They’re very bad people.”
“They have destroyed the lives of anyone they deem an enemy, even just normal people like civilians who, for whatever reason, find themselves in the left’s crosshairs, and they get destroyed. That’s a lot of when we talk about cancel culture.”
“Then the very people who do that lose their jobs, and, what, we’re not supposed to gloat about it?”
“You deserve to lose your job. You’re a very bad person, you have no integrity, you have delighted in your cruelty towards other people and now you lost your job.”
Journalism runs on trust, and nobody trusts them.
The other problem besides wokeness is over-saturation. “The media business has never been wider than it is right now, but it’s also never been more shallow.”
It’s not limited to America. The BBC has the same woke narrative problem.
Finally, Larry Correia with a succinct distillation of the problem:
We’re happy when journalists get laid off because we hate them. We hate them because they lie to us. https://t.co/7rTWYL4wui
Democrat tries to murder Brett Kavanaugh and Pelosi shrugs, human traffickers busted in Texas, another Democrat convicted of voting fraud (in Philadelphia, naturally), WaPo finally draws a line it won’t let SJWs cross, and an 8K computer that can be yours if you have somewhere north of a quarter million dollars. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Another month, another four decade high inflation rate. “The Consumer Price Index (CPI) went up by 8.6 percent in May, the highest year-over-year increase since December 1981.”
Nicholas John Roske was charged with attempting or threatening to murder or kidnap a Supreme Court justice Wednesday after traveling to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home armed with a Glock handgun, intent on killing the justice over his expected rulings in ongoing cases related to abortion and the Second Amendment.
Roske, 26, of Simi Valley, Calif., was identified as the suspect in an affidavit unsealed Wednesday afternoon. Roske told law enforcement that he called 911 to turn himself in because he was having suicidal thoughts, also telling the operator that he intended to kill a “specific” Supreme Court justice, according to the affidavit.
Roske was subsequently arrested, and officers found a Glock 17 pistol with two magazines, as well as a tactical knife, pepper spray, and other items.
Naturally, Democrats stalled a bill to provide additional security for Supreme Court Justices.
A former Democratic congressmen convicted and expelled for taking bribes has now been convicted of committing that voting fraud that Democrats swear up and down doesn’t exist.
A former Democrat congressman, who was expelled from the House of Representatives in 1980 after getting caught taking bribes in what turned out to be an FBI sting, pleaded guilty to multiple election fraud charges this week after the U.S. Department of Justice charged him with bribery, falsifying voting records, stuffing ballot boxes, and more election crimes in Pennsylvania.
According to U.S. Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams, 79-year-old Michael “Ozzie” Myers admitted to bribing Philadelphia election judge Domenick J. Demuro, who already pleaded guilty in 2020, during the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 state elections for $300 to $5,000 per election and then telling him to lie about falsely inflating votes.
Demuro, who “was responsible for overseeing the entire election process and all voter activities of his Division in accord with federal and state election laws,” then manipulated the voting machines in his respective ward and division in a way that satisfied Myers’ desire to “illegally add votes for certain candidates of their mutual political party in primary elections,” especially those clients who paid him “consulting fees.”
“Some of these candidates were individuals running for judicial office whose campaigns had hired Myers, and others were candidates for various federal, state, and local elective offices that Myers favored for a variety of reasons,” the DOJ noted in a press release.
Myers pulled the same stunt with another South Philadelphia election judge Marie Beren, who also pleaded guilty in 2021 to her role in the fraud.
“Myers acknowledged in court that on almost every Election Day, Myers transported Beren to the polling station to open the polls. During the drive to the polling station, Myers would advise Beren which candidates he was supporting so that Beren knew which candidates should be receiving fraudulent votes. Inside the polling place and while the polls were open, Beren would advise actual in-person voters to support Myers’ candidates and also cast fraudulent votes in support of Myers’ preferred candidates on behalf of voters she knew would not or did not physically appear at the polls,” the DOJ stated.
The pair also used cell phone communication to notate in real-time how many votes they faked versus how many were real.
“If actual voter turnout was high, Beren would add fewer fraudulent votes in support of Myers’ preferred candidates. From time to time, Myers would instruct Beren to shift her efforts from one of his preferred candidates to another. Specifically, Myers would instruct Beren ‘to throw support’ behind another candidate during Election Day if he concluded that his first choice was comfortably ahead,” the press release continued.
Much like Demuro, Beren then falsified poll books “by recording the names, party affiliation, and order of appearances for voters who had not physically appeared at the polling station to cast his or her ballot in the election” and balanced the list with the ballots recorded by voting machines before certifying the tainted results.
In a story that launched a thousand “Bye, Felicia” jokes, Washington Post Social Justice Warrior “reporter” Felicia Sonmez was fired for insubordination and constantly attacking her co-workers for victimhood points.
The workplace drama began on June 2 when Sonmez publicly took colleague Dave Weigel to task after he retweeted a joke from YouTuber Cam Harless that said “every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.”
Sonmez posted a screenshot of the retweet, captioning it “fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!”
Weigel deleted the retweet, and explained that he “did not mean to cause any harm.” Nevertheless, the Post handed down a one-month unpaid suspension to punish Weigel for his retweet.
Post reporter Jose A. Del Real then waded into the controversy to criticize Somnez for continuing to tweet about Weigel and the paper even after it took action against Weigel. He accused her of public bullying and “clout chasing,” leading Sonmez to accuse Del Real of violating the paper’s social-media policy.
With the drama hitting a boiling point, Post executive editor Sally Buzbee sent an internal memo to staff saying, “we do not tolerate colleagues attacking colleagues either face to face or online.”
The memo seemed to spark a flood of pro-Post tweets from its reporters, who used similar language to laud the paper’s “collegial” work environment.
Sonmez evidently took offense to her colleague’s tweets saying they were proud to work at the paper.
“The reporters who issued synchronized tweets this week downplaying the Post’s workplace issues have a few things in common with each other,” Sonmez wrote on Twitter on Thursday morning. “They are all white . . . They are among the highest-paid employees in the newsroom, making double and even triple what some other National desk reporters are making, particularly journalists of color . . . They are among the ‘stars’ who ‘get away with murder’ on social media.”
Will this be a cause for soul-searching among MSM outlets over the wisdom of staffing their newsrooms with social justice warriors? Of course not. Sonmez dared to make the mistake of going after higher ranking members of the Clerisy.
Taylor Lorenz and the Washington Post are attempting a third adpocalypse. They’re attempting to take out rivals to the leftwing legacy media — specifically, YouTubers who sided more with Johnny Depp during the Amber Heard defamation trial. The leftwing media, of course, had uncritically championed Amber Heard, as they’d championed all #MeToo allegations, #BelievingAllWomen without asking for any evidence.
In fact, the defamatory opinion piece Depp sued Heard for appeared in the Washington Post. They just added a stingy “Note” to their defamation.
So Lorenz is now attempting to paint it as dangerous for people to openly question #MeToo allegations on YouTube, and to suggest there’s something wrong with non-legacy-media outlets making money off of a major media story. There’s nothing wrong with the Washington Post making money off it, of course — because they take the proper leftwing view of things.
But people like Rekieta or YellowFlash or That Umbrella Guy, the people who thought that Amber Heard was lying? Which, of course, a jury found to be the case?
They’re dangerous and they shouldn’t be allowed to make money off it. And damnit, YouTube has got to control who is allowed to make money from these news events!
By the way: The entire Depp/Heard story was already heavily censored by YouTube. Videos would be demonetized — denied advertising — if they discussed it all. Because of this, YouTubers were forced to resort to the childish tactic of referring to Depp as “The Pirate Guy” and Heard as “the Aqua Lady” to avoid censorship and demonetization. They had to avoid saying the names of the people they were talking about.
No, I’m serious.
But that’s not enough for Taylor Lorenz and The Washington Post.
Either they have to declare “The Aqua Lady is telling the truth and The Pirate Guy is an abuser,” or they must be deplatformed!
And Lorenz, in making the case that only she, a nobody, barely-educated semiliterate wannabe influencer who pretends to be a tweenager online and gets away with it because she is effectively developmentally delayed, should be allowed to weigh in on the Depp-Heard trial, and that actual trial lawyers like Rikieta and LegalBytes should not be so allowed, is on a scorched earth campaign to make them toxic to advertisers.
And of course she’s also up to her old tricks of claiming she reached out to her subjects — I mean, targets and victims — for comment.
Spoiler alert: She did not reach out to her targets and victims for comment.
Gordon decided to take a strategic approach to make the Virginia GOP a party that could attract serious, intelligent, capable candidates, run them, and win. He founded The Virginia Project (TVP) with the mission to create a 21st-century party infrastructure capable of competing effectively and rolling back Democrat Party influence.
Once Gordon realized that Republicans failed to field candidates in 25% of races with a Democrat incumbent in 2019, he made running a candidate in every race a mission point. Other objectives of TVP included taking a complete accounting of GOP performance in every election district and providing a baseline level of support for every GOP candidate in the state. The group also wanted to share tools and best practices to optimize branding, marketing, messaging, voter outreach, and mobilization throughout the state. The goal was to disrupt the Democrats’ narratives and force them to play defense.
After the 2020 election, Gordon realized that to put Democrats on their heels, TVP would have to go on offense. There was no way to verify the vote in Virginia after nearly 60% of Virginians voted early or by mail. The window for challenging congressional elections closed in 25 days. There was no point in fielding candidates across the state without shoring up election integrity. So with the help of Ned Jones, Gordon and TVP set about securing Virginia’s elections.
The group forced the implementation of voter roll management laws already on the books. TVP ensured the process was logged, transparent, and consistent in every Virginia county and removed a half million bad entries from the voter rolls statewide. Then TVP made sure a system was in place for 2021 that had what Gordon refers to as “Eyes on Every Ballot.”
Challenging elections after the fact proved fruitless at the state and national levels in 2020. The key would be to challenge violations on the spot rather than post facto. TVP prepared and delivered training for election observers. The Virginia GOP went from 33% to 95% observer coverage. Gordon said, “The worse Biden gets, the more people volunteer. A good look in some of the disputed states in 2020 also motivated people to get involved.”
The success in recruitment and training allowed the GOP to challenge every suspected violation on election night 2021. As a Twitter thread from TVP noted, “[DNC lawyer Marc] Elias’ now-legendary losing streak started with us stopping him. We fought for and won every legal stipulation needed to enforce our rights.”
President Biden unveiled new sanctions Thursday targeting influential Russians and President Vladimir Putin’s yachts on the 99th day of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine — but two oligarchs linked to his son Hunter Biden again were spared.
The slow rollout of sanctions comes despite the president threatening “swift and severe” penalties ahead of the invasion, which began Feb. 24.
New US-targeted individuals include the steel and gold-mining oligarch Alexey Mordashov, Putin-linked money manager Sergei Roldugin, billionaire property developer God Nisanov, electronics executive Evgeny Novitsky, banker Sergey Gorkov and Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. The Treasury Department also sanctioned two yachts that Putin allegedly co-owns and the Monaco-based yacht brokerage Imperial Yachts and its Russian CEO, Evgeniy Kochman.
It remains unclear why Hunter Biden’s alleged Russian business associates — the billionaire oligarchs Yelena Baturina and Vladimir Yevtushenko — eluded the latest round of US sanctions against members of Russia’s business elite.
It’s a great mystery.
Baturina, whose wealth derives largely from construction, in 2014 paid a firm associated with Hunter Biden $3.5 million, according to a 2020 report written by Republican-led Senate committees. She is the widow of former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, and documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop indicate she may have attended a 2015 dinner in DC with then-Vice President Joe Biden.
Yevtushenkov, who owns a nearly 50% stake in Russian conglomerate Sistema — which has telecom, retail, banking, food and health interests — faces UK sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but hasn’t yet been targeted by the Biden administration. He met with Hunter Biden in 2012 at Moscow’s Ritz-Carlton hotel, but recently claimed they had no subsequent contact.
Before the war, [Sgt. 1st Class Chris] Freymann, a cavalry scout in the Washington state National Guard, had been the lead instructor in the U.S. military’s program that trained soldiers in Ukraine how to use the shoulder-fired tank-killing missiles. He trained about 200 Ukrainian troops during his months with the program.
Russia launched its invasion in February, after U.S. trainers left. But the relationships Freymann made remained. His former students — now troops fighting on the front lines — again reached out for help on operating the Javelins as they encountered technical issues or forgot details.
“When the war started, I had a lot of guys hitting me up on WhatsApp,” Freymann told Military.com. “One of our linguists, her husband was one of the few soldiers who were left. A lot of the students trained by the other [Guard units] died.”
Freymann would relay information on operating the Javelin to the linguist. Her husband, who was in the fight, would then send Freymann photos and videos of destroyed Russian tanks. Freymann says at least four tanks were destroyed after some of his over-the-phone coaching.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Americans are abandoning high tax states (New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey) and moving to low tax states (Florida, Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, Tennessee). (Hat tip:Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Catastrophic failure at an aluminum extrusion line. Looks like an overpressure event and the oil itself (over a drop ceiling no less) open a portal to a demon dimension… pic.twitter.com/VQeM0f85Mw
Not news: Real estate owners in New York City jacking up rates. News: Jacking up New York real estate. Namely jacking a landmark Broadway theater up 30 feet to put retail space underneath it.
Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! The Biden Administration has done everything it can to worsen inflation, The Ministry of Truth’s Scary Poppins dissolves into a puddle, a whole lot of school groomer news from all across the country, and the world’s longest D&D game.
The Biden administration’s first response to any problem is to pretend that it isn’t a problem. That’s how inflation went from a minor problem to a major one. Unwilling to take the necessary steps to rein in inflation early — pushing the Fed to raise interest rates and slowing down the torrent of money going out the Treasury’s doors — Biden and congressional Democrats at first insisted that inflation wasn’t a real problem: “Transitory,” they called it.
And then when inflation turned out not to be transitory, they thought they could just pin it on the Russians. Jen Psaki sniffed smugly at the “Putin price hike,” as though Americans were too stupid to understand that inflation at home had started long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That gambit fizzled, too.
When you don’t have any fresh ideas or real principles — and when your long-term goals are limited by the fact that the president, who was born during the Roosevelt administration, isn’t exactly buying any green bananas — then the easiest thing to do is to throw money at every problem.
Throwing money at things is how you make inflation worse.
Washington had already thrown a lot of money at the economy during the COVID-19 emergency, and, predictably, the emergency spending outlasted the emergency. By the time Biden was elected in 2020, Washington had thrown $2.6 trillion in budgetary resources at COVID and had authorized as much as $4 trillion in subsidized federal lending. That was new money amounting to about a third of GDP sloshing around the economy. Biden’s first priority was pushing out another $1 trillion in a phony infrastructure bill (that has little to do with actual infrastructure) and a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, even though the Consumer Price Index was already rising steeply, according to the Federal Reserve.
Stimulating an already overstimulated economy is how you make inflation worse.
Our inflation problem is only partly an issue of dovish monetary policy and reckless spending. There are problems in the real-world physical economy, too, those “supply-chain issues” we hear about. The Biden administration has done extraordinarily dumb things to make these worse, too, keeping in place the worst of the Trump administration’s anti-trade policies. That “Made in the USA” talk sounds good on the stump, but the truth is we need a lot that we don’t make at home and aren’t going to — including much of the steel and other vital inputs for the high-value manufacturing we actually do here.
The incredible fact is the Biden administration still had punitive tariffs on Ukrainian steel while it was seeking financial aid for the Ukrainians — it wasn’t until the Chamber of Commerce and conservative critics started making a stink that the administration changed its stance.
More Biden magic: “Dow Suffers Longest Losing Streak In 99 Years.”
“Hunter Biden Took In $11 Million Over 5 Years.” I would treat NBC’s number as a floor rather than a ceiling…
Scary Poppins resigns from the Ministry of Truth because all those vicious right-wing bullies were mean to her about her gross bias and constant lying.
I know you’ll be shocked, shocked to find Taylor Lorenz attempt to ride to her rescue:
Investigating and criticizing a Homeland Security official is now "harassment" and bullying, according to the WashPost and @TaylorLorenz.
Only ordinary citizens can be investigated — not high-level US Security State operatives. Them's the rules:https://t.co/rtHpupbeMw
In sum, a free press exists to unmask and punish private citizens with the wrong politics ("shoe-lace reporting"), not to investigate and scrutinize the beliefs, conduct and claims of powerful government officials ("harassment" and bullying).
Also seems odd that WPost allowed @TaylorLorenz (who, credit where due, broke the story of the DHS "pause") to write an entire article arguing Nina Jankowicz should be off-limits from criticism, without mentioning Jankowicz argued the same about Lorenz:https://t.co/Sh6mzcKRe0
Indeed, Jankowicz has a very long history of defending Lorenz and expressing solidarity for the trauma Lorenz suffers when her work is criticized. That's almost certainly where Lorenz got her version of events and seems like it should be disclosed when Lorenz defends Jankowicz. pic.twitter.com/R49NHCQ3RZ
I live in a manufacturing city with a very strong union voice speaking into the politics of our community. Yet a fascinating and unmistakable phenomenon has been occurring over the course of the last decade or two. Though the percentage of citizens in our area who post their “Proud Union Home” yard signs has likely increased, the percentage of them identifying as, or supporting, the Democratic Party has dropped precipitously during that same time frame.
For the first time in my city’s history, Republicans swept all municipal offices in the last election. So what is happening, and is it a microcosm of some larger trend?
I can’t offer any scientific study or analysis; I can only tell you what I have been told. Though former President Trump attempted overtures towards the “made in America” union mentality, that isn’t the most often cited rationale among Democrat dropouts. Instead, their disillusionment seems to stem from the prevailing belief that the party has been hijacked by single-issue ideologues that are willing to destroy party cohesion and solidarity if it means advancing their singular cause. More and more of these ex-party members now consider the Democrats the “Abortion First” party.
Again, that may be just the frustrated sentiments of disgruntled Dems in rural Indiana who feel as though the once big tent that embraced them has become far more rigid and dogmatic in who they welcome under the awning. Gone seem to be the days of the party’s Rust Belt/Union Grit identity, replaced today with a coalition that obsesses over white guilt, pronoun pandering, and legal feticide.
“Tucson high school counselor accused of sexual misconduct with a 15-year-old student…police officials in the Southern Arizona city said Zobella Brazil Vinik turned herself in to detectives on May 11.”
Bellingham School District board director is advertising a “queer youth open mic” for ages 0-18 taking place in her sex shop which she owns. @BhamSDpic.twitter.com/jIIdAV0YOu
Speaking of sexual predators after your children, this is pretty horrifying: “Texas Teen Goes to Bathroom at NBA Game, Is Found 10 Days Later Sold for Sex in Oklahoma Hotel.”
In another action-packed school board meeting in McKinney, the board president was served with a lawsuit for suppressing the free speech rights of citizens who disagree with her policies.
Civil rights attorney Paul Davis served Amy Dankel, president of McKinney Independent School District’s board of trustees, during the public comments portion of Tuesday night’s meeting.
“Your outrageous display of tyranny in how you trampled on the rights of the public at the last meeting was shocking,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
In recent months, McKinney ISD’s school board meetings have featured a heavy police presence.
On several occasions, police officers have ejected citizens, at Dankel’s direction, for failing to observe her rules of decorum during public comments.
Davis said Tuesday that Dankel’s rules “placed an unconstitutional restraint on First Amendment rights by disallowing signs, clapping, and comments.”
He also says Dankel enforced her rules unequally.
She directed police to physically remove people who were wearing green—supporters of conservative trustee Chad Green, who Dankel is trying to oust from the board.
“Those same rules were not applied to people wearing blue,” Davis said, referring to Dankel supporters. “For that, we have filed a civil rights lawsuit against you.”
Kevin Whitt is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
During last month’s school board meeting, the pro-family activist spoke against the district’s failure to proactively identify and remove sexually explicit books found in students’ libraries—a contentious topic in McKinney and other districts across the state since last year.
Later in that meeting, Whitt was dragged out by City of McKinney police officers for uttering a single word—“disgusting”—after a local mom finished comments that included excerpts from one of the explicit books.
Speaking of Texas school boards getting sued parents, Round Rock ISD is being sued over violating parent’s rights.
The contentious saga in Round Rock ISD continues after two parents filed a federal lawsuit last week against five school board trustees, the district superintendent, and several district police officers.
Last year, the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office arrested Jeremy Story and Dustin Clark on charges of “hindering proceedings by disorderly conduct” following a September school board meeting. Both men were released the next day.
The lawsuit claims the defendants violated Story’s and Clark’s rights under the First Amendment and the 14th Amendment. Additionally, the suit accuses the defendants of violating 42 U.S. Code 1983, or misusing their power to deny their constitutional rights.
The two men attended last September’s school board meeting to protest Superintendent Dr. Hafedh Azaiez’s continued employment and a proposed tax increase.
Texas Scorecard chronicled multiple scandals involving Round Rock ISD in a special report and a podcast series, Exposed, which included investigations into the school district and Azaiez. Five of the district’s seven trustees, dubbed the “Bad Faith Five,” were also brought under scrutiny for allegedly covering up domestic violence allegations against Azaiez.
At the August 16 board meeting, Round Rock ISD officers removed Story after he referenced the investigation into Azaiez. Amy Weir, president of the school board, instructed district officers to escort Story from the building, claiming his concerns about Azaiez did not follow the meeting’s agenda.
At the same meeting, trustees Mary Bone and Danielle Weston walked out after accusing the district of intentionally limiting seating under the guise of following COVID-19 safety guidelines. Clark then demanded the board let more citizens in to witness the meeting, and Weir subsequently instructed district officers to escort him out.
Three days later, Williamson County officers arrested Story and Clark. Although Story’s charges pertained to the August 16 meeting, Clark’s charges dated back to a September meeting of the school board. Their lawsuit, filed May 11, accuses all defendants of suppressing Story’s and Clark’s constitutional rights and claims they were arrested illegally.
If successful, the lawsuit would void Azaiez’s contract and prevent Round Rock ISD from restricting attendance at school board meetings due to COVID-19.
Groomer teachers are even popping up in Ohio:
Elementary-high school students at @OlentangySD were allegedly given an invasive electronic survey on their pronouns, sexual orientation, and mental health. Parents were not notified and were not asked to consent. pic.twitter.com/opEPFNm6dC
Speaking of Michigan lawsuits over gross abuse of state power, a couple is suing Highland Park after the police seized their building and legal marijuana business, charged them with no crime, and then offered to give it back if they bought the police department two cars.
Speaking of crooked Democratic politicians, you would think that all that graft Bill De Blasio’s wife raked off would allow him to retire in style, but evidently that festering bucket of crooked failure just can’t stay out of the spotlight, and is now running for congress.
People magazine may cease its print version. Bonus: “Sources told The Post that under Wakeford, People had been selling more than 200,000 copies at the newsstand a week. Since then, newsstand sales have been uneven, with a May 2 Prince Harry cover dipping to about 160,000 copies sold, and a March 14 Lizzo cover cratering to between 125,000- 150,000 copies sold, which is said to be one of the worst selling issues in People’s half-century history.” Funny how no one gives a rat’s ass about woke royals and the morbidly obese…
Larry Correia gives a deserved royal fisking to an article by a leftwing feminist who wonders why her boyfriend reads that primitive “science fiction” stuff rather than modern literary fiction that checks all the required Victimhood Identity boxes.
Stagflation is back, scammers continue to loot taxpayer money from the federal government, Team Global Warming continues it’s perfect losing streak, and dispatches from a deadly accordion war. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The U.S. economy shrunk by 1.4% in Q1. “Unexpectedly!” So now we’ve got stagnation to go with that soaring inflation, a key ingredient in the Biden Administration’s Welcome Back Carter cosplay. One more quarter of decline and the recession is officially at hand…
In June, the FBI got a warrant to hunt through the Google accounts of Abedemi Rufai, a Nigerian state government official.
Hello, I am Prince Abedemi Rufai. You are probably surprised by this email…
What they found, they said in a sworn affidavit, was all the ingredients for a “massive” cyberfraud on U.S. government benefits: stolen bank, credit card and tax information of Americans. Money transfers. And emails showing dozens of false unemployment claims in seven states that paid out $350,000.
Rufai was arrested in May at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as he prepared to fly first class back to Nigeria, according to court records. He is being held without bail in Washington state, where he has pleaded not guilty to five counts of wire fraud.
Rufai’s case offers a small window into what law enforcement officials and private experts say is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated against the U.S., a significant part of it carried out by foreigners.
Russian mobsters, Chinese hackers and Nigerian scammers have used stolen identities to plunder tens of billions of dollars in Covid benefits, spiriting the money overseas in a massive transfer of wealth from U.S. taxpayers, officials and experts say. And they say it is still happening.
Among the ripest targets for the cybertheft have been jobless programs. The federal government cannot say for sure how much of the more than $900 billion in pandemic-related unemployment relief has been stolen, but credible estimates range from $87 billion to $400 billion — at least half of which went to foreign criminals, law enforcement officials say.
Those staggering sums dwarf, even on the low end, what the federal government spends every year on intelligence collection, food stamps or K-12 education.
Keep in mind, this is just one government program.
Many who participated in what prosecutors are calling the largest fraud in U.S. history — the theft of hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money intended to help those harmed by the coronavirus pandemic — couldn’t resist purchasing luxury automobiles. Also mansions, private jet flights and swanky vacations.
Biden Administration creates unconstitutional Ministry of Truth to fight “disinformation,” i.e. truth and opinion that hurts Democrats. This is the lunatic running it:
For 20 Years, This Prosecutor Had a Secret Job Working For the Judges Who’d Decide His Cases.”
One of Ralph Petty’s victims is trying to hold him accountable, but she will have to overcome prosecutorial immunity.
Ralph Petty worked as an assistant district attorney in Midland County, Texas, for 20 years. Like any prosecutor, he fervidly advocated for the government. But he wasn’t just any advocate, because he wasn’t just a prosecutor. Each night, Petty took off his proverbial DA hat and re-entered the courthouse as a law clerk for the same judges he was trying to convince to side with him by day.
“A married English teacher at Langham Creek High School was arrested after allegedly sleeping with a 15-year-old student.” Spoiler for those thinking of clicking through for the pic: She’s no prize.
Stop me if you’ve heard this story before: Bold new architecture project becomes ugly and nonfunctional.
In Kurokawa’s original plan, the Nakagin capsules were meant to be replaced every twenty-five years with updated iterations. That didn’t happen, in part because of the funding that would have required. Each capsule would have cost, according to some estimates, almost nine million yen, or about seventy thousand dollars, to repair. A single capsule couldn’t be removed without removing all those above it, so all units would have to be vacated and updated at once. Over time, the building fell into disrepair. Concerns about asbestos made the towers’ ventilation system unusable, and residents complained about mold and incessant leaks during rainstorms. The owners’ association first voted to sell the building to a developer, in 2007, but the firm soon filed for bankruptcy, throwing the building’s fate into uncertainty. Kurokawa, who had pushed for renovations, died that same year. By 2010, the towers’ hot water had been shut off. The building had become more a work of art than the dynamic architecture that Kurokawa envisioned.
“New York Democrats Aim To Tax Ammo To Fund Anti-Gun Research….New York Senate Bill S8415, which would add an arbitrary 5-cent tax per round of ammunition larger than .22 Caliber. Rounds smaller than .22 Caliber would be subject to a 2-cent tax per round. According to the bill, the tax revenue would go to the state’s Gun Violence Research Fund.” That would be unconstitutional with a capital “un.”
Lake Mead hit by megadrought. “After nearly half a century, the first intake is out of service and can no longer draw water. Water levels at the lake hit record lows this week, falling to 1,056 feet. Luckily, SNWA has two other intakes at much lower levels that are still operational.”
Russia eyes Moldova, Ron DeSantis and Florida republicans strip Disney of it’s special privileges in record time, CNN+ dies quicker than Sean Bean, and Florida Man scores a trifecta! It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
A Russian General announced plans to occupy the Transnistria region of Moldova on Friday.
Speaking at a defense industry meeting, Brigadier General Rustam Minnekayev, acting commander of Russia’s Central Military District, stated that the Russian Armed Forces plan to “make passage” into the region – in Moldova’s East, bordering Ukraine and less than 30 miles from the port city of Odessa – to create a “land corridor to Crimea,” Russian media reported. Such a corridor would also purport to connect the Russian mainland to Transnistria.
Minnekayev stated that the measure was part of Russia’s second phase in its war in Ukraine, which involves establishing full control over the Donbas Region and Ukraine’s coast along the Black Sea. No timeline was provided for the maneuver to begin, however.
Rather seems like overweening hubris to think about invading another country when they haven’t managed to defeat Ukraine despite pouring huge resources into the attempt.
Speaking of Russia walking on rakes:
Giant fire engulfs Russia’s biggest chemical plant right after a fire broke out at “a sensitive Russian Defense Ministry research facility in the city of Tver.”
Huge plumes of smoke were seen enveloping the Dmitrievsky Chemical Plant late this afternoon. The cause of the fire remains unknown. Almost 150 plant workers were reportedly evacuated.
The facility in Kineshma, east of Moscow produces more industrial solvents than any other in Russia. It is less than 1,000km from the border with Ukraine.
“Less than 600 miles” does not strike me as super close, even for Russia.
Naturally, observers are starting to ask in connection to Russia’s war in neighboring Ukraine: coincidence? sabotage operation?
Anti-Putin racecar driver Igor Sushko in tweeting the above video of the Dmitrievsky Chemical Plant going up in flames commented: “We are beginning to see a pattern develop.”
Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation Friday that strips Disney of its 50-year-old “independent special district” status in retaliation for lobbying against Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law.
The law dissolves the Reedy Creek Improvement District, an autonomous area created in 1967 to accommodate the massive Disney World complex near Orlando. The independent status has shielded Disney from significant tax burden.
The governor fast-tracked the initiative to a special session Tuesday, after which the state Senate voted 23-16 on Wednesday to advance it.
The parental rights measure keeps gender identity and sexual orientation instruction out of K-3 elementary school classrooms and enjoys majority support among Floridians.
To quote The Wire: “You wanted to be in the game, right? Now you’re in the game.” For years, The Mouse was considered an unstoppable juggernaut that always got what it wanted. Then Disney decided to to throw it’s corporate weight behind the pro-grooming faction opposing a bill banning discussion of sex in elementary schools, and DeSantis knee-capped them in a week.
Though the losses from special tax breaks and privileges is going to hurt the bottom line, Disney has done far, far more damage to its brand for stepping into the cultural wars to embrace forcing radical transexism on a resisting American public. That’s going to be destroying shareholder value for years (if not decades) to come.
DeSantis Bonus: Christopher Rufo spoke at the signing ceremony:
At the end of my speech, I gave a direct warning to Disney CEO Bob Chapek: he must immediately terminate the company's critical race theory training program, "Reimagine Tomorrow," which is now illegal under Florida law. No more racism in corporate America.https://t.co/bIu0Rt0kRapic.twitter.com/S1dJAFe3XS
Am I and are others supposed to feel bad because the most opportune time to end Disney’s corporate welfare exploits the momentum that Disney created against themselves?
Because I don’t.
Disney vociferously and hatefully opposed parents who didn’t want ideological activist teachers lecturing their K-5th grade kids about how they bang their significant others after hours — Disney accused parents of opposing this as literally killing gay people because teachers with fantasy pronouns can’t talk about genitals when kids should be learning math.
The left hated corporations influencing issues because of Citizens United v. FEC until they realized they could push Disney to lobby for them and now they LOVE corporations again! Party! I’m confused — are corporations still evil? They can’t influence issues or push for candidates that aren’t Democrat and they have more rights to a child than the parents raising said child? We really need some consistency from the left here.
When corporations act as agents of the state all bets are off. When a corporation’s actual heir, the CEO, and executives say on camera and on their own social media accounts (as Disney’s did) that parental rights erase gay people (I know, what?) and people who support parental rights in the classroom are murderers, all bets are off.
Who is “gaslighting” whom, here? Where was the opposition to the heinous manner in which parents were smeared? Was that not Disney’s “revenge” for opposition?
Disney chose the boss fight against taxpaying parents and they lost.
Losing their corporate welfare isn’t revenge, it’s a reckoning.
Relevant tweets:
Why is Disney throwing its weight behind the FL "say gay" controversy?
Same reason Home Depot inserted itself in the GA voter bill last year… Proxy advisory firms. Specifically Glass Lewis & ISS pic.twitter.com/WaKWlbMoA1
DeSantis and Florida Republicans: Go woke… **blows viking battle horn** and we shall burn your entire village to the ground and sing a song of victory so that any potential enemies in our future shall learn from your folly.
I find it mesmerizing that, after the last few years of corporate America bending over backwards to appease every tenet of progressive philosophy, it’s now a national scandal when Republicans decide to “dissolve Walt Disney World’s private government”https://t.co/KI2eL9itcq
John Nolte: “Yes, Democrats Really Do Want to Groom Your Children.”
The debate we’re having right now…
THE LEFT: We don’t want to sexualize little kids behind the backs of parents. Stop saying that. It’s a lie!
FLORIDA: We’re going to outlaw sexualizing little kids behind the backs of parents.
THE LEFT: NOOOOooooooo!
What kind of country are we living in where we even have to pass a bill that outlaws sexualizing kids aged four to eight in the classroom?
What kind of country are we living in where Florida teachers are angry that they can’t discuss their personal lives with your little kids, much less discuss sex?
What kind of country are we living in where the Walt Disney Co., a company built on the idea of preserving the innocence of children and teaching them lessons about honesty, hard work, and true love, is now openly bragging about feeding the little kids sexual propaganda?
Of course, this is grooming.
What else would you call it?
What is the rationale for telling innocent little boys that they might be girls or gay or bisexual? What other rationale could there be for that other than to destroy their innocence, to turn them into sexual creatures, and warp their sexuality into something that can later be exploited?
Behind the backs of parents!
For the life of me, except for my second-grade teacher talking about the day John Kennedy was assassinated, I cannot remember a single teacher who ever discussed their personal life. A couple of times, I remember seeing a teacher outside of school, at the store or something, and how odd it was to realize they existed outside the classroom.
The thing to keep in mind here is that this is not a “gay” thing.
It’s not gay people looking to groom little kids.
Plenty of gay people are as disgusted by this as anyone. In fact, this sick movement is a terrible disservice to gays. What you have here is the LEFT working overtime to bring to life the very worst stereotypes about homosexuals looking to recruit among the innocent.
What you have here is Disney bringing to life these terrible stereotypes.
But that doesn’t change the fact that the left is desperate to groom your kids, to sexualize them behind your back.
Why?
Well, a whole lot of leftists want to have sex with your kids, and want to normalize sex between kids and adults. The evidence of that is everywhere. Democrats know opening the southern border will mean the import of child sex slaves. And yet, Democrats still open the border. Democrats continue to release child predators and suspected predators. We’re about to be saddled with a Supreme Court Justice who shrugs at child porn. More than one left-wing publication has asked us to better understand and sympathize with child molesters. The left embraced Jeffrey Epstein for decades. The left-wing Lincoln Project shielded a suspected predator.
The other reason for the grooming is political.
Democrats are losing key parts of their coalition: the working class, Hispanics, and chunks of the black population. One way they see of making up those numbers is to create a lot of damaged and broken young people obsessed with their sexuality. It’s just a fact that neurotic, unhappy lunatics and narcissists who define themselves by what they do with their sex organs vote Democrat. So… Democrats want to damage your kids to create a whole lot more of them.
“EIGHT news stories about teachers committing sex crimes upon children. ALL TODAY.”
From Powerline comes two tales of endemic corruption. The first was Yale University employee Jamie Petrone admitting to stealing over $40 million in computer equipment. “So for years, 90 percent of the equipment (sub-$10,000) that Yale’s emergency medicine department paid for–more than $40 million worth–never showed up. It didn’t exist. And no one noticed.”
That’s the smaller of the two scandals. The bigger:
A second instance of corruption is the Feeding Our Future scandal in Minnesota. The scandal actually involves entities in addition to FOF, and altogether $460 million or more has been funneled through these agencies by the federal free food programs Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) and the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP). The whole thing turned out to be a criminal enterprise. Various crooks pretended to be feeding many thousands of non-existent Minnesota children. The fraud should have been obvious since, if you added up the numbers, a ridiculous percentage of all of the children in the state were supposedly getting free food through these newly-founded charities.
The corruption occurred primarily, although not entirely, within Minnesota’s Somali community. Apparently spread sheets have been circulating among fraudsters showing the names and addresses of many thousands of Somali immigrants who can be listed as phantom beneficiaries of government programs. Here, like the Yale criminal, those who were in on the fraud have lived lavishly, with federal taxpayer money administered by the State of Minnesota paying for luxury cars, expensive homes, exotic vacations, and so on. Scott wrote here about a young Somali bride who was given a tray of gold worth $100,000 as a wedding gift by persons involved in the Feeding Our Future fraud.
Such criminality is not subtle. Little care is taken to hide it. How can a handful of fly-by-night fraudsters steal hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. government and the State of Minnesota, and no one notices? As in Yale’s case, the answer is partly gross incompetence in Minnesota’s Tim Walz administration. But in the larger picture, government at all levels is rolling in so much dough that they don’t know what to do with it. A few hundred million is hardly worth checking up on.
This goes toward proving my “Working Thesis,” that all new welfare state programs are designed to channel money into the pockets of crooks and left wing activists (to the extent that it’s possible to distinguish the two).
But the government not only attempted to manufacture “terrorists” in the Whitmer kidnapping hoax—the same FBI operation also tried to coax a man in Virginia to participate in the same sort of plot against Virginia Governor Ralph Northam. That scheme didn’t fully materialize, but the FBI’s attempt to pull off a similar stunt in Virginia reveals just how far agents were willing to go to bolster FBI Director Christopher Wray’s false warning that domestic extremists planned to “kill and assassinate” public officials.
In summer 2020, Dan Chappel, the main informant in the Whitmer fednapping who was compensated at least $60,000 by the FBI for his services, targeted a man named Frank Butler, a disabled veteran in his late 60s and an alleged militia member. Taking instructions from Jayson Chambers, one of his FBI handling agents, Chappel used the same playbook in Virginia.
“Dan suggests to Frank that he engage in acts of domestic terror,” defense attorneys wrote in a joint motion filed last year in the Whitmer case. “Like the defendants in this case, Dan suggested to Frank that he attack the governor of Virginia.”
Screenshots submitted into evidence show a jaw dropping exchange between Chappel and Chambers in August 2020. “Goin [sic] to call frank butler today,” Chappel texted Chambers, asking for direction on what he should say to his target.
“Mission is to kill the governor specifically,” Chambers replied.
Just as in the Whitmer plot, Chappel lured Frank Butler into attempting to build an explosive device. Another text exchange in September 2020 shows Chappel and Chambers discussing a “recipe” for a bomb that Chappel can provide to Butler. After passing along the information to Butler, Chappel texted Chambers to tell him Frank planned on purchasing bomb-making supplies. “Awesome. Excellent work,” Chambers told Chappel.
Chappel also invited Butler to a field training exercise in Wisconsin during the last weekend in October, an excursion attended by some defendants in the Whitmer caper.
“This event, like all the others,” defense attorneys wrote, “was conceived, planned, and conducted by the federal investigative team of agents and undercover informants working together to provide a stage upon which to manipulate their targets into acting out ostensibly incriminating behavior the government hoped to elicit in its bid to develop and then ‘interrupt’ the operation of a ‘domestic terrorist organization.’”
Butler, who cannot drive due to disabilities, did not participate. And to date, he has not been charged with any crime.
“Seattle’s transit system struggles as riders refuse to pay. So few riders are paying, fares are currently covering just 5% of the system’s operating costs, a fraction of the 40% mark Sound Transit set as a requirement.” (Hat Tip: Dwight.)
While most reporting on Harris County’s problems revolve around Democrat County Judge Lina Hidalgo, this citizen’s research suggests ties exist between Democrat County Commissioner Rodney Ellis (a former state senator) and certain organizations receiving taxpayer monies.
Ellis’ influence, and the influence of at least one of these organizations, appears to reach all the way to Hidalgo’s office.
Snip.
To counteract shuttering the economy in 2020, Congress broke open a dam and flooded federal taxpayer monies nationwide. These monies flowed to state and then local governments for eventual distribution. Harris County’s cut from the 2020 CARES Act was $426 million.
One organization the county commissioners gave some of these funds to was the Coalition for the Homeless. Ties were verified between Commissioner Ellis and this organization.
Licia Green-Ellis, Ellis’ wife, is a partner of the Waterman Steele Real Estate Consulting Group. Another partner is Lance Gilliam, who is chairman of the Coalition for the Homeless. Gilliam donated to Ellis’ campaign in 2015, and he also donated to Hidalgo in 2018, 2019, and March and June of 2021.
Hidalgo’s chief of staff, Alexander Triantaphyllis, is also on the coalition’s board.
In April 2021, the coalition recommended commissioners allocate taxpayer monies toward “the rapid expansion of housing” for the homeless. This resulted in agreements between the county and multiple organizations, including a more than $1.2 million agreement with BakerRipley Community Developers. We’ll come back to them in a minute.
The following month, commissioners ballooned funding for the housing program to more than $7 million, of which more than $3.6 million went to BakerRipley for the county’s “Rapid Rehousing” program.
New York City: Now that the pandemics over, everyone’s going to come back to our high-tax hellhole, right? People who used to work in NYC: LOL. Get Rekt!
A high-tax, highly regulated city, New York has relied for the past 25 years on a growth formula of low crime, a stable social order, and an emphasis on high-value jobs at profitable companies for whom being in the city brought advantages that outweighed the costs. The result was a prosperous but hollow economy that featured well-paid jobs in finance, law, and technology alongside low-paid service-industry jobs necessary to support those workers, but lacked many of the middle-class jobs in manufacturing or financial back offices that the city once boasted.
The pandemic has changed that calculus. The work-from-home movement has hit New York City’s office market—the backbone of its economy—right in the pocketbook. More than two years after the initial lockdowns that brought much of the economy to a standstill, only 38 percent of office workers have returned to their city jobs, which is below average for major cities. Employers have tried to get workers back to their Manhattan offices, only to be thwarted by Covid surges and resistance from employees who don’t want to return to working in person five days a week. A rise in violent crime and disorder hasn’t helped. Both the city’s current mayor, Eric Adams, and his predecessor, Bill de Blasio, as well as former governor Andrew Cuomo and successor Kathy Hochul, have at various times urged workers to return, but to little avail.
The more that workers and companies discover they can accomplish through remote work, the greater the danger—because New York is by far the most expensive place to locate a worker in the country. Its overall cost of occupancy, including labor, utilities, and taxes, is 50 percent higher than the next most expensive American city, San Francisco, and three times as high as Dallas, Chicago, and Seattle. The gap is even larger with many smaller metro areas that seem poised for growth. One big component of these costs is taxes: the city and state together out-tax other competitors, taking as much as 45 percent more taxable income than the average of U.S. big cities and their states. No surprise, then, that even in the pandemic’s early stages, experts rated New York one of the places that might struggle the most to recover its jobs and residents.
What are the Democrats who run New York (city and state) going to do to bring down high taxes? Jack and Squat.
In case you missed it, Pakistan’s Prime Minister was ousted two weeks ago. “Pakistan’s political opposition toppled Prime Minister Imran Khan in a no-confidence vote in Parliament early Sunday after several political allies and a key party in his ruling coalition deserted him.” He wasn’t the worst person to run Pakistan, but high inflation (even worse than ours) brought him down.
California’s corporate diversity law ruled unconstitutional. California’s law mandated that corporations stock their executive boards with members from various victimhood identity politics groups.
The trifecta! “Florida man arrested after cops find him in possession of drugs, guns and alligator.” Click through to see what a hard 31 looks like. (Hat Tip: Dwight.)
“Downtown Greek Restaurant Owner Escapes the Country, Leaving Workers and Rent Unpaid. That’s Simi Estiatorio, and the manager partner who fled the country is George Theodosiou. Read the link for the details. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Heh:
Reward Offered: any information that can lead to finding the person or persons responsible for putting this flag behind our council dais. #SpaceForce
Ps my DMs are open and as far as I can tell it has shown up in the last week or two. I want to know the story. pic.twitter.com/RmDcOtidi1
(@realchrisrufo) 
