Trump’s winning in Iran, Russia’s losing in Ukraine, Democrats committing fraud left and right, the data center debate rages on, a crappy movie in China gain sudden popularity because it’s crappy, and Orlando PD get to wrestle an alligator.
The “rhetoric” coming from both sides of the conflict over the Strait of Hormuz has “caused considerable confusion and doubt,” CNN’s David Goldman understatedly observed. Yet, at present, “The evidence is clear,” he conceded: “Iran is losing much of its control over the critical waterway.”
One month ago, the number of commercial ships transiting through the strait via the U.S. approved route along the Omani coast was close to zero. Today, however, over 80 percent of the vessels that have made it through the strait are taking the U.S.-authorized lane. And even though the United States has not responded with kinetic force to every Iranian attack on commercial traffic in the strait, sometimes to the consternation of America’s Gulf partners, that has not dissuaded countries like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates’ tankers from making “dark traffic” runs on the strait.
CNN could not independently verify Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s claim that “combined oil transits through the strait and rerouted around the waterway totaled around 15 million barrels per day,” which approaches the pre-war average of 20-million barrels. But it couldn’t gainsay the experts. As one industry analyst conceded, “It increasingly looks like Iran has at least partially lost control of the strait.”
The Iranian regime is feeling the pain. As Hot Air’s Duane Patterson explained, the economic conditions on the ground inside the Islamic Republic are catastrophic. “Iran’s economy is currently experiencing around 90 percent inflation, and it turns out the worst may be yet to come,” he wrote. Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior fellow Miad Maleki concurs. “Nearly every part of Iran’s oil economy,” he wrote, “owes massive, growing sums to each other, with no real money moving through the system to pay any of it back.”
The gas lines are growing, and the petrol that Iranians are allowed to buy may soon be rationed. Iranian authorities are triaging their resources by prescheduling hours-long blackouts. The regime is ramping up executions and cracking down on dissent as the prospect of economic collapse brings with it the risk of renewed civil unrest.
Brooklyn Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher (D-50th District) wants New Yorkers to believe that walking out of a CVS with a fistful of stolen toothpaste isn’t a crime. It’s a “biological need.”
Yes, really.
Gallagher, who represents Greenpoint and other parts of northern Brooklyn, made her case Thursday at a news conference outside Manhattan Criminal Court, flanked by fellow far-left officials and activists from Court Watch NYC. The group said it monitored 360 arraignments over four days and found that more than half involved misdemeanor offenses. Gallagher used those numbers to argue shoplifters swiping basic necessities shouldn’t be prosecuted at all.
“Most of what we saw were crimes of poverty-people who are stealing things like toothpaste, people who were stealing things like, you know, soap,” Gallagher said. “And that means if you’re stealing those things, you need them.”
Funny how all those films of riot never show people stealing soap and toothpaste, just flat screen TVs and Nikes. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Salman Ahmed Elmi was charged last week with three counts of aiding and abetting by swindle and five counts of aiding and abetting by false representation.
He made his first court appearance on Monday. Authorities say some of Elmi’s co-conspirators at Reva Health in Golden Valley have connections to a sex trafficking ring bust last week.
Elmi is accused of billing Medicaid for more than $1 million in services that were not provided or not eligible. Reva Health provided autism services and adult rehabilitative mental health services.
“The Minnesota Department of Human Services awarded Elmi an ‘Outstanding Refugee Award’ in 2021.” Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that “Outstanding Refugee” is an award for those that stole the most taxpayer money to give to Democrats?
FBI agents seized electronic devices from former Representative Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.) at the San Francisco airport on Saturday and then raided his home in connection with an investigation into sexual assault allegations against him, according to several reports.
Federal authorities executed a search warrant at Swalwell’s home in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, law enforcement sources told CNN and the Associated Press.
The FBI declined to comment.
Swalwell resigned from Congress and suspended his campaign for California governor in April after a former staffer came forward with allegations that he had sexually assaulted her twice, including once at a hotel while he was in New York City for a charity gala in 2024.
Three other women then accused Swalwell of sexual misconduct as well. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department opened criminal investigations into Swalwell in response.
At the time, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg encouraged “survivors and anyone with knowledge of these allegations to contact our Special Victims Division.”
The reports that the FBI’s investigation into Swalwell is picking up steam comes days after the White House Transparency Task Force released FBI files indicating Swalwell previously admitted to having “physical relations” with suspected Chinese spy Christine Fang on a “handful of occasions,” providing confirmation of the public sphere’s longstanding suspicion that a sexual relationship had transpired.
Ukraine continues its war on Wildberries. “Best Wildberries Strike Yet! Koledino Near Moscow–Biggest Wildberries Hub in Russia.”
“Ukrainian forces hit at least five workshop buildings at Russia’s Kombinat Kamensky defense plant in Rostov region, penetrating several layers of air defenses from Pantsir to S-300 systems. The plant produces solid rocket fuel for Uragan, Smerch and Tornado-S MLRS, as well as other missile and aviation systems. Key workshops had anti-drone protection and were surrounded by earthworks. Several air-defense vehicles were also hit.”
The Russian fuel situation has gotten so bad that even Russian newspapers are talking about it. “As of the 16th of August, across Russia, 28.1% of petrol stations had fuel. A week before, it was 41%.” Imagine more than two thirds of stations having no gas and long lines at the ones that do.
The State Department worked with World Vision to distribute $2 billion in global health foreign assistance even though an Israeli court convicted the nonprofit’s Gaza affiliate operations manager of sending up to $50 million to Hamas in 2022. Separately, the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) provided nearly $80 million to 14 organizations linked to terrorism and extremism.
The Middle East Forum (MEF) recently reported that 14 terror-linked and extremist organizations, led by CAIR, collected nearly $80 million from HHS through the Refugee Resettlement, Health, and Mosque Renovation grants. Through this fund, the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) California chapter received the most of any Islamist group, collecting $42.2 million in funding from the HHS to provide legal and social services to Afghan refugees.
Concerning: “Chinese Spy Official Who Is Also A Trained Sniper Buys Property Overlooking White House.”
🚨CCP intel official Philip Qiu, who is trained as a SNIPER, bought an historic building overlooking the White House.
“Liberal white woman fights fascism by defacing national memorial to soldiers who died fighting Hitler.” ‘This morning, we are filing two felony charges, Depredation Against Property of the United States and Destruction of Veterans’ Memorials, in Federal District Court against Melissa L. Farris, offenses that carry penalties of up to ten years in prison.” TDS strikes again.
How is this legal? “Karen Bass brags that Los Angeles will use tax dollars to provide a 6:1 match for every dollar donated to her campaign.”
Karen Bass is very worried about losing her mayoralty to left-winger Nithya Raman, who squeaked past Spencer Pratt in the primary election due to a bunch of election shenanigans, and Bass has an interesting campaign strategy.
Using city tax dollars to fund her campaign!…
The city of Los Angeles “donates” money to Bass’s campaign in a matching program? If you give $10, the city chips in another $60? And she’s pushing this program?
Through the foreign-donation-taking ActBlue, no less.
Per the City Ethics Commission (I kid you not), the city charter allows for “public matching funds.”
Left-wing group Common Cause California brags about “strengthening” this public match fund in 2019.
The program is intended to help less-funded candidates get access to funding, but in actuality, all it does is take YOUR tax dollars to fund politicians you hate.
The Frankfurt School. You should know what it was, what it built, and why you are still living inside it.
1. The Institute for Social Research was founded in Frankfurt in 1923 and relocated to Columbia University in 1934 when Hitler came to power. The civilization they had decided to dismantle gave them refuge when another tried to kill them. They spent the next five decades producing the theoretical infrastructure for that dismantling. Western civilization itself was the problem: reason, the Enlightenment, the family, tradition, authority. Not reformed. Dismantled.
2. They called it Critical Theory – and the name is the program. Everything is to be criticized; nothing is to be built. In The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), Adorno and Horkheimer argued that Western reason — the reason that produced Newton and the rule of law — contained the seeds of Auschwitz. Not that reason had been misused, but that reason itself, taken to its conclusion, produces the death camp. This was not a critique of institutions. It was an indictment of the civilization itself.
3. Adorno gave them the psychological weapon. The Authoritarian Personality (1950) classified conservatism, religious faith, patriotism, and the traditional family not as political positions but as symptoms of a proto-fascist personality. If you believe in the nation or the father’s authority, you are pre-fascist. The opponent was no longer wrong – he was sick. You don’t argue with a pathology. You treat it.
This made dialogue impossible. You don’t persuade someone who is wrong; you diagnose someone who is sick. Politics becomes therapy, and disagreement becomes pathology.
4. Marcuse gave them the political weapon. Repressive Tolerance (1965) argued that tolerating wrong ideas is itself oppression. True tolerance therefore requires suppressing intolerant ideas. The left decides which ideas are intolerant. Everyone else is silenced – not despite tolerance, but “in its name.” Censorship dressed in the vocabulary of liberation.
5. The generation that read Marcuse at Columbia, Berkeley, and Yale went on to run universities, media, foundations, NGOs, content moderation departments, and the EU regulatory apparatus. They implemented the argument sincerely because they had been taught it as philosophy. This was the Frankfurt School’s greatest achievement: it produced true believers.
6. French Theory picked up the tools and made them aesthetic. Foucault made the critique of power literary. Derrida made the critique of meaning philosophical. Deleuze made the critique of identity elegant. A political program became a cultural sensibility. You can argue with a program. A sensibility is in the air you breathe. By the time these ideas reached the American campus through the French conduit, they were no longer ideology. They were the water. The fish did not know they were wet.
7. A civilization stands on three pillars: truth exists and is accessible to reason; good is distinguishable from evil; and there is an inheritance worth transmitting. The Frankfurt School attacked all three – systematically and with considerable intellectual sophistication. It produced a generation that knows how to deconstruct and has forgotten how to build. That sees power everywhere and beauty nowhere.
The ultimate achievement was to make destruction feel like progress. Every inherited institution became suspect; every constraint became oppression; every act of preservation became reactionary. Deconstruction became the default, while construction became something that needed to justify itself.
Kurt Schlichter: “The Death of Academic Fraud Jason Arday Won’t Shut Us Up.”
Fake Professor Jason Arday was found dead in the wake of being exposed as a complete fraud, and if it were my choice, he would still be alive and suffering the humiliation that should be the result of his crimes. I would prefer that he did not likely choose to kill himself instead of facing the consequences of his actions. My preference is irrelevant. If he decided to do himself in, it’s crushing for his wife and kids, and that was a selfish, cruel, and stupid decision. But it was his decision, as was his decision to commit fraud upon fraud. I don’t celebrate his death, and his death changes nothing. We’re not going to stop rooting out the charlatans.
Of course, the entirely predictable response of the institutional left to his cowardly and apparent self-deletion has been to insist, loudly and with quivering outrage, that his death is our fault. You see, we normal people pointed out that he lied about his background, his achievements, his credentials, and his work. The fact that we did what a functioning institution should’ve done itself outraged his boosters, so these moral illiterates now invert the moral calculus to keep the exposure of academic fraud from happening again. Arday lied pathologically and endlessly, enabled by a ridiculously solicitous academia, then likely killed himself when his lies were exposed. Obviously, the villains are the people who did not lie and did not choose to end his life.
And you’ll never guess their key accusation in a million years.
Okay, you guessed it: RACISM!
Snip.
Regardless, it was entirely predictable that the left would use his unfortunate demise to try to shut us up, to place all criticism of woke charlatans off limits because the subject of the critique might decide to do something desperate. They can’t help themselves but act out irrationally, you see. The fact that this tactic deprives the minority of any agency is no shock; there’s no racist like a leftist, who considers minorities to be nothing more than political marionettes unable to control their own actions. We’re supposed to give them a pass because the targets of our criticism have no agency. It’s like that NSFW scene in Blazing Saddles where the sheriff keeps the townspeople from lynching him by sticking a gun to his head—“He’s just crazy enough to do it!” Except this time the townspeople were not trying to lynch an innocent man and didn’t back off, and he did pull the figurative trigger.
We’re not going to play their game. We’re not going to hold fire for fear of feelz. We’re not going to ignore the truth lest the liar lash out at himself or others. Sometimes the truth hurts, but the only people the truth hurts are people exposed doing something they shouldn’t be doing. The truth is more important than feelings. And the truth is more important than Arday’s life. If the choice we are presented with is that Jason Arday will go on living a lie and degrading our civilization by doing so, or that Jason Arday might hurt himself, it’s Option 2 every day of the week. We’re not going to be held hostage or intimidated or shamed into silence and, therefore, complicity.
Texas has three federally recognized Native American tribes: Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, located in the western part of the state in El Paso; the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas, located near Eagle Pass along the Rio Grande; and the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas, located in the eastern part of the state near Livingston.
And two of those are along the Mexican border, which means drug smuggling is a big problem.
I’m going to quote a largish chunk here just so I can tag the various companies.
In June, Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to require data centers to pay for their own electric infrastructure costs, scuttling at least one project planned for East Texas.
Then, earlier this month, Abbott asked these agencies to audit all data center projects in the process of connecting to the Texas grid. According to his directive, data centers in the pipeline must provide and verify information about their water usage; their noise, light, and traffic mitigation efforts; how they plan to obtain electricity; whether they receive taxpayer money; and the real identities of their owners.
A flurry of affirmative replies ensued, including assurances from some of the best-funded users and most prolific developers of data centers in the world.
Many of these companies have already made use of a sales tax exemption for data center equipment — a 13-year-old state law passed before the remote work boom of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) this decade propelled the industry well past the state’s expectations.
Here are the data center companies that have agreed to comply with Abbott’s standards, cross-referenced with the state’s list of companies that benefit from the tax break.
QTS Data Centers
On August 6, Virginia-based Quality Technology Services (QTS) “applauded” Abbott’s “efforts to increase transparency on power use, water and resource consumption, and community considerations associated with data center development.”
QTS data centers built after 2019 use fans rather than water for cooling, according to the company.
The company operates three facilities in Texas and has three more in the pipeline, according to its website. The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts certified one QTS facility, a 56-acre campus in Irving, to benefit from the state sales tax exemption.
Vantage Data Centers
Vantage Data Centers sent a letter of support to Abbott on August 7.
The company, based in Denver, Colorado, only lists one active data center in Texas, at an undisclosed location in Shackelford County. However, it has secured a sales tax exemption for 12 projects listed by the comptroller, all for Oracle.
Skybox
Texas-based Skybox Datacenters agreed to Abbott’s standards on August 7.
The company has built nine data centers around the state. Besides one in Wichita Falls, all are in the Dallas, Austin, and Houston metropolitan areas, according to its website. The comptroller’s list of qualifying data centers doesn’t include a project with Skybox in the name or one associated with its address at 3131 Turtle Creek Boulevard in Dallas, based on a search of the state’s franchise tax database.
Digital Realty
Digital Realty stated on August 7 that it would comply with Abbott’s standards. The Austin-based company claimed in its statement to be “the world’s largest cloud- and carrier-neutral data center platform.”
Digital Realty operates more than 300 data centers that serve companies including Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Nvidia and IBM. Twelve of its 14 Texas data centers are in the Dallas area, its website shows.
Stream Data Centers
Dallas-based Stream Data Centers agreed to Abbott’s standards on August 7.
Altogether, nine Stream data centers are either active or in development across Texas, with one on the outskirts of Houston, three in San Antonio, one in Austin, and four in the Dallas area.
Mara
Mara agreed to abide by Abbott’s standards on August 7.
The Florida-based company operates a Bitcoin mining fleet, and it “colocates data centers with power sources to convert stranded energy into digital capital,” its website states.
The company name doesn’t appear on the comptroller’s list of qualifying data centers, nor do any subsidiary companies registered under the address of its Florida headquarters.
Rowan
Rowan Digital Infrastructure, another developer based in Denver, issued a press release in support of Abbott’s orders on August 7.
The company owns and operates four data centers in Texas that benefit from the sales tax exemption, including one in Temple for Meta and another in Cinco for Google.
Meta
Meta, the California-based parent company of Facebook, pledged to comply with Abbott’s standards on Monday.
Meta’s three Texas data centers are in Fort Worth, Temple, and El Paso, according to its map.
Multiple data centers owned or used by Meta benefit from the state’s sales tax exemption. One subsidiary company, Polmer LLC, owns the certified data center in Temple and occupies two other data centers on the comptroller’s list of certified projects. The El Paso facility is owned by a Meta subsidiary, Wurldwide LLC, which also makes use of the exemption.
OpenAI and Oracle
California-based company OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, agreed to comply with Abbott’s standards on Monday. Oracle, also based in California, made the same commitment on Tuesday.
OpenAI is collaborating with Oracle and SoftBank on Stargate, a $500 billion AI infrastructure project based in Abilene and funded in part by chipmaker Nvidia. Lancium, a company backed by New York-based investment firm Blackstone, is constructing the facility, according to its website.
Eleven Lancium data centers and projects appear on the comptroller’s list, spanning Fort Stockton, Turkey, Childress, and Abilene. Seven projects in Abilene are associated with Stargate, with Oracle listed as an occupant.
Core Scientific
Core Scientific issued a press release in support of Abbott’s directives on Monday.
The company, based in Miami, Florida, operates three data centers in Texas: one in Austin, one in Denton, and one in the Callahan County town of Cottonwood, according to its website.
All three benefit from the state tax exemption, the comptroller’s list shows.
Google
The California-based Big Tech titan expressed support for Abbott’s standards on Monday.
The comptroller lists Google as the owner or user of nine data centers that benefit from the sales tax exemption.
CleanSpark
Data center developer CleanSpark Inc. agreed with Abbott’s standards on Monday.
The Nevada-based company doesn’t publish a comprehensive map or list of its data center locations, but as of February, it owned two plots of land in Brazoria County and Austin County with plans to develop facilities there, according to an investor relations press release.
Neither CleanSpark nor the only Texas entity registered to its corporate address, Eagles Nest 138 LLC, appear on the comptroller’s list of data centers.
EdgeConneX
Virginia-based EdgeConneX announced support for Abbott’s standards in its Tuesday press release.
The company doesn’t specify how many discrete data centers it operates in Texas, but it’s only active in the Houston and Austin areas, according to its online map.
The state has certified two EdgeConnex projects for the tax exemption, both in the Austin area.
SB Energy
SB Energy sent Abbott a letter on August 6 expressing support for his directives and publicized it on Tuesday.
The Redwood City, California-based company is building a facility in Milam County in support of Stargate, with Orion listed as an occupant on two projects that benefit from the state sales tax exemption.
Data Center Coalition
The Data Center Coalition, a trade association that represents data center companies, expressed support for Abbott’s directives on Tuesday.
David Morens, a former senior adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to hiding federal records from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Morens, a senior adviser at NIAID’s Office of the Director from 2006 to 2022 under Dr. Anthony Fauci, was charged by the Department of Justice in April with five counts related to the scheme.
He agreed to a deal with federal prosecutors this week that would see him plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit offenses or to defraud the United States. The charge carries up to five years in prison.
Snip.
The indictment came after the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic found evidence that Morens had used his personal email to discuss Covid-19’s origins and National Institutes of Health grants with EcoHealth Alliance, including a terminated coronavirus grant, in an attempt to keep the communications hidden from hypothetical future FOIA requests.
The committee obtained a communication between Morens and EcoHealth President Peter Daszak in which Morens wrote, “I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail, or hand it to him at work or at his house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”
Why it was almost like their was a conspiracy of secrecy against the American people…
Abdulloi Toshpulodzoda left the Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute (NVMHI) on July 6 for an authorized 48-hour pass. He was required to return two days later, but he never did, FOX 5 reported, citing court documents.
Instead, Toshpulodzoda traveled to Washington Dulles International Airport and boarded a Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul before continuing to Dushanbe, Tajikistan, court documents show.
Snip.
FOX 5 reported that Toshpulodzoda had previously been allowed to travel to Washington, D.C., in 2024 to obtain a passport, with support from the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office.
Sorry, a what? Passport? And then they gave him a 48-hour pass? And then they were surprised that he fled the country and never came back?
Well done, everyone.
You may not be surprised to learn that it was the office of far-left Steve Descano, the prosecutor for Fairfax County, that allowed him to get the passport.
The Trump admin is suing Descano for releasing violent criminals. You may recall that Descano went viral for allowing a registered sex offender to change in the girls’ locker room at multiple HIGH SCHOOLS because the sex offender now identifies as a woman.
Very suspicious: “Bastrop City Council Holds Official Workshop 100 Miles Away from their Constituents.”
On August 7th, the Bastrop City Council conducted official workshops not in Bastrop (where one might reasonably expect), but more than one hundred miles away in Fredericksburg. The posted agenda lists the location as the John Wm. Klein Meeting Room at 115 N. Crockett Street in Fredericksburg, roughly a two-hour drive from the city those officials were elected to serve.
And no, these were not informal “retreats” for city council members to relax and blow off steam. These were formal City Council workshops covering the very decisions that hit taxpayer’s wallets and daily lives hardest: the city budget, setting the tax rate, Hotel Occupancy Taxes, capital projects, the Master Transportation Plan (including an East/West connection north of Highway 71), water and wastewater planning, street projects, and “Future Goals” that include a recreation center, expanded fire and police service, data center policies, and Legislative “advocacy.” An extensive list of hot-button issues all to be discussed far away from their constituents.
State Rep. Stan Gerdes (R-Smithville), whose district includes Bastrop, correctly called out the problem: “The City of Bastrop is holding a City Council meeting hours away in Fredericksburg, making it nearly impossible for the people they represent to attend and participate.” He noted the agenda’s weight on budget, tax rate, data centers, and surveillance technology and announced plans to file legislation requiring city council meetings to be held inside the city they serve so residents can actually show up, speak, and hold officials accountable.
Security camera company Flock Safety has announced changes to its privacy safeguards amid public opposition to use of the devices and concerns about law enforcement abuse.
However, U.S. Rep. Keith Self (R–McKinney) told Texas Scorecard that although these changes are welcome, Flock is obviously “trying to gain acceptance and put lipstick on a pig amid the intense pushback they have received from Americans across the nation who are rightfully concerned about their privacy.”
“The bottom line is Americans do not want to be spied on, and they reject the surveillance state operating in America,” said Self. “The Fourth Amendment is not a suggestion. Federal and state legislation are still needed to ensure the government cannot access this data without a warrant—and that taxpayer dollars are not spent purchasing or installing this invasive spyware. That’s why Congress needs to pass my bill, the PRIVACY Act.”
Self filed the PRIVACY Act last month. It would require federal law enforcement to obtain official warrants before accessing or querying data collected by state and local systems, including automated license plate readers.
Powered by artificial intelligence, Flock cameras have been a hotly debated topic across the U.S., with concerned Texans requesting that state lawmakers create guardrails for the technology during the upcoming legislative session.
Since law enforcement officials do not need a warrant to access the Flock automated license plate reader (ALPR) database, citizens are raising concerns about potential Fourth Amendment violations.
Among the technology updates is a new default setting of 7-day data retention instead of the previous 30 days. This change is based on Flock’s analysis that all searches “without a full plate are done within a week.”
The Critical Drinker/Gamer covers a hacker group penetration of Rockstar games, evidently including full playable source code of the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6. They’re even threatening to release the ending if Rockstar don’t promise to eschew the greedy enshitification of games (like ending physical media) that’s now standard practice in the industry.
Niu Lai is a sleeper hit in China, mainly because the animation is so bad, something that might have been a 3D animation demo reel in 1994. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
In news that may be of interest only to me, both BattleSwarm and Futuramen had huge upticks in Views this week, at least ten times normal traffic, though a smaller uptick in unique Visitors, and I notice no single post generating such traffic. I can only assume some AI scanned the entirety of the site.
“DeSantis Explains To Newsom Secret To Counting Ballots In One Night Is Not Committing Fraud.”
“Kentucky Derby Convenes Committee To Determine What Is A Horse.”
Finally, an SPLC arrest, Iran is broker than broke, a crazy commie loses despite a huge poll lead, more Russian Wildberries, ships, and conveys blow up, more of that voting fraud that never happens, and Israel dirtnaps more Hamas scumbags.
Authorities in California arrested Heidi Beirich, a former chief financial officer (CFO) at the Southern Poverty Law Center, on fraud charges.
The indictment alleges Beirich helped funnel money to white supremacist groups through informants. She also supposedly had a romantic relationship with one of them.
From CNN:
The woman, Heidi Beirich, previously ran the SPLC’s project tracking hate groups in the US and allegedly “oversaw payments of donors’ money” to people inside of these hate groups, according to the indictment. Prosecutors say she shared a bank account with one of those sources, which included funds from the SPLC’s payments.
“I believe she was part of the effort to open bank accounts in completely fictitious companies’ names and make payments to individuals for reasons that that were not accurate as as described,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a news conference Wednesday. “This is exactly what we said would happen in a case like this, which is that our investigators and the US attorneys and the agents working the case will can keep on working it even after the initial indictment.”
Oh yeah, Blanche was confirmed as Attorney General. Maybe should have had a link on that, but, eh.
The grand jury indictment against the SPLC came down in April 2026, including 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
“In order to covertly pay the individuals, the SPLC opened bank accounts connected to a series of fictitious entities,” the DOJ wrote in a press release. “The covert nature of the accounts allowed the SPLC to disguise the true nature, source, ownership, and control of the fraudulently obtained donated money the SPLC paid the individuals. In order to keep the scheme going, the SPLC made a series of false statements related to the operation of the accounts.”
Beirich is “Employee-2” in the indictment, who worked as SPLC’s director of intelligence between 2012 and 2019.
SPLC said America had a racism problem. It did. It was the SPLC…
Not a whole lot of kinetic news out of Iran this week, but there are additional signs that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s economy is cracking.
Despite the bluster from Iranian officials on social media, it should come as no surprise that the country is not doing well economically. From the beginning of the conflict to current day, Iran has been dealt an estimated $270 billion to $300 billion in total damage due to a steady barrage of strikes, including numerous infrastructure targets from bridges, highways, railways, airports, etc.
The three-month-long US blockade on Iran’s oil exports have also taken a toll, with national oil output dropping from 2.2 million bpd to less than 300,000 bpd. It is likely that there has been some long term damage to the regime’s oil wells and they have lost approximately $6 billion in oil revenues so far.
With a general information blackout in place, getting a proper estimation of the damages can be difficult. However, in recent months many Iranian leaders and media sources have indicated a dangerous shift in the stability of the country. The situation has become so volatile that citizens are reportedly turning to theft in order to get their hands on basic necessities including food.
Iranian newspaper Jahan-e Sanat has reported increased theft of basic groceries over recent months, with store workers linking the trend to rising poverty. Related reports say meat is in short supply, there is reduced consumption of staples, subsidy shortfalls, and broader poverty pressures.
Analysts note that while full state collapse or famine has not yet occurred, the combination of high food inflation, currency weakness and job losses is placing severe strain on households. Iran’s President, Masoud Pezeshkian, seemed to confirm the decline last week when he noted that the country was facing economic “difficulties and problems,” while claiming the enemy was trying to provoke protests.
At Iran’s 33rd Conference on Monetary and Banking Policies (around June 2026), he questioned why people wake up to find their purchasing power has fallen and stated there are “hundreds of ways to overcome the economic impasse.” He noted that policymakers take people’s money and “return it with reduced value.”
Central Bank Governor Abdolnaser Hemmati presented a recovery roadmap and acknowledged an ongoing GDP contraction. He stated that “the combination of war and cruel sanctions has posed serious challenges to the country’s economy. Most importantly, people’s livelihoods have been severely affected because various sectors of the economy have been impacted by sanctions.”
He also cited inflation at around 53%, which appears to be a underestimation of the real currency destruction taking place.
Government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani has discussed infrastructure damage (e.g., bridges, tunnels, gas and electricity capacity losses), adjustments to gasoline rations, and challenges with subsidy payments disrupted by banking issues or cyberattacks.
These admissions are often wrapped in claims of resiliency despite the crisis, but the biggest danger (inflation) has yet to fully play out. SCI data for the Persian month of Khordad (ending ~June 21, 2026) showed overall year-on-year inflation of 88.6% (up from pre-escalation levels around 50%). Food inflation reached 134%, with oils/fats at 278%, red meat/poultry at 178%, and bread/cereals at nearly 139%.
The rial hit record lows of around 1.5–1.9 million per USD at various points during the war. This has amplified import costs and eroded purchasing power.
Crippling infrastructure damage and currency devaluation might help to explain Iran’s desperate insistence on charging tolls in the Strait of Hormuz. If their oil industry is facing a multi-year setback and damage to infrastructure is extensive, tolls on shipping through the strait may be their only source of economic recovery.
There seems to be just enough juice left in the Corrupt Wing of the Democrat Party to rise up and defeat the very worst candidates of the insane wing, as Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong lost.
Yesterday, faced with a potential gubernatorial nominee who hates a bunch of American holidays, Wisconsin Democrats pulled it together and got just enough votes to nominate Milwaukee County executive David Crowley instead of the DSA candidate, Francesca Hong. As of this writing, Crowley has a bit more than 313,000 votes, and Hong has a bit more than 310,000. The Associated Press called Crowley the winner at 2:34 a.m. local time.
Keep in mind, recent polling had Hong with a lead of 18 to 29 percentage points.
7 months ago Francesca Hong voted against a bill that made it illegal for teachers to groom their students for sexual purposes
Here’s what happened: A 30-year-old teacher messaged a 13-year-old student of his every day for six months and talked about how he wanted them to be together, she had a nice body, and he was jealous when she talked to other boys. He also sent her pictures of himself lying shirtless in bed
So the cops arrested him but when they went to charge him, they realized nothing he did was actually illegal. They never made sexual contact and no pictures were exchanged that were explicit enough to qualify under Wisconsin state law. This guy was actively trying to rape a 13-year-old student and there was no law forbidding his conduct
He wound up being charged with a bunch of disturbing the peace charges and only spent six months in prison for spending half a year abusing his authority as a teacher to manipulate a 13-year-old girl into having sex with him. He is not a convicted felon – since all the charges were misdemeanors – and is not on the sex offender registry
The Wisconsin State Assembly responded to this by drafting a bipartisan bill that made it a felony to engage in any course of conduct clearly and obviously intended seduce or lure a child into engaging in sexual acts or exchanging illicit images. It passed 193-6 and was signed into law by the Democratic governor. Francesca Hong voted no.
4 months later the first person was charged under the new law. He was 36-year-old man who met a developmentally disabled 16-year-old in a public park when she was 13 and spent the next three years trying to manipulate her into running away from home so he could make her his live-in sex slave.
To recap: Earlier *this very year* Franesca Hong was one of only six people to vote against a bill that made it illegal to take affirmative action designed to lure a minor into sexual acts and the very first person the bill Hong voted against was used to arrest was a guy who tried to rape an underage girl with Down Syndrome
Marxist streamer Hasan Piker has emerged as an increasingly visible, if unofficial, spokesman for the Democratic Socialists of America’s rapidly expanding political action network. He campaigned for Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong while cultivating close ties with socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
From an electoral-risk perspective, Piker is becoming a liability for Democrats. His far-left, anti-American rhetoric provides Republicans with what we called “a gift” last week. Even Hillary Clinton warned on Friday that the GOP’s “anti-communist messaging is very effective.”
Piker calls on his followers to “kill capitalists”:
Hasan Piker calls on his followers to kill capitalists:
“Yeah kill them! KiII those motherfuckers and murder those motherfuckers in the streets. Let the streets soak in their fucking red capitalist blood, dude.”
Piker: “We want more immigrants to come into your countries and then they’re gonna f**k your sisters and then your daughters. We’re here to destroy the White Race, Bitch.”
Hasan Piker says he wants to FLOOD illegals into the United States so they can "f*ck your sisters and daughters" to "destroy the white race"
I am demanding the Democratic Party voice PUBLICLY that they denounce Hasan Piker's comments.
A federal appeals court has delivered another victory for Texas’ landmark 2021 election integrity law—the same legislation that prompted Democrat lawmakers to flee the state in an unsuccessful attempt to block its passage.
The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday reversed a lower court ruling that blocked nine provisions of Senate Bill 1, including requirements related to voter identification for mail ballots and assistance provided to voters.
The three-judge panel sharply criticized the lower court’s handling of challenges to the law.
“In short, we have been playing an exhausting game of Whac-A-Mole to correct the district court’s mishandling of this case,” Judge Andrew Oldham wrote after recounting a series of previous Fifth Circuit decisions reversing or staying rulings against SB 1.
Oldham opened the opinion with an equally forceful defense of mail-in voting safeguards.
“It has long been established that mail-in ballots are prone to fraud,” wrote Oldham, adding that voting by mail “jeopardizes election integrity and democracy itself.”
Passed by the Legislature in 2021, SB 1 established new safeguards, including requiring voters casting ballots by mail to provide an identification number or Social Security number that matches state records.
The law also established procedures for voters to correct defective mail ballots and imposed requirements on individuals assisting voters, including an oath that they did not coerce or intimidate the voter and disclosure of their relationship to the voter.
The legislation became the centerpiece of a months-long political battle at the Texas Capitol.
Democrat lawmakers first broke quorum near the end of the 2021 regular legislative session to kill an earlier version of the election legislation. When Gov. Greg Abbott called lawmakers back into a special session, more than 50 House Democrats left Texas for Washington, D.C., again denying the chamber a quorum.
The effort ultimately failed, and lawmakers returned to Austin. SB 1 was subsequently approved by the Legislature and signed into law by Abbott.
The decision is the latest in a series of Fifth Circuit victories for the state over challenges to SB 1.
In 2025, the appeals court reversed separate permanent injunctions against provisions of the law challenged under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the latter ruling in June.
Earlier this year, the Fifth Circuit also reversed another permanent injunction against SB 1 provisions challenged under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) unsealed a two-count indictment charging 11 individuals for orchestrating a massive, decade-long marriage fraud network that arranged over 1,000 sham marriages.
Federal prosecutors described the operation as one of the largest marriage fraud prosecutions in U.S. history, spanning “from 2016 through July 2026 and generating tens of millions of dollars in illegal revenue.”
The criminal scheme primarily aimed to secure fraudulent green cards and lawful permanent residency for foreign nationals, predominantly citizens of the People’s Republic of China, the DOJ noted.
According to the 21-page indictment unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the defendants marketed their services through social media, word of mouth and targeted advertising.
Foreigners reportedly paid the enterprise up to $100,000 each to facilitate a fake marriage and process green card applications. In turn, the network recruited U.S. citizens to act as spouses, paying them up to $30,000 per arrangement, while recruiters pocketed commissions of around $5,000 for every participant enrolled.
Federal officials explained further how the syndicate functioned as a “full-service” operation designed to systematically evade federal immigration checks. Facilitators hired officiants and photographers, staged wedding ceremonies — sometimes at local restaurants where participants wore traditional attire to fabricate authenticity — and generated fake documentation.
Ukraine hits “multiple Black Sea Fleet ships at Novorossiysk, including a Project 22160 patrol ship, a Kilo-class submarine, and the Admiral Makarov, an Admiral Grigorovich class frigate, as well as grain export terminal facilities.
Ukraine destroys a train carrying North Korean ballistic missiles some 6,000 miles away on the Transiberian Railroad. Depending on where on the Transiberian Railroad it was hit, that could put a real crimp on Russian logistics coming from China, one of its last lifelines.
Russian oil refinery 6,500km away from Ukraine goes up in flames, but it probably wasn’t a Ukraine strike.
That thing that never happens happened again. “Non-citizen sex offender given green light to vote by Dearborn poll officials.”
OMG [O’Keefe Media Group]’s undercover journalists investigated two Michigan registered voters identified as non-U.S. citizens in federal court and DHS records. One of them, Afshin Masheli, is identified in federal court records as an Iranian national and non-U.S. citizen. DHS has previously featured Masheli on its publicly released “Worst of the Worst” list, which highlights noncitizens arrested by ICE for serious criminal offenses. According to United States District Court records, Masheli is a registered sex offender.
OMG proved that at Masheli’s assigned polling location, election workers confirmed a voter registration under his name appeared in the poll book and stated that a registered voter listed there could cast a ballot. Our undercover journalist spoke to Afshin Masheli himself and Masheli said he planned to vote later that day.
Our investigation also identified another registered voter, Fazlollah Haritash, whose federal records identify him as a non-U.S. citizen. Public court records and Michigan’s public sex offender registry showing the criminal convictions, and the registry lists him as incarcerated. At the polling location associated with Fazlollah Haritash’s voter registration, an election worker confirmed that a voter registration under his name appeared on Michigan’s voter rolls.
More tax incentives to hire foreigners over Americans. “Employers Using J1 Student Visas for Seasonal Work Pay NO Social Security Taxes.”
When a company hires J1 student temporary or season employees, they do not have to pay the 7.5% FICA or Social Security tax on the wages.
If a company hires a seasonal American student, they have to pay the 7.5%. If the company hires a foreign student, they don’t. This creates a perverse incentive for private equity firms, companies or corporations to hire foreign seasonal workers…
Apparently, this is now the common approach within the hospitality industry to save money and increase profit from payrolls. Unfortunately, this approach puts young Americans at a disadvantage when seeking summer or short-term seasonal employment.
For fiscal Year 2025: The U.S. State Department processed 506,142 applications and successfully issued 451,803 J-1 visas.
Among the recent criminal sentencings and convictions:
— Jacob Daniel Terrazas, 31, of Paramount, Calif., was sentenced July 22 to ten months in federal prison “for throwing chunks of cinderblock at Border Patrol agents and injuring one of them during a protest that turned violent,” according to a Justice Department press release. Terrazas pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of simple assault on a federal officer.
— Yachua Mauricio Flores, 23, a Mexican illegal immigrant living in Los Angeles, was sentenced August 3 to 37 months in federal prison “for pouring two bottles of lighter fluid onto a burning California Highway Patrol (CHP) vehicle and throwing an electric scooter over a freeway overpass near officers during an anti‑immigration law enforcement riot in a downtown Los Angeles,” according to a Justice Department press release.
— Ismael Vega, 42, from Los Angeles, was sentenced July 27 to 37 months in federal prison “for throwing rocks and ignited debris at California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers trapped underneath a downtown Los Angeles freeway overpass … during a violent anti-immigration law enforcement protest last year,” according to a Justice Department press release. Vega pleaded guilty to one count of obstructing, impeding, and interfering with law enforcement during a civil disorder.
On Friday, the IDF disclosed the recent elimination of Hamas company commander Muhammad Mushtaha, who committed atrocities on October 7, 2023, and kept several Israelis in captivity. “The IDF now confirms the elimination of the terrorist Muhammad Bassam Muhammad Mushtaha, who was struck two weeks ago in the northern Gaza Strip,” the military said in a statement on Friday. “Muhammad Mushtaha served as a company commander in the Shati’ Battalion in the Hamas terrorist organization׳s military wing.”
Snip.
On Thursday, an Israeli airstrike killed another Hamas commander who took part in the October 7 Massacre. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) “struck in the area of Gaza City and eliminated the terrorist Jamal Mahmoud Abu Kamil, a commander in the Hamas terrorist organization who infiltrated Israeli territory during the October 7th Massacre,” the IDF announced on Friday. ”
From Dwight comes the heartwarming story of Gina LaPlaca, former mayor of Lumberton Township in New Jersey, who, with her husband Jason Carty, was indicted for voting fraud, namely collecting fraudulent signatures to compete in a Democrat primary…only to come in third of three.
Brandon Herrera and Wes Virdell buy silencers. “GOA Members to Make History with First Suppressor Transfers Without NFA Registration Since 1934.”
Ann Coulter: “Google AI will NOT cite The Daily Mail.” Specifically, Google will not find a 2013 Daily Mail article about Trayvon Martin and drug use, even if you search for the exact name of the article. The Ministry of Truth is hard at work hiding those pesky facts from you. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Well: “Jason Arday, ex-Cambridge professor accused of plagiarism, found dead in UK week after investigation launched.” (Previously.) (Hat tip: Dwight.)
One of the videos showed an alleged assault that was reported on July 30. The video appeared to show [Diquan] Hunt punch a woman on a sidewalk off East Boulevard in Charlotte’s South End before running away.
The person suffered serious but non-life-threatening injuries. It was not immediately clear why Hunt punched her, but it does appear to be random.
In the video, it appears you can hear Hunt say to a woman passing by, ‘Don’t wave to me.’ Hunt appeared to hit the woman and can be seen standing over her, screaming at her and asking her, ‘You still talking?’
Hunt was taken to a local medical facility for treatment. He will be transferred into the custody of the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office once he is released and charged with assault with a deadly weapon.
Bonus: “This is Hunt’s tenth arrest since 2023.” Of course Mecklenburg County DA Spencer Merriweather is a Democrat…
Bad guy threatens gas station clerk after being denied alcohol because he didn’t have ID. Good guy with gun: DELETED. Bonus: Perp’s name: “Ofa’tangikivaha Angilau (a classic Utah name right there).”
“Bitcoin Red Team Says AI Is Finding Critical Exploits Across Core Projects. A volunteer security effort says it has scanned 150 Bitcoin repositories, disclosed more than a dozen vulnerabilities, and is building an open-source AI platform to automate software security reviews.”
Royce White, the Rockets draftee turned Republican congressional candidate has declared for the WNBA, along with ex-NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom. How far is the WNBA willing to go to tie itself into knots rather than offend the radical left by just declaring that no one with XY chromosomes can play in the WNBA?
Thursday I got back from a trip to visit my mother and shop for books. Before my sister left my mother’s place to visit her daughter, she changed the WiFi password and neglected to write it down, making blogging a bit more challenging, but I persevered.
Hard evidence that the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen, more details on those vast Minnesota Somali/Democrat fraud networks, the illegal alien hiding judge was convicted, big banks admit to debunking people in the name of ESG, Ford takes a huge write-down on EVs, and Asmongold offers dating advice.
Earlier this month, Fulton County admitted that approximately 315,000 early votes from the 2020 election were illegally certified but were nonetheless still included in the final results of that election.
The admission came during a Dec. 9 hearing before the Georgia State Election Board (SEB) stemming from a challenge filed by David Cross, a local election integrity activist. Cross filed a challenge with the SEB in March 2022. Cross alleged that Fulton County violated Georgia statute in the handling of advanced voting ahead of the November 2020 election, counting hundreds of thousands of votes even though polling workers failed to sign off on the vote tabulation “tapes” critical to the certification process.
And Fulton County admitted to it.
Ann Brumbaugh, attorney for the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections, told the SEB in the hearing that while she has “not seen the tapes” herself, the county does “not dispute that the tapes were not signed.” Brumbaugh continued, “It was a violation of the rule. We, since 2020, again, we have new leadership and a new building and a new board and a new standard operating procedures. And since then the training has been enhanced. … But … we don’t dispute the allegation from the 2020 election.”
Georgia’s Secretary of State Office investigated the alleged failure to sign tabluation tapes and “substantiated” the findings that Fulton County “violated Official Election Record Document Processes when it was discovered that thirty-six (36) out of thirty-seven (37) Advanced Voting Precincts in Fulton County, Georgia failed to sign the Tabulation Tapes as required [by statute],” according to a 2024 investigation summary. In addition to probing the unsigned tabulation tapes, the investigation also found that officials at 32 polling sites failed to verify their zero tapes.
Georgia law requires that election officials have each ballot scanner print three closing tapes at the end of each voting day. Poll workers must sign these tapes or include a documented reason for refusal. Voting laws also require poll workers to begin each day of voting by printing and signing a “zero tape” showing that voting machines are starting at zero votes.
If there is no record of whether the tabulator was set at zero at the start of polling, there is no way of telling whether ballots from a previous election (or ballots from a test run) were left on the memory card and might later be counted. Notably, this happened in Montana, where officials discovered more votes than were cast and believe the votes were leftover sample data that had not been cleared.
“These signed tapes are the sole legal certification that the reported totals are authentic,” Cross told the SEB at the Dec. 9 hearing. “Fulton County produced zero signed tabulator tapes in early voting.”
Cross stated that he obtained 77 megabytes of election records from Fulton County through an open records request that cost $15,800. According to Cross, these included 134 tabulator tapes, representing 315,000 votes. Each signature block on these tapes was blank, Cross said.
So, just like everyone in the conservative blogsphere has contended for five years, Democrats stole the 2020 Presidential election for Biden. When do we get our apologies from Conservatism Inc.? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Americans were stunned last month to learn that members of Minnesota’s Somali community had scammed state taxpayers out of hundreds of millions — possibly even billions — of dollars.
The question on everyone’s mind was how did this go undetected for so long?
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) may have provided the answer in remarks delivered earlier this month that have only recently come to the media’s attention.
The always entertaining senator from Louisiana read a particularly damning portion of an internal memo written by a fraud investigator from the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office. Kennedy told his colleagues that those benefiting from the Feeding our Future program [Emphasis added.]:
[W]ent to the state and said, ‘If you stop giving us this money, we’re gonna call you racist and we’re gonna sue you. And you don’t want to be in the news.’
Well, why didn’t the employees do something? They did. They told the people higher up — the people with the flags in their office, and you know what they did? Nothing. You know why? Here’s what the legislative auditor in Minnesota said: He said that the threat of litigation and the negative press affected how the state politicians used their regulatory power.
Here’s what a fraud investigator in the Attorney General’s office said. She said, ‘There is a perception that’ — I’m quoting now — ‘that forcefully tackling this issue would cause political backlash from the Somali community, which is a core voting block for Democrats.’
Senator John Kennedy reads an internal memo from the Minnesota Attorney General’s office
They openly say they did not stop the Somalia immigrant fraud because Democrats would lose votes.
More: They lied to the state government lied to the Feds about it as well.
Still more: “Taxpayers’ Money Still Flowing To Indicted Fraud Suspect.”
A Minnesota lawmaker alleged on Dec. 17 that a man awaiting trial on federal charges that he laundered $1.1 million in taxpayer dollars and his wife continue to collect payments from other government programs, a state lawmaker said Dec. 17.
hat’s concerning, state Rep. Kristin Robbins told the fraud-fighting committee that she chairs.
“This is just one example of how potential fraudulent activity is being allowed to continue in Minnesota,” she said during a hearing at the state Capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota. Later, she alleged on social media that the state government “continued to pay a fraudster who was indicted.”
With the help of whistleblowers, a public-records researcher uncovered an intertwined web of people and entities allegedly tied to the man. Those connections are still receiving taxpayer dollars for assisted-living facilities and adult day services despite multiple “red flags” indicating possible fraud, Robbins said.
These revelations show that state agencies are failing to employ “the most basic checks and balances” to prevent and detect fraud despite state agencies promising reforms, Robbins told fellow members of the Fraud Prevention and State Agency Policy Committee.
The committee—five Republicans and three Democrats—has met regularly since February, trying to get a handle on the state’s burgeoning fraud scandals. In recent weeks, Minnesota fraud cases have drawn national attention and multiple federal investigations. The scandals mostly involve federal programs that state programs administer, with matching state contributions in some instances.
The defendant, whom Robbins dubbed Person One, allegedly received $49 million from state-run programs from 2019 to 2024 on top of the $1.1 million he is accused of laundering, she said.
He is among 78 people charged since 2022 in the Feeding Our Future (FOF) scandal. Fraudsters connected to that now-defunct nonprofit agency reaped a total of nearly $250 million from the Federal Child Nutrition Program after falsely claiming to provide 91 million meals to needy children.
Robbins alleged that Person One “changed his name months before he was indicted” for FOF, and used his new name to purchase two homes that are operating as an assisted-living facility that receives government money.
One of those homes, Robbins alleged, was bought under the same business name tied to alleged money laundering in the FOF case.
Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday narrowly passed the Protect Children’s Innocence (PCI) Act which would criminally charge medical providers who perform so-called gender-affirming care on minors.
The Act prohibits permanent genital mutilation surgeries such as mastectomies or phalloplasties on otherwise physically healthy minors and also outlaws administering cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers for patients under 18.
The bill, which cleared the House by a vote of 216 to 211, would impose fines and up to 10 years in prison on medical providers who perform sex-change surgeries or administer hormone therapy to minors, with exceptions for rare medical conditions or the reversal of prior procedures.
The bill was introduced by retiring Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) who explained, “Protecting children is not optional, it’s our duty.”
MTG may frequently dance on the edge of clownshowdom, but she’s not wrong here.
The arrests include aliens with criminal histories, including those convicted of murder, kidnapping, sexual assaults, and other violent crimes, according to officials.
Officials underscored that their operations have been consistently undertaken amid assaults on agents by protesters who have thrown projectiles and firebombs, as well as attempted to interfere with agents in the middle of detaining suspects.
“In the face of violence from rioters and demonization by sanctuary politicians, DHS law enforcement has made over 10,000 arrests in Los Angeles since operations began in June. Some of the most heinous criminal illegal aliens arrested include murderers, kidnappers, sexual predators, and armed carjackers,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
She said that California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass failed the people of California, alleging that the state allows criminals to roam free.
“Thanks to our brave law enforcement, California is safer with these thugs off their streets,” McLaughlin said. “Instead of thanking our law enforcement for removing criminals from their communities, Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass repeatedly demonized our brave law enforcement during these operations.”
Among the criminal illegal aliens arrested are Alireza Hashemi, from Iran, convicted of rape, aggravated assault, domestic violence, burglary, and driving under the influence, according to the statement.
Andres Velasquez-Ocampo, from Mexico, was convicted of armed carjacking, vehicle theft, and vandalism, it said.
Juan Carlos Tamayo, from Mexico, was convicted of homicide, conspiracy to commit homicide, and multiple counts of attempted murder, it stated.
Ambartsoum Pogosium, from Armenia, was convicted of kidnapping, homicide, fraud, burglary, larceny, and forgery, it said.
Rene Reyes-Miranda, from Cuba, was convicted of a sex offense against a child, sex offender registration violation, harassing communication, cocaine possession, robbery, burglary, larceny, probation violation, property crimes, possession of stolen property, and possession of burglary tools, the statement said.
Akop Jack Kantrozyan, from Armenia, was convicted of identity theft, burglary, multiple counts of conspiracy to commit a crime, larceny, multiple counts of fraud, receiving stolen property, shooting at an inhabited dwelling/vehicle, possession of a firearm, grand theft of access cards, violation of parole, battery, and conspiracy to defraud the United States, it said.
Everado Garcia Martinez, from Mexico, was convicted of vehicle theft, armed carjacking, and amphetamine possession, according to the statement.
Jose Manuel Perfecto Hernandez Corrales, from Mexico, was convicted of possession of stolen property and attempting to import methamphetamine into the United States, it said.
Yonic Telles-Sosa, from Mexico, has been previously removed from the United States on five occasions. He received a final order of removal in 2013 and has been convicted three times of knowingly and unlawfully entering the United States, robbery, marijuana possession, and aggravated sexual assault of a child, it said.
Mohamed Chekchekani, from Kenya, was convicted of facilitating interstate commerce in aid of a racketeering enterprise, larceny, stolen property, and drug possession, it continued.
A Wisconsin judge who helped an illegal immigrant flee federal immigration enforcement officials was found guilty of obstruction by a jury on Thursday, after six hours of deliberation.
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was previously charged with felony obstruction and concealing an individual to prevent arrest, a misdemeanor charge, after she ushered a Mexican illegal immigrant, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, away from federal agents, according to the criminal complaint.
The jury convicted Dugan of the felony obstruction charge, but dropped the misdemeanor. Dugan could serve up to five years in prison, although her sentencing has not been scheduled yet.
Hopefully leftwing judges will learn the lesson that the law can’t be waived because it hurts their precious feel-feels, but I think it will take a lot more felnoy convictions for thqat idea to stick.
In September then-Acting United States Attorney Joe Thompson sent up one of his red flags about Minnesota’s massive public-programs fraud committed by an almost exclusively Somali cast of perpetrators, The Star Tribune reported Thompson’s shout-out to the state powers-that-be:
“Let’s be honest, you can see it,” he said. “You see all the types of health care companies all over the place. Why are there adult day cares all over the city? What the hell is an adult day care?”
The era of denial needs to end. “I think people didn’t want it to be true, seeing this level of fraud. It was an uncomfortable truth,” Thompson said, adding that it “didn’t match our self-image” of good government.
Two months later Minnesota Department of Human Service Temporary Commissioner Shireen Gandhi has “issue[d] a temporay adult day care licensing moratorium” (letter here). She’s temporary. The moratorium is temporary. It’s a sort of bombing pause in one of Minnesota’s 14 “waivered” Medicaid programs that Thompson has called out.
“President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aimed at reclassifying marijuana to be a schedule three, rather than a schedule one, controlled substance in order to create new research opportunities.” One does not need to be a user or booster of marijuana to believe that this reclassification is long overdue. Clearly marijuana is not as dangerous as heroin, nor is it more dangerous than fentanyl (schedule 2). As I’ve argued before, federal marijuana prohibition is unconstitutional under the Tenth Amendment, especially when it comes to people growing and consuming their own marijuana, as it rests on a tendentiously expansive reading to the commerce clause in Wickard vs. Filburn.
“OCC Says 9 Big Banks Took Part In ‘Inappropriate’ Debanking Practices.”
According to Bloomberg, the banks involved are accused of restricting access to firms in numerous sectors, including oil and gas exploration, coal mining, firearms, private prisons, payday lending, tobacco and e-cigarette manufacturers, adult entertainment, political action committees and digital assets.
The OCC said that many of the banks had publicly disclosed their policies, which were often tied to environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals.
All should have to answer for their illegal, unconstitutional participation in Operation Choke Point.
“Valero’s Billion-Dollar Exit: Newsom’s Regulations Fuel California’s Gas Crisis. Valero’s $1.1 billion Benicia refinery exit by April 2026, driven by Newsom’s regulations, threatens 8.6% of California’s gasoline supply, job losses, and $1.21-per-gallon hikes. Economists warn of shortages and $8 spikes amid Phillips 66’s parallel closure.”
California’s energy sector is reeling from Valero Energy Corp.’s decision to shutter its Benicia refinery by April 2026, a move that underscores the mounting toll of stringent state regulations on the industry’s viability. The Texas-based refiner announced it would absorb a staggering $1.1 billion write-down rather than navigate Governor Gavin Newsom’s escalating mandates, citing prohibitive costs and regulatory pressures. This closure eliminates 8.6% of the state’s gasoline production capacity overnight, threatening severe supply disruptions and price surges for drivers already burdened by the nation’s highest fuel costs.
The Benicia facility, processing 145,000 barrels of crude oil daily into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and asphalt, has been a cornerstone of Solano County’s economy since Valero acquired it in 2000. Its impending idling will axe 400 direct jobs and 200 contractor positions, while slashing 17% of Benicia’s municipal budget. Local leaders, including City Manager Mario Guiliani, expressed shock, likening the blow to the devastating Mare Island naval shipyard closure in nearby Vallejo.
More Blue State self-inflicted wounds.
Not just Minnesota: Haitians in Massachusetts managed to run $7 million Food Stamp fraud ring out of a tiny store. “Apparently, they traded SNAP benefits for cash, sometimes pulling in upwards of $500,000 per month. The scammers are Antonio Bonheur and Saul Alisme, both migrants from Haiti.”
“Gartner Group is the largest IT trend analysis firm, used by essentially all large corporations. They just recommended blocking the installation and use of AI browsers.” No doubt they were depending on research from the No Duh Foundation.
The 33-page legal filing accuses the BBC of making “a false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump … that was fabricated and aired by the Defendants one week before the 2024 Presidential Election in a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the Election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment.”
The BBC aired an episode titled “Donald Trump: A Second Chance?” on Oct. 28, 2024—one week before the presidential election.
The suit claims that in its episode, produced by “Panorama,“ the BBC ”intentionally and maliciously sought to fully mislead its viewers“ by ”splicing together” clips of remarks that Trump made ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol breach.
It asks for $10 billion in damages, citing the value of Trump’s personal brand and “the injury to President Trump’s business and personal reputation inflicted by these Defendants, and their efforts to falsely, maliciously, and defamatorily portray President Trump as a violent insurrectionist.”
The legal action was expected, coming hours after Trump announced from the White House on Dec. 15 that he planned to imminently file a lawsuit over the alleged defamatory edits.
“Literally, they put words in my mouth. They had me saying things that I never said coming out. I guess they used AI or something,” Trump said from the Oval Office on Monday.
The edits at issue center around remarks Trump made to his supporters at the Ellipse in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.
In the BBC program, editors spliced together two clips from the speech, creating the impression that Trump had said, “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you and we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.”
In reality, the clips came from separate portions of the speech, including one in which Trump said, “We’re going to walk down, and I’ll be with you … we’re gonna walk down to the Capitol,” and another 54 minutes later, in which he said, “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Girlboss has meltdown on Tik-Tok about being alone despite all her high achieving. Asmongold has the perfect advice for her: “You should go to a Warhammer 40K convention.”
Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife were evidently murdered by their own drug-addict son. Certainly he was a leftist TDS sufferer, but the vast majority of Hollywood directors will never direct films as great as This Is Spinal Tap or The Princess Bride.
WNBA players authorize a strike. It’s like the setup for a Bill Burr punchline. Do the players really want to give the NBA to just pull the plug on their money-losing league?
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.
Trump might actually bring peace to the Middle East, the FBI behaving badly (again), Letitia James gets served a heaping plate of payback, a bomb factory goes boom, a dive into the mind of a social justice warrior, Ukraine keeps wrecking Russia’s oil infrastructure, and ShoeOnHead dives deep into really icky erotica aimed at women. Plus multiple good boys.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Peace in the Middle East? “Trump Announces Israel, Hamas Have Agreed to First Phase of Peace Deal to End Gaza War.”
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that Israel and Hamas have agreed on the first phase of his 20-point peace agreement to end the war in Gaza.
Hamas will exchange the remaining living and dead hostages in its captivity and Israel will respond by releasing Palestinian prisoners, Trump said on Truth Social.
“I am very proud to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first Phase of our Peace Plan. This means that ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed upon line as the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace,” Trump said.
“All Parties will be treated fairly! This is a GREAT Day for the Arab and Muslim World, Israel, all surrounding Nations, and the United States of America, and we thank the mediators from Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey, who worked with us to make this Historic and Unprecedented Event happen,” he added.
“BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS!”
Snip.
With the deal on the table, the White House said Trump is considering a trip to the Middle East after he completes his annual checkup on Friday.
Releasing the hostages and prisoners is one aspect of the Trump administration’s plan to stop the fighting in Gaza and foster economic development in the region. Hamas is expected to begin releasing the hostages this upcoming weekend.
In September, the White House released Trump’s plan for stabilizing Gaza and creating a temporary governance structure to rebuild the territory and prevent Hamas from governing it after the war. At the same time, Trump gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the green light to escalate the conflict in Gaza if Hamas rejected his latest overture.
“With God’s help we will bring them all home,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
Trump’s announcement Wednesday marks the beginning of end of the war between Israel and Hamas after almost two years of fighting and tens of thousands of casualties. The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas fighters killed 1,200 innocent civilians and abducted more than 250 hostages.
If it works out and the hostages get home, fine and dandy, but Jihadis not living up to their promises and treaties is pretty much the norm, so I’m not going to hold my breath…
“Patel Fires FBI Agents, Ends CR-15 Squad After Learning Jack Smith Tracked GOP Senators. Patel also said the FBI “initiated an ongoing investigation with more accountability measures ahead.”
FBI Director Kash Patel announced he fired the agents and dismantled the squad after learning former Special Counsel Jack Smith tracked eight GOP senators while investigating then-former President Donald Trump.
Patel wrote on X:
Transparency is important and accountability is critical. We promised both, and this is what promises kept looks like. This FBI is delivering.
As a result of our latest disclosure about the baseless monitoring of members of Congress by the prior leadership team of the FBI, we have already taken the following actions:
We terminated employees, we abolished the weaponized CR-15 squad, and we initiated an ongoing investigation with more accountability measures ahead.
Transparency is important and accountability is critical. We promised both, and this is what promises kept looks like. This FBI is delivering.
As a result of our latest disclosure about the baseless monitoring of members of Congress by the prior leadership team of the FBI, we…
— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) October 7, 2025
But will the DOJ take action against Smith? That’s my big question.
The CR-15 squad is a federal public corruption squad. It helped Smith during the Arctic Frost investigation, which involved Trump allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election and the Capitol Hill Riot.
In May, Patel said he folded the squad and reassigned the agents. I’m unsure if today’s comments indicate that the FBI will no longer have another CR-15 squad.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) revealed the tracking memo on Monday. Smith tracked these eight senators:
Marsha Blackburn (TN)
Lindsey Graham (SC)
Bill Hagerty (TN)
Josh Hawley (MO)
Ron Johnson (WI)
Mike Kelly (PA)
Cynthia Lummis (WY)
Tommy Tuberville (AL)
Yet another reason President Autopen was so busy handing out pardons like Halloween candy…
R.S. McCain takes a deep dive into the Democrat Party’s social justice craziness.
Did you ever wonder how the Democratic Party got so crazy? For example, how is it that the governor of Illinois is inciting violent mobs against federal immigration authorities and meanwhile, in Virginia, every Democrat is rallying to the defense of Attorney General candidate Jay Jones, who openly fantasized about murdering political opponents?
To summarize briefly: Bad causes attract bad people.
To understand the symbiotic relationship between toxic political movements and their toxic supporters, my advice is to first read Eric Hoffer’s 1951 classic, The True Believer, especially Part 2: “The Potential Converts.” Next, you should read Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, focusing on Chapter 10, “Why the Worst Get on Top.” Among the personal experiences that led me to comprehend this phenomenon was being swarmed by a mob of “Occupy” protesters in 2011. If you ever had the misfortune to be in close proximity to a zombie horde like that, you would never doubt that the fundamental problem of the Democratic Party is that its grassroots “base” is composed of dangerous lunatics.
If you ever needed a reason to vote Republican, this is it: Democrats are the party of people who celebrate terrorist massacres of innocent Jews.
All of which is preamble to introducing you to the person calling herself “Cloud,” who describes herself as “Pisces / 26 / ATL / Immortal Angel Femboy / Cosplayer” on an Instagram account with approximately 8,000 followers. If ever anyone needed a Kiwi Farms LOLCow file . . .
This summer, “Cloud” went viral with a video denouncing Taylor Swift’s engagement to “MAGA-adjacent” Travis Kelce:
“I can already feel myself regretting making this video. If ten people are sitting at a table, and one of them is a Nazi, and the other nine people are not telling the Nazi to fuck off, then you’re at a table with ten Nazis. When Taylor Swift first started dating Travis Kelce and Travis Kelce was so open about his ‘respect’ for Donald Trump, I already knew we were reaching the beginning of the end, right? When she was posting photos with, like, other NFL wives and girlfriends or whatever, and they were all open MAGAs, and Taylor was happily posing with them on Instagram, I knew we were at the beginning of the end. I just didn’t know how long it would take for the general populace to catch on that it was the beginning of the end. You cannot be friends with people who have different opinions on you when those opinions are life and death for other people — when the Supreme Court ruling today has decided that certain people’s lives are genuinely worth more on paper than others. This is a black-and-white issue. I’m sorry, but there is no nuance when it comes to Trump. You’re either chill with the guy who has death camps in El Salvador or you’re not. And the only reason I’m making this video is because I’ve been very open about how much I love Taylor Swift during the last few years. So I do feel obligated to come on here and say she is MAGA — or at least, MAGA-adjacent. And I’m sorry, as a trans person, if you’re Nazi-adjacent, that’s still a Nazi to me. Do with that info whatever you will.”
Oh, wow — where to begin unraveling this gigantic yarn-ball of dangerous craziness? To start with, the Supreme Court ruling she references (see “NY Times on the Left’s Skrmetti Bungle: ‘Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb’,” June 21) was a consequence of transgender activists overplaying their hand, trying to claim that a state law prohibiting transgender “treatment” for children to be a form of sex-based discrimination that violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pause for a moment to ask yourself whether those who voted to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 intended for it to protect the use of synthetic hormones and surgery to turn children into carnival sideshow freaks. As a legal theory, this is bizarre, and yet “Cloud” (who identifies as a “trans person” despite apparently having undergone no such treatment herself) sees the Skrmetti ruling as “life or death.” This over-the-top rhetoric is entirely consistent with her lazy formula “MAGA = Nazi.” If you don’t vote for Democrats, you are a latter-day Hitler, she contends, and therefore . . . ?
Violence is the logical conclusion of a syllogism built on such premises, and good luck trying to convince Democratic voters that their belief system is based on dubious premises and fallacies. Having convinced themselves that they are “on the right side of history,” they consider it a hate crime to disagree with them. This fanaticism attracts bad people to the Democratic Party banner, and the bad people expect their party to represent their beliefs, which is why the Democrats are so crazy.
A federal grand jury in Eastern Virginia has indicted New York Attorney General Letitia James on one count of bank fraud, multiple outlets are reporting.
US Attorney Lindsey Halligan presented the case to the grand jury on Thursday, according to sources, one month after she was installed in her role.
As noted in August, a criminal referral was filed against James, alleging that she had “falsified records” to get home loans for a Virginia property that she claimed was her “principal residence” in 2023 – while she was serving as a New York state prosecutor.
Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director William Pulte sent the missive to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy AG Todd Blanche, claiming that in late August 2023 – weeks before she launched her civil fraud trial against the Trump Organization for inflating the values of its properties.
In 2021, James also purchased a 5-family Brooklyn property, but has “consistently misrepresented the same property as only having four units in both building permit applications and numerous mortgage documents and applications,” the letter noted.
Loans secured for this property could have reduced her mortgage interest rate by as much as 1% – leaving James with lower monthly payments under the federal Home Assistance Modification Program (HAMP) since it was listed as containing just four units, according to Pulte.
More on that subject:
Not trying to make a political point here.
I spent years as a mortgage banker at Quicken Loans (now Rocket Mortgage), the number one mortgage lender in the country, before I ever went to law school. So when I see stories like this, I look at them a little differently.
The Trump Administration has designated international drug cartels as unlawful combatants.
President Donald Trump has finally named the enemy: Mexican drug cartels. Declaring them unlawful combatants and recognizing a “non-international armed conflict” marks one of the most consequential national security shifts in modern history.
For decades, Washington treated cartel violence as a crime — a problem for prosecutors, not generals. Indictments were filed, assets seized, and sanctions imposed. But the cartels fought a different kind of war, one that combined terror, intelligence, and territorial control. Calling it “crime” guaranteed defeat.
We refused to define the cartels as belligerents — and fought the wrong fight.
According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, Mexico ranks among the world’s most violent conflict zones — behind only Palestine, Myanmar, and Syria. It is also the second-most dangerous country for civilians. Those numbers are not from a failed state overseas. They come from our southern border, where cartel wars spill into American communities daily.
For decades, federal authorities insisted on using a law-enforcement lens. Agencies operated under Title 21, Title 50, and limited “detect and monitor” authorities. They punished crimes but never broke campaigns. The narrow scope bred strategic blindness. While U.S. prosecutors filed indictments and built cases, cartels corrupted institutions, coerced populations, and built empires.
As the Marine Corps teaches: How you define the environment determines how you operate in it. We refused to define the cartels as belligerents — and fought the wrong fight.
By every operational measure, cartels are hybrid threats. They control territory, command loyalty through terror, and run parallel governments. They tax, adjudicate, and even “protect” local populations. Their power rests on corruption and espionage: bribing officials, infiltrating agencies, and compromising law enforcement through human networks that resemble intelligence tradecraft.
Cartels operate across land, air, maritime, subterranean, cyber, and electromagnetic domains. They deploy drones, tunnels, jammers, and encrypted systems. They are multi-domain actors running hybrid campaigns.
Cartels don’t just smuggle — they destabilize. Mass migration has become a weapon of war: overwhelming institutions, hiding operatives, and masking foreign infiltration. Millions of illegal entrants from more than 170 nations have crossed under cartel supervision. The intent is not just profit. It’s demographic disruption.
Under federal law, terrorism includes violence intended “to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or “influence government policy.” By that definition, Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation qualify as terrorist organizations.
Munitions plant explodes in Bucksnort, Tennessee. Which is a real place off I-40. “Accurate Energetic Systems, LLC (AES) is a certified Women-Owned Small Business specializing in the production, handling, and storage of energetic materials for military, aerospace, and commercial demolition sectors.” Chopper footage shows the place leveled.
“Ukrainian drones hit multiple targets in Russia [including] the Feodosia oil depot in Crimea, a chemical plant Sverdlov in Dzerzhinsk and power plants in Belgorod and Klintsy.”
They also carried out a drone strike on a key oil pumping station in Efimovka. “The station [is] a key node on the Kuibyshev-Tikhoretsk pipeline that moves Urals crude to the Black Sea.”
Finland’s President Alexander Stubb says that Russia’s economy is crumbling. “Inflation is over 20% which means that their [financial] reserves are close to zero.” Also: “In the past roughly 1,000 days, Russia has advanced only one percentage point of Ukrainian territory.”
Eman Abdelhadi, an associate professor in the university’s Department of Comparative Human Development, was arrested Friday and charged with two counts of aggravated battery to a government employee, a Class 3 felony, and two counts of resisting/obstruction peace, a Class A misdemeanor, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office told Fox News.
Radical sociologist Abdelhadi, who previously cursed out her employer while speaking at a “Socialism 2025” conference, is due in court again on Tuesday.
It sounds like University of Chicago already has plenty of evidence to fire Abdelhadi for cause.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joins lawsuit to close the Texas Republican primary. Paxton might quite rightly have a conflict of interest here, since Democrats voting in he Republican primary would obviously favor his Senate race opponent John Cornyn…
EPCOR Utilities Inc. recently announced its intent to begin construction and eventual operation of a facility in Galveston Bay, a region that is home to almost eight million people.
Beginning with a permit application with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), EPCOR is planning to construct a desalination plant on the San Leon Peninsula, which, according to a press release, will supply approximately 26.5 million gallons of fresh water per day.
The Bayshore Desalination Facility is projected to be completed in approximately five years if the design and construction phases are allowed to proceed.
Various government entities have been warning about potential water shortages for some time now, so it’s good to get ahead of the curve.
“Morning Glory Milking Farm [is] a popular romance novel about a young woman down on her luck who does what every young woman does when facing financial struggle. She starts an Only Fans. No, I’m just kidding. She wouldn’t degrade herself like that. She gets a job jerking off monsters.”
“I forgot to inform you that there is a new epidemic. An epidemic that many have yet to discuss and that epidemic is female Gooners. Now, for those of you unaware, Goonar is internet slang for someone addicted to porn, and smut is slang for dark romance novels, otherwise known as porn.” [sigh] I did a tiny bit of research on the term “gooner” when I first came across it in an Asmongold video, and Shoe is slightly off in her definition, as the most common use of the term seems to be someone who masturbates constantly without achieving orgasm.
“I actually read the book myself, and I’m not going to lie: the Nineteenth Amendment needs to be abolished.”
“I like how in this fantasy world, student loans still exist. Like, we can imagine a world with minotaurs and humans in a relationship, but we can’t imagine a world without student loans.”
She reads a goodly portion of the scene where the minotaur insists on paying for his handmaiden’s dinner. “Inside every woman there are two wolves or two bulls, the strong independent girl boss and the submissive doting housewife. And in the presence of a masculine man, or a farm animal, she will fold like a lawn chair and instantly return to factory settings.”
“Women are going to be picking up Animal Farm now, ‘like, where’s the horse cock?'”
One of the books Amazon recommended after she bought this one: Pounded By Produce.
“Are we really going to pretend that a story about a young woman getting a job milking mythical creatures to pay off her student debt is not funny? It’s funny. If that makes me a sexist misogynist, you got me. To act like you are so different and above the other Gooners is just it’s silly. I’m sorry, but you are no different than Joe Schmo jerking it to Fat Booty Latinas in Space 12.”
Just wait until she talks about women attending the “Sinners and Stardust” convention and actually sexually assaulting a man there. So if you’re a single man desperate enough to attend such a convention know that the odds are good, but the goods are odd…
“The women are like conquered and taken and overpowered by these monsters. And I think many of these women are reading these books containing monsters and not men because masculinity and dominance in men has been completely demonized in modern society. But the truth is many women still crave it. You see, the monsters in these stories have those like dominant masculine traits that women like so much, but they’re not human men. They have all these traits women desire without the problematic baggage human men bring without being the men they hate or have been told to hate. It is the perfect guilt-free slop.”
On the other hand, he thinks Tron: Ares is “complete arse. “I’ve got plenty of issues with Tron: Legacy, but that movie was a goddamn masterpiece compared to this.” “Not only can Disney not be trusted as the custodians of other people’s IPs that they bought their way into, they can’t even be trusted to manage their own fucking IPs at this point.”
Ridley Scott says that most films today are crap. on the one hand, he’s right. On the other hand, he’s also the director of Prometheus, so glass houses, stones…
President Trump wins another huge (and hugely favorable) trade deal for America, more Obama/Clinton skullduggery exposed, a whole lot of sick perverts get arrested, Nigel Farage plays Cassandra, Russia gets hammered by both Ukraine and God, plus an unusually high amount of hypercars and Star Trek.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Winning: “Trump strikes massive trade deal with EU on energy, arms, tariffs.”
The United States has reached a trade deal with the European Union after President Donald Trump pressured the group of nations, as well as others, to open up trade with the US using the threat of tariffs.
While being joined by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Trump detailed the plans for the deal. “The European Union is going to agree to purchase from the United States $750 billion worth of energy.”
“They are going to agree to invest, into the United States, $600 billion more than they’re investing already. So they’re investing a large amount of money. … They’re agreeing to open up their countries to trade at zero tariff,” Trump added. “So that’s a very big factor, opening up their countries. All of the countries will be opened up to trade with the United States at zero tariff, and they’re agreeing to purchase a vast amount of military equipment.”
The president added that the number for the military equipment is not exact, and then also said the EU imports to the US will have a “straight across tariff of 15 percent” on automobiles and other goods. The tariffs on EU goods were previously in the single digits on average, according to the New York Times. The EU had hoped to reach an agreement for 10 percent across the board on tariffs.
The Very Best People repeatedly told us that President Trump’s tariff strategy would inevitably plunge us into a trade war and send the economy into a recession, if not a recession. It turns out, once again, that Trump has far better grasp of negotiating strategy than they do.
When Mr. Trump first unveiled his reciprocal tariffs, virtually all the important foreign countries flocked to make a deal with him; they ignored Communist China.
Why is that? Because America’s the greatest country in the world. With the best economy.
And nobody trusts the Chinese to do anything, much less honor a trade deal.
What’s more, Mr. Trump and his team have already made a number of deals with the United Kingdom, the European Union, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, and South Korea.
Talks with Mexico are constructive and will be extended.
We can’t be sure, but it’s likely that the China talks will be extended.
In general, Mr. Trump is charging a very modest 15 percent or 20 percent fee as the price for doing business with the greatest economy in the world.
That modest fee could generate something like $400 billion a year in tariff revenues.
And here’s his new wrinkle: vast foreign direct investment into America
For example, $600 billion from the EU, and perhaps another $600 billion from Japan. Maybe $750 billion from EU energy purchases. Think clean burning LNG produced by America’s first in the world energy industry.
Direct investment pledges of as much as $5 trillion or $6 trillion coming from governments and companies all around the world — including the Middle East. And even in Asia — with South Korea putting up $350 billion.
We’ll learn more about how this direct investment is going to work, but the point is — the stimulus from all of that vastly outweighs any fiscal drag from the mostly moderate reciprocal tariff rates.
That’s Mr. Trump’s brand-new wrinkle. And it’s a very clever ploy.
FBI Director Kash Patel found a trove of sensitive documents related to the origins of the Trump – Russia probe buried in multiple ‘burn bags’ in a secret room inside the bureau, sources told Fox News Digital.
Sources told Fox News Digital that the ‘burn bag’ system is used to destroy documents designated as classified or higher.
Sources told Fox News Digital that multiple burn bags were found and filled with thousands of documents.
Sources exclusively briefed Fox News Digital on some of the contents of the classified annex — including that the U.S. intelligence community had credible foreign sources indicating that the FBI would play a role in spreading the alleged Trump – Russia collusion narrative — before the bureau ever launched its controversial Crossfire Hurricane probe.
A source familiar with the contents of the classified annex told Fox News Digital that while it may not have been exactly clear in the moment what the intelligence collection meant, with the benefit of hindsight, it predicted the FBI’s next move ‘with alarming specificity.’
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took members of the press corps to task over their refusal to cover newly released evidence that shows Hillary Clinton approved the Russian collusion hoax against Donald Trump.
Leavitt’s comments come on the heels of a newly declassified appendix to the Durham Report that exposes a reported Clinton campaign plan to falsely accuse President Trump of collusion with Russia.
Leavitt chided members of the press, telling them, “This is a story that every outlet in this room should be covering,” and that “This is further evidence that Hillary Clinton approved the Russia Hoax against President Trump. Her campaign financed it.”
Leavitt added that “the FBI and the CIA were both weaponized to accelerate this hoax against then-candidate and former president Trump.”
The Press Secretary told reporters that, “The president wants to see justice served and he trusts the Attorney General and the Department of Justice to implement that justice and hold these people accountable.”
The so-called “Durham annex” to John Durham’s Special Counsel report was released yesterday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and brings previously classified information to light regarding the Clinton campaign’s plans to falsely tie Trump to Russia.
In a press release, Grassley said, “History will show that the Obama and Biden administration’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies were weaponized against President Trump. This political weaponization has caused critical damage to our institutions and is one of the biggest political scandals and cover-ups in American history. The new Trump administration has a tremendous responsibility to the American people to fix the damage done and do so with maximum speed and transparency.”
Travel back in time to the year 2021 and you might find yourself in the middle of a bizarre debate over the virtues of “cancel culture”. At the time the political left was aggressively trying to secure long term power within the US through a multi-pronged psychological offensive – A war on the minds of the masses designed to force Americans into submission.
A big part of their strategy relied on the fundamentals of Cultural Marxism: The combination of Marxist mob tactics, artificial consensus and the exploitation of minority grievances as a vehicle for controlling speech. This was the rise of the “woke movement” to the halls of government.
The root of their power was not martial. In fact, the political left is weak and largely astroturf with minimal ability to project power in a physical way. If conservatives wanted to destroy them tomorrow the task would be relatively easy. We don’t because many of us still have hope that our problems can be solved through peaceful discourse.
What the leftists did have at their disposal was a massive institutional apparatus of government agencies, corporations, Big Tech and NGOs. The full might of the establishment cabal was on their side, which meant they had the means to enforce “cancel culture” and silence their ideological opponents.
I don’t think there has ever been a psychological war on a population that was more pervasive and tyrannical. Not since Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China has a citizenry been under such a siege by their own government. The fact that we survived this event, defeated the onslaught and actually grew a grassroots anti-woke movement without the use of social media forums is truly mind blowing.
Very few people today realize the level of victory that was achieved. We thwarted perhaps the largest 4th Generation “mind war” ever devised and we did it without any institutional access. We won by simple truth and word of mouth.
Another tool that the leftists and globalists used was the mobilization of illegal migrants, gays and minorities as a shield against criticism or counter-protest. If conservatives and moderates fought back with superior debate or our own protest groups, we were immediately accused of racism, xenophobia and homophobia. Merely presenting an opposing view to the progressive machine was considered an act of evil.
Large contingents within all of these groups were happy to go along with the agenda for numerous reasons.
First and foremost, DEI allowed them to easily game the system. They could snatch up grants, subsidies, welfare, and leapfrog over more talented and more intelligent competitors in education and business simply because of their “marginalized status”.
Secondly, the system under progressives was two-tier; leftists activists, illegals and minorities were given preferential protection while breaking the law and causing chaos. Conservatives were labeled terrorists for any act of defiance. We were banned from the largest web platforms. Some of us were targeted by the online mob and lost our jobs. Others were “de-banked” and threatened with ostracism from the economy. Still others were imprisoned.
This imbalance of the law bred a culture of entitlement, especially within the LGBT cult and the black community. Illegal aliens were given carte blanche to enter the country and feed like parasites. Not only that, but they were treated like heroes coming to save the US from “population decline” and “labor shortages”.
They all participated in the game willfully and joyfully. They were ALL part of the problem. But, of course, none of them ever thought the party would end or that they might end up facing consequences for their behavior. They joined in the feeding frenzy without considering the inevitable clap-back.
The primary argument that leftists would often use to defend the application of cancel culture was that there was “no such thing as cancel culture”, only the righteous utilization of “consequence culture”. This was, of course, a misdirection. The word “consequence” suggests that a person deserves punishment for wrongdoing and that the leftists canceling him (or her) have the right to do so.
Cancel culture was never about justice or karma, it was about suppression of anyone who disagreed with the political left. A corrupt group of psychopathic people with no support from the majority is in no position to dole out consequences. They can dole out harassment and intimidation, but not justice.
In recent months, however, I think these people are finally beginning to understand what “consequence culture” really is and clearly they don’t like it.
We told them over, and over, and over again that the left wouldn’t like it when the “new rules” they were creating got applied to them. And here we are.
Annals of human depravity: “FBI, DOJ arrest ringleaders of dark web child porn exploitation networks with over 120,000 users.”
The Justice Department has announced the results of Operation Grayskull, a sweeping joint investigation with the FBI that dismantled four dark web sites dedicated to child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The operation has so far resulted in 18 convictions across multiple federal districts and significant sentences for offenders involved in the distribution and advertisement of CSAM.
One of the most notable sentences came last week, when Thomas Peter Katsampes, 52, of Eagan, Minnesota, was sentenced to 250 months in prison, lifetime supervised release, and ordered to pay $23,000 in restitution. Katsampes pleaded guilty in February to conspiracy to advertise and distribute child pornography. According to court records, he joined one of the dark web sites in 2022, actively advertised and distributed CSAM, including material depicting prepubescent children, and eventually became a site moderator responsible for enforcing posting rules and advising others on sharing illegal content.
The Houston branch of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 214 illegal aliens who have either been charged with or convicted of child sex offenses over the past six months — more than it arrested in all of Fiscal Year 2024.
Among the five illegal aliens captured and highlighted in an ICE press release published on Monday, four were from Mexico and were deported back there following their arrests. Forty-eight-year-old Jorge Zebra received convictions for two counts of sexual assault of a minor as well as “sexual indecency” with a minor. He was returned to Mexico in March.
Mexicans Sergio Rolando Galvan Guerrero and Jesus Gutierrez Mireles were convicted for “aggravated sexual assault of a child” as well as for Driving While Intoxicated.
Jose Guadalupe Meza, who’s been deported four other times, was convicted of both sexual assault of a child and theft. Meza was deported to Mexico on June 25.
The lone criminal from El Salvador was Manuel Antonio Castro-Juarez, who was convicted for both sexual assault of a child as well as illegal entry, twice. He’ll be sent back to El Salvador for the third time, but is in ICE custody until necessary proceedings are completed.
“Former Texas National Guardsman Convicted of Smuggling Aliens. Mario Sandoval now faces up to 10 years in federal prison.”
A Houston-based former member of the Texas National Guard who once served on the front lines of Operation Lone Star is now facing up to 10 years in prison after a federal jury convicted him of human smuggling.
Mario Sandoval, a 27-year-old Houston resident and former national guardsman, was deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border as part of Operation Lone Star, the Texas-led initiative launched in 2021 to curb illegal immigration. The operation mobilized both the Texas National Guard and Department of Public Safety.
Despite being released from his official orders, Sandoval remained in the Rio Grande Valley and, in July of last year, began smuggling illegal aliens north of the immigration checkpoint. Jurors were shown text messages confirming Sandoval’s coordination in the smuggling operation—including his role arranging drivers and alerting others to law enforcement locations. Surveillance footage also placed him near the checkpoint during the times those messages were sent.
Sandoval was discharged from the Texas National Guard in October 2024. Although he claimed the texts were taken out of context and that no conspiracy existed, a jury found him guilty after a one-day trial and less than an hour of deliberation.
“We live increasingly in a lawless Britain… most people think that Britain has become lawless”, Farage remarked Monday at a press conference to launch a new law and order policy platform.
“We’re actually facing, in many parts of our country, nothing short of societal collapse,” Farage warned, adding “People are scared to go out to the shops, scared to let their kids out. That is a society that is degraded, and it’s happening very, very rapidly.”
Farage further suggested that Britain should leave the European Court of Human Rights in order to restore effective criminal deterrence.
Farage maintains that the ECHR undermines the country’s ability to deport foreign criminals, terrorists, and illegal migrants, thereby weakening criminal deterrence.
He contends that exiting the system would remove legal barriers imposed by foreign judges, and allow the UK to swiftly remove dangerous individuals, free up prison space, reduce taxpayer burdens, and send a strong message that crime by non-citizens will result in certain expulsion.
This, in his view, would restore effective deterrence by ensuring consequences are enforced without interference, discouraging both criminal activity and illegal immigration.
Among a range of policies he outlined to avoid a descent into societal collapse, Farage suggested outsourcing hardened criminals to foreign jails and a hard-line three-strikes and you’re out rule, meaning after three convictions there would be no more rehabilitation for offenders.
He noted that one of the most egregious aspects of the collapse is that the government is obsessed with drilling it into the British people that everything is getting better when citizens can see the rampant degradation all around them.
“Huge numbers of law-abiding, taxpaying Britons have also lost respect for the police but in a different way. The idea, the concept that we’re living in a system of two-tier policing and two-tier justice under two-tier Keir has really taken hold,” Farage urged.
Farage noted that crimes such as shoplifting and drug taking have been allowed to become a part of everyday life in cities, and that one in three Londoners have now been victims of mobile phone theft.
He vowed that his party will work to halve crime in five years if elected to parliament by becoming “the toughest party on law and order and on crime that this country has ever seen”, and instituting “zero tolerance policing.”
Farage also floated the idea of Army run centres for repeat petty criminals to be held in and made to undergo a program of reform.
He pointed to Rudy Giuliani’s tenure as Mayor of New York City as an example of how to restore law and order in a broken down society.
The Tories could have been the party of border control and tough on crime policies, but their feckless wet leadership pissed the opportunity away.
Ukrainian troops also landed on the Tendrovo Spit, a long sandbar south of Kherson. I’m including this one because it includes a closer look at some of Russia’s drone jamming equipment.
Here’s some great outside-the-box thinking: A wounded Ukrainian soldier behind enemy lines was rescued by a drone lowering an E-bike to him.
It would take a heart of stone not to laugh: “‘Crisis’ at Media Matters, As It Cuts Staff, Struggles to Pay Legal Bills.” Golly, a whole lot of lefty outlets seem to be in trouble now that Trump47 is eliminating the graft at places like USAID… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
What too much winning looks like: “The Corporation for Public Broadcasting will shut down by September’s end, the private non-profit that is funded almost entirely by Congress announced on Friday.”
Soros-funded prosecutor = brothel boom in Fairfax County. “How did the state’s largest municipality, a wealthy and highly educated suburb of Washington, D.C., become a sanctuary county for pimps, madams, and whorehouse operators? All signs point to the Commonwealth’s attorney, self-styled progressive prosecutor Steve Descano.””County Supervisor Pat Herrity said that about 80 to 100 ‘illicit massage businesses’ are ‘operating in plain sight today’ in the county.”
The latest event that’s now too dangerous to attend: Jazz festivals, as a crowd of black people beat two white people unconscious. Then Cincinnati Police Chief Teresa Theetge tried to downplay the attack saying that the assault was taken “out of context.”
Candace Taylor, 35, of Slidell, was arrested Monday after investigators found she underreported her income to qualify for the program. The Louisiana Bureau of Investigation launched its probe after a complaint from the state health department.
The Fox News report says court records say Taylor ran six businesses that brought in over $9.5 million between 2020 and 2024. Bank records show deposits of $480,994, including more than $325,000 linked to her businesses.
“From 2021 through 2024, Ms. Taylor continued to transfer tens of thousands of dollars between her personal and business accounts, with personal inflows consistently exceeding the eligibility thresholds for Medicaid,” the affidavit states.
Despite this, Taylor allegedly kept renewing her benefits—most recently claiming $4,000 in monthly income without disclosing she owned the business.
Authorities say her spending included $45,086 in Audi vehicle payments, a $100,000 wire to an exotic car dealer, and $13,000 for a 2022 Lamborghini Urus. She also allegedly withdrew multiple six-figure cashier’s checks for property, cosmetic surgery, jewelry, and luxury services.
Unless it was very hot or very crashed, there’s no way she paid $13,000 for a Lamborghini Urus, as those things go for over $200,000. Maybe that was a down payment…
Progress on civil rights: “California Law Requiring Background Checks for Ammo Declared Unconstitutional.”
But the Democrat Party’s desire to disarm law-abiding American citizens never rests. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy filed a bill to raise the National Firearms Act tax to $4,709. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Entertainment economics: Stephen Colbert isn’t worth $20 million a year. but South Park is worth over $1 billion.
“Texas Democrat Candidate Flips Out During Hearing, Winds Up Getting Arrested.” “Isaiah Martin’s attempt to filibuster the redistricting hearing ended in cuffs as he was dragged away from the microphone by a capitol security official.” Martin is currently running in a special election for the 18th Congressional District following the death of Shelia Jackson Lee, and is currently polling at 3%.
Israel hits Iran, everyone wants to delete illegal aliens, Kamala loses a one-person debate, WaPo refuses to pick Kamala over Hitler, the WNBA continues to bleed cash, and Tim Walz gets his ABBA on. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Reminder: Early voting in Texas is going on now and extends through November 1st, and Joe Rogan’s interview with Donald Trump is tonight.
A new Fox News poll shows that two-thirds of American voters favor deporting illegal aliens—a dramatic increase over the past decade.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has made mass deportation a major policy promise throughout his campaign, as the open border policies of the Biden-Harris administration have allowed millions of illegal aliens to enter the U.S.
The October 2024 poll of registered voters shows that support for deportation has increased dramatically since 2015. Among nonwhite voters, 57 percent now support mass deportations, while only 33 percent said they did in 2015.
Additionally, 91 percent of Republicans now say they support deportations—a 21-point increase since 2015. Rural voters’ support has risen by 20 points, urban voters by 19 points, and men’s support increased by 16.
Democrat support for deportations has increased to 42 percent from 34 percent in 2015.
Voters were also asked if they were in favor of allowing illegal aliens who have jobs to apply for legal status. While 68 percent said they were in favor in 2015, it dropped to 58 percent in favor this year.
Another Fox News poll shows that immigration is voters’ second top issue as they head into the November election. The economy is the number one issue for 40 percent of voters, while 17 percent said immigration and 15 percent said abortion.
is out of gas. The weather is choppy, the navigation system completely unreliable, and the best guess is that you’re still short of the runway. (Oh, and the captain had a stroke while in the cockpit a few hours ago, leaving only a flight attendant as the pilot. She refuses to read the instruction manual or listen to the passengers.) Yes, it’s easy enough to spin up lovingly bespoke metaphors for how the Harris campaign is handling the late stages of the 2024 race — a race they very much could still win, I must always emphasize — but I’ll conclude this one by saying that if last night’s Kamala Harris CNN town hall (with Anderson Cooper hosting in the Philadelphia suburbs) is any indication, the plane may already be disintegrating in midair, before it even hits the ground.
You may have noticed that I’ve had a decidedly muted reaction to Harris’s other recent “serious” media interviews, whether Bret Baier at Fox News or Bill Whitaker on 60 Minutes, in the sense that while Harris was predictably awful in both sit-downs (almost relentlessly so), she was boring and unrevelatory in her awfulness. In other words, we learned nothing new about the depths to which she is capable of sinking performatively that we didn’t already know. They were water-treading exercises for the most part.
Last night’s CNN town hall, on the other hand, was memorably bad. This is the moment her campaign dreaded, the moment when the fundamental emptiness and inadequacy of their candidate was revealed for all the world to see without helpful edits or someone to bail her out. There Harris stood exposed — with an unpersuaded audience and a moderator in Cooper who handled his task without showing any particular solicitude for her electoral fortunes — and she withered in the spotlight. (As Dylan might have said, “Even the vice president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.”) There are moments from this event — many moments, oh so terribly many of them — that will haunt Harris in retirement forever should she lose, the sorts of ghastly stammering failures destined to go into YouTube clip reels ten years later explaining “How We Got Here….”
As for myself, I found Harris’s answer to Anderson Cooper’s pointed question about the border fence to be perhaps the lowest moment of her entire public career to date, and I mean that in the specific sense that nobody who watches it — not even her fiercest partisans — will be able to come away from it with anything save a reflex-level revulsion.
I did not have Anderson Cooper cooking Kamala on my bingo card but here we are.
She’s exposed as a total hypocrite here. First the wall was racist, stupid and xenophobic but now that she needs votes she’s pandering. pic.twitter.com/ctk6nmQcvZ
“What was most remarkable about the disaster is how even CNN’s own analysts panned Harris’s performance as well, some with a palpable sense of disgust.”
Some excerpts of that:
NEW: CNN’s Scott Jennings says Kamala Harris is a “double-threat” because she can’t think on her feet and can’t answer the expected questions.
CNN has railed on Harris after her town hall event.
Next, after weeks of courting Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate, Harris rejected him for Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota – the state that gave us Gov. Jesse “the body” Ventura and Saturday Night Live’s Al Franken as a U.S. Senator.
Another misstep for Harris. While Shapiro isn’t Biden, he is well known in greater Philadelphia and seems comfortable campaigning in Scranton and towns like it across the state.
It still isn’t clear if Harris rejected Shapiro because he is Jewish and supports Israel’s right to defend itself or because he is a tireless campaigner, well-received on the stump, who might show her up. Did she reject Shapiro because picking him would offend “the Squad” in Congress and endanger the electoral votes of Michigan, home to a large Muslim population? Or did she spurn the Pennsylvania governor because she didn’t want her supporters murmuring: “We should’ve run him?
Harris compounded her mistake by picking Walz, who represents the Democratic Party’s modern left wing. Walz won’t help Harris win votes in Pennsylvania; in fact, he makes it harder. She picked someone who is un-relatable everywhere, from Philadelphia’s neighborhoods to small town and rural Pennsylvania. And, he’s just plain “weird.”
It gets worse. Her message, agenda, and policies are not resonating here.
She has tried to stress that the economy is actually good – “Bidenomics is working,” she maintained. They tried charts, graphs, and “experts.” No one in Philadelphia’s neighborhoods is buying it, especially blacks and Hispanics, who are being crushed by inflation and violent crime.
So Harris pivoted to a new message: she would “fix” the economy and “fight” inflation. Her now comically repeated line about being “raised in a middle-class family” draws blank stares, laughs, or anger, even among some in her usual base.
It’s even worse in rural Pennsylvania, where Walz and “second man” Doug Emhoff tried a “real men for Kamala tour,” complete with ads and Zoom calls about why men should support her.
Then they sent “Elmer Fudd” – aka Walz – out hunting. In newly purchased hunting clothes, using the wrong rifle (plus demonstrating that he didn’t know how to load it), Walz resembled something like King Charles attending the Indianapolis 500.
Harris was against fracking – that is, before she was for it, as she now claims to be. No one in rural Pennsylvania is buying it. Her “values haven’t changed,” as she herself says. Rural Pennsylvanians know that her preferred policy would hurt the economy of northern, central and western Pennsylvania, to say nothing of the national economy and national security.
Democrats want to win Pennsylvania, of course – but they have selected the wrong candidate, through the wrong method. Harris then dug the hole deeper by picking the wrong running mate. And to top it off, they’re running on a misguided, if not delusional, platform.
“Black, Latino, and Asian Trump supporters shout down white, liberal Harris supporters in Lancaster.”
The left-wing, liberal, and Democratic narrative about former President Donald Trump being a racist is falling apart.
For years, labeling Trump as a racist was an integral part of Democrats’ political strategy. It was never really true, mind you. It was just baseless hyperbolic hysteria that was at the foundation of the Democratic political propaganda machine. They have used it against every Republican presidential candidate for the last 40 years.
They used it to brainwash, scare, and manipulate racial minorities and white liberals in the previous two presidential elections, in which Trump was the GOP nominee. They wanted to create a narrative that the only people who supported Trump were a bunch of lowly, uneducated, racist white people. It worked in 2016, and it worked in 2020. It’s not working in 2024.
The sanctimony of white, liberal Democrats is predicated on their unhinged arrogance of moral superiority involving race. The white, liberal Democrats think racial minorities cannot succeed in the United States without white, liberal Democrats saving them. The white, liberal Democrats think they are more intelligent, enlightened, and compassionate than Republicans. So, imagine their surprise when, outside the venue that hosted a town hall for Trump in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, it was black, Latino, and Asian Trump supporters shouting down Vice President Kamala Harris’s white, liberal supporters.
I witnessed, firsthand, white, liberal Harris supporters screaming that Trump is a racist and then demeaning the many black, Latino, and Asian Trump supporters holding Trump signs and wearing MAGA hats and shirts. These smug, arrogant white people were trying to tell racial minorities what was best for them. It was a sight to behold, but not one that has not become commonplace in American society. It was a reflection of just how out of touch with reality white, liberal Harris voters are.
Dominicans for Trump sign holders outside Trump town hall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Christopher Tremoglie)
The crowd at the town hall was diverse, with a larger-than-expected minority presence, given the tall tales of Harris supporters’ fails regarding diversity and race among Trump supporters. It was immediately noticeable upon arriving at the town hall. Those in attendance were greeted by boisterous Asian Americans waving American flags in front of Trump posters, wearing red MAGA hats, and chanting the name “Trump!”
A few hundred feet away, a group of Dominican Trump voters were cheering for the former president and shouting down anyone who dared insult the GOP nominee. They stood outside the venue holding signs that read “Dominicans for Trump” and “Boricuas for Trump.”
A Harris supporter passed the group and chastised them, asking how they could be a minority and support a racist and a bigot. A person holding a “Boricuas for Trump” sign shouted back at them, asking the white Harris supporter who they thought they were telling a Dominican who to support. The Harris supporter kept walking. Other incidents played out similarly nearby.
Later, this group gathered at a main intersection near the Lancaster Convention Center and engaged in a shouting match with a group of Harris supporters, who had gathered to protest Trump. There did not appear to be any mention of race, just two groups shouting back and forth at each other. However, again, I noticed the Harris supporters were white, and the most vocal Trump supporters were black, Latino, and Asian.
Also: “Initial GOP Early Vote Turnout in Texas Substantially Higher Than 2020 Levels.”
But don’t get cocky! “Schumer-Backed Democratic PAC Makes $5 Million Texas Ad Buy Backing Allred….Schumer’s group, Senate Majority PAC (SMP) had mostly abstained from the Texas race, playing ball in other, seemingly more competitive races like in Ohio and Montana — much to Congressman Colin Allred’s (D-TX-32) chagrin. But clearly the calculus has changed for the group, which has now put substantial skin in the game in Texas.”
The Democratic Party’s election dirty tricks begin. “Montana Dem Operative Caught Tampering With Ballot Box…The operative, Laszlo Gendler, has been paid by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), according to OpenSecrets.org, as Montana Talks reported. The DSCC is attempting to help incumbent Democrat Senator Jon Tester against GOP senatorial candidate Tim Sheehy.”
A decade and a quarter of a billion dollars later, students and faculty are more frustrated than ever….
A decade ago, Michigan’s leaders set in motion an ambitious new D.E.I. plan, aiming “to enact far-reaching foundational change at every level, in every unit.” Striving to touch “every individual on campus,” as the school puts it, Michigan has poured roughly a quarter of a billion dollars into D.E.I. since 2016, according to an internal presentation I obtained. A 2021 report from the conservative Heritage Foundation examining the growth of D.E.I. programs across higher education — the only such study that currently exists — found Michigan to have by far the largest D.E.I. bureaucracy of any large public university. Tens of thousands of undergraduates have completed bias training. Thousands of instructors have been trained in inclusive teaching.
Michigan inaugurated what it now calls D.E.I. 1.0, it intentionally placed itself in the vanguard of a revolution then reshaping American higher education. Around the country, college administrators were rapidly expanding D.E.I., convinced that such programs would help attract and retain a more diverse array of students and faculty.
Today that revolution is under withering attack. Energized by backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement and the right-wing campaign against “critical race theory” in public institutions, at least a dozen states have banned or limited D.E.I. programs at public universities. After the Oct. 7 attacks, as campuses across the country erupted with protests against Israel, critics accused D.E.I. programs of fostering antisemitism. In the fever of the 2024 campaign, Republican influencers and politicians have recast D.E.I. as an all-purpose boogeyman — the root cause of defective airplanes, the collapse of a Baltimore bridge and the near-assassination of Donald J. Trump.
But even some of Michigan’s peer institutions have soured on aspects of D.E.I. Last spring, both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences said they would no longer require job candidates to submit diversity; such “compelled statements,” M.I.T.’s president said, “impinge on freedom of expression.”
Michigan hasn’t joined the retreat. Instead, it has redoubled its efforts, testing the future of an embattled ideal. A year ago, the university inaugurated what it calls D.E.I. 2.0. At Michigan’s flagship Ann Arbor campus, the number of employees who work in D.E.I.-related offices or have “diversity,” “equity” or “inclusion” in their job titles increased by 70 percent, reaching 241, according to figures compiled by Mark J. Perry, an emeritus professor of finance at the university’s Flint campus and a D.E.I. critic. (The school’s own figures, which count the D.E.I. work force differently, show less growth over time and a much smaller staff as of last year.) When school began in August, brightly colored flags around campus promoted the goals of D.E.I. 2.0.
According to a confidential report I obtained, a committee appointed by Michigan’s provost — and stocked with professors with D.E.I.-related appointments — urged the school this summer to continue using diversity statements in hiring and promotion, arguing that eliminating them “would be seen as a capitulation to the winds of political expediency.”
In many respects, Michigan’s entire D.E.I. initiative can be understood as a sustained act of defiance against such pressures. Nearly two decades ago, voters in Michigan banned racial preferences in university admissions and hiring. When the Supreme Court outlawed affirmative action across the land last year — stripping selective colleges of their most powerful tool for building racially diverse classes — Michigan’s president, Santa J. Ono, went on PBS’s “NewsHour” to offer his university as the model for achieving diversity in a post-affirmative action world.
But over months of reporting this year, I found a different kind of backlash building, one that emanated not from Washington or right-wing think tanks but from inside the university’s own dorms and faculty lounges. On Michigan’s largely left-leaning campus, few of the people I met questioned the broad ideals of diversity or social justice. Yet the most common attitude I encountered about D.E.I. during my visits to Ann Arbor was a kind of wary disdain.
D.E.I. at Michigan is rooted in a struggle for racial integration that began more than a half-century ago, but many Black students today regard the school’s expansive program as a well-meaning failure. The university now has a greater proportion of Hispanic, Asian and first-generation students and a more racially diverse staff. But in a state where 14 percent of residents are Black, the school’s Black undergraduate enrollment has long hovered stubbornly at around 4 percent, before ticking up just past 5 percent this fall. (The figures are slightly higher if, as school officials strongly urged, you include students who identify as more than one race.) …
Michigan’s own data suggests that in striving to become more diverse and equitable, the school has also become less inclusive: In a survey released in late 2022, students and faculty members reported a less positive campus climate than at the program’s start and less of a sense of belonging. Students were less likely to interact with people of a different race or religion or with different politics — the exact kind of engagement D.E.I. programs, in theory, are meant to foster.
Social Justice is racist garbage that destroys everything it touches.
'We must not publish a study that says we're harming children because people who say we're harming children will use the study as evidence that we're harming children, which might make it difficult for us to continue harming children.' pic.twitter.com/hS4CcswkXg
Hezbollah launches a drone attack against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s house, though they cause no injuries. Honestly, this is a huge step up from their usual targeting of women and children, as a country’s political leaders are a legitimate war target.
“Half of Millennials and Gen Z homeowners are, quote, trapped in their starter homes, which are now losing tens of thousands in value thanks to the same Federal Reserve that put them in a housing hell to begin with.”
Ammo.com sent over a report on defensive gun use in the U.S. “Although many dispute the plausibility of more than one million DGUs yearly, it is entirely plausible. With millions of gun owners in the U.S. and millions of unreported crimes, more civilians likely stop threats than are harmed by them. Furthermore, states with permitless carry and stand-your-ground laws experience reduced violent crime rates. Therefore, armed civilians are, at least, not a danger to society.”
Another one. “North Texas Teacher Arrested for Sexual Relationship With Former Student. Carroll ISD middle school teacher Angela Barnes was charged with sexual assault of a child and improper relationship between an educator and student.”
Lin Chen pleaded guilty in federal court today to illegally exporting U.S. technology to a prohibited end user in China, in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). The plea was accepted by the Hon. William Alsup, Senior U.S. District Judge.
In pleading guilty, Chen, 65, a citizen of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), admitted to acting on behalf of Jiangsu Hantang International Trade Group Corp., Ltd. (JHI), a company headquartered in Nanjing, PRC, to procure a wafer cutting machine on behalf of Chengdu GaStone Technology Co., Ltd. (GaStone), an entity located in Chengdu, PRC. Chen admitted to knowing that GaStone was designated on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Entity List on Aug. 1, 2014. Federal regulations restrict the export of certain items to companies, research institutions, and other entities identified on the Department of Commerce’s Entity List. Under applicable Department of Commerce regulations, wafer cutting machines, which are used to cut thin semiconductors used in electronics (also known as silicon wafers), require a license for export to end-users such as GaStone.
According to the plea agreement, by no later than Dec. 4, 2015, Chen knew that GaStone was prohibited from receiving restricted exports without a license, including a DTX-150 Scribe and Break Machine, a machine for processing silicon wafer microchips. On approximately Dec. 10, 2015, Chen worked with a co-defendant to arrange the sale of a DTX-150 to GaStone by shipping it to the PRC in the name of JHI without an export license from Commerce. Chen used JHI’s status as an intermediary to conceal GaStone as the true end-user of the technology.
That’s a slice-and-dice machine, not some cutting-edge process tech that’s embargoed to China. They might have been able to get that legally by just filling out the proper forms.
The last full-sized Kmart closes. I would say “Thanks, Joe Biden,” but this particular death, thanks to Walmart and Amazon, has been a long time coming.
“WNBA will lose $40 million this season. So naturally the players are thinking of opting out of their labor agreement to ask for more money… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Postcards From Barsoom has an extensive, reasonably compelling case that men gravitate toward jobs that allow them to compete with other men, mainly to impress women, and as become the majority in each of these fields, those particular arenas no longer convey status for achievement, because men do not win status by defeating women. Thus men who enter female-dominated fields for greater access to women are barking up the wrong tree, because even their co-workers will view them as low status. This theory has a certain amount of explanatory power, and posits that the feminization of academia begat social justice, not vice versa, but seems to me to be too totalizing an explanation for our current woes. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
All those “new jobs” created in the Biden Recession have gone to illegal aliens, two Trump court cases appear to be in the process of derailment, more Hunter Biden shenanigans come to light, a whole lot of anniversaries this week, and a chance to own the Ark of the Covenant! It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The first Wall Street analyst daring to point out that the employment emperor is naked, is Standard Chartered’s global head of macro, Steve Englander who in a note titled simply enough “Immigration leading to labor-market surge” [writes] that according to his estimates “undocumented immigrants account for half of job growth in FY24 so far” (the actual number is far higher but we understand his initial conservatism), and adds that “asylum seekers and humanitarian parolees explain the surge in undocumented immigrants” before concluding that the continued rise in EAD approvals likely will extend strong employment growth in 2024. In other words, “strong employment growth” for American citizens, always was and remains a fabulation, and the only job growth in the US is for illegals, who will work for below minimum wage, which also explains why inflation hasn’t spiked in the past year as millions of illegals were hired.
How is this not the biggest political talking point right now: since October 2019, native-born US workers have lost 1.4 million jobs; over the same period foreign-born workers have gained 3 million jobs. pic.twitter.com/Z5HVWmQ24C
Does a mistrial loom in the Trump kangaroo court case? Seems like a juror celebrating a guilty verdict before the trial was over on Facebook is yet another reason to throw out the conviction…
Speaking kangaroo Trump prosecutions, the Georgia Court of Appeals has ordered that case halted until the Fani Willis conflict of interest issue is resolved.
In other court news, in Hunter Biden’s defense just blew up.
Hunter’s defense, carefully crafted by attorney Abbe Lowell during his opening statement on Tuesday, was blown up by the testimony of an ex-girlfriend and ex-wife who described the extent of Hunter’s crack-cocaine usage around the time he purchased a firearm in October 2018 — and by the salesman who sold Hunter the gun he allegedly lied in order to purchase.
Hunter is facing two federal charges related to his allegedly lying about his drug addiction on a gun-purchase background-check form and he faces a third charge for allegedly possessing the firearm while addicted to crack cocaine. Hunter pleaded not guilty to the charges last year and faces up to 25 years in prison.
Most of the day was taken up by testimony from Hunter Biden’s ex-girlfriend Zoe Kestan, a woman who dated Biden from roughly December 2017 to November 2018, despite being half his age at the time.
Prosector Leo Wise conducted a lengthy direct examination of Kestan accompanied by pictures from her cellphone to corroborate her recollection of events.
Wise and Kestan seemed to get into a rhythm throughout the direct examination, as Kestan recalled large events and small details from her time with Hunter Biden. Kestan remembered exact dates and named the various hotels they stayed at during their time together.
Each time Kestan described an experience with Hunter Biden, Wise asked her if Hunter Biden smoked crack at their hotel or Airbnb, and Kestan always replied affirmatively.
“Every 20 minutes or so,” Kestan said of Hunter Biden’s crack habit during one of the hotel stays. She noted that he smoked crack less frequently in public, and she never noticed a change in his demeanor when he smoked.
Wise shared photos from Kestan’s cellphone showing drug paraphernalia scatted around the bathrooms and tables of their lodgings. One of the images appeared to show Biden in a hotel bathtub holding a crack pipe in the wee hours of the morning. When Wise showed the images, Kestan easily pointed out the drug paraphernalia and explained to the courtroom how the various materials were used to cook and consume crack.
Biden allowed Kestan to withdraw cash from his account when he needed to spend it on drugs, she recounted. Kestan stated the names of drug dealers and described the drug transactions she saw at the hotels and other locations.
Kestan’s testimony and the images allowed Wise to establish that Hunter was smoking crack in September 2018, following his late August rehab stint in Malibu, Calif. She said Biden smoked crack every 20 minutes at a Malibu house he rented, and she did not remember Biden discussing his rehab stint during her time at the house in September 2018.
Wise closed the direct examination by introducing a lengthy text message Biden sent her in December 2018 lamenting how he would always be a drug addict and his attempts to get sober failed.
And this is “the smartest guy” Joe Biden knows…
Also from Hunter’s weapons case, he was caught on tape bragging about how he could score crack in Timbuktu. Which is a neat trick, since it’s an Islamic majority city in Mali, Africa, and is currently under siege by Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin, a jihadist organization which has incorporated elements formally loyal to both al Qaeda and the Islamic State. To be fair to the crackhead, he apparently said this before the siege was imposed last year…
Also, I would like to apologize to readers for not knowing about the siege and doing at least a LinkSwarm post to it. So much news, so little time..
On Friday, Mayor John Whitmire and outgoing Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced seven people have been indicted for 14 public corruption felonies ranging from abuse of official capacity to tampering with evidence. The charges are related to a scheme surrounding the City of Houston’s water repair contracts.
Patrece Lee, the lead defendant, and a former city employee, had access to $80 million of city funds for emergency waterline repair.
In the Summer and Fall of 2022, Lee was in a position to recommend vendors for contracts with the City of Houston public works department to repair the water lines. Lee allegedly made agreements with companies to have them hire her as a “consultant” to receive a kickback in exchange for expedited payments and bigger contracts. She also targeted less experienced companies and offered her services to help them “get paid faster, or to get bigger and better contracts in the future” as well.
Lee allegedly received roughly $320,000 in payments from that scheme and then steered contracts to a company owned by her brother, allowing them to be paid more than $400,000 of which she immediately transferred $380,000 to her own company. The total amount she stole from the city was $700,000.
“The cooperation that we’ve received from this administration stands in stark contrast to the last seven years,” said Ogg.
The issue was uncovered during Mayor Sylvester Turner’s administration. However, he planned to have it handled as an internal civil or administrative matter rather than refer it to the district attorney for criminal prosecution.
If Kim Ogg would actually go after government corruption (and real criminals) while she’s a lame duck DA, that would be a nice silver lining to the clouds of Houston/Harris County’s soft on crime Democratic leadership.
The Houston conman who pretended to be a rabbi. “The man accused of spending $15,000 on a dead woman’s credit card has a long history of fraud, according to police, court records and his family. Police say Dustin Mitchell, who goes by Dustin Cohen, posed as a Rabbi, lawyer and possibly a cop to defraud people. They also say they think he spray-painted anti-semitic vandalism on his own truck.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
…and the 20th anniversary of Killdozer. The event, not the great Theodore Sturgeon short story or the medicore TV movie made from it.
Speaking of D-Day, Biden just plagiarized Reagan’s speech.
Joe Biden essentially plagiarized Ronald Reagan’s famous 1984 speech at Pointe du Hoc today in Normandy. Watch these clips side by side. Wow: pic.twitter.com/jeGgTS2Nnm
Remember the WNBA? The women’s basketball league the NBA started to draw more women into watching basketball? In its inaugural season, the WNBA finals drew 2.85 million viewers, when the Houston Comets won the first of their four championships.
It’s never reached those heights again, and the Comets folded in 2008. There was a mild uptick to 728,000 viewers last year.
So you’d think the league would welcome an exciting, highly skilled new breakout player.
You’d be wrong.
“For almost three decades the WNBA has been a laughing stock and disgrace of a professional sports league that only survives due to NBA subsidies.”
“A possible turning point for this sad existence of a league has arrived in the form of a basketball messiah.”
“Caitlin Clark, the greatest and most popular female college basketball player of all time, has announced she’ll be joining the WNBA this upcoming season, and some think she can do for the WNBA what Larry, Magic or Jordan did for the NBA.” I think she can make it more popular, but I sincerely doubt she can produce the same boost that trio gave to the NBA’s fortunes.
“The WNBA’s players don’t want Caitlin Clark to succeed.”
“The WNBA is made up primarily of players who’ve been infected with the false ideas of modern feminism, which heavily focuses on issues related to race, sexuality, gender identity and participating in the oppression Olympics.” I would say “Get woke, go broke,” but the WNBA was already broke without NBA subsidies.
“The players that have been infected with this ideology don’t want Clark to be the face of the league and will do everything in their power to stop it from happening.”
“The first problem Clark will face is that she will be a straight player in a primarily LGBT dominated league, which some of you may think is nonsense and won’t have any effect.”
“But don’t take it from me, take it from former WNBA champion and number three overall draft pick Candace Wiggins, who claimed that 98% of the league is gay and that the toxic environment within the the league affected her as a straight woman and made her retire early.”
“From her first moment in the league, she was targeted and harassed because she was straight and a nationally popular figure, and that many of the other players were jealous and consistently tried to hurt her.”
“After Wiggins came out with these comments, the media didn’t support her. Instead they tried to tear down and diminish her.”
“If you look at viewership numbers since the start of the league, you’ll see viewership is still down tremendously. But the league and the media will still try to create a positive narrative by saying things like how this year’s finals had the highest viewership for a game three in 18 years, without mentioning it was still over 200,000 viewers short of the game three 18 years ago, and one of the teams that played in that game [doesn’t] even exist anymore.”
“Even worse for Caitlin Clark is that, unlike Wiggins, in the minds of those who participate in the oppression Olympics, Clark bears the ultimate sin of being white.”
“We’ve already seen this be a problem for other WNBA Stars. For example Sabrina Ionescu. She’s of course the player who took Steph Curry to the wire in the Three-Point Contest, which was probably the most exciting thing of that dumpster fire of an All-Star weekend.”
“Like Clark, Sabrina was a dominant college player who won awards and consistently pulled in higher attendance numbers for her college game than the average WNBA game, yet ever since she’s been in the league she’s faced criticism from players and the media because she’s white.”
“With an Emmy-nominated sportscaster [Chris Williamson] straight up saying the reason people aren’t rocking with Sabrina is because she leans into her white privilege and benefits from her whiteness and doesn’t use it to uplift and amplify her black co-workers voices in the WNBA.”
Plus the usual accusations of racism for putting her on the NBA2K24 cover. (Which is, I think, a special WNBA edition available only at Gamestop? I don’t play sports video games, so I have no idea how these various editions work.)
“This past year, Sabrina was ranked six by the fans and media among guards for All-Star voting, but was ranked 19th by the players.”
“Articles have already started to emerge which claim Clark’s whiteness is the reason she has been elevated to superstar status instead of, you know, the fact that she’s actually a legit college superstar who’s scoring points at a level not seen since Pistol Pete and bringing in more fans to the women’s game than ever before.” This is hyperbole. Though quite impressive, Clark’s 27.8 points per game in NCAA Division 1 doesn’t come close to Pete Maravich’s insane 44.5 points per game, and Chris Clemons averaged 30 points a game 2018-19.
“Those in and around the league subscribe to beliefs that simply don’t allow them to build the WNBA around Caitlin Clark, but rather instead actually urge them to tear her down.”
Is the commenter (TooLazyToHoop) overselling Clark? Maybe. I’m hardly an expert on the WNBA or women’s college basketball. (Although, since I could, in fact, name five past WNBA players with a gun to my head, I probably do know more than 99% of the American public.) But the video shows Clark does have a very sweet 3-point stroke.
And now Bill Burr’s quite relevant WNBA rant:
“Nobody in the WNBA got Covid.”
“We gave you a fucking league! None of you showed up! Where are all the feminists? None of you went to the fucking games. You failed them, not me.”
“Women failed the WNBA.”
“Meanwhile, the Kardashians are making billions. Those Real Housewives shows are making money hand over fist. That’s what women are watching.”
Happy New Year, everyone! The Biden Recession bites deeper, Israel dirtnaps a top terrorist, Harvard’s chief plagiarist finally steps down, and the crypto CEO who wasn’t there. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The monthly nonfarm payrolls (from the Establishment Survey) may have been weak at 216K but the far more accurate Household Survey showed that the number of Employed workers actually collapsed by an unprecedented 683K, the biggest drop since the US economy was shutdown by covid!
Even scarier, while the monthly grind higher in the payrolls number (pulled from the far less accurate Establishment Survey) means that US jobs hit a record high every month with bizarre consistency and in December this was certainly the case, the total nonfarm employment number rose to an all time high 157.232 million, the abovementioned collapse in US Employment (per Household survey) meant that there were only 161.183 million employed people in the US, the lowest since June, with the now traditional divergence between these two surveys glaringly obvious.
A senior Hamas leader was killed Tuesday in a drone strike in Beirut, Lebanon, during a meeting between Palestinian factions at a Hamas office.
Saleh al-Arouri, deputy chairman of Hamas’s political bureau and commander of the terror group’s military wing in the West Bank, and at least five others died from the explosion, which occurred near Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut, Lebanese state media reported. Several more were injured. Following the blast, Hamas blamed Israel for the “Zionist raid” amid its ongoing war with the Jewish state. Israel has not claimed responsibility for the strike.
Many Israeli officials declined to comment. However, Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich posted a statement on X shortly after the attack: “Surely your enemies will perish, O Israel.”
In November, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated he ordered the nation’s Mossad spy agency to eliminate Hamas leaders around the world after the militant group’s coordinated October 7 attack. Netanyahu’s office also declined to comment about the explosion.
Al-Arouri, whom Hamas described as “one of the architects” of the terror attack on Israel, had close ties with Yahwa Sinwar, the group’s leader in Gaza. Al-Arouri is the most senior Hamas leader to have been killed since the war began in early October.
A good chunk of the Epstein files have finally been released. Some revelations: Bill Clinton “likes them young” and Donald Trump didn’t have sex with at least one girl who was asked under oath about it.
Harvard President Claudine Gay finally does the right thing and resigns in wake of burgeoning plagiarism scandal.
A three act farce: Act 1: “Ohio governor Mike DeWine (R.) on Friday vetoed a bill that would have banned both transgender procedures for minors and trans student-athlete participation in school sports in the state.” Act 2: Turns out DeWine has taken taken over $40,000 in donations from pro-child-genital-mutilation hospitals. Act 3: “Republican Ohio governor Mike DeWine issued an “emergency” executive order Friday banning child gender-transition surgeries after receiving intense backlash last week for vetoing a bill with a broader but similar mandate.” Ohio’s Republican legislature can and should override DeWine’s foolish veto.
Robert F. Kennedy, jr. qualifies for the presidential ballot in Utah.
Last month, American Values 2024, a super PAC supporting the third-party candidate, announced a plan to spend nearly $15 million to get Kennedy on the ballot in ten states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, New York and Texas. All are important to winning the 2024 race.
I don’t see RFK Jr. doing even as well in Utah as Egg McMuffin did in 2016, and of the other states, only Arizona, Colorado, Michigan and Nevada might have any effect on the election, all four of which went (however fraudulently) for Biden in 2020.
Ricky Gervais has a great idea: He and Dave Chappelle should co-host the Oscars. That would indeed be a smash ratings success, and I would watch the Oscars for the first time this century.
This is the only way for us to live in peace,” said Texas Governor Greg Abbot. “The citizens of Austin have been at war with the people of Texas for many years now, and to end the bloodshed for future generations, we are willing to recognize Austin as its own separate and sovereign land.”
The resolution brought much-needed relief to the war-torn area, where battle lines had been drawn along the border of Austin. “The weirdo hipsters of Austin can stand down now,” said Texas Senator Ted Cruz in a statement acknowledging the resolution. “The people of Austin can now stop patrolling the perimeter of the city in armored tanks and go back to driving electric vehicles, painting strange murals nobody understands, and hating everything the United States stands for.”
