I Forgot Poland

Posted on November 7, 2026 by Lawrence Person

I mean to talk about the failed Polish Coup in yesterday’s LinkSwarm, and with all that was going on this week I just forgot. So let’s cover it today.

Coverage of the October 31 attempted coup seems particularly poor, but here’s a piece from ABC.

Hundreds of anti-government protesters rallied overnight outside Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal to denounce the suspension of its president, a move they blame on the country’s pro-European government.

Police said they detained three protesters after some threw objects at officers and tried to break through the security fence around the court.

Polish President Karol Nawrocki — who opposes the pro-European government — turned back his plane during a flight to Senegal on Friday evening and returned home. On Saturday, he made his way to the Constitutional Tribunal despite the chaos and said he helped the suspended court president enter the building.

Nawrocki said that a “breach of Poland’s constitutional order” had taken place and invited all parliamentary parties to talks on Saturday in an effort to defuse tensions and find a solution.

“Since last night, we’re dealing with a massive constitutional crisis in Poland, the result of an illegal, forceful attempt to take over an important institution,” Marcin Przydacz, a top aide to the Polish president, told The Associated Press.

The government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk said it acted to restore the independence of the judiciary.

And by “independent,” he means “subservient to leftwing Euroelites.”

The government is a broad coalition made up of Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition, the Left, and two more conservative groupings, Third Way and the Polish People’s Party, or PSL. Representatives of Third Way and PSL, along with several opposition parties, met with Nawrocki on Saturday, while Tusk did not attend.

The president’s camp is hoping the crisis surrounding the Constitutional Tribunal will erode Tusk’s parliamentary majority.

The protests over the long-embattled Constitutional Tribunal are likely to sharpen the battle between Poland’s pro-European government and its opponents, chiefly the main opposition party, national-conservative Law and Justice, or PiS.

Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Council linked to Nawrocki has formally condemned Friday night’s attempted takeover, describing it as an ‘unlawful coup against a constitutional organ of the state’.

The council, chaired by Deputy Sejm Speaker Marcin Horała, adopted the declaration during an extraordinary meeting on Saturday attended by presidential minister Adam Andruszkiewicz. It accused individuals acting without legal authority of receiving support from state security services in their attempt to seize control of the Constitutional Tribunal.

The declaration warned that accepting such actions would exclude Poland from the ranks of civilized Western democracies. It also condemned attempts to undermine the president’s constitutional prerogatives, calling for respect for the separation of powers and judicial independence.

The crisis has also exposed divisions within Tusk’s governing coalition. Deputy Prime Minister and Polish People’s Party (PSL) leader Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz met Nawrocki alongside Deputy Sejm Speaker Piotr Zgorzelski, emphasizing constitutional order, political stability and national security.

Poland 2050 leader Szymon Hołownia also attended the consultations, calling Friday night’s events ‘shameful’ and urging Nawrocki and Tusk to negotiate a constitutional reset. Hołownia expressed serious legal reservations about the suspension of the Tribunal’s leadership, while stopping short of calling it a coup.

Snip.

On Friday evening, the Constitutional Tribunal’s website announced the suspension of court president Bogdan Święczkowski. Shortly after, the protesters — including PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński and far-right politicians — began rallying outside the building.

The government says Święczkowski repeatedly broke the law and jeopardized the tribunal’s work. Święczkowski became head of the court under the former PiS government. Tusk has accused him of blocking judges elected by the parliamentary majority from taking up their posts at the tribunal.

Imagine if Joe Biden had Clarence Thomas removed from the Supreme Court because he was “jeopardizing the Supreme Court’s work,” sent capitol police to surround the Supreme Court building and tried to swear in three new Supreme Court justices the Senate had rejected, and that’s essentially what went down.

With Nawrocki returning and escorting the illegally ousted justice, the coup looks like it failed. Unfortunately, Tusk shows no sign of remorse. Or giving up.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has defiantly rejected any compromise over the attempted takeover of the Constitutional Tribunal, despite mounting criticism from his right-wing opposition and growing divisions within his own governing coalition. In a televised address on Saturday evening, 31 October, Tusk defended Friday’s attempted judicial coup carried out by pro-Tusk judges at the court, while two of his coalition partners engaged in emergency consultations with President Karol Nawrocki to resolve the constitutional crisis.

‘In certain matters there can be no compromise,’ Tusk declared, accusing Nawrocki and the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party of destroying the rule of law. He insisted that the newly elected judges were legally entitled to assume their duties and that police had merely protected them from aggressors. Tusk also suggested that those challenging his government’s actions were benefiting from—of course—Russian interference. He nevertheless announced no new constitutional reform initiative.

By contrast, Tusk’s Civic Coalition refused to participate in the presidential consultations, while the Left also rejected Nawrocki’s initiative.

(Hat tip: Gates of Vienna.)

If everything seems weird and deeply confusing, that’s because it is weird and deeply confusing. Tusk just decided that he had a parliamentary majority and that meant he could sweep aside legal but irritating obstructionism from the Euroskeptic President and his party by force. It didn’t work out.

Political conflicts between elected Presidents (the head of state) and elected Prime Ministers (the head of government) in European countries that have both is hardly unknown, but the conflict reaching the level of an attempted coup is, as far as I know, pretty much unique in modern western Europe.

With leftwing/Muslim riots still popping up in other EU countries, Tusk’s statist Europhillic allies evidently feel deeply resentful that Poland, which refused to let the EU ship unassimilated Muslims into their country, are completely riot free, and intend to do something about it by hook or by crook…

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LinkSwarm For November 6, 2026

Posted on November 6, 2026 by Lawrence Person

Been a weird week. The midterms were a disaster, but I’ve been too busy mailing out books from my most recent Lame Excuse Books catalog to worry too much about it, which is probably just as well. And given the wall-to-wall coverage of the midterms, I don’t think they require too much rehashing here.

Wall Street sees a wave of red ink in the wake of the blue tsunami, More California fraud, more scammers stealing taxpayer money,

Also, a quick update on the new template. Everything works, but there are difference between how the old and new handled certain things, especially unordered lists. I didn’t use to use the <ul> tag before because bulleted lists looked better without it. That’s not the case for the new template, so bulleted lists in the old template are going to look weird for, well, a long, long time. I’m way too busy to even think about fixing 17 years of posts, so only expect changes on an ad-hock basis.

  • Markets drop nearly $3 trillion in reaction to Democrats winning the midterms.

    The Democrats ran on shutting down data centers and more tech regulation.

    The stock market responded on Thursday with nearly $3 trillion wiped out in just a few hours.

    After the Tuesday election, there was a brief rally in the market, but investors pulled sharply out of tech stocks on Thursday to move their funds into safer portfolios.

    From CNBC:

    The Nasdaq Composite declined 4.7% and dipped into correction territory, trading more than 10% below a record set last month. The S&P 500 was down 3.7%, heading for its worst day since April 2025. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 1,531 points, or 2.9%. The Dow erased about all of its advance from Wednesday’s massive postelection rally. The small-cap Russell 2000 index decreased 4.5% and also entered a correction.

    Stocks related to the artificial intelligence trade, particularly those linked to the chips industry and data centers, slid for a second day. Investors fear that a Democratic sweep of both chambers of Congress as well as victories in key gubernatorial races could decelerate the data center buildout.

  • “DHS revokes status of 2.2 million migrants that Biden let into the country.” The misspelled “illegal aliens.”

    2.2 million immigrants let in under President Biden are now eligible for deportation.

    Here’s the Business-Standard:

    President Donald Trump’s administration has taken actions to revoke or terminate the status of 2.2 million ‘illegal aliens’ since he returned to the White House in January 2025, a US agency has said, marking the scale of the country’s immigration crackdown.

    The figure, reported by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on October 29, is nearly seven times the number of comparable actions taken during the final two years of the Joe Biden administration, according to the agency.

    ‘Since Jan. 20, 2025, USCIS has carried out immigration enforcement actions to revoke or terminate the status of approximately 2.2 million illegal aliens,’ the agency said on Thursday.

    There are certain categories of migrants, like “refugees,” where the courts are holding up progress tremendously, but there are other areas where the Trump admin can push to get things done.

    AKA exactly what we voted for.

  • The welfare state fraud problem is everywhere.

    Over the past 10 days, I became the digital Nick Shirley.

    Using public & private records my AI agent swarm found ~$787 million in government billing that made absolutely no sense.

    Thread 🧵
    One physical therapist billed Medicare for 9,006 hours of treatment in a year that only has 8,760 hours.

    That’s 30 hours of therapy. Every. Single. Weekday.
    A single mall parking lot claimed over 1 million summer meals served in one August.

    That’s more than half the entire state’s summer breakfast claims… from one parking lot.

    They went from 7,688 meals the year before to a $4.9 million payday.
    A lab presented itself as a COVID testing site.

    Then billed Medicare $6M+ for genetic tests on 1,433 seniors, including 50% of all cystic fibrosis tests given to Medicare patients in America.

    Average age: 76.
    Seven Florida suppliers filled 99.6% of all the hip braces Medicare paid for nationwide in 2024. All billed from suppliers in one state.

    Orders came from 2,066 doctors across 41 states. Florida doctors combined only wrote 165.
    A lab’s federal certificate says it runs ~600 tests a year.

    In 2024 it billed Medicare for 105,977 genetic tests.

    Including 816 tests for Rett syndrome (a childhood diagnosis) on patients averaging 73 years old.

    Medicare paid them $43 million in two years.
    Someone excluded from every federal health program after a fraud plea is still listed as:
    – Administrator of 3 Medicare home health agencies
    – 100% owner of two others

    One of those home health agencies got certified four months after the ban started (!!)
    Two Chicago labs claimed they only ran 10–15k COVID tests a year.

    Medicare got billed for 90k and 157k.

    One lab averaged 27 PCR tests per patient.

    They collected $23.7 million… then both dissolved in 2025. 🤔
    Two doctors billed Medicare for remote patient monitoring that would have required 87 hours and 44 hours of their own time every single day of 2024.

    No face-to-face visits. Just pure time that does not exist.
    One doctor billed Medicare $23.6 million for skin substitutes on just 89 patients.

  • “DOJ Uncovers $29M More In Minnesota Benefits Fraud, Calls State ‘Epicenter For Fraud In America.'”

    Between Sept. 30 and Oct. 30, the DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement Division and the District of Minnesota charged, convicted, or sentenced 13 individuals for proven or alleged schemes that caused nearly $83 million in intended losses to the federal government.

    The DOJ said in an Oct. 30 statement that it uncovered $29.1 million in fraud in newly charged cases, which is part of the total $83 million.

    The targeted benefits programs include Minnesota’s Medicaid program, the Federal Child Nutrition Program, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Some are accused of engaging in bribery as part of carrying out their schemes.

    In one case, Shaakir Mohamud Ibrahim, 54, of Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, is facing wire fraud and money laundering charges for being part of a scheme to defraud the Federal Child Nutrition Program through the nonprofit Feeding Our Future.

    Ibrahim and his co-conspirators are alleged to have falsely claimed to be serving thousands of meals to children every day for four months. The department alleged he used this fake meal distribution to collect more than $1.1 million in reimbursements through the nonprofit.

    In another case, the DOJ said it charged Feisal Mohamed Elmi, 46, of New Brighton, Minnesota, with 11 counts related to health care fraud in an $8.2 million scheme that targeted the state’s Medicaid program.

  • “Ex-School Board President Indicted In Alleged $1.3 Million Kickback Over $2.7 Million COVID-Funded Air Purifier Deal.”

    A federal grand jury in Chicago has indicted Annette Johnson, the former president of the East Aurora School District 131 Board of Education, on charges that she entered the district into a $2.7 million air purifier purchase in 2021 in exchange for a $1.3 million payment. Johnson, 63, of Aurora, faces two counts of honest services mail fraud and one count of honest services wire fraud, each punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois said. She remains a member of the board.

    Prosecutors say that Johnson, then board president, voted for the purchase, and that the district paid for the purifiers with COVID-era federal grant money. Unbeknownst to the other board members, they say, Johnson and the vendor had agreed that the vendor would pay more than $1 million of the sale proceeds to a company owned by her boyfriend, where she served as chief financial officer.

    Within days of a board vote in which Johnson participated and approved payment, prosecutors say, the vendor mailed a $1.3 million check labeled “commission” to that company. Later, she allegedly pushed the board to approve a $201,077 payment to the vendor in 2023 for an “extended warranty” on the purifiers.

  • “Yaroslavl Oil Refinery Hit Very Hard By Drones: Multiple Impacts and Fires.”
  • “Big Drone Strikes on Samara LPDS Oil Tanks (Multiple Hits).”
  • “Wildberries Warehouse Hit Again! + Ryazan Oil Refinery Hit Hard.”
  • “Kstovo Oil Refinery Hit Hard By Drones: Third Oil Refinery in Three Days!”
  • “Ukraine Attacks Moscow With Balloon Drones: Possible Oil Storage Hit.”
  • “Big Drone Strike on Hvardiyske Air Base in Crimea, Two Likely Impacts. Possible Ammo Storage Hit?”
  • “Ozon Warehouse Hit By Drones! In Adygeysk.”
  • “Excellent JDAM Strike On Drone Operators, Filmed From Very Close Range By Attack Drone.” This is north of Bakhmut, some 15 miles behind the front lines, suggesting that Ukrainian successes against Russian anti-aircraft units have been effective enough to give their aircraft more range for attack.
  • Drone takes out Russian Mi-8 helicopter.
  • A look at a Ukrainian all-UGV offensive operation north of Lyman that failed. Interesting for a glimpse of the different UGVs Ukraine is using.
  • “Trump Taps Stephen Miller as Chief of Staff in Post-Midterm Shakeup.” Strangely, Democrats don’t seem thrilled at the move…
  • “DOJ Civil Rights Chief Harmeet Dhillon Resigns.”
  • Democrats immediately reveal that their top priorities are disarming the law abiding and protecting Haitian illegal alien scammers. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “California High-Speed Rail CEO Resigns After Reporter Confronts Board Over Consultants’ Nightclub And Cigar-Lounge Tabs.”

    Ian Choudri, the CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, resigned late Wednesday, telling the board in an emailed letter that he needed to focus on ‘important personal and family priorities,’ CalMatters reported. The board named Joe Stephenshaw, the state’s Department of Finance director since July 2022, to replace him Thursday morning after a closed session. Board chair Steve Kawa said the resignation took effect immediately.’

    The exit came in the middle of a two-day board meeting. CBS News California investigative reporter Julie Watts wrote that Choudri skipped the meeting, where the board was set to approve the long-delayed train contract.

    The authority had stopped answering her requests for comment, Watts said, so she put her questions to the board directly.

    Her questions went to consultant spending. She asked whether the board would let its chief counsel review every consulting contract signed in the past two years and seek clawbacks, and noted that taxpayers are paying roughly a quarter of a billion dollars over two years to consultants who are “not laying track or building trains.”

    The state inspector general had already put a number on part of it. Consultants at four firms (KPMG, Nossaman, AECOM-Fluor and SYSTRA/TYPSA) billed nearly $600,000 in travel the inspector general called questionable, including trips to a nightclub, a tiki bar, a cigar lounge, an escape room and a gym, CalMatters reported. Investigators found consultants flew first class and hired premium rides, many trips went to Folsom, where Choudri has a home, and some were made at his request. One legal consultant billed $86,500 in “travel time” and $40,800 in reimbursements for 30 Denver-to-Sacramento trips in one year, according to CalMatters’ earlier report. The firms have since repaid nearly $1.3 million in reimbursements.

    Earlier this month the board voted 7-2 to strip Choudri of his sole authority to sign and manage contracts under $25 million, sending them through in-house counsel. At that meeting Kawa said, “Not one dollar of California taxpayer dollars should be misused.” The board had been weighing further discipline, including possible termination, an anonymous source told CalMatters, and Choudri’s compensation this year exceeds $534,000.

    The entire point of California’s high speed rail is to shove money into the pockets of consultants, but Choudri committed the cardinal sin of getting caught.

  • So how’s that rigging the election to toss Spencer Pratt off the ballot working out for you, Karen Bass? “Incompetent, Uneducated Boob and Socialist Nithiya Raman Has been Elected the Final Mayor of the City Formerly Known as Los Angeles.”
  • Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: “Charity Founder Gets Eight Years For Embezzling Millions.”

    The founder of a charity that helped low-income workers cover emergency bills has been sentenced to eight years in federal prison for spending millions of dollars in donations on himself. Keith Taylor, 59, of New York, founded Modest Needs around 2002, and U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Rochon sentenced him, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced Wednesday. He pleaded guilty in August 2025 to defrauding the charity and its donors and to evading more than $1 million in federal income taxes.

  • “A federal indictment announced Wednesday accuses six people tied to one Mobile, Alabama, tax shop of filing more than 9,000 false returns that sought more than $177 million in refunds, about $81 million of which the IRS actually issued, prosecutors say.”

    Prosecutors say Jennifer Beverly, 47, owned and ran JB Accounting Tax Service LLC in Mobile from roughly 2022 through 2024. Five of her employees are charged alongside her: Jadasha Bowman, 28; Kennedy Lawrence Stovall Winston, 42; Solida Lucille Green, 36; Paris Lovett, also known as Paris Johnson, 30; and Shermeka Benjamin, 38.

    The indictment alleges the scheme ran from about 2021 through 2024. The returns allegedly carried false Schedule C statements, COVID-19 credits, fuel tax credits, credit repayments, estimated tax payments, Schedule A and Schedule 3 statements, and education credits. Spread across 9,000 returns, the refunds claimed come to more than $19,000 apiece, and the roughly $81 million issued is about 46 percent of the $177 million sought.

    All six are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Beverly also faces 63 wire fraud counts, Bowman 11, Winston five, Green 11, Lovett 11 and Benjamin four, 105 counts between them. If convicted, they face penalties that include prison, supervised release, fines and restitution.

  • Long-running garbage far left, pro-pedophile website Salon finally shuts down.

    It’s been a rough couple of years for liberal rags, and this week, the digital pile of liberal media carcasses grew just a little taller.

    On Thursday, Salon announced that it was “ceasing publication” after 31 years. The company cited the changing “business realities of independent digital journalism” and an unsustainable publishing model as its reasons for calling it quits.

    Snip.

    In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, Salon branded the GOP a “terrorist group” and suggested that “MAGA and Christian nationalism” presented a greater threat than “Hamas could ever be.” It also pushed characterizations of President Donald Trump and his allies as Nazis.

    Salon blogger Chauncey DeVega claimed in a Sept. 26, 2024, piece that “Donald Trump and his surrogates are continuing to channel and amplify Nazism and Adolf Hitler. This is not random or happenstance. It is part of a strategy.”

    DeVega, writing in the wake of multiple attempts on the president’s life, further claimed that Trump was planning “to turn America into a type of Fourth Reich” and planning an “ethnic cleansing.”

    While keen to smear Republicans as terrorists and Nazis, Salon did its apparent best to humanize pedophiles.

    In September 2015, Salon published an article titled, “I’m a pedophile, but not a monster,” with the sub-headline, “I’m attracted to children but unwilling to act on it. Before judging me harshly, would you be willing to listen?”

    The article by self-identified American pedophile Todd Nickerson characterized pedophilia as a sexual orientation and pedophiles as victims who “suffer in silence”; insinuated there might be good things about having that particular “sexuality”; and called on readers to “be understanding and supportive.”

    Like its article mocking Warmbier and its article titled “‘Genetic sexual attraction is normal, and very real’: A woman describes the reality of parent-child incest,” Salon’s pedophile article was later scrubbed from its website. Salon’s article defending humans having sex with dolphins is, however, still up on its website.

    The demise of Salon — which was valued at $107 million when it went public in 1999 — was generally well-received.

    Hopefully anyone involved in that rag will never be allowed to work in media ever again.

  • The Bulwerk’s TDS turns into MDS with a side-effect of acute communism.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • UK comedian/actor/podcaster Russell Brand found “guilty on one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault. He was found not guilty on two other rape charges and not guilty of attempted indecent assault.” “In the rape case, the assault took place in 2009 when a woman who met with Brand to have sex was, according to her accusations, forced to go further than she planned. The assaults Brand was convicted of took place in the 2000s as well.”
  • Oil rig off Gabon collapses and sinks.
  • Are Samsung TV’s listening to you?
  • Tesla to wind down cybertruck production in favor of Cybercabs.

    Gigafactory Texas, located outside of Austin, is the only known Tesla facility used to manufacture the Cybertruck’s components. Musk did not specify whether Cybertruck production will be moved to another facility or phased out entirely, but he said the “Cybertruck fleet will be around for a long time” in response to a user on his social media platform.

    Tesla’s decision comes after years of poor sales for the Cybertruck model, which faced intense political backlash when Musk associated himself with President Donald Trump. Over 20,000 Cybertrucks were sold in the United States last year, down 48% from nearly 39,000 units in 2024. For the first three quarters this year, over 11,500 units were sold, per preliminary figures.

    For an “unsuccessful” truck, I sure see a lot of them on the road.

  • “Utah man tells friend he can dodge a bullet. Friend pleads guilty to manslaughter.”
  • Fulton County auctions off land that doesn’t exist.
  • Adam Savage geeks out at the Library of Congress. Including the Thomas Jefferson draft of the Declaration of Independence corrected by John Adams and Ben Franklin.
  • Jeremy Clarkson on cycle lanes: “They can all fuck off. All of them.”
  • Critical Drinker raves about Widow’s Bay.
  • He also liked Godilla Minus Zero, albeit not as much as Godzilla Minus One. I need to see both of them…
  • Consumer news you can use: How to tell if your Lamborghini odometer has been tampered with.
  • What does one buck get you at the laundromat?
  • The Slow-Mo Guys play with generating sparks in the dark. Some of the shots are profoundly beautiful.
  • “Idiot King Forgets To Cancel Election.”
  • “Russell Brand Convicted In UK Court On Charges Of Raping While Not Muslim.”
  • Weird looking senior dog rescued from under a Houston bridge.

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





Posted in Austin, Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Technology, Texas, video, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Texas: Bright Spots In The Carnage

Posted on November 5, 2026 by Lawrence Person

While the results of this week’s election were very dismal indeed, there were a few bright spots for Texas conservatives.

  • Representative August Pfluger won re-election in the the redrawn 11th Congressional District, and will be my Congressman come January 3rd.
  • In fact, Texas will have the same number of Republican U.S. Representatives as it did before the 2026 election: 24.
  • Republicans maintain a majority in the Texas senate. I don’t say “control,” because because under the Texas constitution, Lieutenant Governor elect Vikki Godwin will theoretically run that chamber. But Democrats did flip the Texas House.
  • Because Republicans maintained a majority in the Texas senate, it’s all but impossible for Democrats to be able to ram any sort of redistricting through before the 2030 census.
  • On the Texas Supreme Court, while Democrats captured all four 2026 races there, republicans still hold a 5-4 majority in that nine member body.
  • While turning Texas blue, voters also rejected tax hikes and school bonds.

    While electing a bevy of Democrats to office up and down the ballot on Tuesday, Texas voters also rejected many of the tax increases and bonds proposed by their local governments, sending a signal to newly elected leaders about the parameters of the 2026 mandate.

    “Even given what’s happened at the state level as far as the elections go, I think that these were good signs that people are upset about their property taxes, and they’re willing to reject these large bond propositions,” economist Vance Ginn told The Texan.

    The Texas Election Code requires that local governments include the sentence, “THIS IS A TAX INCREASE” for a Voter-Approval Tax Rate Election (VATRE), and the Texas Education Code requires “THIS IS A PROPERTY TAX INCREASE” at the top of the ballot proposition for school bonds.

    Some of the largest rejections were in the urban areas of the state, where Democratic officials swept elections.

    In the Dallas-Fort Worth area, voters rejected a number of bond and tax increase propositions.

    Dallas County’s proposed 2.4 cent tax rate increase was rejected by voters by a 3.7 percent margin. The City of Dallas’ bond Proposition A for $443 million for public safety facilities also failed by 13 points.

    In the City of Wylie, which lies in both Dallas and Collin counties, voters rejected four out of five bond propositions totaling $90.5 million. They approved the largest bond at $25.5 million for historic downtown improvements.

    Irving Independent School District (ISD) voters rejected all four propositions in a $952.4 million bond package by double-digit margins.

    Voters rejected a Mesquite ISD proposition for a Voter-Approval Tax Rate Election (VATRE) by 15 points that it claimed would generate $16 million per year and fund teacher compensation.

    Residents of the affluent University Park community, enveloped by the City of Dallas, approved a tax rate increase on their ballot. It was touted as funding needed for police officers, firefighters, public safety pensions, and residential parking enforcement.

    In the Houston area, voters rejected every school bond proposition and VATRE on the November 3, 2026 ballot, according to unofficial Harris County results.

    The largest rejection came in Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, Texas’s third-largest public school district. Voters turned down a VATRE and a $1.6 billion bond package split across four propositions. The VATRE, which would have raised the maintenance-and-operations rate by roughly 9 cents per $100 of a property’s appraised value and generated an estimated $100 million in new revenue, received only 32.5 percent support.

    Propositions B through E for infrastructure and security, technology, athletic stadiums, and swimming pools were all defeated by between 63 percent and 73 percent.

    Channelview ISD saw similar results. Its 7-cent VATRE for roughly $7.5 million in annual revenue failed by 71 percent. Four bond propositions totaling around $165 million for facilities, safety, technology, and a multipurpose indoor facility also lost.

    Crosby ISD’s $208 million bond package for a new elementary school, a replacement middle school, and campus improvements failed as well. Proposition A received about 30 percent support and Proposition B about 31 percent.

    VATREs in Spring, Huffman, and La Porte ISDs also failed. Spring sought a 2-cent increase for about $15.5 million in combined local and state funding—its second recent attempt. Huffman’s 3-cent measure, projected to raise $2 million without raising the overall tax rate due to compression, was rejected. La Porte’s 12-cent VATRE, aimed at raising $8.4 million to address a roughly $12 million deficit, also failed to pass.

    Snipping over Tarrant and Collin county.

    In Central Texas, VATREs failed in Bastrop, Del Valle, Georgetown, Leander, and Round Rock ISDs, and Bexar County area voters rejected school district tax increases in East Central, Northside, San Antonio, and South San Antonio ISDs.

    Two public school districts that narrowly passed tax increases are Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City ISD near San Antonio and Seguin ISD.

    Ginn suggested that newly elected Democratic officials, along with Republicans, should heed the warning sign given by the majority of voters who soundly rejected these tax increases and bond proposals.

    “This is a huge blue wave, but not a mandate for Democrats,” Ginn said. “The election results also included a rejection of big government policies and progressive populism.”

    “I hope that this is a wake-up call to say maybe we need to do something about government spending.”

And there it is, my attempt to be a little ray of sunshine after the blue tsunami…

Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Just Got TWO Phising Emails With A BMP Attachment

Posted on November 5, 2026 by Lawrence Person

Just got a phishing email as a fake “order confirmation” that Gmail didn’t put in my spam folder until I tagged it as a phishing attack:

Powlowski – Daugherty – Order confirmation – 5-November-2026 at 6:27
One attachment • Scanned by Gmail

The attachment seems to indicate an order from Springfield Armory. I didn’t click on it because I’m not a moron and nobody sends an invoice in .BMP, which is a Windows bitmap format. There’s been a known exploit to embed malicious code within a BMP file since 2021.

Then, just minutes later, I got another one:

Pacocha – Krajcik – Order confirmation – 5-November-2026 at 6:47
One attachment • Scanned by Gmail

I reported both for Phishing.

Never click attachments on a email you weren’t expecting, and never click on a file attachment that looks suspicious or is a weird format type.

Always be alert for scams in any unexpected email.

Stay alert, people…

Posted in Crime, Technology | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Well, That Absolutely Fucking Sucked

Posted on November 4, 2026 by Lawrence Person

The Democratic Media Complex tries to will a “Blue Wave” into existence every two years, and they finally got one.

Call it Trump fatigue, inflation fatigue, anti-ICE animus or disapproval of the Iran War, but when every statewide race in Texas flips to the Democrats (as appears likely now), that’s a blue wave.

The first inkling I had of how bad things were going to go was seeing Republican Ashley Moody barely break 50% in Florida.

Talafreako defeated Paxton. Evidently disgust over transing kids and the rest of the social justice warrior agenda wasn’t enough to to drown out the siren song of cheaper gas and free (i.e. taxpayer funded) stuff. Judging from the across-the-board statewide losses in Texas, running Cornyn instead of Paxton wouldn’t have made a lick of difference.

Brandon Herrera won’t be a U.S. Congressman.

Judging from results in the Rio Grande Valley, all of Greg Abbott’s long-term efforts to turn Hispanic voters into Republicans seems to have come undone this year.

Nationally, Democrats take the House and Senate, though not by large enough margins to overcome a Trump veto.

Abdul El-Sayed looks head for victory in Michigan, albeit the race looks much closer there. The Red/Green Commie/Jihadi alliance now has a greenlight to run Democrat priorities.

Republicans weren’t wiped out everywhere. It looks like Republicans will maintain control of the Texas House and Senate, so disarming the law-abiding and crippling the oil and gas industry are probably off the menu. Republicans won in places like Florida, Tennessee and Oklahoma.

But make no mistake: Losing Texas is going to hurt. Expect malicious prosecution of Elon Musk to be a top priority, as well as intransigence on keeping border security agreements Texas previously made with the Trump Administration, and expect the incoming Democrat attorney general to drop all lawsuits over anything touching on Democrat financial backers like Soros and Singham, far-left NGOs, voting fraud or subsidies for illegal aliens.

If there’s a silver lining, the size of the victory will likely embolden the Democrats worse impulses. “See, we should have been running socialists and jihadists all along!” It’s the DSA’s and Hasan Piker’s party now. And Trump Derangement Syndrome is the party’s real point of unification. Expect them to immediately try to impeach Trump again, and wage a full scale social justice culture war, because they won’t be able to help themselves.

And Republicans have a chance to bounce back in two years. There are no lost causes in American politics, because there are no won causes.

Possibly more later, if I feel up to it.

Posted in Austin, Democrats, Jihad, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 21 Comments

Election Day! Go Vote! (Plus Mini Election Roundup)

Posted on November 3, 2026 by Lawrence Person

Election Day is finally here! Get out and vote if you haven’t already!

And now a super-brief election news roundup, since I’m slammed right now:

  • Early trends show Republicans areas turning out at near-2024 levels.
  • In Michigan, Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens, the woman jihadist scumbag Abdul El-Sayed defeated in the primary, just endorsed Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers over him.
  • And she’s not the only one! There’s some polling place interviews that suggest those defections are having an effect, and that black voters never warmed to El-Sayed and are tired of being taken for granted.
  • Last poll shows Susan Collins up by 1.2% in Maine, by the same polling company that showed her down by six in the last race that she ended up winning by eight.
  • I was going to scan in some election flyers, but I don’t have time. I got two from August Pfluger, my congressman come January 3rd thanks to redistricting. I should check with him to see if he needs staffing for a north Austin office. Believe it or not, I actually got two flyers from Talarico. I doubt the “Paxton is dirty and cost taxpayers money” one moves the needle, but the other declares “James Talarico has a plan to address the maternal mortality crisis,” and the back makes it clear it’s pitched at black women. Mail-dropping flyers to eeruone, including Republicans, may be a low percentage move, but if you have the money the Talarico campaign has, it’s not the worst play, especially if you’re trying to appeal to women, especially black women bitter over Jasmine Crockett’s defeat. But if black women are your audience, why mail it to me? Finally, I got a flyer from Ted Brown, calling to abolish the IRS. Ballotpedia tells me he’s the Libertarian senate candidate this year, information to be found nowhere on the flyer itself. This does not exactly speak to keen attention to detail…
  • “Bored Of Having A Good State, Texas Considers Voting Democrat.

That’s all I have time for. Go vote!

Posted in Austin, Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Talarico Staffers Confirm His Moderation Is Fake

Posted on November 2, 2026 by Lawrence Person

After yesterday’s post, I thought I was finally done posting about James Talarico. But no! The James O’Keefe Media Group just dropped a hidden video filmed in my neck of the woods, and it reveals that his staffers know his entire moderate stance is a sham:

“James [Talarico], he’s not going middle.”

“He’s [Talarico] definitely going to play the middle ground because he’s in Texas. but he is a lot more progressive on it [abortion].”

“Don’t put too much stock into border security comments…“He [Talarico] and I have spoken about these issues.”

“He [Talarico] probably said that to try to make himself appear more centrist. He’s very liberal…but we’ve got to get elected, so we can do something.”

Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico’s girlfriend, Brianna Menard, was identified by her father, Matt Menard, during an undercover conversation in which he and Williamson County Democratic Chair Kim Collins Gilby separately cast doubt on Talarico’s recent moderate messaging on border security, immigration, and transgender surgeries for minors.

Menard, who claims to communicate with Talarico weekly and has personally discussed immigration policies with Talarico. Insisting James Talarico remains a progressive, opposes ICE’s immigration enforcement tactics, and supports a pathway to citizenship for everyone.

Democrat believes in illegal alien amnesty! Drink!

Menard also warns against putting too much stock in Talarico’s public border security remarks.

Meanwhile, Collins Gilby suggests Talarico’s CNN town hall comments on transgender surgeries for minors were an attempt to appear more centrist to Texas voters, arguing that Democrats must first win elections to advance their priorities.

Inside Travis County Democratic Headquarters, regional organizer Andhi Beltran Garcia mentions that James Talarico is portraying himself as a moderate on issues like abortion to appeal to Texas voters while privately holding more progressive positions.

In short, Talarico still believes in every bit of social justice lunacy he was spouting off in 2020, wants to amnesty the huge wave of illegal aliens President Autopen let flood across the border, and he’s just lying about what he believes to get elected.

Just like all of us knew.

(Hat tip: Williamson County Republican Party chair Michelle Evans.)

Posted in Austin, Border Control, Democrats, Elections, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, video | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Pre-Election Talafreako Roundup

Posted on November 1, 2026 by Lawrence Person

This seemingly eternal election season is finally stumbling to a finish, so our last chance to take our shots at the walking freakshow that is James Talarico is drawing to a close. So let’s pull out those rotten tomatoes:

  • Everyone was wondering what sort of freak James Talarico, and evidently he’s the kind of freak that signs up for Fetishes and Group Sex on Fling.com right before he starts teaching sixth graders.

    An email address that James Talarico’s attorneys confirmed belonged to and was at one time used by the Texas Democratic U.S. Senate candidate appears in a database search result associated with the adult dating website Fling.com’s 2011 data breach. A Fling.com account was created with Talarico’s email address just before Talarico began teaching sixth graders.

    The result lists the username “mohawk787” and an account creation timestamp of December 26, 2010, at 20:56:49. The profile’s interests field lists “FETISH,” “GROUPSEX,” “SEXUAL RELATIONS,” “ONLINE FLIRTING,” and “OTHER.”

    His lawyers claim he was “hacked,” but why would anyone care about an unknown Talarico in 2011, long before he ever ran for office?

  • Yet another Talarico law busted. “NY Times Exposes Talarico’s Fake Story About Overcrowded Classrooms.”

    James Talarico has a compelling story about teaching classrooms with 45 students during a two-year stint as a Teach For America educator, but even the New York Times is poking holes in it.

    “When I entered the classroom, the Texas Legislature had just gutted the public education budget by $5 billion — so I had 45 kids in one classroom,” Talarico claims on his website. “There weren’t enough desks for everyone, so some of my students sat on the air conditioning unit.”

    “In the richest country on the planet, I knew that was unacceptable,” he says.

    It is a compelling claim – Republicans cut public education funding so these students suffer. Talarico certainly thinks it will resonate with voters, which is why he keeps repeating it.

    “At one point, I had 45 students in one classroom,” he said. “There weren’t enough desks for all those kids, so I had students sitting on the air-conditioning unit in the wealthiest country in human history — in the 21st century, children sitting on the air-conditioning unit.”

    But the NY Times says the story may not be true.

    The Times reported:

    Documents from the Texas Education Agency indicate that the most students ever assigned to a class period that Mr. Talarico taught was 30, with most of his classes ranging in size from 22 to 27 students. In the interviews with Mr. Talarico’s former students and colleagues, they recalled classrooms where every desk was occupied, but not crowding to the point where students were sitting on air-conditioners.

  • Little did I know that when I put up yesterday’s post that creator Tetsuo SI had already put up a video slamming Talarico:

  • Very latest poll has Paxton up over Talarico. Don’t get cocky. But also don’t get black-pilled. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

    • It all comes down to turnout…

    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

    “America Innovates, Europe Regulates”

    Posted on October 31, 2026 by Lawrence Person

    Finally, a suitable use for AI-generated videos: Making fun of the EU choosing regulation over innovation.

    “We formed a committee.”

    “Please accept all cookies.”

    This is the way the EU ends
    This is the way the EU ends
    This is the way the EU ends
    Not with a bang, but with a committee

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    Posted in Regulation, Technology, Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

    LinkSwarm For October 30, 2026

    Posted on October 30, 2026 by Lawrence Person

    Happy Halloween Eve! Between finishing up a Lame Excuse Books catalog and getting ready for Halloween, time for the LinkSwarm has been squeezed this week, but I think we’ll muddle through. And I’m still dealing with discontents from the new template (Twenty Ten) necessitated by the PHP upgrade. My first attempt to comment out the PHP block for automatically putting the author bio below posts result in an error, so I haven’t made any progress on that front. And I’m not wild about the italics for blockquotes.

    Crypto hacked, Ukraine Storm Shadows a bunch of Russian petrochemical and semiconductor plants, more illegal alien voting fraud, another Swalwell-related raid, and an adorable canine jailbreak artist.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • This may be a big deal. “Binance Suspends Transactions After It Is Targeted in Biggest-Ever Cyber Heist. The crypto exchange says users will be made whole. But hackers made off with an estimated $6.3 billion.”

    Binance suspended transactions Thursday as the exchange investigates the biggest cyber heist in history.

    “It does look like a hack on Binance,” Changpeng Zhao, Binance’s founder, said in a post on the social-media platform X. “User funds are safe.”

    Binance said late Thursday that the hack totaled around $6.3 billion.

    Zhao, who no longer leads the world’s biggest crypto exchange but remains its largest shareholder, added that stablecoin providers Tether and Circle had moved quickly to freeze some $1.7 billion in stolen assets. Binance later revised that number to $3 billion across several different assets.

    Cybersecurity research firms TRM Labs and Pangolin Intelligence said the heist appears to have been conducted by North Korea’s TraderTraitor hacking group, which has been behind many of the largest crypto hacks in recent memory. “This was absolutely North Korea,” said Nick Carlsen, a senior investigator on the Global Investigations team at TRM, who told the Journal he worked with Pangolin Intelligence to correlate hackers’ blockchain activity with information they gathered on other DPRK-linked attacks.

    Binance said it has suspended all deposits and withdrawals as its team conducts security checks, freezes funds and works with law enforcement.

    This is evidently not just the biggest crypto heist, but the biggest heist of all time by value, period.

    Somehow a whole lot of that “super secure” crypto seems to disappear every year, making it seem less secure than boring old fiat currency. And it may not be hardened enough to survive the AI era. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “Days before midterms, ICE and DOJ announce new wave of noncitizen voting arrests With the midterms days away, federal officials are arresting and charging noncitizens accused of illegally registering and voting. DHS says it’s checking about 300,000 more cases against state voter rolls. That puts noncitizen voting at the center of the election-integrity debate going into Election Day.”

    The Trump administration continues to investigate and arrest illegal immigrants accused of unlawfully registering to vote or voting in American elections.

    Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced on Thursday that it had arrested dozens of illegal immigrants for alleged voter fraud, including many accused of actually casting a ballot illegally.

    “These arrests, carried out in coordination with our federal, state and local law enforcement partners, are the result of careful, methodical investigations,” acting ICE Director David Venturella said in a press release. “American elections must be conducted in accordance with the law, and allegations of illegal voting deserve our undivided attention. When the facts support criminal charges, we pursue them. Every eligible voter deserves an election process that follows the law.”

    ICE provided 18 examples of illegal immigrants it has arrested on voter fraud charges, including many who not only voted illegally but also have been arrested for other crimes as well.

    Aden Hassan Aden, an illegal immigrant from Somalia, allegedly voted in the 2020 federal election and has convictions for domestic violence, drug possession, and larceny. Mai Tran, an illegal immigrant from Vietnam, allegedly voted in the 2024 federal election and, according to ICE, has been convicted of fraud, drug possession offenses, burglary, larceny, and illegal use of credit cards.

    Phath Vorn, an illegal immigrant from Cambodia, is accused of voting in the 1992 federal election and again, according to ICE, has convictions for assault with intent to murder, assault with a dangerous weapon, and possession of a weapon.

  • “El-Sayed courted Muslim centers where clerics portrayed U.S as Satan, sought ‘revenge’ on Zionists.” Of course he did. He’s a jihadi scumbag, and no one should be remotely surprised at revelations he palled around with other jihadi scumbags any more.
  • “Novokuybyshevsk Oil Refinery Attacked By Drones!”
  • “New Video of Big Storm Shadow Strike on Proton Plant in Oryol.”
  • “Satellite Imagery of Proton Plant After Storm Shadow Strike in Oryol: Multiple Impacts Confirmed.” Proton manufactures semiconductors and silicon wafers. And Google’s AI results suggest those are 100mm wafers, which was state of the art…in 1979.
  • “Azot Chemical Plant in Tula Hit By Drones!” “Russia’s Azot chemical plant in Novomoskovsk, Tula region, got hit and caught fire after a drone strike. It’s one of Russia’s biggest fertilizer producers. Ukrainian intelligence says it also supplied nitric acid to a factory making explosives for Russia’s war machine. Judging by the footage, the AM-70 ammonia production unit appears to be on fire.”
  • “Another Storm Shadow Strike! On Energia Plant (Makes Chemicals for Missiles).”
  • “Ukrainian Drones Attack Omsk Ozon Warehouse & Petrochemical Plant.”
  • “Ukraine Destroys & Damages 60 Russian Trucks in One Night at Parking Lot in Donetsk!”
  • “Big HIMARS Strike on Russian Command Post During Long Operation… This was near the Kupiansk axis.”
  • “Two Su-34 Destroyed At Marinovka Air Base.”
  • And a Su-57 just caught fire and burned itself out.
  • “Pittsburgh welfare supervisor allegedly stole EBT cards, traded food stamps for crack.”

    Sheila McDonald, 46, of Pittsburgh, worked at the Lehigh County Assistance Office in Allentown, where she was responsible for safeguarding EBT cards.

    Prosecutors accuse her of taking 48 of the cards and carrying out more than 270 unauthorized transactions that drained $20,558.61 in benefits …

    An unidentified man told investigators he repeatedly received EBT cards and their PINs from McDonald as payment for crack cocaine, authorities said.

    He suspected McDonald had gotten the cards through her work at the welfare office, authorities said.

    Every week a new instance of fraud pops up because the federal government is finally looking for welfare fraud. Under President Autopen, they weren’t, mainly because so much of the fraud was flowing into Democrat pockets.

  • It begins. “Somali-born superintendent says Maine schools should change policy on dogs because they are impure.”

    Abdullahi Ahmed, the Somali-born assistant superintendent for student, family and community partnerships at Portland Public Schools, proposed changes to the district’s policy on dogs and other animals, citing Islamic beliefs about ‘ritual purity.’

    I have a better idea: Let’s hand your ass a pink slip and change our policies on letting unassimilated Muslims immigrate to the United States.

  • “Mexican Illegal Faces Charges After Beheading Iwo Jima Statue.

    Miguel Alonso Maldonado Sorianom, illegal migrant from Mexico residing in the US, has been officially charged after battering a replica of the Iwo Jima flag-raising statue near the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia. One of the figures on the statue was beheaded before police apprehended the man.

    Prince William County Circuit Court Chief Judge Petula Metzler granted Soriano a $2,500 secured bond. Conditions include GPS monitoring, alcohol/drug testing, remaining in Virginia, and completing a mental health evaluation (plus any recommended treatment). A preliminary hearing is set for January.

    However, ICE has lodged a retainer, and if the suspect posts bond they plan to take him into custody. Meaning, Soriano will not be escaping with a slap on the wrist. A General District Court judge initially tried to grant the migrant cashless bail until prosecutors objected (another example of the two tier legal system which has long given illegal migrants special treatment).

    Jail him and deport him. Then deport any of his illegal alien family and friends.

  • “Green cards for sale: Feds bust another sham-marriage ring as prices hit $100,000 per arrangement.”

    Federal prosecutors in Boston on Wednesday charged six people with running an alleged decade-long sham-marriage ring, with illegal immigrants purportedly paying between $38,000 to $40,000 per wedding to gain legal status.

    Jennifer Gonzalez, 43, of Fall River, Mass., allegedly ran the business, collecting money from illegal immigrants to arrange sham marriages so they could obtain immigration status, the U.S. District Attorney’s Office for Massachusetts announced this week. Court documents allege that Gonzalez paid four U.S. citizens – Erica Daniels, 29; Chreise Alejandro, 39; Jessica Tavares, 31; and Jaylin Hill, 26 – to marry one or more illegal immigrant “customers.” Amara Pugh, 31, another U.S. citizen, allegedly worked as the “secretary” for the sham-marriage business, federal officials said. Those arrested have not entered pleas, yet.

  • “Montana Democrat Claims Senator Offered Her a Job to Drop Out of the Race — in Violation of State Law.”

    Alani Bankhead, a Montana Democrat running for the U.S. Senate, says a Democratic senator offered her a job with the Democratic National Committee if she agreed to drop out of the upcoming midterm election and cede the field to an independent candidate who the party believes has a better chance of besting Republican Kurt Alme.

    If the exchange occurred as Bankhead described, the lawmaker responsible would be guilty of violating state law.

    The “independent” the DNC is “allegedly” pressuring Bankhead to back is Seth Bodnar. We previously covered Bodnar’s toes to Democrats here.

  • “FBI raids Beverly Hills mansion as part of Eric Swalwell investigation.”

    Federal authorities raided a California mansion belonging to billionaire Stephen Cloobeck on Tuesday morning, Fox News has learned.

    The FBI targeted Cloobeck’s Beverly Hills mansion in connection with an investigation into disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. Swalwell resigned from Congress and withdrew from the California gubernatorial race earlier this year after facing multiple accusations of sexual misconduct.

    Snip.

    The raid was linked to a sex worker reportedly connected to the investigation.

    Cloobeck is a longtime supporter of Swalwell’s political campaigns.

    Also this tidbit: “Cloobeck was arrested earlier this year in an unrelated case, in which he faced charges of attempting to influence witnesses in a criminal case against his fiancée.” Most curious.

  • Haiti overrun with Hiatians. “Haitian officials are now complaining they’re ‘OVERWHELMED’ by the amount of Haitian migrants the United States is returning to their country.” Which is some 450 of them. “Now imagine 20,000 Haitians plopped in small-town Ohio and Pennsylvania!”
  • Serbia’s long-running pro-Russian strongman Aleksandar Vucic has been ousted by a youth-backed “Students’ List” party. When last we checked on Vucic, he was attending a Clinton Global Initiative meeting.
  • Microsoft offers buyouts to 60,000 of its employees.

    Job cuts and downsizing announcements across corporate America have gained momentum, a trend we featured in a report last week titled “Tech Layoffs Surge As Corporate America’s AI Blitz Raises Fears The Worst Is Yet To Come.”

    Days later, Bloomberg reports that Microsoft will offer voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees while spending heavily on artificial intelligence and data center expansion.

    “This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support,” Chief People Officer Amy Coleman wrote in a memo earlier today.

    The memo cited by the outlet says workers on selected units in the US, Canada, India, and the UK at the vice president level and below will be eligible for the voluntary buyouts.

    Some employees in data centers, sales, and marketing are excluded. Benefits will match a standard severance package, according to the report.

    Bloomberg data shows Microsoft employed 223,000 people at the end of June and has cut thousands of jobs in recent years. The Big Tech firm’s total workforce began to plateau in 2022.

    The cynical part of me wants to guess that 60,000 is the number of non-Indian employees they have left. Given how much Microsoft’s own devs complained about Copilot being inferior to other AI coding offerings, it looks like they’re going all-in on a “using AI is better than employing people” strategy, and I suspect that will be their undoing. Letting that much institutional memory walk out the door, especially for a company whose products are infamously kludgy, seems like a recipe for disaster.

  • High profile companies drop SPLC screening. Better late than never, I guess.

    Major companies have finally stopped using the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate groups” list to decide who qualifies for corporate giving programs.

    1792 Exchange has asked companies to drop SPLC since the DOJ finally exposed the “anti-hate” group as a fraud. Officials alleged SPLC funneled $3 million to white hate groups.

    One boss faces accusations of funneling $1.2 million to her informant lover in a neo-Nazi group.

    I mean, SPLC wouldn’t exist without hate!

    1792 Exchange announced these nine companies removed the SPLC filter:

    • BlackRock
    • Salesforce
    • Mastercard
    • Texas Instruments
    • AT&T
    • NVIDIA
    • Microsoft
    • American Express
    • DoorDash

    This is good news for freedom, and bad news for those running fake racism scams. And given BlackRock’s agreement to back away from their previous ESG stance, they seem like a company repenting of their woke madness.

  • Tesla just got approved for big tax breaks on a solar factory in Fort Bend.

    Tesla’s proposed $10 billion “Project Crystal Sun” solar factory in Texas could get up to 35 years of local tax breaks on its equipment, according to the four agreements Fort Bend County commissioners approved on Thursday.

    “Project Crystal Sun”sounds like the third installment in a science fiction video game franchise.

    The vote was 4-0. And Tesla still hasn’t committed to building the plant in Texas.

    Tesla applied for a 10-year school property tax limitation under the state’s JETI program, through Lamar CISD and the Texas Comptroller. The plan is a vertically integrated solar plant near Richmond, southwest of Houston, that would make everything from silicon ingots to finished modules, with commercial production targeted for Q1 2029.

    Lamar CISD approved the school tax piece in September. The county was next.

    On October 22, the commissioners court approved items 25A to 25D on its agenda: a Chapter 312 tax abatement, a Chapter 381 incentive agreement, a foreign trade zone agreement with a payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT), and a “true up” PILOT agreement. Interim County Judge Daniel Wong abstained because his engineering firm has worked with Tesla.

    Each agreement covers a different slice of Tesla’s tax bill, and together they run for decades.

    The Chapter 312 agreement abates 100% of county property taxes on Tesla’s equipment and other tangible personal property at the plant for 10 tax years. The clock starts in tax year 2029 by default, but Tesla can move it to the first year after production starts, as late as 2031 without needing the county’s approval.

    Tesla’s JETI application splits the $10.1 billion into $1.52 billion of real property and $8.6 billion of personal property, mostly production equipment.

    Land and buildings aren’t part of the deal.

    It’s not a done deal, but just think if California hadn’t locked down so hard, and Democrats didn’t suffer from Musk Derangement Syndrome, you’d have to think California would have been a possibility to locate a solar plant…

  • Another conviction for that thing that never happens. “Five Noncitizens Charged With Illegally Voting in South Texas. The nationals from Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, and Nigeria face years in prison and steep fines for charges of unlawful voting, as well as fraud.”

    Five noncitizens, including one illegal alien, have been charged in the Southern District of Texas for “unlawfully voting in federal elections, lying on immigration documents, or falsely claiming American citizenship.”

    According to the announcement, 33-year-old Trinidad and Tobago native Ali Khan was charged with “voting by an alien in a federal election” for illegally voting in 2024. Khan had been illegally residing in La Porte near Houston prior to his arrest. It is unclear when Khan first entered the United States, though the announcement reports that he had been a DACA recipient.

    The four legally present noncitizens charged were 61-year-old Mohammed Omar Hassan of Nigeria, 29-year-old Diego Benavides Rodriguez, 51-year-old Jose Vasquez-Mendoza, and 37-year-old Karen Hinojosa-Martinez. Rodriguez, Vasquez-Mendoza, and Hinojosa-Martinez are all citizens of Mexico residing in South Texas.

    Better get this one out of the way now because, knowing Democrats, we’re going to be dealing with hundreds of much larger voting fraud cases next week…

  • “At Least 64 Dead After Two High-Speed Trains Collide In Spain.” “The death toll from this morning’s collision between two high-speed trains south of Madrid has risen to 64, Bloomberg reports, placing it among Spain’s deadliest rail disasters. For context, the 2013 Santiago de Compostela derailment killed 80 people.” I’m beginning to think that safety of high speed rail has been oversold…
  • Members of liberal “forever cruise to escape Trump” get stranded in Cambodia due to rising fuel costs.” Time to pull out this classic:

  • Illegal alien woman brings a knife to a gun fight, gets arrested.
  • Patrick Stewart, RIP. The problem with writing a proper memorial is that he was great in everything he was in, and he was in so much.
  • Stolen from Sarah Hoyt:

  • James May drives the new Slate electric pickup truck. He likes the basic-ness of it, but that bed is so short it’s hard to see it meeting a lot of American use cases. And the breaking system sounds bit strange.
  • Nobody wants to buy The Stahl House. My theory is that the wealth tax proposal has spooked all the people who might have enough money to buy it…
  • All of my Halloween posts on my other blog can be found here.
  • “Millions Of 12-Foot-Tall Lawn Skeletons Discovered On Dem Voter Rolls.”
  • “Abdul El-Sayed Promises To Any Jews Who Vote for Him That He’ll Kill Them Last.”
  • “DHS Agents Seize Ilhan Omar’s Phone But Decide To Let Her Keep Pager.”
  • “Voter Turnout In Minnesota Expected To Be Over 130%.”
  • “After Late-Night Ballot Drop, Joe Biden Wins Brazilian Presidency With 81 Million Votes.”
  • “Cowboys Fans Concerned Another Loss Could Make It Difficult For Team To Choke In Playoffs.”
  • Escape artist:

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





    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Jihad, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Technology, Texas, video, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments