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 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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 , , , , , , , , | 2 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

    Hinojosa: Give Me All Communication Between Musk And Abbott. Appeals Court: LOL, No

    Posted on October 29, 2026 by Lawrence Person

    Given all the attention paid to the Texas senate race, you could be forgiven for forgetting that Texas also has a gubernatorial race this year, with Republican incumbent Greg Abbott expected to handily throttle his little-known Democrat challenger, state rep Gina Hinojosa, en route to Abbott’s record-breaking fourth term election as governor. But while she’s still theoretically in election contention, and a state rep, Hinojosa decided that would be a great time to demand all the communication between Elon Musk and Abbott, because that’s a totally normal request and not an outburst of far left Musk Derangement Syndrome.

    Appeals court: LOL. No.

    The Fifteenth Court of Appeals has blocked a district court ruling that would have granted Democrat gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa access to communications between Gov. Greg Abbott and Elon Musk.

    Travis County District Judge Catherine Mauzy, a Democrat, had ordered the governor’s office to allow Hinojosa to read more than 1,300 pages of unredacted communications between Abbott and Musk.

    Bloomberg Law reported that Mauzy donated $500 to Hinojosa on June 24 for her race against Abbott, and more than $700 to Hinojosa’s campaign for the Texas House in 2016.

    Hinojosa claimed her request was for transparency: “The people have the right to transparency, and that’s why I’m continuing to fight for the documents between Elon Musk and Greg Abbott.”

    However, Mauzy’s order did not give Hinojosa permission to share confidential information with the public.

    Instead, she argued that Texas law gives lawmakers the power to inspect government records. Hinojosa is currently a sitting state representative whose term expires in January.

    The 1,300 pages of communications allegedly involve Musk’s Texas business interests, school tax breaks, broadband infrastructure, and state grants.

    According to KVUE, court documents argue that Hinojosa, whose term ends January 12, 2027, “is suffering present, continuing, imminent injury” because she has not been granted access to the requested communications between Abbott and Musk.

    Abbott’s office stated that the district court’s order would have allowed Hinojosa to use her office to violate state public records laws.

    “This was a sham lawsuit in a rigged district court,” said the governor’s press secretary Andrew Mahaleris. “The trial court judge refused to follow the law and rubber-stamped an illegal fishing expedition into the Governor’s Office. The appeals court rightly froze this abuse of process.”

    Though Hinojosa’s gambit was thwarted, I can’t help thinking there’s a grand bargain to be made here. Elon Musk can share his communication with all Republican office holders…as long as George Soros, Neville Roy Singham and all their minions do the same for all Democrat office holders.

    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

    AI Bubble Bursts…In China

    Posted on October 28, 2026 by Lawrence Person

    Many people have long predicted that the AI bubble will pop. Indeed, the AI bubble has already burst, and taken a good chunk of the stock market with it…in China.

    Stocks on China’s mainland have lost about $2.4 trillion in market value, the total worth of all their shares, since May, as investors lose faith that Beijing’s AI boom will ever turn a profit.

    That is more than South Korea’s entire economy produces in a year.

    AI companies now make up 42% of the market value of Chinese shares listed on the mainland and in Hong Kong, and 57% of trading, according to Goldman Sachs. So when AI stocks fall, the whole market falls with them.

    The CSI 300, an index of China’s 300 biggest listed companies, entered a bear market on October 22, meaning a drop of at least 20% from its peak.

    The sharpest damage hit Shanghai’s STAR 50, an index of 50 large tech and chip companies. It fell 40% in less than four months, erasing about $480 billion.

    It still trades at roughly 100 times earnings, a ratio that shows how many years of current profit investors are paying for, down from nearly 250 at its peak. The Nasdaq 100, the U.S. tech benchmark, sits around 30.

    100 P/E ratio is an insanely high valuation. Right now Nvidia, a real company that sells real chips to AI companies, has a P/E ratio just over 27. Berkshire Hathaway, one of the most capitalized non-tech companies in the world, has a P/E ration of 14.8.

    DeepSeek, a Chinese startup, released a cheap and powerful chatbot in January 2025, and Nvidia, the U.S. company whose chips power most AI, lost nearly $600 billion in market value in a single day. Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3, also produced by a Chinese AI lab, sent chip stocks tumbling again in July.

    Beijing then pushed its tech giants toward homegrown chips: According to the Financial Times, its internet regulator reportedly told companies including ByteDance and Alibaba to stop buying Nvidia chips in September 2025. Z.ai, a Beijing lab, says it trained its GLM-5.2 model entirely on Huawei chips.

    Analysts blame weak spending by Chinese consumers and doubts that AI companies can earn back what they have invested. Robot maker Unitree drew retail orders for 8,000 times the shares on offer when it listed in August, and its stock has since lost almost half its value since launch even after a significant recovery this week.

    Having 42% of your stock market’s value tied to AI companies seems extremely dangerous from the git-go. Thank God the American stock market isn’t so dependent on one sector. Oh, wait. This report in April says that 45% of the S&P 500 value is in AI-linked stocks.

    And the biggest AI IPOs haven’t even happened yet.

    But back (for the moment) to China. China’s economy has long been shell games all the way down, and there’s no way at this remove to figure out which Chinese AI companies are real and which outright scams. What real growth China has enjoyed is largely attributable to making goods to sell to Americans (and on the world market), but I don’t see terribly many Americans trusting their data to Chinese AIs over American models. (And I don’t even trust American AI companies.)

    A whole lot of gloom and doom news has been coming out of China, with factories closing to vacancies across Shanghai to unemployed young people pretending to still go to work to avoid telling their family they lost their job. China’s stock market has lost $2.4 trillion, but at such elevated PE ratios, it still has a long way way to drop to seem rational.

    American AI-linked companies have their own issues, but Nvidia, Broadcom (P/E 43.5), Alphabet/Google (16.5) and Microsoft (29.4) aren’t trading at nearly the insane multiples Chinese companies are. Even if the American AI bubble bursts (as it almost certainly will), they don’t have nearly as far to fall. That may change if Anthropic and OpenAI pull the triggers on their long anticipated IPOs. The Dotcom Bust meant about $5 trillion in stock losses (or just under 60% of the 8.45 trillion President AutoPen added to the national debt), and an AI bust would likely be around the same scale, if not worse.

    If I were to consider investing in the stock market right now, I might consider American companies that actually make physical goods…

    Posted in Communism, Economics, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

    Texas Election Tidbits And Down Ballot Recs

    Posted on October 27, 2026 by Lawrence Person

    It’s been one of those months where I: A.) Felt like I was constantly busy, and B.) Still got very little accomplished. The Halloween season and the run-up to the election are part of that, but I’m still dealing with cataloging a large library of books, including sending out another Lame Excuse Books catalog this month, and the blog updates necessitated by the PHP vulnerability, and clearing a large tree limb that fell onto my driveway (now gone), in addition to all the usual slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

    All that is a preamble to saying that what you’re getting today is a random selection of some pre-election tidbits.

  • Williamson County early voting locations.
  • Travis County early voting locations.
  • Austin’s Proposition I, the proposal for regular independent audits of Austin City government, is pulling in opposition spending from national unions.

    Extreme concentration from two organizational sources
    AFSCME + Austinites for Equity = ~89% of the money. There is only one individual household contributor. This is not a broad grassroots effort; it is a small number of large institutional checks.

    City employees’ union is the dominant funder and organizer
    AFSCME (the national public-sector union) provided the single largest gift. Local AFSCME Local 1624 (City of Austin and Travis County employees) has been the public face of the “Don’t DOGE Our Austin” rallies, with union officers speaking and signs prominently displayed. Reporting indicates the Don’t DOGE PAC shares the same treasurer (Carol Guthrie, AFSCME Local 1624 business manager) and office ties as Austinites for Equity and the local union. Austinites for Equity itself previously received large AFSCME contributions (reported around $50,000). This creates a tightly interconnected funding and control structure centered on the union whose members’ departments would be audited.

    Out-of-state money is the largest single source
    The majority of funds came from AFSCME headquarters in Washington, D.C., rather than from Austin residents or local small donors.

    • I’m pretty sure just about everyone reading this blog (bots and opposition researchers excluded) is going to be voting Republican straight down the line. So here are some down-ballot “non-partisan” race recommendations for my neck of the woods.

  • For Williamson Central Appraisal District Place 1, Clint L. Stephenson is a Republican and thus the choice here.
  • For Austin Community College District Board Of Trustees:
    • Place 1: Dana Walker is the choice here, because her opponent is endorsed by Democrat groups.
    • Place 3: Trevor Hale is the choice, for the same reason.
  • For Round Rock ISD board, vote for The TAG Team, namely:
    • Troy J. Evanovich for Place 6
    • Miriam Arora for Place 5, and
    • Gregory Andrew for Place 4.

    All three are endorsed by True Texas Project, and their opponents are the usual social justice warrior Democrats.

    For North Austin MUD #1, Jennifer Wiebe is the choice in the only contested race, because I voted against Diana Christiano for her signs appearing with Dem signs, and Wiebe evidently donated to Trump, which is a good enough reason to vote for her this far down the ballot.

    • Posted in Austin, Elections, Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

    Police Officer Steals Dead Man’s Identity, Home

    Posted on October 26, 2026 by Lawrence Person

    You hear about identity theft all the time, but usually a police officer isn’t the one doing the stealing.

    A Florida police officer who found a man dead during a welfare check in 2022 is accused of taking possession of the man’s home and impersonating him for years while fixing up the place, authorities said.

    The officer said he took possession of the property weeks after discovering the homeowner’s body to “prevent squatters from taking control of it,” according to a court document he filed.

    “Smell test” failed.

    Investigators in South Florida have accused Lauderhill police officer Brian Sguros of carrying out a “complex scheme” to take control of the $400,000 home. They say he made it appear the man was still alive by using his identification to pay taxes on the property and obtain permits to make repairs.

    Sguros was arrested this week and charged with five felonies, including official misconduct and criminal use of deceased personal identification. He appeared in court at a brief hearing on Wednesday and then dashed away from reporters outside.

    Messages seeking comment were left Thursday with one of his attorneys and Sguros, who has been suspended from his job.

    Court documents in a related civil case show that the officer’s attempt to take possession of the two-story house in a tidy neighborhood just outside Fort Lauderdale became known after a real estate group bought the house from the man’s relatives in 2025.

    Sguros said in an affidavit that in August 2022 — less than a month after he found Dennis West dead inside the Lauderhill home — he took possession of the property and spent the next 2 1/2 years making repairs, spending more than $200,000 of his own money.

    So not only did he commit fraud, his fraud is going to lose him $200K.

    He said the house had been filled with trash, that its roof was partially collapsed and that the structure was unstable.

    Sguros said in another court document that he took over the property “believing that by cleaning, securing, and restoring a dangerous and abandoned residence he was acting lawfully and responsibly to protect the surrounding community.”

    Sure he did.

    He argued that he made no attempts to hide what he was doing.

    But investigators with Broward County Sheriff’s Office said the deception began when the officer told the county medical examiner that he was friends with West, who had died of natural causes, and that the man had no family, which was not true.

    Sguros paid taxes and utilities at the home in West’s name, and forged his signature to get permits for work at the home, the sheriff’s office said. Investigators said Sguros also used his access to law enforcement databases to find information about West.

    Usually the way this sort of fraud works is that someone stealing the dead person’s ID keeps cashing their Social Security or disability checks. That sort of fraud can be profitable until you get caught. But stealing a crappy house and putting your own money into it in hopes you won’t be detected (deeply unlikely, given how much paperwork goes into real estate transactions) isn’t.

    Committing a crime that involves years of negative cash flow offends both Florida law and Dave Ramsey.

    And what did this house look like?

    There’s nothing about that house that screams “jackpot” to me. And if it’s after he put $200,000 into it, it still looks like crap.

    Crime doesn’t pay. Especially poorly thought-out crime…

    Posted in Crime | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

    Paxton Sues OpenAI Over ChatGPT

    Posted on October 25, 2026 by Lawrence Person

    Another week, another Ken Paxton lawsuit.

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, on Friday.

    A press release announcing the legal action said: “OpenAI has failed to protect Texans, including children, from the many harms of relying on its artificial intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT.”

    “A virtually unknown concept outside of science fiction until a handful of years ago,” the lawsuit begins, “AI now accounts for over a third of U.S. market value.” According to Paxton, those gains were not earned, but came from a “web of deceit and the exploitation of users.”

    The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI violated two Texas laws: the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices—Consumer Protection Act and the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act.

    The SCOPE Act, passed in the 88th Legislative Session in 2023, was intended to prevent digital service providers from entering into user agreements with minors without parental or guardian consent. The law has faced several legal challenges, and was recently partially upheld by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals regarding age verification.

    On the first count, Paxton alleged that OpenAI deceptively marketed its flagship product ChatGPT regarding its “safety, accuracy, and reliability.” Because of this, the lawsuit says, “mass shooters have been aided and abetted in deadly rampages, vulnerable people have been encouraged into suicide, professionals have suffered public humiliation, users have lost critical thinking skills, and minors have become addicted to a tool that feigns human compassion to collect their data with no parental oversight.”

    Regarding the SCOPE Act, Paxton alleged that ChatGPT lacked required age verification.

    The lawsuit also seeks to hold OpenAI CEO Sam Altman personally liable for the alleged violations “and the deceptive statements he has personally made regarding his firms’ products.”

    OpenAI (which is not an open source company or product at all) is certainly among the slimiest of AI companies, but Paxton faces a number of legal hurdles for the lawsuit to actually succeed in a court of law. The first is that OpenAI’s own terms and conditions state that “You may not use our Services for any illegal, harmful, or abusive activity,” which theoretically offers a certain amount of legal indemnification for end users misusing your product in violation of said terms. The terms also address the underage issue, stating “Minimum age. You must be at least 13 years old or the minimum age required in your country to consent to use the Services. If you are under 18 you must have your parent or legal guardian’s permission to use the Services.” That may or may not be considered sufficient to address the “access control” issue. Those same terms and conditions also specify binding arbitration when using their products, which is going to provide another hurdle to overcome in a lawsuit. Thirdly, if you’re using a product for free, it’s going to be hard to convince a court you have standing to sue them, as you have not entered into a commercial contract (actual or implied) with that company.

    All that said, the Attorney General for the State of Texas is a very different category of plaintiff than the average Joe Schmoo, which probably addresses the standing issue. But even given that, it will be much more difficult to hold Altman personally liable for the actions of his company. Paxton will have to prove that Altman knew his product was defective and said that it wasn’t, rather than offering up a piece of beta software for free on a “use at your own risk” basis.

    Of course, carrying a lawsuit all the way through to judgment is far from the only purpose of filing it. Forcing OpenAI to more rigorously enforce SCOPE Act controls and pay a sizable fine (as Paxton has successfully done with numerous other large companies) is probably a more likely endgame. Facing a litigant with such deep pockets as the State of Texas may be a powerful motivator for a company that might possibly want to go public in 2027 to settle sooner rather than later.

    Given the possibility of discovery unearthing many unappetizing details about just how the AI sausage is being made, I would expect OpenAI and Altman to settle with Paxton, or likely Texas AG successor Mayes Middleton, sooner rather than later.

    Posted in Technology, Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

    Crappy New Theme Active!

    Posted on October 24, 2026 by Lawrence Person

    A side effect of the PHP upgrade is that my ancient, Basic Bitch WordPress theme won’t work any more.

    I’m not wild about this, and resent being forced to update to anything with a remotely modern aesthetic.

    But this will have to do until I can sit down and pick something more suitable…

    Update: Made the color this garish red just so it wasn’t that bland pastel whatever-it-was. I may end up trying a variety of themes…

    Update 2: Changed to another theme because the last one I changed to wouldn’t give me a sidebar. This one is a lot closer to meeting my needs, but I still need to replace the default image with something else.

    Update 3: I also need to edit the single post template to kill the bio underneath.

    Update 4: Changed the header image to a cropped American flag. What I would like is a regular-sized American flag with the red and white stripes stretched to the desired length.

    Also need to add tags and categories back to the sidebar.

    Update 5: Added back my old sidebar by messing with widgets. Now how the hell do I delete the automatic bio addition on single posts?

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