ICE Targets Charlotte, NC for Illegal Alien Arrests; Thirty Thousand Students In Public Schools Stay Home

—Ace

Does this mean that around 30,000 of Charlotte's public school students are illegals or children of illegals? I think it does. I did not hear of any leftist campaign to Keep Your Kids Home as a protest. This was organic.

Note the number claimed earlier was 20,000, but it appears to be 30,000.

Almost 20% of the school population appears to be illegal alien children.

All paid for by American taxpayers.

On Monday, Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools saw a tremendous number of absences, nearly 20% of students, shortly after ICE showed up in town and illegal migrant communities became afraid of going out in public.

Nearby district, Wake County, told illegals that it will have teachers deliver Zoom lessons so that they can stay home to evade ICE.

Congressman Pat Harrigan @RepPatHarrigan

Charlotte has 900,000 residents, and more than 150,000 are foreign nationals, which comes out to roughly one in six people.

When a city carries numbers like that, it shows up everywhere. Uptown murders are up 200 percent. Aggravated assaults with knives or guns climbed from 86 to 111 year over year. Strong-arm robberies went from 26 to 31 in the same period. Families feel the strain in housing, in classrooms, and in basic public safety.

That is the environment @CBP walked into because the scale of the population shift and the rise in violent crime have outpaced what local agencies can handle on their own.

A city cannot function when the pressure points stack up like this. Charlotte has to put the safety of its residents first or the numbers will keep getting worse, no matter who pretends otherwise.

One illegal injured an officer by "weaponizing his car." I guess a new euphemism for "running down a cop" has dropped.

One person was injured after a vehicle was used to attack Department of Homeland Security agents performing a crackdown on illegal immigrants in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Sunday.

"his afternoon in Charlotte near University City, a United States citizen weaponized his vehicle, driving a large van at law enforcement while they were conducting an operation," DHS posted on X.

The officer is reported to be in stable and culturally-enriched condition.

Joy Reid: I Would Be Alarmed If I Saw a Man's Penis in the Women's Locker Rooms

—Ace

As background, Joy Reid previously admitted that she was "homophobic," stating that she would "cringe" at the sight of two men kissing, and asserted that most people would, too.

No lies detected.

But here's the lie: As a black leftist, she's allowed to say that, because blacks aren't down with everything gay like white leftists are.

But she got hired by MSNBC, the whitest and leftist of all white leftist organizations.

And when her blog got a fresh look, and her long history of (admitted) "homophobia" and derogatory cracks about then-Republican Charlie Crist being gay-- again, no lies detected -- she began claiming that her blog had been #Hacked, with unknown parties, possibly Russian, inserting homophobic material into her old and little-read blog, just to embarrass her in the future.

This lie was always ludicrous -- she never reported this very serious foreign #Hacking operation to the FBI, for example, because it's a crime to file a false criminal complaint -- so she has come up with a new way to talk about it. She no longer actually says she didn't write these posts, she just implies it, without reviving the ludicrous lie explicitly. Black Conservative Perspective clips this appearance on Piers Morgan in which Joy Reid -- or, as some call her, "Racial Maddow" -- insinuates that she didn't write the post, but admits she's "responsible" for whatever is "on that website." In other words, she didn't write this stuff, but she has so much integrity that she will take "responsibility" for the material that Russian #Hackers planted on her website. She's so full of integrity she'll take some blame for not having detected the #Hacking sooner.

Isn't that big of xer?

But now Racial Maddow is no longer employed by a White Leftist organization and can now go back to being a Black Leftist Commentator, and, get this, it turns out her views now more closely align with those that Russian #Hackers planted on her blog.

She now thinks it's alarming for women to see a penis in their sex-segregated places.

Federal Panel of Judges Rules That Republicans Aren't Allowed to Gerrymander in Republican States

—Ace

...because when you gerrymander to reduce Democrat seats, you're usually also reducing sets dominated by black or Hispanic voters, and these judges say you can never, ever reduce the "impact" blacks or Hispanics can have on elections.

You can, of course, always reduce the impact of white voters, as California just did.

In fact, it's legally required.

A three-judge federal panel ruled that the redrawn Texas congressional redistricting map was "racial gerrymandering" and ordered the state to use 2021 maps for the midterm elections.

Since it's a federal voting rights case, the only appeal is to the Supreme Court. It's unclear whether the high court will have time to rule before the 2026 primary filing deadline next month.

"Any claim that these maps are discriminatory is absurd and unsupported by the testimony offered during ten days of hearings," Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said in a statement. "This ruling is clearly erroneous and undermines the authority the U.S. Constitution assigns to the Texas Legislature by imposing a different map by judicial edict."

Texas state law allows for partisan gerrymandering. Republicans claimed that the map was being redrawn to give them a partisan advantage and to "better reflect Texans' conservative voting preferences -- and for no other reason," said the governor. The Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that the courts could not intervene if a map was drawn to give one side a partisan advantage.

"The public perception of this case is that it's about politics," U.S. Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote in the ruling. "To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map."

Indeed, it's a lot easier to prove "racial gerrymandering" based on the number of voters of color in a new district compared to the last one. It doesn't matter if many of those black and Hispanic voters would vote Republican. The Voting Rights Act only recognized the color of the voter's skin.

GOP-aligned people filed a lawsuit against the California gerrymander that Gavin Newsom just put into action. They allege that gerrymander is also a racial gerrymander, packing Republican-leaning -- and largely white -- voters into as few districts as possible.

How much do you want to bet that that lawsuit gets laughed out of court, resulting in the de facto rule that Democrats are allowed to gerrymander but Republicans aren't?

...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom was openly gloating about the decision. He had just rammed through his own Democratic redistricting map that would reduce the nine Republicans currently serving in the 52-member California congressional delegation to four.

"Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned -- and democracy won," Newsom said in a statement Tuesday. "This ruling is a win for Texas and for every American who fights for free and fair elections."

We'll see if the Supreme Court accepts cert on an expedited basis. They're already weighing whether or not the leftist-schemer-fabricated, left-wing-judge imposed doctrine of "disparate impact" -- which claims that you can never adopt any law at all which might have a "disparate impact" on black voters, no matter legislative intent -- can still stand.

In the congressional gerrymandering fight between Republicans and Democrats ahead of the 2026 midterm election, a number of states are keeping watch for a potential game changer from the U.S. Supreme Court.

During the rare rehearing of a Louisiana redistricting case in October, the court's conservative majority appeared inclined to weaken the Voting Rights Act's Section 2 protections against racial discrimination in the political mapmaking process.

Such a ruling could spark a new wave of congressional redistricting, especially in the South, where voting is often racially polarized and Section 2 has long prevented the dilution of Black minority voters' collective power. Without the current Section 2 protections, Republican-led southern states may undo districts where Black voters have a realistic opportunity of electing their preferred candidates, who are usually Democrats.

This redrawing could give the GOP a sizable boost, as the party seeks to keep control of the House of Representatives.

When the Supreme Court would release its decision is crucial. Time is running out to redo maps, which have to be finalized ahead of a state's filing deadline for candidates seeking to run in a primary election for the midterms.

"The earlier the decision comes, the more likely the decision is before the date for candidates to declare that they're going to be running, and the more time there is for legislatures to meet and consider maps and redraw their maps," says Nick Stephanopoulos, a professor specializing in election law at Harvard Law School.

The next batch of filing deadlines arrives in December. Still, Stephanopoulos notes these cut-off dates are "just products of state law."

"If a state legislature that's hellbent on gerrymandering wants to do so, it wouldn't be especially surprising if that same legislature delayed the filing deadline, potentially even change the date of the primary election, in order to give themselves enough time to gerrymander," Stephanopoulos says.

As I've already said, I think Roberts is too cowardly to vote this pernicious discriminatory rule down, and Amy Coney Barrett is a liberal-leaning flake who wants her fellow liberals to accept her back into the club.

As if we needed more bad news for 2026-- Indiana RINO liberal Republican state legislators are refusing to redistrict that "red" state. A gerrymander could change the partisan balance of the state delegation from 7 to 2 to 9-0 in favor of Republicans, but "Republicans" are refusing.

President Donald Trump is unleashing his anger at Indiana Senate Republicans for not backing the GOP redistricting effort, posting his displeasure three times to Truth Social in the last 24 hours and calling President Pro Tempore Rod Bray a "Total RINO."

"In the entire United States of America, Republican or Democrat, only Indiana "Republican" State Senator Rod Bray, a Complete and Total RINO, is opposed to redistricting for purposes of gaining additional Seats in Congress," posted Trump on Monday afternoon, who has seen Republican lawmakers in four states now reject his mid-cycle redistricting scheme. In another Monday post, Trump said competitors were lining up to primary Bray.

Bray is not the only Republican in Indiana who doesn't back redistricting. On Monday, Indiana state Sen. Blake Doriot of Goshen issued a statement saying that he was a Trump supporter but that he opposed redistricting.

"I have long been a Trump supporter, and I want President Trump to continue to be successful with a Republican-led House so he can continue fixing our woke colleges, fighting illegal immigration and crime, and encouraging us to speak about our great nation and be proud of who we are as Americans -- not apologize for it," Doriot said in a statement.

The news comes as Trump is set to issue a retributive endorsement as early as Monday against one of a handful Indiana Senate Republicans who opposes the White House's mid-cycle redistricting plan.

Among the holdouts targeted by the White House: Republican state Sen. Jim Buck of Kokomo, who is facing a primary from Tipton County Commissioner Tracey Powell. Trump could back Powell Monday, according to a person familiar with his thinking speaking exclusively with POLITICO, following through on MAGA's and White House allies' long-running threats to primary opponents of their mid-decade redistricting effort intended to protect their slim House majority in the midterms next year.

Welcome to Wednesday. So far, it's not great.

Wednesday Morning Rant

—Joe Mannix

Another day, another story about ICE arresting an illegal alien who was given a CDL. Unlike the last flurry of stories about this where many of the drivers had a printed name of "NO NAME GIVEN" on their CDLs, this one does include the person's name: Akhror Bozorov. He's not only an illegal alien, he's an illegal alien who is wanted as a terrorist in his native country of Uzbekistan but was released into the country by the Biden Administration.

Like last time, however, neither DHS nor the issuing state (the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in this case), nor the press outlets covering it bring up an uncomfortable fact about these CDLs. Last time around, most of the pictures of licenses issued to Messrs. Given were REAL ID compliant licenses. So, too, was the license given to Bozorov. His REAL ID was probably fraudulent. Non-citizens may be issued them legally, but only if they have official status - green card (permanent resident), valid visa, DACA (I know) or TPS (I know). It is unlikely that Bozorov had any of these.

Mid-Morning Art Thread

—CBD

Nudes by a Stream
Louis M. Eilshemius

The Morning Report — 11/19/25

—J.J. Sefton

Good morning kids. Well, there are autopens and then there are autopens.

At the trial for Linda Sun, a former top aide to New York Govs. Kathy Hochul and Andrew Cuomo allegedly forged Hochul’s signature on invitations for dignitaries from Henan, a province in China. . . Jurors in Brooklyn federal court were shown copies of letters purportedly sent by Hochul on March 26, 2018, inviting a six-member delegation from the province in central China to a meeting with then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo. But the letters bore clearly forged versions of Hochul’s signature — that featured “overly loopy” handwriting, her former chief of staff Jeff Lewis testified.

And speaking of autopens, there are also Manchurian candidates:

A big part of the Biden ‘autopen’ scandal is that we don’t really know who’s making decisions in parts of the government. A signature doesn’t really mean much these days and government has gotten so big and chaotic that there are really complicated chains of authority, yet a lot of the actual work, including even the signing, is down by junior personnel . . . Prosecutors say that Sun, who served as Cuomo’s director of Asian-American affairs, forged the governor’s then-No. 2 Hochul’s signature several times that year in an attempt to curry favor with Chinese officials. “Her loyalty was for sale, and the Chinese government, which wanted to influence the New York government, was willing to pay her to do their bidding,” prosecutor Amanda Shami said during last week’s opening statements. . .

That’s why the question of who was actually wielding executive authority in the Biden administration and in any administration matters so much. . . What we have is a system of low-level staffers who can do anything with no oversight and can work for anyone.

While this is certainly true, it's not so much the low-level staffers, it's Biden himself. But considering his brain function was and remains somewhere between that of a cup of yogurt and a dessicated clump of lichen, it's whoever Biden was fronting for, be it Obama, Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod, George Soros or some combination of them and others. It kind of puts the stories of the Chi-Coms owning massive tracts of our farmland as well as trailer parks and other property that are very close or otherwise butting up against our military installations, and Chinese nationals with direct connection to or are agents of the Chi-Com party and/or intelligence apparatus in everything from our schools and media to some of our most sensitive defense and industrial establishments into very alarming perspective.

But not to worry because we now have this to deal with:

Mamdani’s First Endorsement Called Al Qaeda Terrorist a Hero . . . Daughter of an illegal alien criminal and terrorist supporter runs for office in New York.

And this too!

Dearborn’s Muslim Mayor: Call to Prayer Through Loudspeakers No Different From ‘Church Bells’

Remember, just because this insanity takes place in places that you have long held disdain for, doesn't mean it will only stay there and never have any impact on you.

And lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY LINKS
• This needs to be a bigger story.
  Hochul Aide Allegedly Forged Her Signature on Invites for Chinese Dignitaries
  
• A cautionary tale from the New York governor's office.
  Could China Have Run the Biden Junta?

Daily Tech News 19 November 2025

—Pixy Misa

• So, Cloudflare. (Cloudflare)
  
  Cloudflare carries something like 20% of the world's web traffic, but for a few hours late last night (my time) or early yesterday morning (US time) it wasn't carrying much of anything, because it stopped working.
  
  Six times.
  
  Not a DNS problem like the recent outages at Azure and Amazon, but a fumbled configuration file change like that massive Crowdstrike outage sixteen months ago.
  
  
  
• And it's going to keep happening, so buckle up. (The Verge) (archive site)
  
  I run traditional unshared physical servers at a smaller datacenter, not bound to any of the major players. On the one hand, a few years ago that datacenter had a fire and while the fire didn't cause any damage, the same could not be said for the sprinkler system mandated by local fire codes. (Yes, a sprinkler system. In a datacenter.)
  
  On the other hand, not one of these big global outages have affected us.

Tuesday Overnight Open Thread - November 18, 2025 [Doof]

—Open Blogger

Howdy Hordelings! Welcome to the Tuesday night ONT. So glad you stopped by. What's going on in your world tonight?

***

Big Internet Outage Earlier Today

Please excuse tankdemon for being late. He was digging through his collection of Compute! magazines looking for the issue with Hunt the Wumpus cheat codes.

***

Have You Seen The Bridge?

Where's that confounded bridge?

As you are probably well aware, the Key Bridge in Baltimore has been closed since March 2024 due to being struck by a cargo ship. Initial estimates for the rebuild were approximately $2 Billion with a forecasted re-opening in 2028. Now the state of MD is saying the rebuild will, get this, cost a lot more and take a lot longer. I know you're totally shocked by these developments!

Cost of Key Bridge Replacement Upped to $5 Billion, Timeline Delayed to 2030

Rendering of the new Key Bridge design

Commuters, residents, and business owners waiting for a new Key Bridge will have to wait longer than previously though… and construction will cost two to three times as much.

The Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA) released new cost and timeline estimates one day before the National Transportation Safety Board released the failures that led the M/V Dali to lose power, strike the bridge, and cause the deadly collapse.

MDTA says it is working with the Federal Highway Administration to “quickly and safely” advance the rebuilding of the bridge that people and commerce operations relied on. MDTA announced it has raised the cost estimate to a range of $4.3-$5.2 billion, up from $1.7 billion. The predicted opening date of the bridge has been pushed back from 2028 to late 2030.

Why, you ask?

MDTA attributes the doubling or tripling of the cost to changing national economic conditions and material costs, which the agency says have increased dramatically. Because the cost and timeline estimates were made less than two weeks after the collapse on March 26, 2024, they didn’t factor in pre-construction activities (which have been underway since this summer), advanced design, and updated data points.

***

A big part of the cost increase comes from the length of the main bridge span and the height of the main piers. The new bridge’s main span will be 1,665 feet long to accommodate today’s large ships (some of which are much larger than the Dali).

I'm sorry -- WHAT?? The original estimates didn't factor in pre-construction activities or the length of the new main span??? Nobody picked up on that a year and a half ago? Yeah, OK.

Here's a recent photo of pre-construction activities.

Some additional info to consider. From marylandmatters.org

Within hours of the bridge’s collapse, then-President Joe Biden promised that the federal government would cover 100% of the cost of replacement. That pledge was later codified into law by Congress.

But President Donald Trump (R) has repeatedly hinted that he does not feel bound by that agreement. In an online spat with Gov. Wes Moore (D) in August, whcn Moore slammed Trump’s suggestion that he might send National Guard troops into Baltimore, the president ended a lengthy social media post by saying he “gave Wes Moore a lot of money to fix his demolished bridge. I will now have to rethink that decision???”

And U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, while pledging that the federal government is committed to working with the state to deliver a new Key Bridge, has pressed the state for updates on costs and the timeline for the reconstruction.

“Congress granted the Secretary of Transportation important authorities to conduct critical oversight to ensure that Federal highway funds are properly managed, and I take this authority seriously,” Duffy said in a September letter to state officials. “It is my role to guarantee that federally funded projects benefit the entire Nation through every dollar spent.”

In that letter, Duffy also warned that the state’s “reliance on race- or sex-conscious factors in contracting decisions” could threaten the project. It was a reference to the state Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program, which aims to use state contracts to bolster minority- and women-owned businesses.

Kiewit, the contractor overseeing the bridge project, has committed to a goal of using 26% “disadvantaged business enterprises,” including campanies [sic] that are at least 51% owned and controlled by one or more minority individuals.

What does Governor Moore say about that?

In a statement Monday night, Moore said the state will “continue to work with the Trump Administration to find ways to reduce costs and rebuild faster.” The higher costs and longer timeline are the result of outside factors, “not discretionary state choices,” he said.

Yup. Not his fault. And definitely not any cronyism or grift going on.

-----

In another part of the country, a bridge nears completion.

New Yellowstone Bridge Replaces Crumbling 62-Year-Old Span

Big news, big bridge - visitors to Yellowstone National Park are now using the new Yellowstone River Bridge.

This major Great American Outdoors Act project is moving into its final phase as crews continue work on overlooks, remove the old bridge, and restore the Lost Creek drainage. The full project is expected to be completed in 2026.

The bridge was one of the biggest projects in the park's recent history.

The old bridge was deemed structurally deficient, with crumbling concrete. The new bridge, located upstream, is more than twice as long, at 1,285 feet, as the 62-year-old bridge.

***

The project was originally estimated to cost slightly more than $71 million, but park officials said the rising cost of labor and materials like concrete and steel pushed the budget to $118 million.

Wes Moore is probably laughing at the relatively tiny price tag for this bridge!

***

Palate Cleansing Videos

Sorry - embedding X videos isn't working today.

Guy from the future?

Master move in Jenga

***

Otter News

The good kind of otters - not the rapey ones.

Baby Sea Otter Named Caterpillar Rescued off Central California Coast

Conservationists recently reunited a mother otter with her baby and caught it on film.

It seems surreal when marine conservationists plop the lost baby sea otter into the frigid waters of Morro Bay in Central California.

Before it makes its way back into the arms of its mother, the thing just bobbed around like a crabbing buoy.

***

For two hours, the team plied the coastline, blasting the call off of one side of the boat and then the other with no luck. Finally, a female otter popped her head above the water and began to take interest in the boat—something otters almost never do; they have no interest in people or boats typically.

The intern moved the speaker around the sides of the boat to see if the visitor would follow the sound: which it did, giving them the cue to throw man overboard overboard.

With up to 970,000 strands of hair per square inch, the sea otter’s fur is the densest of any animal. An air layer sits between the skin and the base of the fur that prevents any water from reaching it. It is, therefore, startlingly buoyant.

Lowering it gently into the water, it floated helplessly on its back, rolling around as if it were on a thick quilt. Mom swam over, grabbed the baby, and began to smell it rather intensely before swimming away, reunited with its pup.

Video at the link

***

This Date in History

Starting off with sports. On this date in 1985 - The Theismann Injury.

Kinda gruesome to watch, but if you're interested - here ya go!

-----

Moving on to music - some noteworthy albums were released on this date in history.

2002 - The debut album from the supergroup Audioslave, which featured Chris Cornell on vocals along with 3 members of Rage Against the Machine (at least one of whom is a Trump-hating uberdouche).

1991 - Achtung Baby from U2. Yes, this band takes a lot of deserved scorn from the Horde. But they did make some great music in the early days, and I'd say this is their last really good album. I'll forego the hits / singles from the album and go with a deep track - dedicated to a lovely lady who is gone but will never be forgotten. This was among her favorites.

1985 - Psychocandy, debut album from The Jesus and Mary Chain. I remember buying this CD when it came out. The audio mix is very heavy on treble. Not sure why.

Also in 1985, a banger of an album was released. Here's a track from it.
Dedicated to Mis Hum.

***

Tonight's ONT brought to you by pithy explanations

***

Tonight's ONT was recorded in front of a live studio audience. Spectators may or may not have been paid for their participation.
Comments or questions? Suggestions for content? Do the email thing at doof2112 at proton dot me.

Close it up

Return to Witch Mountain Cafe

—Ace

Witch Mountain, Sedona, AZ
throwawayMambo5

Here's the trailer for Escape from Witch Mountain (1975). This is the movie where I first saw Kim Richards and I was allowed to have a crush on her because I was younger than she was. I also think this movie started the trope, which we'd see continued in the Wonder Twins, where the sister has an awesome power and the boy can turn into a bucket of lukewarm water or form the shape of a puddle. I think the boy in this had the amazing power of... playing a f***in' flute without his hands or something. Meanwhile the girl can PK an RV over a f***in' canyon like a psychic Evel Knievel. #WOKE

The Cloudflare outage has been traced to its source, and of course it's exactly who you think it was.

Florida Weather is f***ed up, too.

Hast thou seen the white whale?

Dogs showing off ninja stealth skillzzz.

Not in front of the other employees, Gertie!

My eyes and heart say "real" but my brain says "AI."

Roast duck. (Or penguin?)

Bears are begging us to domesticate them already.

For ten seconds I was certain I was looking at a woman. Now I realize I'm a furry.

Border collies never leave work back at the office.

Dog is so happy to be adopted.

Big tough doberman is a scaredy-cat for the rain.

The heart wants what it wants.

Christmas is coming, and the true enemies of Christmas are in training.

Puppy grows up to be a big strong dog but he still wants to lay his head down on his mommy.

Zohran Mamdani Declares NYC a City of "International Law," Not American Law

—Ace

And this isn't just rhetoric. The Socialists believe this is their moment to bring about the communist utopia on earth.

Greg Price:

Greg Price @greg_price11

This is one of the most insane things I've ever heard a politician say.

Zohran Mamdani declares that New York is a "city of international law."

Last time I checked, I was pretty sure New York is an American city under U.S. law.

Hit the links for video. Embeds aren't working for me since the Cloudflare outage.

"Raylen Givens/JewishWarrior13:

Raylan Givens @JewishWarrior13

🚨WATCH: Zeharan Mamdani, the incoming mayor of New York, reaffirmed yesterday in an interview with ABC network that he will do whatever he can to enforce the international arrest warrant against PM Netanyahu if he visits New York, even if it is during a visit to the UN General Assembly.

Mamdani has already said he intends to ignore Trump's lawful orders as president and as the top law enforcement officer in the country, as regards deporting criminal aliens.

So he intends to implement "international law" while committing insurrection against constitutional American law and authority.

Guy Benson @guypbenson

He is very eager to enforce illegitimate "international law" against the elected leader of the Jewish state, but is explicitly opposed to the enforcement of actual, binding federal immigration law in his city.

Islamic law trumps American law.

And the worldwide communist revolution trumps all:

Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktok

BREAKING: Elected Democrats just released a video encouraging members of the military to commit treason and DEFY orders from Trump and Hegseth

Update: David Strom just wrote a post expressing the same idea: This isn't "just rhetoric." Like Hitler, they mean it.

Video here.

Greg Price @greg_price11

Meet Aber Kawas.

Zohran Mamdani just endorsed her for a New York State Assembly seat in Queens.

Here is Kawas saying 9-11 was America's fault because of our "system of capitalism, racism, white supremacy and islamophobia."

House Votes 427 to 1 to Release Full Epstein Files

—Ace

Near-unanimous.

The lone "no" vote was cast by Rep. Clay Higgins, who objected to the trashing of grand jury secrecy and worried about many people named in the files being exposed to unfair publicity. Remember, this is all the unvetted, unverified stuff -- anyone can make any accusation and get it jotted down in a government record.

I guess this case is now a matter of such intense public interest that such concerns don't matter.

Now it goes to the Senate:

Nick Sortor @nicksortor

2h

🚨 BREAKING -- IT'S OFFICIAL: The Epstein Files Transparency Act has PASSED the House of Representatives, 427-1

The sole NO vote was Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), but it's unclear why.

The bill, which is on the floor due to @RepThomasMassie and @RoKhanna's discharge petition, would force the release of the Epstein files

It now heads to the Senate, where it's expected to receive pushback, and even possibly be amended.

I think this will wash out as a net negative for Republicans, because the media will continue ignoring the actual Democrats associating with the convicted pedophile while continuing to insinuate this is a Republican scandal.

Despite the fact that if there were Republican names in those files -- especially Trump's -- Obama's and Biden's Angry Democrat DOJ lawyers would have leaked them starting in 2015 and would have kept re-leaking them through this past election.

The dog that didn't bark is the telling clue.

Leaked emails already show a Democrat group begging for donations for... current Democrat minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, pimping him as "Brooklyn's Barack."

This broke two days ago. Heard about it from George Sloppadopoulos yet?

Leaked Emails: Epstein Despised Trump (But Had Warm Relations With Democrats!)

—Ace

The media is running cover, of course.

Democrats started this mess by releasing select emails they thought would damage Trump, but those cherry-picked messages turned out to be nothing burgers. House Republicans responded by releasing more than 20,000 emails, and the damaging information that emerged pointed right back at Democrats.

The emails revealed that Epstein really disliked Trump, telling former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers in February 2017 that he had "met some very bad people," but "none as bad as trump." In other messages with Kathryn Ruemmler, who served as White House counsel under President Barack Obama, Epstein described Trump as "worse in real life and upclose" after Ruemmler sent him a message calling Trump "so gross." So much for the narrative that Trump and Epstein were close pals.

The emails also revealed that Epstein discussed blackmailing Trump with anti-Trump author Michael Wolff.

Byron York writes about the Democrats' complete lack of interest in Democrats who visited Epstein's Pedo Island, while screaming about Trump, who never visited the island.

He recaps an old article by the blackmail enthusiast Michael Wolff, noting all the names of Democrats who did not break with Epstein even after his conviction for trafficking.

Foremost not among them: Donald Trump.

The article is a long list of people who hung around with post-prison Epstein. Microsoft founder Bill Gates, "for whom Epstein has become a key adviser," was helping Epstein deal with his image problems. Mort Zuckerman, "the real estate billionaire and owner of the Daily News." PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel. Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury Secretary and president of Harvard University. Ehud Barak, the former prime minister of Israel. Then-Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim. The lawyer Reid Weingarten. Thorbjørn Jagland, then-head of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. Nathan Myhrvold, a former top executive at Microsoft. Harvard professor Martin Nowak. Richard Axel, a Nobel Prize winner. Investment fund manager Ron Baron. Josh Harris, owner of the Philadelphia 76ers and the New Jersey Devils. And then: "A high ranking official from the Obama White House, whose name I am asked not to use."

They all came to Epstein's house in New York. "These meetings, and this lifestyle, have somehow stayed private or secret -- or apart -- not out of any formal or stated restrictions, but because, in some sense, it would be very hard to explain just what you're doing there with a brazen sex offender in a guffaw-inducing home flaunting all moderation," Wolff wrote. "And yet, defying disgrace, and tolerating his tone deafness -- or mocking attitude toward the zeitgeist -- so many come. Gladly. Willingly. Feeling that his invitation is quite an extraordinary privilege."

He could also have named Katie Couric and George Sloppadopoulos, but I guess he thinks he can still break into real media and wants to protect his leftwing media fellow travelers.

..

Given today's political situation and the things Wolff has been saying recently, here is something interesting. Out of all the names dropped, one is conspicuously absent: Donald Trump. The billionaire developer, reality TV star, and future president, who had a falling out with Epstein around 2004, did not even merit mention as a former friend. Wolff saw fit to name former President Bill Clinton as absent, but Trump, who at that point had not yet entered national politics, was just not there. Some years later, of course, after Trump became president, his adversaries saw Epstein, like they once saw Russia, as an opportunity to bring him down, and the Epstein story became all about Trump. But in 2014, when Epstein was alive and active and Wolff wrote the profile, Trump wasn't part of the picture.

Maybe that tells you something is wrong with the way the story is being reported today. Whenever new information is released, such as the thousands of documents recently made public by the House GOP, and when that new information contains nothing to incriminate Trump, the usual suspects loudly proclaim that more new information is still being hidden that will incriminate Trump. It must all be released! One prominent Democratic senator, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, literally said recently, "Clearly, Donald Trump was at the center of a child sex ring. That is heartbreaking that the President of the United States was involved in that kind of gross, craven immorality."

That is a positively surrealistic read on what we know about Epstein so far -- and we know a lot.

Of course, the Epstein emails do contain frequent mentions of Trump -- as his mortal enemy, who he believed was behind his arrest for trafficking.

York again:

"Your world does not understand how dumb [Trump] really is," Epstein wrote to former Treasury Secretary and Harvard President Lawrence Summers in May 2017, Trump's fourth month in office. When, in July 2017, former Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler wrote, "Trump is truly stupid," Epstein replied with a one-word answer: "Duh."

In an exchange with New York Times reporter Landon Thomas, Epstein wrote that Trump was "evil beyond belief," and that he, Epstein, had tried to warn the world about his former friend. "I told everyone from day one," Epstein wrote.

"I know how dirty Donald is," Epstein wrote to Ruemmler in August 2018. "My guess is that non-lawyers, NY biz people have no idea." Then Epstein boasted to an unknown recipient in December 2018: "I am the one able to take him down." Meanwhile, Epstein exchanged long emails with adviser Michael Wolff in which Wolff offered Epstein counsel on trying to damage Trump, blackmail Trump, and possibly run him out of office.

It would be an understatement to note that Trump was living rent-free in Epstein's head. "The emails suggest that Trump remained a fixation for Epstein," CNN wrote, "as he's frequently mentioned numerous times over a span of nearly a decade -- including long after their friendship ended."

By the way, remember when Elon Musk, breaking with Trump, breathlessly announced that Trump was "in the Epstein files"? Of course Trump is in the Epstein files; he's all over this set of Epstein files because he was so deeply in Epstein's head. Trump will be in other Epstein files, too, because Epstein apparently could not stop thinking and talking about him.

Finally, one problem with reading the Epstein emails today is that Epstein was, in the words of one recent assessment in the Atlantic, a "notorious liar." It is reasonable to take Epstein's statements of opinion at face value -- he appeared to really think Trump was dumb -- but not his statements of fact.

So when Epstein says that victim Virginia Giuffre "spent hours at my house with [Trump]," there's no compelling reason to believe him. Giuffre, now dead, wrote a book that said no such thing about Trump and also testified under oath that Trump "didn't partake in any sex with us ... [and] never flirted with me." Giuffre said she never saw Trump and Epstein together. She was asked, "Did you ever see Donald Trump at Jeffrey's home?" and answered, "Not that I remember." In addition, she said she did not remember seeing Trump at Epstein's island, or his house in New Mexico, or his house in New York.

The Democrat-Media Party has a Hot Take on Epstein's hatred of-- not friendship with, hatred of -- Trump.

That take? "If even Jeffrey Epstein (the notorious liar, note) says that Trump is bad, then Trump must be very, very bad."

They seem incapable of understanding that if Epstein hated Trump, and considered him the worst man on the planet, and also had information about Trump engaging in criminal activity with underaged women, then of course he would have leaked that information.

Therefore: Epstein had no such information about Trump.

The media which thinks it is so smart that it is the only institution in the world capable of reading information and drawing conclusions for it still can't wrap its stunted little brain around that conclusion.

Instead, we get this: "Leave aside" the question of whether there's any evidence Trump was a client of Epstein. Just look at how many times he's "in" Epstein's emails!

As York points out: Yes, he's mentioned by Epstein, as an enemy.

But unlike dozens of Democrats, there are no emails in which Trump speaks with Epstein.

We have proof that Epstein was using his paid operative Stacey Plaskett to get anti-Trump testimony into the congressional record.

You might think, "Gee willickers, if the media is this interested in Trump-Epstein stories, surely they must all be seizing and pouncing on this one!"

You might think that, but you'd be wrong. Again.

One would expect that such a story would dominate the headlines and the talk shows, especially given the Democrats' months-long, full-court press on the Epstein Files. The Protection Racket Media has other ideas about what makes news in the Epstein case, as [Newsubsters'] Jorge Bonilla discovered watching the Sunday news shows:

The Plaskett story early enough for pre-production of This Week, and yet there was no mention whatsoever of what would otherwise be a scandal. There was likewise no mention of Plaskett on NBC's Meet the Press, CBS's Face the Nation, or CNN's State of the Union.

As is the case with "news" in the Trump Era, the durability of a story is directly proportional to its ability to (a) cast aspersions on Donald Trump, and/or (b) cover up some other, more nefarious scandal. ...

Epstein coaching a Member of Congress as to what questions to ask of a committee witness isn't notable? Does this not warrant prominence on the Sunday shows? For an Elitist Media intent on mining the "Epstein Files" for revelations, this is a huge omission. But not surprising, because this does not directly implicate President Donald Trump in any crime.

The wagons didn't just circle around Plaskett on television. Straight Arrow News did some research on the coverage of the story, and found that -- with a handful of exceptions -- the Protection Racket Media did its best to shut the story down...

The media is asking Plaskett zero questions, but one citizen got through on the CSPAN lines and did ask about her servicing her pedophile patron:

MAZE @mazemoore

In 2023 Stacey Plaskett was taking calls on C-SPAN and a caller asked her about her relationship with Epstein.

Plaskett: "He wanted to make contributions to the Democrat party."

She left out that she personally asked him for money and texted him during hearings on what to say.

Informed citizens, doing the job that the "American" media refuses to do.

Illegal Alien Helped by Left-Wing Judge to Escape ICE Has Now Been Deported

—Ace

Adios.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has deported an illegal alien whom Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Judge Hannah Dugan is charged with trying to help evade arrest by federal agents.

Over the weekend, ICE agents deported illegal alien Eduardo Flores-Ruiz of Mexico. Flores-Ruiz crossed the southern border in 2013 and was apprehended by Border Patrol agents in Nogales, Arizona. He was swiftly deported to Mexico, but illegally crossed the border again, a felony.

Flores-Ruiz also faced charges for strangulation and suffocation, battery, and domestic abuse.

This is what I call a "full-spectrum cultural enricher."

In April, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested Dugan for allegedly helping Flores-Ruiz evade arrest by ICE agents by purposefully misdirecting agents from Ruiz inside a Wisconsin courthouse.

...

A month after her arrest, surveillance footage from inside the courthouse showed Dugan seemingly pointing ICE agents in the wrong direction on purpose so that Flores-Ruiz could avoid arrest.

Video of that below the fold. If it actually posts. Cloudflare is causing all sorts of outages.

I never mentioned it, but back in late August a federal judge denied Dugan's motion to dismiss on grounds that as a judge she can do wha'ever she want.

A federal judge on Tuesday denied a motion to dismiss the criminal charges against Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan in the immigration enforcement-related case that has drawn national attention as an example of the Trump Administration's effort to punish judges it sees as antagonistic to its increased deportation efforts.

No bias detected.

Hint: She wasn't arrested for "being antatgonistic to increased deportation efforts."

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman issued a 27-page order denying Dugan's motion. Dugan's attorneys had filed to dismiss the case earlier this summer, arguing that the prosecution violated judicial immunity and represented extreme federal overreach into the operations of the state court system.

Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury, Harvard Professor Larry Summers, "Steps Back from Public Life" After Revelation He Sought Jeffrey Epstein to be His "Wingman" In His Seduction of the Daughter of a Red Chinese Banking Executive

—Ace

This is somehow connected to Drumpf, I just know it!!!

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers in a statement Monday said he would be stepping back from public life and expressed deep regret for past messages with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in the wake of new revelations about the extent of their relationship.

"I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused," he told POLITICO. "I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein. While continuing to fulfill my teaching obligations, I will be stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me."

Emails revealed that Summers, who served as Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and a top adviser to President Barack Obama, repeatedly sought advice from Epstein on romantically pursuing a woman he referred to as his mentee. Epstein in one message referred to himself as the prominent economist's "wing man." Summers in another exchange suggested women in aggregate have a lower IQ than men.

Summers' comment comes after a senior Trump administration official and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) each called on institutions to sever ties with Summers.

The statement leaves question marks hanging over the fate of several positions Summers occupies, which include a board seat at OpenAI, a tenured position at Harvard, an unpaid nonresident fellow position at the liberal Center for American Progress think tank and a paid contributor role at Bloomberg News. A Summers spokesperson declined to answer a direct question about those roles.

Politico refuses to name the woman he was trying to seduce. It was Jin Keyu, a professor in China, and daughter of a major figure in Chinese banking.

Matt Stoller @matthewstoller

Nov 17

There's an interesting angle about the CCP in the story of Larry Summers trying to seduce someone he was mentoring. Her father is a Chinese official running part of the Belt and Road initiative, and she explicitly thanked Summers for supporting her Dad

Matt Stoller @matthewstoller

Nov 1
It's very awkward that Larry Summers was manipulating Chinese and U.S. politics as a means of seducing a Chinese economist he was mentoring.

Is it "awkward"? Some might call it efficient.

Flashback to a Charlie Kirk tweet from July 25: Trump tells a reporter, "You ought to be talking about Larry Summers.... or Bill Clinton, who went to the island 28 times. I never went to the island."

Trump said yesterday: "We have NOTHING to do with Epstein. The Democrats do. All of his friends were Democrats. Reid Hoffman, Larry Summers, Bill Clinton. They went to his island ALL THE TIME. All Democrats."

But asking Bill and Hillary Clinton about their repeated trips to Pedo Island will be difficult: They're refusing to testify.

They cite no justification for doing so, they're just refusing.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna @RepLuna

Bill and Hillary Clinton are refusing to appear before House Oversight for their depositions regarding Jeffrey Epstein. Notice how House Democrats suddenly have nothing to say about it.

Remember when Peter Navarro refused to testify and Joe Biden sent him to prison?

Drew Holden @DrewHolden360

Peter Navarro went to prison for what the Clintons are currently doing on the Epstein hearings.

The House is voting soon to release all the secret Epstein grand jury materials. The flake traitor "libertarian" Tom Massie is outgassing right now.

Trump asked the House to vote in favor of the release.

I'll be posting more about the Epstein disclosures -- and the media's refusal to cover them -- later today.

Judge Stays "Insane" Magistrate's Defense of James Comey

—Ace

Yesterday I reported that a lowly magistrate -- a helper judge that hears motions on behalf of the judge -- made a "rare" grant of a motion to turn over all grand jury evidence to James Comey's team of angry Democrat lawyers. He claimed that despite such orders almost never being granted -- he admitted it was "rare" -- he felt that James Comey's rights "outweighed" the standard guarantee of grand jury secrecy.

This lowly Democrat magistrate searched desperately for some kind of infraction on the part of the prosecutor that he could claim was serious enough to justify this "rare" step. This partisan magistrate claimed there were "misstatements of law" in the grand jury case, which is common, which is why it is "rare" to invade grand jury secrecy, even on behalf of a politically-connected, Deep State protected accused.

But ah, how that changes when James "No Intent/8647" Comey is in the dock.

Shipwreckedcrew @shipwreckedcrew

Nov 17

Generally not a ground to invalidate an indictment.

Misstatements of law by prosecutors in front of the the GJ is a subject that has a LOOOOONG history of litigation.

Not a new topic and defendants rarely win on it.

Bear in mind, grand juries are entirely one-sided, prosecutor-controlled affairs, with no opposing counsel or judge to bring up misstatements as they occur, so these are common and usually not something judges -- or even lowly magistrates -- pitch a fit about.

Mike Davis @mrddmia

Nonsense.

Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick--appointed by partisan DC-area Democrat judges in 2022--is going out of his way to carry water for James Comey.

Fitzpatrick--through his highly irregular ruling--is grasping at straws to make his findings that Lindsey Halligan (somehow) did something wrong.

She did not.

Fitzpatrick is even pretending there is missing evidence.

Is there any basis for his conspiracy theory?

They know the evidence against Comey is damning.

He lied to Congress to coverup his clear corruption in politicizing and weaponizing intel agencies and law enforcement to take out political enemies--the biggest scandal in American history.

So they are doing everything they can to stop Lindsey Halligan.

Lindsey Halligan is clearly over the target.

The Justice Department must appeal this fact-free and lawless ruling by Fitzpatrick.

The Deep State protects its own.

Halligan filed for an emergency stay, which was granted.

This doesn't mean the matter is settled, just that the government is now afforded the opportunity, which the lowly magistrate didn't think they should have, to rebut the insane claims of the defense.

And an actual judge will take a look at the lowly bureaucrat-magistrate's shoddy work.

Mike Davis 🇺🇸 @mrddmia 🚨

Trump U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan wins temporary stay of (insane) order of U.S. Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick (illegally) carrying the water for James Comey

Am I late? I blame the Cloudflare outage.

FearBuck @FearedBuck

Cloudflare went down early this morning, causing half the internet to go offline.

Major platforms like Twitter/X, ChatGPT (OpenAI), Spotify, Facebook, Telegram, League of Legends, Letterboxd, and others were affected.

Thankfully this site runs on state-of-the-art (circa 2002) technology which makes it more reliable.

The Morning Rant: Minimalist Edition

—CBD

In a perfect world, Russia would have respected Ukraine's borders (whatever those are!), and Ukraine would not have poked the Russian Bear. James Baker and George Bush the elder would not have "guaranteed" Ukraine's safety in exchange for relinquishing their nuclear arsenal. NATO would not have expanded far to the east after the USSR collapsed, instead remaining roughly in Western Europe. The United States would not have used corrupt Ukraine as a base for its monstrous money-laundering schemes. Russia would have elected modestly benevolent leaders instead of the corruptocratic, expansionist savage that they chose. Western European nations would have maintained their armies.

But the world isn't perfect, and none of those things happened. The reality is that a large regional power decided that the tit-for-tat of their border disagreement needed to end, and the Western powers that would normally prevent such expansionist tendencies were in a state of weak chaos, thanks to the election of a series of weak leaders.

Fast forward three and a half years, and the border war is a horrid slog that is chewing up Ukraine -- slowly, inexorably -- and absent the entry of America into a ground operation, will end in Russian consolidation of its captured territory.

Orban: Risking 'World War III' to Support Ukraine When It Has 'No Chance' to Win Is 'Crazy.'

We have burned already €185 billion, and... our intention is to burn even more. So we finance a country which has no chance to win the war[...]

He is also correct in his analysis of the current situation in Ukraine. And as an additional bona fide, Muslims make up about 0.1% of the population of Hungary. So what does that say about Orban's analysis of geopolitical events?

The most ridiculous aspect of this entire pathetic repudiation of the Globalist, United Nations, NATO narrative is that the West is very willing to sacrifice Ukrainian youth in the meat grinder of this war, spend their American-financed peace dividend on arms for Ukraine, but would never dream of sending a single soldier to fight. That's for filthy Slavs to do! And also because their fighting-age men are effete, despise any martial spirit, and simply don't care enough about anything to fight for it! Including of course fighting the Muslim hordes raping their women!

Orban is correct. This will end in a Russian victory of sorts, and throwing good money into the quagmire of Eastern Ukraine is laughable, if it weren't also deadly and destructive. The West should push hard for some sort of ceasefire, but expanding the war by sending American offensive weapons to Ukraine is insanity. Yes, that will put pressure on Moscow, but is it the kind of pressure that ends wars? No.

The real question is: What does Europe get for its €185 billion? The continuation of the obscene corruption in Ukraine? That speaks ill of the morality of the Western elites. They are willing to sacrifice Ukrainian and Russian youth to keep the graft flowing.

[Crossposted at CutJibNewsletter and X/Twitter]. If you folks who are on X/Twitter would follow us it would be much appreciated!

Mid-Morning Art Thread

—CBD

Femme à l'écharpe
René Lelong

The Morning Report — 11/18/25

—J.J. Sefton

Good morning kids. Continuing from where we left off yesterday, our dear friend the VP and Director of Communications at the invaluable Heartland Institute, Jim Lakely, has dropped yet another poll that does not bode well for the restoration of our republic let alone for its survival.

42% of likely voters aged 18-39 who identify as conservative want Democratic Socialist to win presidency, Parents and online videos or podcasts are most likely to influence young Americans to support democratic socialism, 52% said their teachers or professors favored democratic socialism when they attended school

I don't even want to imagine what the respondents who identified as liberal wanted. Way back in the 1960s, the lower end of the aforementioned cohort had the battle cry Never Trust Anyone Over 30 Bitterly ironic and catastrophic is how many of them reached that age to become academics, the very ones they railed against trusting.

Had they only met the same fate as their contemporaries Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, or blew themselves up in Greenwich Village townhouses making pipe bombs as their expression of universal love and brotherhood. How much better off we'd all be. Alas, the Communist myth of utopianism and self-hatred is a hell of a drug. So we're primed to get Mamdani'd right in the neck. Or are we?

Decades in the making, Western civilization faces a profound crisis in its political leadership. The problem the West confronts is clear: for too long, Western leaders in Canada, Europe, and the U.S. willfully abandoned the core principles of Western Civilization. They adopted policies that were both foreign and antithetical to the historical civilization of their countries and the societies that their fathers and mothers knew, which had, in fact, nurtured the very leaders who then labored to destroy it. These policies, including multiculturalism and progressivism, were anchored in Marxist-Leninist thought. Their impact has been catastrophic. Their consequence is that the future of Western Civilization is now in the balance. This was done deliberately.

The policies had the effect of weakening the Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment core principles of the West. These included intentional and sustained efforts to evict these principles from the public space while opening their borders to mass immigration from non-Western peoples. This has been done so massively and so quickly that most Western European states, including Ireland, France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden, are at great risk of destabilization. Importantly, those states that rejected mass immigration, Hungary and Poland, are not. .. The West is thus in the curious position of permitting its statues to be toppled and its civilization destroyed by those who have the freedom to hold the West in contempt, a freedom that was made possible by that civilization. Of course, the West’s enemies do not care about that irony. The point is to destroy the West, and Western freedoms will be weaponized against Western peoples. In the end, it was Western Europe’s leaders who have intentionally and consistently made this situation possible.

The focus of this essay is on western Europe but is most certainly applicable to what we are experiencing right here in the good old US of A. And its these leaders who for the most part are or were the cream of the crop of Academia.

Some of them, not so much.

Monday on CNN’s “The Lead,” Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) said President Donald Trump had caused a “consistent spike in the violence when it comes to politics.”

Crockett said, “I believe that we all need to pay attention to Trump and how he acts. He is the cause of all the confusion and the destruction that we have seen in politics. As far as I’m concerned, because it used to be we could disagree, and that was that. I disagree with a lot of Republicans, but it does not necessarily turn violent. Ever since he’s been introduced into politics, we have seen a consistent spike in the violence when it comes to politics.”

And yet this urine-saturated lice-infested whorehouse mattress somehow became an elected member of our House of rRepresentatives.

Elsewhere, is shit about to get real "down Souse American way" as Carmen Miranda would croon? John Bolton, the inept, egotistical warmongering buffoon reacted to our biggest carrier, the USS Gerald Ford arriving off the coast of South America, with what to me is a Luca Brasi/Johnny Fontaine Godfather reference:

“Well, I think the drug smugglers can obviously see what’s happening. It’d be stunning, as they do, that they don’t shift their routes and find other ways to get drugs into the United States. Let’s face it, it’s our demand for the drugs that’s giving them the incentive to try this; they’ll find other ways. But it also shows the confusion in the White House’s objectives. If it’s simply about illegal narcotics, that’s one thing, but it seems to be about overthrowing Maduro. Why else bring the Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group from the European theater to the Caribbean? Trump has now put the gun on the table. The question is, is he going to use it or not?”

Either his signature or his brains will be on the paper!

Aside from being a communist thug, whose legitimacy as that nation's president is dubious at best, his close strategic ties to both Iran and the Chi-Coms have made his regime a national security threat to both America and our allies in the region. Neither of the aforementioned can be allowed to have any kind of a foothold or influence. Am I looking for a war, no. But flexing of our muscles if done very carefully and intelligently can yield the results we desire and that are necessary.

Maduro must indeed go as well as every other Communist regime in South America and the Caribbean, let alone the world. And south of our seemingly reappearing southern border, thank you President Trump, the Mexican people are sick of the narco terrorists and their corrupt government, and are taking to the streets...

Is President Trump's show of strength against Venezuelan and Colombian drug traffickers having an unexpected knock-on effect in cartel-plagued Mexico?It's hard not to think that when one sees the intensity of protests like these at the center of Mexico City:

In the long term if the pressure is kept up, no doubt it helps our situation at the border, despite most of the violence coming from American leftists attacking our own ICE agents and police.

It's a fine thing to defeat communism abroad, but we are going to have to crush the life out of it right here at home before they can crush us.

This is not the Democrat party of thirty or even twenty years ago. It is a party determined to transform this nation and destroy the foundations of Western Civilization. Because of federalism and its overwhelmingly successful 250-year history as a capitalist-based constitutional republic, they will never succeed in peacefully transforming the United States into a one-party socialist oligarchy. However, it’s very likely that they will succeed in violently fracturing the nation, fomenting civil conflict, and hastening the death of Western Civilization.

And lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY LINKS
• 42% of likely voters aged 18-39 who identify as conservative want Democratic Socialist to win presidency, Parents and online videos or podcasts are most likely to influence young Americans to support democratic socialism, 52% said their teachers or professors favored democratic socialism when they attended school
  Heartland/Rasmussen Poll: Majority of Young Likely Voters Want Democratic Socialist to Win the White House in 2028
• Leaders across the English-speaking world used the pandemic to trade democratic messiness for centralized control, revealing a ruling class that trusts abstraction far more than its own citizens.
  The Dangerous Politics of Abstraction

Daily Tech News 18 November 2025

—Pixy Misa

• If you gaze too long into CoreWeave, CoreWeave gazes back at you. (The Verge) (archive site)
  
  Some actually sound reporting from The Verge's usually reliably crazy Elizabeth Lopatto, about deeply dubious datacenter holding company CoreWeave.

  But as I began to look more closely at the company, I began feeling like I'd accidentally stumbled on an eldritch horror. CoreWeave is saddled with massive debt and, except in the absolute best-case scenario of fast AI adoption, has no obvious path toward profitability. There are some eyebrow-raising accounting choices. And then, naturally, there are the huge insider sales of CoreWeave stock.

  Yes, naturally there are those.
  
  Wait, what?

  After I unfocused my eyes a little, I realized CoreWeave did make a horrible kind of sense: It's a tool to hedge other companies' risks and juice their profits. It's taking on the risk and the costs of building data centers that bigger tech companies can then rent while they build their own data centers which may very well wind up competing with CoreWeave. What's more, it's part of a whole stable of companies that are propping up demand for the behemoth of the AI boom: Nvidia.

  The usual names pop up in the list of investors in CoreWeave. Nvidia is a major investor and is selling the company billions of dollars worth of GPUs, which CoreWeave then provides access to for customers like OpenAI and Microsoft, which are also major investors.
  
  It also has billions in outstanding loans at variable interest rates.
  
  It's not a bubble.
  
  
   
• Meanwhile Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is deeply worried about the power a handful of unelected people like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have to shape the future of AI. (Business Insider)
  
  Deeply worried, I tell you. Deeply.

Overnight Open Thread (11/17/2025)

—CBD

Mount Mitchell, in North Carolina...the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi River. To give you some sense of scale, Mount Mitchell is about 6,800 feet high, and Donner Pass through the Northern Sierra is about 7,000 feet high...one of the lowest passes through the range!

Average annual snowfall on Mount Mitchell (from 1980-2024) is about 85 inches. Average annual snowfall at Donner Pass is about 450 inches.

This is why I chuckle when I hear people talk about mountains in New Jersey.

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Federal Firearm Indictments Up 292 Percent Under Expanded Project Safe Neighborhoods in Northern Illinois

The number of defendants charged in PSN firearm indictments is up 287 percent compared to last year. The PSN program is an evidence-based program that focuses enforcement efforts on the most violent offenders while bringing together a broad spectrum of stakeholders to identify the most pressing violent crime problems and develop comprehensive solutions to address them.

One such problem is violence in Chicago's downtown neighborhoods and public rail system. In June of this year, U.S. Attorney Boutros announced an expansion of PSN to include the economic centers in downtown Chicago and the entire rail system operated by the Chicago Transit Authority, including all train lines.

Sorry, it's a TownHall link, which means it can be nigh unreadable with the popups and other ads splashed all over the place. And to make it worse, there is a huge amount of government jargon and obfuscation. But the salient point is that the federal government is charging and prosecuting violent criminals.

I know...I know...it's a crazy idea, but it just might work!

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La Vie En Rose
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Heavy drinking in youth may aid career success, study suggests
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• Hoddypeak
  
• Hiraeth
  
• Apricity
  
• Gobemouche
  
• Brabble
  
• Perendinate

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