Fire Hydrant of Freedom

Trump has a Republican problem
The public wants a winner. FJB and Republican senators are losers
MAY 24, 2024

Philip Bump of the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post reported, “Why Biden is underperforming Democratic Senate candidates.”

Of course he got the story bass-ackwards. He wouldn’t be at the Bezos Post if he got the story right. Biden isn’t underperforming. Republican senators and congressmen are.

Inflation is at 40-year highs. Millions of drug mules, child sex traffickers, murderers, spies and terrorists have infiltrated the country. We’ve had to take shots that we were told were vaccines but aren’t. We’ve lost wars in Afghanistan and Niger — yes, Niger kicked us out and took over a brand-new military base we built. We’ve backed terrorists who raped and killed Israelis. We’ve thrown billions to that loser Zelensky.

Republicans have a rock star presidential candidate who is peeling black and Hispanic votes from Democrats. They should be enjoying wide leads in Senate races.

Nope.

In state after state, Trump is up and the Republican Senate candidate is down.

In Arizona, it is Trump +6, the Republican Senate candidate -13.

In Nevada, it is Trump +13, a tie in the Senate race.

In Pennsylvania, it is Trump +3, the Republican Senate candidate -3.

In Wisconsin, it is Trump +1, the Republican Senate candidate -7.

The problem for Trump is that the down ballot may bring him down because most Republicans are seen as incompetent among independents and untrustworthy among conservatives.

Most Republicans in DC are unworthy of our trust. We sent them to repeal Obamacare. 14 years later, it is still standing.

We sent them to build the wall. They didn’t.

We sent them to support Trump and some of them voted to impeach him.

Bump stumbled across a salient point in his column about that Arizona Senate race between Democrat Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake:

Biden and Gallego get about the same level of support across the state. Biden is at 47 percent and Gallego is at 49%. The difference is on the Republican side, where Trump gets 52% to Lake’s 36%.

Trump cannot carry Lake because, well, she has become a McCain Republican who backed banning abortion until it hurt her in the polls.

And yes, abortion is hurting Republicans because the fear of a national ban on abortion (which we’ve never had) is real. Dobbs turned the issue back over to states like it was in 1973, but Republicans failed to realize that after 50 years of calling abortion a right, people started believing that. The easiest way to deal with abortion is to support letting states decide, which Trump is saying..

Thus, abortion is not hurting Donald Trump, whose trio of justices made Dobbs reality. The main difference between him and most Republican candidates is that he actually accomplished something in politics. The economy was better under him and not only did we have peace, we had an absence of fear.

By that I mean, we were not headed to World War III. Muslim nations signed the Abraham Accords with Israel. Putin was not bothering his neighbors as he was under Obama. Trump met with Kim Jong Un.

Bump’s fear about Trump carrying the party was encouraging. Bump wrote:

As Election Day gets closer, they’re more likely to catch up to Trump’s levels of support than Trump is to descend to theirs.

In other words, while it’s still fair to say that the CBS poll offers good news and bad news for Democrats, the bad news seems a lot more stable than the good news. There and in the other swing states, it seems more likely that the good news for Democrats will flip than it does that the bad news will.

Trump helped save a Republican Senate majority in 2018’s midterm election. The party actually had a net gain of two seats. I hope for his sake he not only carries Arizona, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin but that he carries the Republican losers in their Senate races to victory because I still hold out the hope that conservatives can wrest control of the Republican caucus in the Capitol from the RINOs.

The New York Times though believes Democrat Senate candidates can save FJB.

NYT, reporting on its polling in 6 states, said, “The results in the presidential race would have been surprising a year ago, but it’s hard to call them surprising anymore. Donald J. Trump leads in five of the six states among likely voters, with Mr. Biden squeaking out a lead among likely voters in Michigan. Mr. Trump’s strength is largely thanks to gains among young, black and Hispanic voters.

“What’s more surprising is the U.S. Senate results. This is the first time we’ve asked about Senate races this year, and the Democratic candidates led in all four of the states we tested: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada.

“Not only do Democrats lead, but they also seem to do so in an entirely customary way, with ordinary levels of support from young and nonwhite voters, even as Mr. Biden struggles at the top of the ticket.”

The reality is, Biden is as big a drag on Democrats as Carter was in 1980. Not only did Reagan win in a landslide, Republicans gained 12 Senate seats.

Samantha-Jo Roth of the Washington Examiner reported, “Democratic Senate candidates in critical swing states are running well ahead of President Joe Biden and lead their Republican rivals, but Pennsylvania Senate Republican candidate Dave McCormick believes he’s got a plan to ensure the commonwealth turns red for both himself and former President Donald Trump.”

McCormick said, “Bob Casey has been the status quo; he’s voted with Biden 98% of the time. I’ve made huge progress on people getting to know me and that is being reflected in the polls.”

Republicans need to do that and they also need to show support for Trump. Otherwise it is 1972 all over again when Nixon took 49 states and Republicans had a net loss of two Senate seats. That was the year Biden first got elected by ousting a Republican incumbent senator.

https://donsurber.substack.com/p/trump-has-a-republican-problem?r=1qo1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

This post, taken from the page of someone I follow, will leave a mark.

Dina Rubina, the Israeli author, was invited to a conference in the U.K., but asked to clarify her position in advance regarding the situation in Gaza:

"On October 7, Saturday, the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, the ruthless, well-trained, well-prepared and well-equipped Hamas t*rrorist regime of Iran, Hamas, which rules in the Gaza enclave (which Israel left around twenty years ago), attacked dozens of peaceful kibbutzim, and bombarded my country with tens of thousands of rockets. 

Hamas has committed atrocities that even the Bible cannot describe, atrocities that rival the crimes of Sodom and Gomorrah. Atrocities filmed by the way, by GoPro cameras, the m*rderers having taken the horror to the point of sending the images to their families or on social networks in real time. 

For hours, thousands of happy, blood-drunk beasts r*ped women, children and men, sh*oting their victims in the crotch and heads, cutting off the women's breasts and playing football with them, c*tting off the babies from the wombs of pregnant women and immediately decapitating them, tying up and burning the small children.
There were so many charred bodies that, for many weeks, forensic pathologists could not cope with the enormous workload of identifying individuals. 

A friend of mine, who worked in the emergency room of a New York hospital for 20 years, then in Israel for 15 years, was one of the first to arrive in the kibbutzim, as part of a team of rescuers and of doctors.  She still hasn't been able to sleep since.
While she is an emergency specialist, accustomed to dissected bodies and corpses, she fainted when she saw the macabre sight and vomited all the way back in the car.
\
Among the Hamas militants, Palestinian civilians rushed in, participating in pogroms of unprecedented scale, pillaging, killing, dragging everything they could get their hands on. 

Among these "Palestinian civilians" were 450 members of this highly regarded organization UNRWA (United Nations Relief Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East). 

Judging by the utter joy of the population (also captured by thousands of mobile cameras), Hamas is supported by almost the entire population of Gaza.

But the essential is there for us:  More than two hundred Israelis, including women, children, the elderly and foreign workers, were dragged into the beast's den. 
A hundred of them are still rotting and d*ing in Hamas dungeons. It goes without saying that these victims, who continue to be mocked, are of little concern to the “academic community”. 

But that's not what I'm talking about right now. I am not writing this so that anyone will sympathize with the tragedy of my people. 
During all these years, while the international community has literally poured hundreds of millions of dollars into this piece of land (the Gaza Strip) - and UNRWA's annual budget alone is equivalent to a BILLION dollars! - During all these years, Hamas used this money to build an empire with a complex system of underground tunnels, stockpile weapons, teach schoolchildren from primary school to disassemble and assemble a Kalashnikov assault rifle, print textbooks in which hatred of Israel is indescribable, in which even math problems look like this: "There were ten Jews, the shahid killed four, how many are left?...", calling for the murder of Jews with every word. 

And now, when, finally shocked by the monstrous crime of these bastards, Israel is waging a war of annihilation against the Hamas t*rrorists, who so carefully prepared this war, who placed thousands of shells in all the hospitals, the schools, kindergartens... - this is where academia around the world is on the defensive, concerned about the "genocide of the Palestinian people" - based, of course, on data provided by... . Who ?

The academic community, which was not concerned about the massacres in Syria, nor the massacre in Somalia, nor the mistreatment inflicted on the Uighurs, nor the millions of Kurds persecuted by the Turkish regime for decades, this very worried community, which wears "arafatkas" - the trademark of m*rderers - around their necks and rallies under the slogan "Liberate Palestine from the river to the sea", which means the total destruction of Israel (and Israelis). "academics", as polls show, have no idea where this river is, what it is called, where certain borders are located.  And it is this same public which asks me "to express a position clear on the issue. 
Are you really serious? 

As you know, I have been a professional writer for over fifty years. My novels have been translated into forty languages, including Albanian, Turkish, Chinese, Esperanto... and many more. 

Now, with great pleasure, without choosing my expressions too much, I sincerely and with all the strength of my soul send to all the brainless "intellectuals" who are interested in my position to go fuck themselves. 

Dina Rubina

https://x.com/lelemSLP/status/1794007676759708106

Once again, I can’t even:

https://x.com/Vuk02577707/status/1793069886656155671

By happenstance, I started off as a climber, spending most of my time on the granite an hour north of Madison, WI found at a place called Devil’s Lake. When I moved down to the flatlands around Champaign, IL, there wasn’t much rock to climb up so I took up with some cavers and began climbing down instead.

Caving was a revelation, project caving, at least, as opposed to recreational caving. As a project caver there was a goal: collect data, draw maps, survey biota, etc. Climbers just get to the top, usually of something umpteen others have also topped, reach around to pat their own back, before starting down the rock face. Cavers are often the first into a section of cave and are establishing the baselines various disciplines will then use to tie their science to space and time.

Anhoo, check out all these climbers, trotting on down the Everest assembly line, relying on the lines and ladders sherpas and far better climbers of which the sherpas are a subset of provided, getting to the top, planting the flag, patting their back, checking whatever ego box that drove them to tread the nylon and aluminum highway laid down by sherpas, quaffing the O2 others humped up there for them, and then heading down until … the unexpected occurs, unsupported climbing skills are needed lest the ego parade stall in front of the fallen cornice.

Scary stuff, the attraction to which I no longer get as if it isn’t adding to a body of knowledge it no longer feels worth doing. Check out the post-collapse pic of the ~28,000 ft. traffic jam:

Terrifying Footage of Mount Everest Cornice Accident Aftermath
GearJunkie.com - Outdoor Gear Reviews / by Angela Benavides / May 23, 2024 at 2:51 PM
(Photo/Vinayak Malla)

IFMGA guide Vinayak Malla summited Mount Everest at 6 a.m. on the morning of May 21, the busiest summit day, with Elite Exped clients. On their way back, they videoed just after the snow cornice couldn’t stand the weight of hundreds of climbers and gave in, dragging a number of people into the void.

This article was originally published on ExplorersWeb.

The video doesn’t show the actual collapse but its aftermath. Still, the footage is mind-blowing for its clarity and for depicting the mad sight of an overcrowded summit ridge. Dozens of climbers inch across a narrow snow arete, which couldn’t bear the weight and eventually crumbled. The image above shows a climber desperately trying to lift himself back to safety after the collapse.

“The Everest summit ridge felt different than my previous experiences on the mountain,” Malla said. “There was soft snow, many cornices, and rocky sections covered in snow. Even the weather station was half buried in snow.”

Climbers jam the narrow snow ridge to step on the summit of Everest
Dozens of climbers shuffle along meters from the summit of Everest; (photo/screenshot from video by Vanayak Malla)
Sudden Disaster on Mount Everest

“After summiting, we crossed the Hillary Step. Traffic was moving slowly. Then suddenly, a cornice collapsed a few meters ahead of us,” Malla recalled. He and his clients were on another section of that cornice, which happened not to give way.

Malla’s video shows the broken cornice section and climbers clinging to the fixed ropes and desperately trying to lift themselves back to safe ground.

View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Vinayak jaya malla (@malla.mountaineer)

“As the cornice collapsed, four climbers nearly perished yet were clipped onto the rope and self-rescued,” Malla wrote. “Sadly, two climbers are still missing.”

Then Malla recounts how he saved the situation — and perhaps many lives. “We tried to traverse, but it was impossible due to the traffic on the fixed line. Many climbers were stuck in traffic, and oxygen was running low. I was able to start breaking a new route for the descending traffic to begin moving slowly once again.”

The situation resembles other mountain accidents where a broken rope leaves climbers trapped behind. Something similar occurred on Broad Peak in 2021 when the fixed rope on a ridge broke, stranding Russian climber Nastya Runova and, a little later, Korean Kim HongBin.

Above them, over a dozen climbers waited, not skilled enough to progress across that section without ropes. Several suffered from frostbite. Runova was rescued, but Kim died.

However, the numbers on Everest’s summit ridge on May 21 were larger than on any other mountain.

https://gearjunkie.com/climbing/mount-everest-cornice-accident-aftermath-video

What a horror show: UCLA medical school diversity officer cajoles admission committee members to accept unqualified students admitted as unabashed diversity/quota admits. Since this diversity officer began her efforts test scores among other metrics have cratered. But hey, who are we to complain about future dead patients when there are critical social justice idols to worship?

https://freebeacon.com/campus/a-failed-medical-school-how-racial-preferences-supposedly-outlawed-in-california-have-persisted-at-ucla/

The good news is this would drive a stake through the heart of electric vehicle mandates.The bad is everything else that needs a lithium battery also starts dying:

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/05/21/assessing-americas-vulnerability-to-a-chinese-graphite-embargo/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=assessing-americas-vulnerability-to-a-chinese-graphite-embargo

That gain of function work in Wuhan where Covid broke out is all a coincidence, honest!

Esteemed Doctor, Coincidence Theorist and Deputy Director of the NIH — Dr. Tabak
the Air Vent / by Jeff Id / May 17, 2024 at 8:29 AM
That is a lot of titles. The NIH has decided to provide a critical update to human mental software. If your mind is not running “Human Scatology version 30.1.2.17”, head immediately to the NIH home page press download to begin. ALERT: This is a critical update!!

So the NIH has now admitted to performing gain-of-function research at Wuhan lab in China. This research was performed under Trump’s watch and at the direction of Dr. Fauci by EcoHealth Alliance. This research was on bat corona virus and was being done using the exact same types of spike proteins and virus combinations as were discovered in the COVID 19 virus. Like 120,000 Democrat-only votes showing up in one location for the first time ever, we are now to believe that this is simply a coincidence that COVID 19 originated in Wuhan and had the same characteristic virus and spike protein combinations as the Gain-of-Function research performed in Wuhan, by the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA in conjunction with CHINA. We are fully expected to keep in mind COVID 19 is still absolutely and assuredly of natural origin.

It depends on what your definition of “is” is.

It is only a coincidence that for YEARS, we were told it wasn’t gain-of-function research being done by Fauci and others, in sworn testimony!! We were called conspiracy theorists despite all evidence pointing to the man made development of this virus. Medicines which protected from the virus were withheld. Some folks right here at this site told me I didn’t know what I was talking about and somehow they knew better. What year is it now?

Yesterday we were told that the conspiracy is still a coincidence even though they admit to performing gain-of-function research on covid virus at the very location (and timeframe) that COVID 19 was released. Like vote fraud, one must consider how is it possible that such widespread knowledge in the medical world is not exposed outright across all government and media outlets globally. Below is from an application written by Daszak for EcoHealth Alliance in 2014 to build and test COVID 19 in Wuhan lab.

Specific Aim 3: Testing predictions of CoV inter-species transmission.  We will test our models of host range (i.e. emergence potential) experimentally using reverse genetics, pseudovirus and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments in cell culture and humanized mice. With bat-CoVs that we’ve isolated or sequenced, and using live virus or pseudovirus infection in cells of different origin or expressing different receptor molecules, we will assess potential for each isolated virus and those with receptor binding site sequence, to spill over.  We will do this by sequencing the spike (or other receptor binding/fusion) protein genes from all our bat-CoVs, creating mutants to identify how significantly each would need to evolve to use ACE2, CD26/DPP4 (MERS-CoV receptor) or other potential CoV receptors.  We will then use receptor-mutant pseudovirus binding assays, in vitro studies in bat, primate, human and other species’ cell lines, and with humanized mice where particularly interesting viruses are identified phylogenetically, or isolated. These tests will provide public health-relevant data, and also iteratively improve our predictive model to better target bat species and CoVs during our field studies to obtain bat-CoV strains of the greatest interest for understanding the mechanisms of cross-species transmission.

Dr Tabak, Deputy Director of the NIH gave testimony where he admitted the government performs gain of function research with the caveat that they do it all the time. As though there is ‘nothing to see here folks’. Then he adds for those of you still not paying attention, this research is not regulated because the research poses “NO THREAT OR HARM TO ANYBODY”. All part of the new human software download.

This research IS regulated BTW, just not well enough. That is a topic for another time however.

Watch Tabak dance for yourself right here — it’s a short video, even a gen Z could make it to the end.


So there it is Democrat sheople, now it is ok to believe in Gain of Function research in Wuhan lab, and despite using the same virus and spike proteins, during exactly the same timeframe as COVID 19, this research had nothing to do with COVID 19 whatsoever.

And it is completely harmless.

All this will make sense after you download your critical software update — “Human Scatology version 30.1.2.17”

Be well.

https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2024/05/17/esteemed-doctor-coincidence-theorist-and-deputy-director-of-the-nih-dr-tabak/

Paper proposes paying scientists to find errors in the work of others, pointing out the peer review process is overburdened and often incestuous. I like the idea as so much pathological science is a result of funding gatekeepers freezing funding to those that don’t toe certain narrative lines. Okay fine: let’s fund our work by hoisting the Jolly Roger skewering the work of the scientific admiralty:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01465-y

I’ve been running into this Antarctic-Ice-is-at-an-all-time-low alarmism among various Usual Suspects (it’s like they coordinate this stuff or something, eh?); this vid takes that foolishness apart. And yes, the 7.5 billion claim on 3.5 billion year old earth is indeed made with not only a straight face, but an ever so alarmed one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt9KMlJVVas&t=319s

Yo Joe: revert back to Trump’s energy policies and you can reduce gas prices more reliably, and without emptying the strategic reserve you are using as an electoral piggy bank:

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2024/05/22/the-election-is-coming-its-time-for-biden-to-raid-the-strategic-petroleum-reserve-n4929229

I can’t even:

https://pjmedia.com/graysonbakich/2024/05/22/illinois-renames-offenders-to-justice-impacted-individuals-n4929264

Your feel good story of the day:

https://nypost.com/2024/05/22/media/cnn-posts-lowest-rated-week-in-primetime-since-1991/

Just Security is a reliable Deep State mouthpiece. As such, this post of theirs likely serves as a blueprint for what we are likely to see as the 2024 election looms:

Tech Platforms Must Do More to Avoid Contributing to Potential Political Violence
Just Security / by Yaël Eisenstat / May 22, 2024 at 10:05 AM
This essay is co-published with Tech Policy Press.

At the end of March, we convened a working group of experts on social media, election integrity, extremism, and political violence to discuss the relationship between online platforms and election-related political violence. The goal was to provide realistic and effective recommendations to platforms on steps they can take to ensure their products do not contribute to the potential for political violence, particularly in the lead-up to and aftermath of the U.S. general election in November, but with implications for states around the world.

Today, we released a paper that represents the consensus of the working group titled “Preventing Tech-Fueled Political Violence: What online platforms can do to ensure they do not contribute to election-related violence.” Given the current threat landscape in the United States, we believe this issue is urgent. While relying on online platforms to “do the right thing” without the proper regulatory and business incentives in place may seem increasingly futile, we believe there remains a critical role for independent experts to play in both shaping the public conversation and shining a light on where these companies can act more responsibly.

Indications of potential political violence mount

The January 6th, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol looms large over the 2024 election cycle. Former President Donald Trump and many Republican political elites continue to advance false claims about the outcome of the 2020 election, a potential predicate to efforts to delegitimize the outcome of the vote this November.

Yet such rhetoric is but one potential catalyst for political violence in the United States this political season. In a feature on the subject this month, The New York Times noted that across the country, “a steady undercurrent of violence and physical risk has become a new normal,” particularly targeting public officials and democratic institutions. And, a survey from the Brennan Center conducted this spring found that 38% of election officials have experienced violent threats. And to this already menacing environment, add conflict over Israel-Gaza protests on college campuses and in major cities, potentially controversial developments in the various trials of the former president, and warnings from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security about potential threats to LGBTQ+ Pride events this summer. It would appear that the likelihood of political violence in the United States is, unfortunately, elevated.

The neglect of tech platforms may exacerbate the situation

What role do online platforms play in this threat environment? It is unclear if the major platforms are prepared to meet the moment. A number of platforms have rolled back moderation policies on false claims of electoral fraud, gutted trust and safety teams, and appear to be sleep walking into a rising tide of threats to judges and election officials. These developments suggest the platforms have ignored the lessons of the last few years, both in the United States and abroad. For instance, a year after January 6th, supporters of Brazil’s outgoing president Jair Bolsonaro used social media to organize and mobilize attacks on governmental buildings. And an American Progress study of the 2022 U.S. midterm elections concluded that “social media companies have again refused to grapple with their complicity in fueling hate and informational disorder…with key exceptions, companies have again offered cosmetic changes and empty promises not backed up by appropriate staffing or resources.”

Platforms’ failure to prepare for election violence suggests that in many ways, 2024 mirrors 2020. In advance of that election, two of the authors (Eisenstat and Kreiss) convened a working group of experts to lay out what platforms needed to do to protect elections. Sadly, platforms largely ignored these and many other recommendations from independent researchers and civil society groups, including enforcing voting misinformation restrictions against all users (including political leaders), clearly refuting election disinformation, and amplifying reliable electoral information. The failure of platforms to adequately follow such recommendations helped create the context for January 6th, as documented by the draft report on the role of social media in the assault on the Capitol prepared by an investigative team of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attacks.

Recommendations

To avoid a similar outcome, we propose a number of steps the platforms can, and should, take if they want to ensure they do not fuel political violence. None of the recommendations are entirely novel. In fact, a number of them are congruent with any number of papers that academics and civil society leaders have published over the years. And yet, they bear repeating, even though time is short to implement them.

The full set of seven recommendations and details can be found in our report, but in general they center on a number of themes where online platforms are currently falling short, including:

Platforms must develop robust standards for threat assessment and engage in scenario planning, crisis training, and engagement with external stakeholders, with as much transparency as possible.
Platforms should enforce clear and actionable content moderation policies that address election integrity year-round, proactively addressing election denialism and potential threats against election workers.

Politicians and other political influencers should not receive exemptions from content policies or special treatment from the platforms. Platforms should enforce their rules uniformly.
Platforms must clearly explain important content moderation decisions during election periods, ensuring transparency especially when it comes to the moderation of high profile accounts.

This election cycle, so much of the conversation about tech accountability has moved on to what to do about deceptive uses of AI. But the distribution channels for AI-generated content still run largely through the online platforms where users spread the “Stop the Steal” narrative in 2020 and galvanized the people who ultimately engaged in political violence at the U.S. Capitol. We will continue to draw attention to these unresolved issues, in the hope that rising demands for accountability will prompt platforms to act more responsibly and prioritize the risk of political violence both in the United States and abroad.

The post Tech Platforms Must Do More to Avoid Contributing to Potential Political Violence appeared first on Just Security.

Clearly a card carrying member of the Uniparty, so nothing to see here, move along:

https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/05/rand-paul-demands-doj-investigate-top-fauci-aide-for-allegedly-destroying-covid-origin-emails/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rand-paul-demands-doj-investigate-top-fauci-aide-for-allegedly-destroying-covid-origin-emails

And his second one this month. Dude’s got a serious set of stones:

https://gearjunkie.com/climbing/mountaineering/new-mount-everest-summits-record

An interesting turn:

Billionaires for Trump grows
Pledging lives, fortunes, and sacred honor has become fashionable again
MAY 22, 2024

After his honorable discharge on March 5, 1960, from the Army after being drafted, Elvis Presley hit RCA’s studios in Nashville and began recording hits again, including his riff on O Sole Mio that he called It’s Now or Never, which became his biggest international hit.

It’s now or never
Come hold me tight
Kiss me, my darling
Be mine tonight
Tomorrow
Will be too late
It’s now or never
My love won't wait

That is Trump’s theme song this election because it is do or die time. The indictments and the attempt to destroy his business in civil court make it clear that we don’t get another chance to topple this banana republic.

Some rich men get it. The Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post reported, “Trump gets $1 million from Silicon Valley donor who once gave to Democrats.”

The subheadline said, “The donation from Jacob Helberg, a Palantir adviser who helped push the TikTok ban, shows some tech leaders coalescing against Biden.”

He’s gay. He’s Jewish. He’s not alone.

He said, “The social cost of supporting Trump isn’t as great as it was. Trump was right on a lot of make-or-break issues for America.”

Helberg is part of the Gay Mafia that made Peter Buttigieg the secretary of transportation who did such a lousy job that just about everyone in America knows who the secretary of transportation is. Heck, before Buttigieg, most people didn’t know we had a secretary of transportation.

Another strike against him is Helberg also has been a lobbyist for the ban on Tik Tok bill. I love free speech more than I hate Red China.

The Bezos Post said:

Earlier this month, Helberg traveled to Mar-a-Lago, where he says he “fell in love” with Trump while mingling with a slate of GOP vice-presidential hopefuls, including Sen. J.D. Vance (Ohio), Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Rick Scott (Fla.). He spent the better part of the other week in conversation with the former president about topics such as the risks of overregulating artificial intelligence and the importance of Silicon Valley playing a role in developing military technologies, he recalled.

Tech executive-turned-podcast influencer David Sacks, who, like Helberg, is a close associate of billionaire investor Peter Thiel, is another member of the Silicon Valley cohort who has moved toward the former president. (Helberg is married to Keith Rabois, a compatriot of Thiel since their undergraduate years at Stanford University and a former partner at Thiel’s venture capital firm, Founders Fund.) Sacks initially backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) — helping launch his campaign on X — and then hosted fundraisers for Republican Vivek Ramaswamy and now-independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Now, Sacks is organizing a Trump fundraiser of his own, and he hosted the likes of Elon Musk, Thiel and Rupert Murdoch at his Hollywood Hills home in April for a dinner party focused on airing anti-Biden grievances, according to four people familiar with his activities, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe them. The Sacks fundraiser and party were first reported by Puck.

Sacks has complimented Trump on X. And he might be joined in his fundraising efforts by Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive who co-hosts the “All-In” podcast with Sacks and has historically backed Democrats, one of the people said. Palihapitiya did not respond to a request for comment. Sacks declined to comment. Rabois told The Post last year that Trump was a “sociopath” and that he would not vote for him, but declined to comment on his current position beyond saying he was not supporting Biden.

Bezos knows who all these people are because the Astor 400 of elegantly dressed and refined elites has given way to politically charged elitists. Members of the Astor 400 went down with the ship as they gave their spaces in lifeboats on the Titanic to women and children first. These clowns fly their jets to climate control conferences.

After the 2020 election, Jacob Helberg tweeted, “Congratulations to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for winning a hard fought election. To all who supported Pres Trump, you will have in Joe Biden someone who will always strive to represent you and Americans of all stripes. Now is when the hard work of rebuilding our nation only begins.”

Sarcasm or gullibility? You make the call.

At any rate, his flip to Trump is a healthy sign because given the bloodsport Biden has made of American politics, these men really are pledging their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. Chairman Xi destroyed Jack Ma — once the richest man in China — for daring to publicly criticize communism. Does Helberg really believe he won’t be Jack Ma-ed in Biden’s second term?

Three things explain this inexplicable move by Helberg. The first is that he does not really believe they would do this to him because, it is just politics, right? I doubt Helberg understands the feeling of having the power to force millions of Americans to take a shot. But the government did and that rush Biden and the rest have explains why Mengele did the things he did.

The second reason he is publicly rebuking Biden is Elon Musk. Trump standing up for America can be dismissed as ego tripping. But then the richest man on Earth at the time acquired Twitter, a direct and open challenge to the deep state, which sponsored its censorship. Musk encouraged others to stand up.

The third reason — and this is more conjecture than usual on my part — is October 7. The savage attack on civilian Israelis by Palestinian soldiers/Hamas terrorists and the world’s refusal to be horrified should have sent the message to Helberg, Rob Reiner and every other Jew in America that being Jewish makes you a target.

Indeed, instead of making Hamas leaders stand trial for these war crimes, the world goes after Israel. Iranians may have celebrated the death of their dictator, but the United Nations mourns.

My condolences to Biden for losing another friend.

Reiner can pretend to be Buddhist all he wants, but circumcised matters. When the actual Nazis take over, it will come down to whether a man has a foreskin. It won’t grow back.

71% of American males are snipped, by the way.

For whatever reason Helberg has, I welcome his support for two reasons. One, it is a million bucks going to help elect Trump. Two, it is a million bucks not going to Biden to continue this madness.

Biden and the deep state used the mails to stuff the ballot boxes and win in 2020. It could happen again. Helberg and a few others are going to make it more difficult because Americans now see how a banana republic in DC abuses its power.

https://donsurber.substack.com/p/billionaires-for-trump-grows?r=1qo1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

A piece exploring whether those that claim to be “anti-Zionist” are actually just bigots when it comes to Jews:

Do You Actually Hate Jews?
A simple test to check ‘criticism of Israel’ for antisemitism
BY
CYNICAL PUBLIUS
MAY 21, 2024

A soldier lays tefillin near the Gaza border in southern Israel on Dec. 6, 2023
ALEXI J. ROSENFELD/GETTY IMAGES
I have spent much of my adult life in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean regions of the Middle East. I am not Jewish, which will somehow matter to certain readers. I am, instead, a Roman Catholic American who has been in the area during war and peace, with multiple military assignments in the region.

I made many Arab friends in my service. I’ve sat in a tent in the middle of the desert at night during Ramadan, playing cards and drinking chai (and painfully sticking clothespins on my ears as a penalty when I lost at those card games, which happened a lot.) I was a regular for diwaniya at friends’ homes in Kuwait. I sat cross-legged with Egyptian heavy equipment transport drivers drinking scalding hot cardamom coffee while we watched the sun come up over the desert. I am not an Arab, and I do not claim to be, but I have come to admire the richness of much of Arab culture.

And yet, I would be lying by omission if I did not note what was appalling about what I saw: women treated as property; third-country nationals cleaning toilets in orange jumpsuits and living as literal slaves; gay and lesbian people as criminals; utter religious intolerance; fascist restrictions on free speech; monarchies ruling by fiat, and more.

Amid all of this, Israel stood apart to me, a shining light in a region full of dark despotism—a true democracy with guaranteed liberties, a technological wonderland carved out of a stark desert devoid of resources, and a place where 21% of the citizenry of this ostensibly Jewish state consists of non-Jewish Arabs. In Israel, gays are not criminalized and women are not property. Is it without problems? Of course not. It is a country born in violence, and every day it deals with that reality. It has the same internal political strife that we see in all Western democracies. Crime happens. Extremists capture the national dialogue. It is exceedingly easy to point out Israel’s flaws, just as it is for any nation.

The question, especially these days, is: Given the sharp contrasts with its neighbors, why is Israel so repeatedly singled out as if it is the only (and worst) bad actor in that region, whether in the media, on X, in the United Nations, and everywhere else for that matter? And why lately do these attacks seem to be coming from people, including former military people, who should—no, who definitely—know better?

The IDF’s efforts are as measured as those of any Western military. They are simply being singled out. Why do these attacks seem to be coming from people, including former military people, who should—no, who definitely—know better?

These days, if you spend enough time with strangers online discussing anything related to Israel, you will inevitably come into contact with that person who claims, “I have nothing against Jews, it’s ZIONISM I hate.” In the past, this was usually followed by something about the Rothschilds, or bankers controlling the world, or how Dachau was actually an aromatherapy spa, but these days it might just as easily be heard from someone who seems, on the surface, to share a bunch of your own views.

These people inevitably become angry and puzzled when they are labeled “antisemitic,” and their response is usually along the lines of “What? Criticizing Israel doesn’t make me a Jew-hating antisemite! How could you think that?”

If you have found yourself on either side of an exchange like this one, let me give you a scenario that might help.

There are five dry cleaners in your town. You’ve tried them all and are unhappy with all of them. Four of them are owned by Muslim immigrants from the Middle East, and all four are horrible—they overcharge you, they lose your clothes, they never have your clothes ready on time, they rarely get stains out and never offer a refund. The fifth dry cleaner is owned by Orthodox Jews. That dry cleaner’s prices are lower than the other four, they never lose your clothes and always have them ready on time.

Last week, that Orthodox Jew-owned dry cleaner failed to get a mustard stain out of your favorite shirt and would not give you a refund. So you wrote a scathing Yelp review of the Orthodox Jew-owned dry cleaner, something you have never, ever done for the other four dry cleaners over your many dissatisfied years of going to them with your clothing. If that is not enough, in addition to leaving the bad Yelp review, you also attend massive demonstrations in your town in support of the four Muslim dry cleaners, blaming their incompetence and failures on the Orthodox Jew-owned dry cleaner. Also, you chant “From the dry cleaning fluid to the fur storage area” over and over outside the Orthodox Jew-owned dry cleaner.

Which brings us to the war in Gaza.

Let me say some things about that war. First, in my experience, the IDF is one of the most professional militaries the world has ever seen. Its historic track record of stunning victories over better-funded, numerically superior foes is not the only reason I say this. The IDF’s officer corps attends the same sorts of command and staff colleges that have made the U.S. military so great. The IDF’s enlisted forces are drawn from across the entire society, giving it the natural diversity that U.S. military leaders crave. Most importantly for this conversation, it trains and practices civilian harm mitigation with the same zeal as all professional Western militaries. I could go into great detail here, but suffice it say that at the top of the mitigation list is constant warnings to civilians to evacuate tightly targeted areas before engagement with minimally destructive munitions. This is genuine risk mitigation, and is practiced only by the world’s most professional militaries. (See this piece by the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, for example.) Bottom line: As a matter of training and doctrine, the IDF does all it can to minimize civilian casualties—and in this it is as good as, and I’d argue maybe even better, than U.S. forces.

Second, in war it is impossible to prevent all damage to civilians. It cannot be done. Don’t believe me? Ask the remaining family of Zemari Ahmadi, killed in Kabul by mistake along with his seven children by a U.S. drone strike. Ask the families of the five U.S. troops and one Afghan interpreter killed by a U.S. B-1B laser-guided bomb in Afghanistan’s Zabul Province in 2014. Ask fans of the Arizona Cardinals what they know about Corporal Pat Tillman. Go back to the Normandy campaign in World War II and wonder why U.S. B-17 bombers killed U.S. Lieutenant General Lesley J. McNair. Heck, ask me about the time outside Habbaniyah, Iraq, where I personally was seconds away from giving the order to shoot and kill an Iraqi civilian who was trying to sell my troops some whiskey after momentarily thinking the bottles were Molotov cocktails; we eventually let him go in peace, but it could have just as easily gone the other way.

War is ugly. The “fog of war” is a real thing. Innocents die. Most importantly, there is a huge difference between killing innocents by accident, and killing them on purpose (you know, like Hamas does with its random rockets aimed at Israeli civilians). Things like the missile strike on the World Central Kitchen convoy happen in war—that is just a brutal, undeniable truth. Should responsible IDF officers suffer if negligence is proven? Absolutely. But here is the real question: If the unintentional death of innocents is inevitable in all wars, why does Israel get special disapprobation when it happens with the IDF? More importantly, why would anyone instantly (and without full knowledge) assume that the IDF intentionally targeted legitimately innocent aid workers?

The IDF’s efforts are as measured and tempered as those of any Western military at war. They are simply being singled out, amid a world of equally brutal war.

I can already hear the hue and cry—from the BDS crowd on the left and the Protocols crowd on the right—screaming: “They are leveling Gaza! Have you seen the pictures? It’s GENOCIDE!”

Listen to me, people: If you want to commit genocide, you do not warn civilians to seek safe shelter before you engage the combatants in their midst. You’re upset about the pictures of a leveled Gaza? Have you seen any of what the U.S. military did to Fallujah? Remember the “Highway of Death” in 1991? How do you think Iran treats Kurdish villages? Darfur would like a word too. War is ugly in the best cases; it is even uglier when facing a demented foe like Hamas. People who would perpetrate Oct. 7 and hide behind human shields from their own population will not go easy.

To quote that Seinfeld episode where Elaine’s communist boyfriend got banned from a Chinese restaurant: I don’t want to “name names,” but I will say there is a certain X account where the author claims to be a combat veteran, and he regularly posts about how the IDF is recklessly targeting civilians as a tactic. This person does, in fact, demonstrate a deep understanding of military history, which actually makes this behavior of his worse, because he knows better. He understands the fog of war. He understands the mitigation measures the IDF takes. He understands that in all war, certain levels of civilian death and destruction are inevitable. So why does he say what he says?

The hate of the well-informed is purposeful. Any so-called influencer or self-styled intellectual who spreads the mind virus of antisemitism to fellow Americans, under the guise of informing them, is a predator.

In 2024, antisemitism generally evidences itself in two forms. The first is your classic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, “Hitler was right” sort of neo-fascist fabulism. The second is the kind who buys every lie coming out of Al Jazeera and the rabidly antisemitic Arab press. The thing about both of these kinds of hate is that they have been watered down to a level of acceptability in many circles. The watered-down Protocols crowd accurately points to the number of Jewish influencers in Hollywood and the media, as if that somehow validates an unspoken blood libel. These people are the Joe Rogans of the world—avowedly “fair” while actually speaking from highly bigoted assumptions.

The second crowd—the watered-down Al Jazeera crowd—hides behind “anti-colonialism” as an excuse for quaint chants in favor of exterminating Israel’s Jewish population. Unfortunately, that second kind of watered-down antisemitism is mirrored in the great majority of the mass media in the U.S. and globally. CNN, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Reuters and the like will buy every line coming out of the Gaza Health Ministry and every staged Pallywood video without question, and will flood the zone endlessly with stories supporting the myth of Israeli fascism and “genocide.” When you see Jewish students on college campuses across America being terrorized by their Hamas-sympathizing peers, that phenomenon is fueled almost completely by that second sort of antisemitism—let’s call it the “media narrative of Israel.”

When someone starts demonstrating outside the Jewish dry cleaner because of that mustard stain—whether they’re politically on the right or the left—there are only two possible explanations:

They bought the media narrative of Israel.
Consciously or subconsciously, they hate Jews.
I can almost forgive people who fall prey to No. 1, especially if they are young and/or stupid. College students who don’t know any better are immersed in a nonstop barrage of the media narrative of Israel, and as college students their brains are mush anyway, so I sort of get how they could be so easily misled. Your average, working, adult American who does not pay much attention to politics or international relations can also be driven into this belief set—their media bombards them with unbalanced, anti-Israel propaganda, and if all those kids are protesting on campus, there must be something to it, right?

But it’s people like my fellow soldier on X who trouble me more. When you know that Israel is the freest, most liberal state in the region; when you know that war is hell and civilians die in all wars; when you know that the IDF engages in state-of-the-art mitigation measures to protect innocent civilians; when you know all of these things and still engage in the blood libelish lies of “Israel is committing genocide,” No. 2 is the only logical conclusion. The only stain is the one on that person’s soul—a black stain of Jew hatred that goes back millennia.

The hate of the well-informed stands out because it’s purposeful. Ultimately, antisemitism is a mind virus. Any so-called influencer or self-styled intellectual who spreads it to fellow Americans, under the guise of informing them, is a predator.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/do-you-actually-hate-jews

Given Tabbi’s work breaking the Twitter Files I suspect this bodes some very interesting revelations:

Note to Readers: That Eerie Silence
Getcha popcorn ready.
MATT TAIBBI
MAY 21, 2024

“THE AI ELECTION”: Forget Russians, domestic terrorists, or “Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior.” This year’s censorship hobby horse is AI

Subscribe
Racket readers may have noticed it’s been a bit quiet in here of late. That’s because I’ve been spending the last few weeks on an investigative series in cooperation with another site. What seemed like a cut-and-dried report turned into a bit of a rabbit hole on us; hence the delay.

When I first started publishing the Twitter Files in 2022-2023 along with Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, David Zweig, Paul Thacker, and others, there was an emphasis on speed. Once we saw phrases like “flagged by DHS,” I knew the project was temporary, and guessed we’d probably need to stay ahead of the news cycle in order to avoid seeing material drown in blowback. So, we set aside some explosive bigger-picture storylines to focus on things that could be confirmed and published quickly. There were also topics we didn’t fully understand at the time.

Some of those broader stories will begin coming out now, hopefully starting this week. There’s a reason for working back through this material now. Sources tell me at least two different active groups are working on political content moderation programs for the November election that tactically would go a step or two beyond what we observed with groups like Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership, proposing not just deamplification or removals, but fakery, use of bots, and other “offensive” forms of manipulation.

If the recent rush of news stories about the horror of foreign-inspired AI deepfakes (“No one can stop them,” gasps the Washington Post) creating intolerable risk to the coming “AI election” sounds a bit off to you, you’re not alone. This is one of many potential threats pro-censorship groups are playing up in hopes of deploying more aggressive “counter-messaging” tools. Some early proposals along those lines are in the unpublished Twitter Files documents we’ve been working on. Again, more on this topic soon.

Also: beginning around the time we published the “Report on the Censorship-Industrial Complex,” Racket in partnership with UndeadFOIA began issuing Freedom of Information requests in bulk. The goal was to identify inexcusably secret contractors of content-policing agencies like the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. The FOIA system is designed to exhaust citizens, but our idea was to match the irritating resolve of FOIA officers by pre-committing resources for inevitable court disputes, fights over production costs, etc. Thanks to UndeadFOIA’s great work, we now have a sizable library of documents about publicly-funded censorship programs (and a few private ones scooped up in official correspondence).

We’ll be releasing those, too, focusing on a few emails per batch, and publishing the rest in bulk. There’s so much material that a quick global summary here would be difficult, but suffice to say that the anti-disinformation/content control world is much bigger than I thought, enjoying cancer-like growth on campuses in particular, in the same way military research became primary sources of grants and took over universities in the fifties and sixties. Some of these FOIA documents are damning, some entertaining, some just interesting, but all of them belong to the public. We’re going to start the process of turning them over, hopefully today.

In any case, thanks to Racket readers for their patience. I’m very appreciative of the commitment every subscriber makes, especially in this narrowing media environment, which is why I want to make sure readers understand what’s usually going on when things go dark around here. My idea of a vacation is one or two days. If you don’t hear from me for six, I’m working on something. Back soon, and thanks again.

https://www.racket.news/p/note-to-readers-that-eerie-silence

Homeless spending grows, so does the size of the homeless population. Only government program managers can’t see there’s something wrong with this set of circumstances:

Why Are Both Homelessness and Homelessness Spending Growing?
May 17, 2024
By CHRISTOPHER J. CALTON

Also published in The Orange County Register Fri. May 17, 2024   Show More »
Over the past decade, homelessness in California has been rising at alarming rates. California already topped the national list in 2014 when it had a homeless population of 114,000, but according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2023 Homelessness Assessment Report count, that number has grown to more than 180,000—nearly a 60 percent increase—and an astonishing two-thirds of these individuals are entirely unsheltered. In fact, with a total unsheltered population of 123,423, California is shamefully only about 10,000 shy of the other 49 states combined.

Yet California has spent a record $24 billion fighting homelessness over the past five years, according to a state audit published last month. In other words, the homeless population and homelessness spending have grown in tandem. How is this even possible?

The sad reality is that the current homelessness policy, known as Housing First, virtually guarantees an ever-ballooning homelessness budget, regardless of how effective it is in reducing the homeless population. This is because the measure of success under Housing First is not independent self-sufficiency, but in homeless persons becoming de facto wards of the state.

In 2013, the federal government adopted Housing First as its approach to homelessness, and California followed in 2016. This means that both state and federal homelessness grants are reserved exclusively for providers who comply with Housing First principles.

The Housing First philosophy contends that the most effective way to address homelessness is to offer people immediate, no-strings-attached housing. Service providers forfeit their grants if they make housing conditional on, say, sobriety or participation in treatment programs. In theory, supportive services are voluntary, but in practice they are almost non-existent.

Instead, California’s approach to Housing First entails little more than warehousing people in permanent-supportive housing (PSH) units. PSH residents are not classified as “homeless” for official counts, but they remain dependent on taxpayer support, which is paid out of the homelessness budget.

We did not always treat permanent dependency as the best-case scenario for homeless individuals. When the Clinton administration first established the continuum of care system for homelessness services in 1994, the Department of Housing and Urban Development explicitly stated that “the goal of the comprehensive homeless service system is to ensure that homeless individuals and families move from homelessness to self-sufficiency, housing, and independent living.”

When Sam Tsemberis, a clinical psychologist, conducted the first Housing First experiment in New York City, he altered the measure of success to “housing stability,” achieved not through self-sufficiency, but through perpetual subsidies. Tsemberis found that 88% of his clients remained stably housed, compared to 47% of patients in treatment-oriented programs. However, Tsemberis worked exclusively with people suffering from severe mental illnesses—those who would have been institutionalized in an earlier era—so it is reasonable that perpetually subsidized housing may have been the best possible outcome for this particular subset of the homeless population.

But should permanent dependency be the goal for all homeless persons? In FY 2022-2023, California spent $116 million on permanent-supportive housing for homeless youth. A policy that functionally treats homeless and at-risk children as lost causes is not only financially unsustainable, it’s downright inhumane.

A significant portion of homeless individuals suffer not from incurable mental illness, but from untreated substance-use disorder, and the overdose mortality rate of PSH residents is disturbingly high. But studies of crack-addicted homeless persons in drug-abstinent housing, work therapy, and day treatment programs found that upon completion, roughly half of the participants remained sober, housed and stably employed. Yes, “housing stability” was lower than Housing First experiments, but independent self-sufficiency is an unquestionably better outcome for those capable of achieving it.
We can accept that there will always be people who require permanent assistance, but state policy should not treat this assumption as universal. Even if we could end homelessness by permanently warehousing people, we should strive to do better.

But after following the Housing First playbook for nearly a decade, the results are clear: the more money we spend on this strategy, the faster the homelessness crisis grows.

 
CHRISTOPHER J. CALTON is the Research Fellow in Housing and Homelessness at the Independent Institute.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14931

Given Tabbi’s work breaking the Twitter Files I suspect this bodes some very interesting revelations:

Note to Readers: That Eerie Silence
Getcha popcorn ready.
MATT TAIBBI
MAY 21, 2024

“THE AI ELECTION”: Forget Russians, domestic terrorists, or “Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior.” This year’s censorship hobby horse is AI

Subscribe
Racket readers may have noticed it’s been a bit quiet in here of late. That’s because I’ve been spending the last few weeks on an investigative series in cooperation with another site. What seemed like a cut-and-dried report turned into a bit of a rabbit hole on us; hence the delay.

When I first started publishing the Twitter Files in 2022-2023 along with Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, David Zweig, Paul Thacker, and others, there was an emphasis on speed. Once we saw phrases like “flagged by DHS,” I knew the project was temporary, and guessed we’d probably need to stay ahead of the news cycle in order to avoid seeing material drown in blowback. So, we set aside some explosive bigger-picture storylines to focus on things that could be confirmed and published quickly. There were also topics we didn’t fully understand at the time.

Some of those broader stories will begin coming out now, hopefully starting this week. There’s a reason for working back through this material now. Sources tell me at least two different active groups are working on political content moderation programs for the November election that tactically would go a step or two beyond what we observed with groups like Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership, proposing not just deamplification or removals, but fakery, use of bots, and other “offensive” forms of manipulation.

If the recent rush of news stories about the horror of foreign-inspired AI deepfakes (“No one can stop them,” gasps the Washington Post) creating intolerable risk to the coming “AI election” sounds a bit off to you, you’re not alone. This is one of many potential threats pro-censorship groups are playing up in hopes of deploying more aggressive “counter-messaging” tools. Some early proposals along those lines are in the unpublished Twitter Files documents we’ve been working on. Again, more on this topic soon.

Also: beginning around the time we published the “Report on the Censorship-Industrial Complex,” Racket in partnership with UndeadFOIA began issuing Freedom of Information requests in bulk. The goal was to identify inexcusably secret contractors of content-policing agencies like the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. The FOIA system is designed to exhaust citizens, but our idea was to match the irritating resolve of FOIA officers by pre-committing resources for inevitable court disputes, fights over production costs, etc. Thanks to UndeadFOIA’s great work, we now have a sizable library of documents about publicly-funded censorship programs (and a few private ones scooped up in official correspondence).

We’ll be releasing those, too, focusing on a few emails per batch, and publishing the rest in bulk. There’s so much material that a quick global summary here would be difficult, but suffice to say that the anti-disinformation/content control world is much bigger than I thought, enjoying cancer-like growth on campuses in particular, in the same way military research became primary sources of grants and took over universities in the fifties and sixties. Some of these FOIA documents are damning, some entertaining, some just interesting, but all of them belong to the public. We’re going to start the process of turning them over, hopefully today.

In any case, thanks to Racket readers for their patience. I’m very appreciative of the commitment every subscriber makes, especially in this narrowing media environment, which is why I want to make sure readers understand what’s usually going on when things go dark around here. My idea of a vacation is one or two days. If you don’t hear from me for six, I’m working on something. Back soon, and thanks again.

https://www.racket.news/p/note-to-readers-that-eerie-silence

Fills in some blanks re the various, competing Mexican cartels:

SWJ El Centro Book Review – CJNG: A Quick Guide to Mexico's Deadliest Cartel

John P. Sullivan

CJNG Quick Guide
Chris Dalby, CJNG: A Quick Guide to Mexico's Deadliest Cartel. Virtual: World of Crime, 2024 [ISBN:  978-9083423913 paperback, 978-9083423906 eBook, 170 Pages]

The Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), or Jalisco New Generation Cartel is one of Mexico’s major criminal cartels. It is locked into a major contest for dominance of Mexico’s illicit economy with the Sinaloa Cartel (Cártel de Sinaloa). Indeed this competition is increasingly global and involves numerous smaller conflicts with other rival cartels and gangs in Mexico and beyond. Both the CJNG and CDS, Mexico’s largest criminal groups, exercise territorial control and criminal governance and effectively rule over large segments of Mexico’s populace, economy (markets), and spaces. This places the CJNG in direct confrontation with its criminal rivals and the state in the areas it controls or seeks to control. This contest for power and profit is often punctuated by violence. It is also colored by myth and misunderstanding of the nature of these contests,

Chris Dalby, a seasoned journalist, formerly with InSight Crime, has analyzed Mexico’s criminal landscape along with its crime wars and criminal insurgencies for many years. Now Director of World of Crime, a think tank based in the Netherlands with a global virtual remit, has published a resource guide capturing the salient aspects of the CJNG story. The guide, CJNG: A Quick Guide to Mexico's Deadliest Cartel, is built upon years of field work, research, and reportage.

Early Days

After a brief introduction, the text is divided into thirteen substantiative chapters followed by a list of “essential resources.” Each chapter describes a distinct aspect of the CJNG’s activities, from their economic ventures to their threats and a description of their geographic reach.

The first topical chapter, “The CJNG’s Origins,” looks at the foundation of the CJNG in the Milenio Cartel under Armando Valencia Cornelio, briefly recounting the early links to the so-called Guadalajara Cartel under Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, and influence of Pablo Escobar and the Colombian Medellín Cartel. These early seeds set the stage for the rise of “El Mencho” or Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes the CJNG’s founder and current leader. This emergence is punctuated by the rise of “avocadonomics” or the boom in avocados as a cash crop that became integral to Michoacán’s economy and ripe for exploitation by the CJNG.

The next chapter, “The CJNG’s Many, Many Wars,” recounts criminal conflicts with a number of groups, including the Cárteles Unidos and La Familia Michoacana in Michoacán, the Gulf Cartel in Tamaulipas and Veracruz, the Mezcales in Coloma, the Cártel de Santa Rosa de Lima (CSRL) in Guanajuato, and the Zetas Vieja Escuela in Tamaulipas. This is followed by “The Matazetas,” which examines the story of a counterforce to the Zetas that many report as a part of the emergence of the CJNG. Yet, the true story is more nuanced and complicated.

The Cult of El Mencho

The next chapter details the emergence of “The Cult of El Mencho.” Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, aka “Mencho,” is the notorious leader of the CJNG.  El Mencho eschewed the mantle of social bandit, cultivated by Sinaloa kingpin El Chapo Guzmán, and “Cultivated an aura of fear, devotion and anonymity.”(p. 50) This section recounts Mencho’s early years, when he was connected to the Valencia family and the Milenio cartel; his time in the United States (both in California and in federal prison in Texas); and his return to Mexico where he became a cop, before he reconnected with the Valencia Family and the Milenio Cartel in time for the war with Los Zetas.

The Rise and Fall of the Cuinis and the Next Generation

The legacy of "Los Cuinis” is told in “The Rise and Fall of the Cuinis” which describes the symbiotic relationship between the CJNG and the Cuinis, led by Mencho’s brother-in-law known as “El Cuini.” This group, or faction, were dominated by the González Valencia family. Money laundering, funding expansion into the global methamphetamine trade were hallmarks of the Los Cuini era. After several notable arrests the Cuini power faded. The next chapter “The Next Generation of CJNG Leaders” assesses potential successors to “El Mencho” amid speculation that he is seriously ill and dying or already dead (his actual fate is unknown at the time of this book’s release and this review).

Money Laundering and Branding

“The CJNG’s Money laundering Empire” looks at the financial services component of the CJNG. From front businesses to real estate transaction, trade-based money laundering helps convert the profits from the global meth, fentanyl, and heroin trade into portable capital. The early rise of this business center to its connections to the Chinese shadow banking system and use of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is briefly reviewed before turning to public affairs. “The CJNG’s Gift for Public Relations” examines the CJNG’s use of social media—including generating a fan base and associated trademark “purple devil” (😈) emoji—and propaganda are described emphasizing “narcoculture,” machismo, hyper-violence, battle images, and cults of personality to reinforce the CJNG brand.

Synthetic Pharma, Other Profit Centers, and Geospatial Reach

The next two chapters focus on the CJG trade in illicit pharma or drugs. “The CJNG and Methamphetamine” sets the stage with a description of the cartel’s innovation in producing its own product through a network of meth labs to form a power base. The global connections derived from this endeavor were the foundation for the next phase, fentanyl. “The CJNG and Fentanyl” describes the growth and current state of the fentanyl trade and its impact in Mexico. The next chapter, “How Else Does the CJNG Make Money?” Looks at the Avocado trade, Extortion, Fuel Theft (Huachicoleo), Illegal Fishing, Illegal Logging and Timber Trafficking, Migrant Smuggling, and Timeshare Fraud. The final two chapters” “Where is the CJNG in Mexico” and “The CJNG Across the Americas” briefly ok at the CJNG presence in each of Mexico’s states and Mexico City (CDMX) and the United States, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, and Guatemala. The text ends with a short list of reference resources.

Assessing the Text

CJNG: A Quick Guide to Mexico's Deadliest Cartel is a quick read. While it is not a comprehensive account of the CJNG, an exhaustive investigative account, and in-depth ethnology or political economic assessment, it provides an accessible, synopsis of the CJNG’s rise, operational context, and geographic reach. While specialists may miss detailed accounts of social network analysis and conflict analysis, both specialists and generalists will find this an accessible and succinct overview of the CJNG’s major characteristics. Journalists and senior leaders seeking to prepare themselves to understand current events and more detailed research and operational analyses will likely find this a good primer or “essential A–Z” on the Jalisco New Generation Cartel’s background. The author states that this is the first of many potential World of Crime “quick guides” with future volumes on the Tren de Aragua an the Chapitos in preparation. I look forward to seeing those released as companions to this text.

Categories: El Centro
About the Author(s)

John P. Sullivan
Dr. John P. Sullivan was a career police officer. He is an honorably retired lieutenant with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, specializing in emergency operations, transit policing, counterterrorism, and intelligence. He is currently an Instructor in the Safe Communities Institute (SCI) at the Sol Price School of Public Policy, University of Southern California. Sullivan received a lifetime achievement award from the National Fusion Center Association in November 2018 for his contributions to the national network of intelligence fusion centers. He completed the CREATE Executive Program in Counter-Terrorism at the University of Southern California and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Government from the College of William and Mary, a Master of Arts in Urban Affairs and Policy Analysis from the New School for Social Research, and a PhD from the Open University of Catalonia (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya). His doctoral thesis was “Mexico’s Drug War: Cartels, Gangs, Sovereignty and the Network State.” He can be reached at jpsullivan@smallwarsjournal.com.

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/swj-el-centro-book-review-cjng-quick-guide-mexicos-deadliest-cartel

No dots to connect here:

https://nypost.com/2024/05/16/us-news/nih-director-admits-taxpayers-funded-gain-of-function-research-in-wuhan-four-years-after-covid-pandemic-began/

It seems the charging cables electric vehicles use to power up are popular targets of thieves:

https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/05/ev-charging-stations-across-the-nation-are-targeted-by-thieves-for-their-copper/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ev-charging-stations-across-the-nation-are-targeted-by-thieves-for-their-copper

Quite the tale!

And yes I sometimes forget how annoying many non-lawyers find being subjected to Socratic lines of questioning whereas for me it is simply a search for getting to definition of terms and clarity in what is being asserted.

In addition to my various misadventures in interaction with law enforcement (nowhere near those of your brother!) I regularly work with law enforcement during which I am exposed quite a bit to what the world looks like from an LEO perspective.

I do not deny the potency of your argument, but in equal measure as a general principle I find it quite implausible to suggest that police need to be as subject to lawsuits as anyone just walking around.  I could be mistaken, but it seems like that is where you are or are heading.

It's not a justice system, it is a legal system. 

Even when one "wins" litigation is a significant emotional event with high costs in emotion, time, energy, and money.   The plaintiff gets his lawyer with a contingency agreement, but someone must pay for the defendant's representation.

Yes it had our little burg north of Chicago all aflutter back in the 1970's. Cop had a last name of Bruce, but my google-fu isn't letting me pull anything up. It was reported in the Chicago Tribune IIRC, but they won't let you search their archives for free.

These misadentures drove my brother Randy into basically an outlaw biker lifestyle, an element I believe in his premature death due to all his motorcycle crashes, bar fights, and general hard living. Some of the stupidest things I ever did involved hanging with him at the Kenosha biker bar he favored as aggravated assualt seemed the hobby of many there, while the rules that crowd lived by were quite difficult to discern though unwitting violations of 'em had ugly, even fatal, consequences.

With that said, I don't think I've argued for setting LEOs up for more lawsuits, but do feel when they cross the line as noted in the piece I posted:

"The two officers then release both men, allowing the obviously intoxicated DD to drive home in his pickup truck. Two days later, the officers, Michael Garcia and Joshua Few, swear out a thoroughly rotten probable‐​cause affidavit in which they credit DD’s incoherent and contradiction‐​riddled story that GS impersonated a police officer during the encounter on the highway. Warrant in hand, they then go to GS’s house at 3 a.m., wake him up with a ruse, and arrest him for felony impersonation of a police officer—for which he is duly charged and prosecuted until the charges are quietly dropped a few months later."

... thus forcing a law abiding citizens to stare down the barrel of felony charges and attendant huge legal bills. Those officers ought not be able to cite QI as a reason they aren't taken to task for their crimes or don't have to endure what the Samaritan did. Sure, it's a legal system, one that was weaponized via QI against a law abiding citizen and Good Samaritan, something that is neither just or legal and hence ought not incentivize so perverse an outcome IMO.

This piece contains some deeply subversive to the "Progressive" point of view elements. I'd paste it here, but there is more italicized text than I can format at the moment, and seeing the italics are important to understanding the piece:

https://reason.com/volokh/2024/05/21/what-is-sex/