Posts on Thursday, February 1, 2024
The verdict in former President Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial in Manhattan that could see him banned for life from doing business in New York has been delayed until mid-February, according to a court spokesperson.
Justice Arthur Engoron said during the trial’s closing arguments on Jan. 11 that he hoped to make his final decision by Jan. 31 in a much-anticipated verdict that could, in addition to hitting the former president with a lifetime business ban, see him fined $370 million.
This time, a medical school neuroscientist is on the hot seat for research misconduct at Harvard.
Claudine Gay could at least argue that her academic misconduct wasn’t exactly brain surgery, but now that two of the academic scandals are at Harvard Medical School and one includes a neuroscientist, you get the idea. It is brain surgery in this case, and it’s pretty hard for Harvard to deny that there is a fundamental problem regarding academic integrity at its institution now that four separate scandals have popped up in the period of a few months.
Top Harvard Medical School neuroscientist Khalid Shah allegedly falsified data and plagiarized images across 21 papers,
Fox News Channel’s Peter Doocy: New
Poll Shows ‘The Trends Here May Be
Changing’ With Biden Ahead replies
Poll Shows ‘The Trends Here May Be
Changing’ With Biden Ahead replies
A new Quinnipiac University poll shows President Joe Biden opening up a 6-point lead over Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, with Biden taking 50 percent to Trump’s 44 percent in the poll released Wednesday. On Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends Thursday morning, White House correspondent Peter Doocy said “the trends here may be changing” after Trump had consistently led in national polls of a hypothetical rematch of the 2020 election—and Quinnipiac’s own poll in December found the race “too close to call,” with Biden just one point ahead, 47 percent to 46.
The pace of job cuts by U.S. employers accelerated at the start of 2024, a sign the labor market is starting to deteriorate in the face of ongoing inflation and high interest rates. That is according to a new report published by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which found that companies planned 82,307 job cuts in January, a substantial 136% increase from the previous month. However, that is down about 20% from the same time one year ago. It marked the second-highest layoff total for the month of January in data going back to 2009.
"Waves of layoff announcements hit U.S.-based companies in January
NEW YORK, - A ruling in the New York state attorney general's $370 million civil fraud case against former U.S. president Donald Trump will not come until early to-mid February, a court spokesperson said Thursday.
Justice Arthur Engoron, who oversaw a three-month trial in the case last year, had said he planned to rule by the end of January but offered no guarantees. His eventual ruling could deal a major blow to Trump's business empire as the businessman-turned-politician seeks the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 U.S. election.
How do you know that it's election time?
Joe Biden is finally doing something about the border crisis. Not anything substantive to fix the issues, mind you, not that. He claims he doesn't have the power to do that. He's trying to shift the blame for the problem he created and has denied for three years until this month, to the Republicans, now that the election is upon us and his handlers realize it's an important issue to the American people.
But he's also discovered something else with election time. He's discovered how important Ohio is and how he's losing in the polls to former President Donald Trump there,
There's a long-running meme on the internet that shows a mother turning around in a car and shouting at her kid, "Why can't you just be normal." He responds by shrieking uncontrollably. That's Joe Biden. Why can't this dude just be normal? On that note, it's Thursday, February 1st, and the president is currently wandering around Michigan saying weird stuff again. He's like an escaped nursing home patient. (X) I'm not an expert on senility, but I suspect a common symptom is a person continually saying the same incoherent things over and over. How many times has Biden delivered that line about deer in Kevlar vests?
They Firebombed My Office
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I wasn’t entirely forthcoming in this post about why I haven’t written much the last few days. It is true that I have been in Washington, mostly to attend the Michael Mann v. Mark Steyn trial. I will write up my thoughts on the trial (or at least, those portions I have seen) when I have time.
But something else has been distracting me: leftists firebombed my office last Saturday night. At around 2 am, they broke into the building that houses Center of the American Experiment and two other conservative organizations with which we often collaborate, along with many other businesses. The arsonists set two fires:
When Gabrielle Robertson rented a room at a house near the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, she says her only alternative was the street.
“It was literally, I didn’t have any other option,” Robertson said.
She says she found the rental on the popular website Craigslist for under $500 a month.
Robertson later discovered that her live-in landlord, Mohammed Shahidullah, was convicted of operating without a rental license in 2022 after 5 INVESTIGATES exposed a history of health and safety violations at the property on Erie Street.
The war between Israel and Hamas continues to rage following the October 7th attacks carried out by the latter. In what culminated in a wild scene, IDF operators dressed in disguise raided a hospital in Jenin, taking out a Hamas leader and two of his deputies. No one else was harmed.
Surveillance footage showed the beginning of the operation, with one operator even showing up in a wheelchair while others dressed as Muslim women and medical workers. Later photos show the aftermath, with blood stains in the room the terrorists were hiding in. [Video, Tweet]
Jenin has been a terrorist stronghold for decades.
My colleague Bob Hoge reported on a mob of illegal aliens who beat two police officers in New York City, continuing to kick them in the head and attack them as they struggled with a suspect on the ground. But initially, they were only able to arrest four of them, when obviously there were more than four involved.
Two suspects — Yorman Reveron, 24, and Darwin Andres Gomez Izquiel, 19 — were arrested minutes after the attack. At around 10:15 p.m. on Saturday, officers took Kelvin Servat Arocha, 19, and Wilson Juarez, 21, into custody. All four suspects were released hours later with no bail.
Oregon GOP state senators who staged walkout
over abortion can't run for reelection,
high court says replies
over abortion can't run for reelection,
high court says replies
The Oregon Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that 10 Republican state senators are ineligible to run for reelection after they participated in a quorum-denying walkout for six weeks last year to stall legislation on abortion, transgender treatments and firearms.
The high court decided in favor of Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade, who had disqualified the senators from running for office again after voters approved a measure in 2022 to amend the state constitution to ban lawmakers with more than 10 unexcused absences from running again.
Donald Trump's political operation is burning through cash and has just $5 million remaining in the bank, according to a report from Mediaite.
Disclosures published online for Trump's Save America PAC reveal that having once had a healthy $100 million war chest, the organization has just $5 million remaining after spending a staggering $25 million on his legal fees in the second half of 2023. Another Trump-affiliated PAC, Make America Great Again, similarly spent $4 million on the former president's legal fees as he battles numerous state and federal criminal cases brought against him.
On Friday, Green Bay Election Observer Janet Angus won an important battle in the fight for transparent elections. (snip) Judge Hock gave a directed verdict for Janet Angus, finding that the city did not meet their burden of proof of disorderly conduct. Judge Hock said “there was absolutely no disturbance.” She then described the city’s actions “absolutely ludicrous” and opined that “this municipal citation was retaliatory due to the Wisconsin Elections complaint that was filed.” These city actions reveal a brazen attempt to silence and intimidate their political critics using city resources.
Former high-level Boeing managers and engineers have issued startling warnings for flyers to avoid the airplane giant’s troubled 737 MAX 9 jets as the model once again takes to the skies.
“I would absolutely not fly a MAX airplane,” one-time senior Boeing manager Ed Pierson bluntly told the Los Angeles Times of the model that recently saw a door plug blow out in midair on an Alaska Airlines flight. “I’ve worked in the factory where they were built, and I saw the pressure employees were under to rush the planes out the door.”
Joe Jacobsen, a former Boeing engineer who has also worked at the Federal Aviation
Disgusting: Joe Biden Calls Grieving Mother
of Killed Soldier and Misleads About Beau
Biden Again replies
of Killed Soldier and Misleads About Beau
Biden Again replies
Chalk this up as another story that dumbfounds me, with Joe Biden once again fibbing to a grieving military family about how his son, Beau Biden, died. As RedState reported, three U.S. Army soldiers were killed in Jordan in late January after an Iranian-backed group attacked it with drones. The deceased have been identified as Sergeant William Rivers, Specialist Breona Moffett, and Specialist Kennedy Sanders. Good Morning America broadcast the call Biden made to the family of Specialist Sanders in which he proceeded to mislead them about his son's death, something he's done in numerous calls to Gold Star families.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Thursday issued an executive order that targets Israeli settlers in the West Bank who have been accused of attacking Palestinians in the occupied territory, imposing financial sanctions and visa bans in an initial round against four individuals.
Those settlers were involved in acts of violence, as well as threats and attempts to destroy or seize Palestinian property, according to the order. The penalties aim to block the four from using the U.S. financial system and bar American citizens from dealing with them. U.S. officials said they were evaluating whether to punish others involved in attacks that have intensified during the Israel-Hamas war.
Equity Is Justice, Redefined
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Diversity and inclusion are not what’s wrong with DEI.
“Diversity” and “Inclusion” are apple-pie American concepts that echo our national motto: out of many, one; from diversity, inclusion, and unity.
What DEI proponents have cleverly done, though, is sandwich between two “good” words a third word with ancient roots that they have vested with a new, radical meaning and evil implications. That word is “Equity.”
Equity arose in Anglo-American legal history as a procedure by which an injured party could petition the king to right a wrong that the rule of law did not address.
Ten Republican senators in Oregon cannot run for reelection, the state’s top court ruled on Feb. 1.
The court found that the senators are banned from running for reelection under a constitutional amendment approved in 2022.
Measure 113, the amendment, states that lawmakers who miss at least 10 legislative days without an excuse cannot seek reelection.The ruling upheld a decision from Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade, a Democrat.
Ms. Griffin-Valade said in 2023 that the senators, under the measure, could not try for another term.
“My decision honors the voters’ intent by enforcing the measure the way it was commonly understood when Oregonians added it to our state constitution,”
Some of us older folks grew up in a time of normality when chaos was not the rule and weird, life-changing things didn’t happen. The stakes were not that high when we were growing up, except for the whole imminent nuclear war thing, but now we are regularly beset by flocks of black swan events, events so significant and life-changing that they send our society and our politics off in strange new tangents. And they now happen all the time. 9/11, the Wall Street meltdown, Trump’s election, COVID, Ben Shapiro getting a No. 1 rap hit … the black swans are coming fast and furious,
Responding to the killing of three American soldiers by Iranian proxies this weekend, President Joe Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Middle East is now more volatile than at any moment since 1973.
At around the same time, Biden finally admitted that the southern border is in “crisis,” just as his Department of Homeland Security announced 300,000 migrants were arrested for illegally crossing into the U.S. in December, a number dwarfing all previous records.
Again, at the same time, inflation ticked higher last month, as a record number of people find they cannot pay their rent and consumers owe more personal debt than ever before. Workers can’t afford
This is kind of a funny and very real political story if you follow the mechanics of it. Essentially, it starts out with Politico noting the Ron DeSantis’ Super PAC Never Back Down, paid the Club for Growth Super PAC, Win It Back, $2.75 million dollars to run attack ads against Donald Trump. {Background Story}
Apparently, Ron DeSantis didn’t want to attack Trump directly, so using the Machiavellian tactics the professionally Republican group is known for, DeSantis funded a third-party to attack Trump on his behalf. A lot of people take issue with this discovery, but the story is actually deeper, and yes, even more Machiavellian.
Interesting move and office location in yet another election year. In 2022, Joe Biden appointed John Podesta as the “Clean Energy Czar,” essentially giving him control over doling out the $326 billion in Green New Deal, aka “Inflation Reduction Act,” money provided by Congress. At least that was the pretense of the purpose.
The actual agenda for Podesta, in 2022, appeared to be using the $316 billion GND money fund leftist support networks of the Biden administration in the midterm election cycle. Now we enter another election year, and Podesta is being given a new title to assume the role of John Kerry as Biden’s latest “Climate Diplomat”
Florida has nearly 800,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) recently announced.
“When I got elected governor in Nov 2018, FL had close to 300k more registered Democrats than Republicans,” DeSantis, who dropped his Republican presidential bid in January, said on X.
“Today, we have close to 800k more registered Republicans than Democrats — a net gain of more than 1 million in a little more than 5 years,” he said, adding, “Produce results and people will respond!”: Indeed, data from the Florida Division of Elections — last updated on December 31, 2023 — shows 5,141,848 registered Republicans and 4,362,147 registered Democrats
Poor communication and a refusal to adapt to evolving scientific evidence led to unnecessary school closures and the restriction of outdoor activity during the Covid outbreak, contributing to the “pandemic chaos” that plagued the country for more than two years, a scathing report published Monday revealed.
The report, “Pandemic lessons for the 2024 presidential election,” was published in the British Medical Journal and draws on a breadth of scientific studies to assess the policy failures that led to significantly higher death rates in the U.S. than in other developed countries. “During the devastating global covid-19 pandemic, one nation stood out: the United States saw ‘eye wateringly high’ death rates
Agenda 2030, the United Nation’s formal plan for the creation of a new world government, contains 91 sections. It begins with the following vacuous but revealing words:
“This Agenda is a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity. It also seeks to strengthen universal peace in larger freedom. We recognize that eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty, is the greatest global challenge and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development.”
This cliché-ridden pap begins the exposition of Agenda 2030, developed by the UN to introduce a world government devoid of the concepts of rights, liberty, life and happiness. Moreover, the Marxist ideal of meeting needs
Students at a school in East Jerusalem run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) were recorded in a recently resurfaced video explaining how they’ve been taught to murder Jews and take part in the generational struggle to reclaim land which they believe belongs to Palestinians.
The documentary was shot in 2022 in a school in the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem and recently resurfaced amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. In the video, students who appear to be as young as seven or eight years old tell an interviewer “we have been taught that the Jews kill our children.”
January 6 Defendants File Challenges in
U.S. Supreme Court To Abuse Of ‘Obstruction
of Justice’ Law replies
U.S. Supreme Court To Abuse Of ‘Obstruction
of Justice’ Law replies
The existential fate of the First Amendment of the US Constitution rests in the hands of the Supreme Court and whether the high court of appeal will strike down 18 U.S.C. 1512(c)(2), the most serious criminal charges leveled against former President Donald Trump and an ever-growing number of January 6 defendants.
1512 criminalizes any effort to “corruptly” obstruct, influence or impede any official proceeding.” A conviction can result in a prison sentence of up to 20 years.
Last April, an appellate court issued a splintered 2-1 ruling endorsing the DOJ’s unprecedented misuse of the statute
White House adviser John Podesta will be the top U.S. climate diplomat when high flying John Kerry steps down this spring and ceases his endless global tours warning the world of impending doom.
“We need to keep meeting the gravity of this moment, and there is no one better than John Podesta to make sure we do,” White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients said in a written statement, shared Wednesday with The Washington Post, CNN and The Hill.
“John has — and will continue to be — at the helm of driving the implementation of the most significant climate law in history,” Zients added.
Music videos and inflammatory social media posts have been a driver of shootings in the nation’s capital in recent years, according to a report released this week by the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, an independent agency in D.C. that identifies local public safety challenges.
“About 95% of victims and suspects in homicides and 94% of victims and suspects in nonfatal shootings were Black, despite Black residents comprising only 46% of the overall population in the District,” according to the report.
Roughly 60% of homicide victims and suspects and 59% of nonfatal shooting victims and suspects were between the ages of 18—34
After spending three years denying that there is a border crisis, President Joe Biden wants the public to believe that the reason more than 6 million immigrants have flooded over the southern border on his watch is because of Republican intransigence.
Now he’s taking this up a notch. He claims he desperately wants to “shut down the border,” but Republicans are standing in the way … for political gain. This is a lie for the history books.
Just how dumb does Biden think the public is?
On his first day in office, Biden started signing executive orders
European Union agrees on a new 50 billion-euro
aid package for Ukraine despite Hungary’s
veto threat replies
aid package for Ukraine despite Hungary’s
veto threat replies
A top European Union official says the 27 EU countries have sealed a deal on new aid for Ukraine just over an hour into a summit of the bloc’s leaders and despite threats from Hungary to veto the move.
“We have a deal,” European Council President Charles Michel said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. He wrote that all “27 leaders agreed on an additional 50-billion-euro ($54 billion) support package for Ukraine within the EU budget.”
The announcement came despite staunch objections from Hungary in December and in the days leading up to Thursday’s summit in Brussels.
Harvard has been bleeding financial support since October, when Ivy League students began campus demonstrations in support of Hamas.
One of their billionaire donors recently explained why he is no longer supporting the institution, calling out the school for its embrace of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies.
Adding insult to injury, he called the students whiny snowflakes.
CNN actually covered this: $500 million Harvard megadonor halts donations, says elite schools produce ‘whiny snowflakes’ ..Hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, who has donated more than $500 million to Harvard University over the years, has halted contributions to his alma mater and claimed elite schools produce “whiny snowflakes.”
A new Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll shows Donald Trump beating Joe Biden in the crucial swing states.
Is there any wonder why Biden is suddenly interested in the crisis at the border or why he is talking about visiting East Palestine, Ohio?
It’s likely because the 2024 election is less than a year away and Trump keeps beating him in the polls.
RedState reports: No Wonder Biden Is Finally Talking ‘Border Crisis’ – Check Out How Trump Is Crushing Him in the Polls..Have you wondered why Joe Biden took an Orwellian flip and was suddenly talking about the “border crisis” —
A 54-year-old branch of Denny's has closed its doors in Oakland amid threats to 'the safety and wellbeing' of staff and customers, as the Bay Area city struggles to contain soaring crime.
With robbery up by 37 percent year-on-year, burglary up 24 percent and motor vehicle theft rising 45 percent to reach an all-time record, those who live and work in the city do not feel safe. Violent crimes have also spiked by 21 percent in 12 months.
And on Tuesday, Clorox - which has its global headquarters in Oakland - begun providing security escorts for people walking to and from the train station.
A majority of House Democrats voted against legislation this week that would impose new criminal penalties for illegal aliens leading Border Patrol agents on often deadly high-speed chases.
On Tuesday, just 56 House Democrats joined 215 House Republicans to pass the “Agent Raul Gonzalez Officer Safety Act,” which would establish new criminal penalties for illegal aliens and others driving vehicles who try to evade Border Patrol agents within 100 miles of the United States-Mexico border.“We appreciate House Republicans’ efforts to secure our lawless and chaotic border, protect the men and women on the frontlines, and make our communities safer,” Hector Garza,
Johnson Sets Vote on Tax Bill Conservatives
Call ‘Trojan Horse to Expand Welfare’
for Illegal Aliens replies
Call ‘Trojan Horse to Expand Welfare’
for Illegal Aliens replies
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is rushing through a tax bill unveiled days ago over significant policy objections from both conservative and centrist factions of the Republican Party.
Conservatives have spoken out against provisions in the bill they see as handouts to illegal immigrants, particularly an expansion of the Child Tax Credit without language requiring the parent to have a Social Security number. They argue the expansion would serve as an additional powerful migration pull, even as migrant encounters at the border reach record highs under President Joe Biden.
A man from Mississippi has been charged with a hate crime after he allegedly badly damaged a Satanic display at Iowa's capitol building in Des Moines in December. The damaged display included a statue of the pagan idol Baphomet. [SNIP] Michael Cassidy, a former Mississippi congressional candidate, was charged after the vandalism with misdemeanor fourth-degree criminal mischief.
He said at the time, "My conscience is held captive to the word of God, not to bureaucratic decree. And so I acted."
That charge was upgraded, according to court documents reported on by the Des Moines Register, accusing Cassidy of committing felony third-degree criminal mischief.
Former President Donald Trump is making a push to shore up support from a historically Democratic voting bloc: union workers.
On Wednesday, Trump met with members of the Teamsters union's leadership as well as rank-and-file members in a roundtable discussion at their headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The group, which represents 1.3 million workers including technicians, film and television workers and law enforcement officials, has yet to endorse in the 2024 election but backed President Joe Biden in 2020.
Speaking with reporters after the closed-door meeting
I find myself a bit surprised to see some of what follows in print, not because any of it is new but instead because things that have been obvious for a long time are now being published as true by the NY Times. The piece, which is labeled analysis, opens by noting that people are streaming across the border and turning themselves in to authorities to claim asylum for one clear reason.
Being hustled into a U.S. Border Patrol vehicle and taken to a processing facility is hardly a setback. In fact, it is a crucial step toward being able to apply for asylum — now the surest way