I posted a video about stuff.
The Senators started the week getting mauled by the Twins as Spaceman Lee self-destructed on the mound en route to a 14-2 blowout, but we managed to salvage the final game with Jim Kaat and the bullpen holding on for a 9-5 win. Things likewise started badly in Montreal; Joe Coleman picked up his fourth loss against Paul Splittorff, but then Spaceman Lee came back for a close 3-2 win and Carl Morton won another squeaker in Game 3. We’re still in the cellar, two games behind Oakland, but only five games behind the Red Sox. No surrender! Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
The intersection of Flatlands Avenue and East 80th Street is probably not the worst part of Brooklyn, but it’s also not the best part of Brooklyn.
Far be it from me to pretend to have any expert knowledge of Brooklyn neighborhoods. All I know on the subject, I learned via Google searches, which tells me that this vicinity is part of what’s known as Carnasie:
Canarsie was initially a fishing community, but became a popular summer resort in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By the late 1930s and early 1940, the resorts had been destroyed, and Canarsie was developed as a largely Italian American and Jewish suburb. In the 1970s, racial tensions developed around an argument over the zoning of the area’s schools, and in the aftermath, Canarsie became a mainly black neighborhood with a high West Indian population in the late 1990s.
The intersection of Flatlands Avenue and East 80th Street is in ZIP Code 11236, where the population is 82% black and 4% white. You may wonder why I’m sharing this information, or how it might be relevant to any current political discussion, but I became interested in this because of a video I watched on the Police Activity channel on YouTube:
Suspect Points Gun at NYPD Sergeant Before Being Shot and Arrested
On Friday, January 10, 2025, at approximately 9:43 p.m., Sergeant Salzman, Police Officer Okafor, Police Officer Wilson, Police Officer Zaheer, and additional officers assigned to the 69th Precinct, were transporting a prisoner to the 69th Precinct following an unrelated arrest. While at the intersection of East 80th Street and Flatlands Avenue, the officers heard a gunshot in the vicinity and observed, 50-year-old Moonra Durham fleeing northbound on East 80th Street. Sergeant Salzman and Police Officer Zaheer pursued Durham on foot while Police Officer Wilson and Police Officer Okafor pursued him in their vehicle. While the officers pursued him, they shouted commands for Durham to stop. Once in front of 754 East 80th Street, Durham positioned himself behind a tree and pointed a firearm at Police Officer Zaheer.
Durham then turned to his left and pointed the firearm at Sergeant Salzman. As a result, Sergeant Salzman discharged three shots, Police Officer Okafor discharged four shots, Police Officer Wilson discharged two shots, and Police Officer Zaheer discharged four shots, from their service firearms at Durham. Durham was struck by the gunfire and taken into custody without further incident. Durham was transported from the scene via ambulance to Brookdale University Medical Center where he was treated for his injuries. For his actions, Durham was arrested and charged with Attempted Murder in the First Degree (police officer), Attempted Murder in the Second Degree, Criminal Use of a Firearm in the First and Second Degree, Attempted Aggravated Assault Upon a Police Officer, Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Second Degree, and related charges.
We do not know why the initial gunshot was fired — robbery? assault? just another Friday night in Canarsie? — but it so happened that at least four cops were within earshot of this incident, and considering how it played out, the suspect is lucky he didn’t get shot dead. Where I come from, you point a gun at a cop, let alone four cops, and you’re likely to die in the proverbial “hail of police gunfire.” What kind of place is this, where gunfire goes off randomly on a Friday night and the perp thinks it’s a smart idea to point his gun at cops? That’s how my curiosity about Canarsie got started; the description included a street address — 754 East 80th Street — and I was able to do a Google “street view,” which showed a pleasant-looking tree-lined street, with brick apartments or rowhouses.
Just looking at it, you wouldn’t think of East 80th Street as “ghetto,” and in terms of its physical appearance, this Canarsie neighborhood probably hasn’t changed much since the days when, as Wikipedia says, it was “a largely Italian American and Jewish suburb.” Alas, the Jews and Italians cleared out decades ago because of a school-zone dispute, and the more recent “gentrification” that turned neighborhoods like Park Slope into hot spots for yuppies never got as far east as 80th Street. OK, so who is this suspect walking around with a pistol? “Moonra Durham” is a sufficiently unique name that I figured it was worth a Google search.
Readers will recall that on Thursday, I took note of Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who had proclaimed on CNN that “the people that commit 80% of the most violent crimes in this country are white supremacists.” And I pointed out that Crockett represents the 30th District of Texas:
“With a Cook Partisan Voting Index rating of D+27, it is the most Democratic district in Texas.” If your employer relocated you to Dallas, and you were looking to purchase a residence in the area, I’d advise you to stay as far away from the 30th District as possible. Nothing good ever happens inside a D+27 congressional district.
The Eighth District of New York is rated D+26. Just sayin’ . . .
Wow, what a week it’s been, huh? Elon Musk’s young wizards at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have applied their superpowers — weaponized autism — to the simple question: Exactly who has the federal government been giving our tax dollars to? The resulting revelations, especially at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), have been shocking — the biggest scandal of my lifetime, and perhaps the biggest since Teapot Dome.
These headlines are just a tip of the iceberg of shady spending that the DOGE geeks have turned up in the past week, and the way they were doing it, apparently, was by doing automated searches through federal payments by the Empoloyer Identification Number (EIN) of recipient organizations. The discoveries are mind-boggling. Hello, the government was paying millions for subscriptions to Politico?
We’re all missing the important question.
The question is “Is the US Government Politico’s biggest customer?”
From the looks of it, the answer is yes.
But in any case, it’s very clearly a payoff. We’re wasting effort arguing about how this payoff was structured to look legit. https://t.co/4CtYCsUb1a
The reaction of Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) to these revelations was a simple three-step process:
Deflect
Distract
Demonize
The deflection involved claiming that all the bizarre spending by USAID was normal and/or trivial. The distraction involved claiming that the real scandal was not the corruption uncovered by DOGE, but rather the “unfettered access” to federal data with which DOGE was making these discoveries. The demonization involved making Elon Musk a scapegoat, with the slogan “Nobody Elected Elon” being repeated by Democrats.
If you’re getting your news from any establishment media organization — CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, New York Times, Associated Press, Washington Post, etc. — you’ll find that their coverage is entirely structured around this deflect/distract/demonize narrative. They are devoting zero coverage to what it is that DOGE actually found about federal spending, except to mention “right-wing outrage” as a reaction to these revelations.
All of this distracting noise generated by Democrats and their media handmaidens was necessary to buy time for them to obtain an emergency injunction from an Obama-appointed judge in New York:
Judge Halts Access to Treasury Payment Systems by Elon Musk’s Team
A federal judge early Saturday temporarily restricted access by Elon Musk’s government efficiency program to the Treasury Department’s payment and data systems, saying there was a risk of “irreparable harm.”
The Trump administration’s new policy of allowing political appointees and “special government employees” access to these systems, which contain highly sensitive information such as bank details, heightens the risk of leaks and of the systems becoming more vulnerable than before to hacking, U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said in an emergency order.
Judge Engelmayer ordered any such official who was granted access to the systems since Jan. 20 to “destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems.” He also restricted the government from granting access to these categories of officials.
The defendants — President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — should show cause on Feb. 14 before Judge Jeannette A. Vargas, who is handling the case on a permanent basis, Judge Engelmayer said.
The order came in response to a lawsuit filed on Friday by Letitia James of New York along with 18 other Democratic state attorneys general, charging that when President Trump gave Mr. Musk the run of government computer systems, he had breached protections enshrined in the Constitution and “failed to faithfully execute the laws enacted by Congress.”
The attorneys general said the president had given “virtually unfettered access” to the federal government’s most sensitive information to young aides who work for Mr. Musk, who runs a program the administration calls the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, though it is not an actual department.
While the group was supposedly assigned to cut costs, members are “attempting to access government data to support initiatives to block federal funds from reaching certain disfavored beneficiaries,” according to the suit. Mr. Musk has publicly stated his intention to “recklessly freeze streams of federal funding without warning,” the suit said, pointing to his social media posts in recent days.
Several things to note here: Judge Engelmayer was appointed by Obama, while Judge Vargas — she who is “handling the case on a permanent basis” — was appointed by Joe Biden. And, of course, New York AG Letitia James is under investigation for colluding with the Biden administration in her witch-hunt prosecution of Trump. Of course, the basis of their lawsuit — the claim that DOGE’s investigation of federal spending, ordered by the duly-elected President, are somehow violating “protections enshrined in the Constitution” — is absurd.
You know it’s absurd, I know it’s absurd, the federal judges know it’s absurd and the “journalists” reporting this story also know it’s absurd. They don’t care. They’re at the stage of desperation — viewing Trump as an existential threat — where they don’t care about the plausibility of the claims they’re making. Evil Orange Man is trying to stop their access to taxpayer money, and this must be prevented By Any Means Necessary.
Eventually, of course, this case will make it to the Supreme Court, where the majority decision will be brief: “LOL. GFY.” What Democrats are banking on is that the appeals process will take a couple of years, and that in the meantime, Democrats will take back Congress in the 2026 midterm elections, which will have the effect of neutralizing the Trump administration. Obtaining a delay in DOGE’s operation through the judicial process is therefore quite valuable to Democrats, even if they know darned well that they will ultimately lose at the Supreme Court.
The best thing that Ordinary Americans can do is simply to start focusing on the 2026 midterms. If Democrats lose in the next midterms — when historic trends suggest they should gain seats — that would serve as the proper rebuke of their obstructionist actions. Democrats obviously learned nothing from their 2024 defeat, and so it is our to duty to teach them a lesson in 2026 that they will never forget.
Yes. And the funds were filtered through nonprofits.
Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
In case you were wondering, Babalu Blog seems to have vanished from the Intertubes, which is unfortunate since it was the best blog for Cuban and Latin American affairs. Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
How the USAID flap looks from Spain, thanks to Kukuruyo.
The question mark in the headline is necessary because, of course, the competition for Worst Democrat in Congress is fierce. Ilhan Omar, Jamie Raskin, Eric Swalwell — it’s a tough league. But keep your eye on the representative from the 30th District of Texas, about which Wikipedia says: “With a Cook Partisan Voting Index rating of D+27, it is the most Democratic district in Texas.” If your employer relocated you to Dallas, and you were looking to purchase a residence in the area, I’d advise you to stay as far away from the 30th District as possible. Nothing good ever happens inside a D+27 congressional district.
For the past several years, I’ve been watching CNN (so you don’t have to), but about a week ago, I switched my office TV to Fox News for the first time in recent memory, because the shrieking craziness from CNN had become so intense, even I couldn’t cope with it anymore. Therefore I must thank Jeff Poor of Breitbart for providing a transcript of what Rep. Jamine Crockett said on CNN Monday night:
We right now have a white supremacist that is sitting in the White House. He is backed up by other white supremacists. And if you really want to know who the criminals are in this country, you can Google it.
You don’t have to trust me. But the people that commit 80% of the most violent crimes in this country are white supremacists. Yet, for whatever reason, they sit and they serve at the pleasure of the president. They are the ones that were there on January 6th tearing our democracy down physically. And now, we have them tearing us down right here from within. . . .
This remark was made, by the way, in response to a question from CNN’s Laura Coates about Trump appointing one of his former speechwriters, Darren Beattie, to a job in the State Department. Beattie has a Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and acquired the “white supremacist” label in a guilt-by-aasociation smear after it was learned he had spoken at a meeting of the H.L. Mencken Club. Darren Beattie has never committed any violent crime, which is more than you can say for a lot of Jasmine Crockett’s constituents in the 30th District of Texas.
[T]he coddling is for the white boys. That’s what’s happening right now. I am tired of the white tears. Listen, if you are competent, you are not concerned. . . .
So, the only people that are crying are the mediocre white boys that have been beaten out by people that historically have had to work so much harder. . . .
But I got news for them. I don’t care what they do. We will fight to the end to make sure that we get our due because, again, if you want to talk about the people that shouldn’t be in this country, you probably need to look in the mirror, because the last time I checked, the Native Americans who [some are?] ICE have been rounding up or the Puerto Ricans who are absolutely Americans, listen, the only people that came and colonized this place are your ancestors, Trump.
Only one Democratic senator — John Fetterman of Pennsylvania — voted to confirm Donald Trump’s choice for Attorney General. Can anyone explain why so many Democrats voted against Pam Bondi, about whom there was no real controversy and whose tenure as Florida’s attorney general was entirely successful? There was no scandal in Bondi’s background, no history of controversial policy positions.
Bondi, who served as Florida’s first female Attorney General and was a prosecutor for nearly 20 years, has been a Trump supporter since the beginning of her political career.
She served as defense lawyer for Trump in his first impeachment trial and as co-chair of Women for Trump during the 2020 election. Most recently she supported Trump in May at his New York business records trial.
Her “crime,” according to Democrats, is being a supporter of the guy who won the election. That’s it — period, end of sentence. Democrats are constantly telling us that Trump is a threat to democracy, and yet which party is it that doesn’t want to acknowledge the result of the election?
Go back to 2021 and see how many of Joe Biden’s Cabinet appointments sailed through the confirmation process with only token opposition from Republicans. There were 30 Republican votes against Merrick Garland’s nomination as Biden’s attorney general, but there were 18 Republican “yea” votes. Was Garland less controversial than Bondi? Was she more of a partisan ideologue than he? You cannot objectively justify the greater Democratic opposition to GOP nominees, and must therefore conclude that Democrats have not yet lost enough elections to be convinced that the country has turned against them. Last weekend’s circus at the Democratic National Committee meeting is further evidence of this. If Democrats took the 2024 election results seriously, they wouldn’t have been acting the fool that way. They seem to believe that regaining their congressional majorities in the 2026 midterms will be a piece of cake, so they don’t need to make any meaningful changes to their rhetoric or policy agenda, but rather just double-down on “Orange Man Bad.”
Part of the problem, of course, is that the establishment media echo chamber encourages Democrats to think this way. Here is the lead of a New York Times story from Tuesday:
After early signs that some of President Trump’s unconventional cabinet choices could be derailed by Republicans alarmed at their character, disturbing paper trails and lack of expertise, the resistance has collapsed.
One after the other on Tuesday, Republican senators fell into line behind two of the president’s most baggage-laden nominees, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for health secretary and Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence.
The party-line committee votes to send both nominees to the floor for likely confirmation next week provided the clearest evidence yet that Mr. Trump’s pressure tactics and the threat of a barrage of abuse by his allies against would-be defectors had sapped whatever remained of a G.O.P. impulse to balk. And they suggested a broader impulse among Republicans on Capitol Hill — even the few who have maintained some degree of independence from Mr. Trump — to shrink from confrontation with him and allow him to have his way at the dawn of his second term.
What can you say about such “reporting,” except that it’s a manic fantasy symptomatic of Trump Derangement Syndrome? It involves a complete misreading of what has happened in the Republican Party since 2012. After two consecutive defeats against Obama — the John McCain and Mitt Romney campaigns — GOP primary voters rolled the dice with Trump, gambling that this brash billionaire businessman could do something to change the status quo in Washington. The vast majority of grassroots Republicans have never regretted that gamble, and have accustomed themselves to trusting Trump’s instincts, including those “unconventional cabinet choices.” The kind of weak-kneed apologetic go-along-to-get-along Republican “leaders” who might be stampeded by media criticism — they’re not calling the shots anymore. Those days of “bipartisan consensus” (which always involved Republican surrender) are over, and the New York Times can’t seem to process what this means.
There’s nothing better than experiencing CPAC with friends by your side!
With the conservative movement stronger than ever after the 2024 election, you might have a few more people eager to join you at the most influential gathering of conservatives in the world—right in the… pic.twitter.com/WewDdEjldn
