‘Stockholm Syndrome’? SVB, BLM and the Toxic Plague of Liberal White Guilt

Posted on | March 18, 2023 | 2 Comments

Bert the Samoan Lawyer sent this story to me with the dry remark, “Basically, this means the taxpayers are picking up the tab for BLM”:

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank New York (SBNY) donated a combined sum of $71.5 million to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, according to a new database released by the Claremont Institute.
SVB forked over a whopping $70,650,000 to BLM while, while SBNY gave $850,000 according to the records gathered by the conservative think tank.
Claremont’s database cited several “social impact reports” that recorded the transactions and highlighted SVB’s pledge from early last year, to give $5 billion to companies aiming to assist with “the transition to a sustainable, low carbon, net zero emissions economy.”
They were criticized following their collapse, for taking their eye off the ball by prioritizing eco-conscious environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing over sound investment principles, while also focusing on diversity and social justice in hiring over strict merit.
One of SVB’s LinkedIn posts in 2022 celebrated the “diversity” hire of Jay Ersapah as the head of Financial Risk and Model Risk Management, highlighting how she helped “establish and is the lead for the LGBTQ+ network at Silicon Valley Bank; where she works closely with Stonewall to create and promote a culture where all can bring their authentic selves to work.”
That same year, Ersapah hosted an “exclusive fireside chat with Suki Sandhu, the author of “How To Get Your Act Together: A Judgement-Free Guide to Diversity and Inclusion for Straight White Men.” The topics discussed included “How to get started with LGBTQ+ inclusion” and “Global best practice in LGBTQ+ inclusion — what great looks like.”
Other big-name corporations listed in the BLM donor database included: CitiGroup and Facebook, which each gave over $1 billion, Amazon (almost $170 million), Apple ($100 million), and American Express ($50 million), among dozens of others.

Let us pause briefly to scrutinize the “intersectional” logic behind SVB’s hiring of a risk management executive who hit all the “diversity” quota marks — brown, female, and gay. A three-fer!

While her resume shows extensive financial-sector experience, that wasn’t why Jay Ersapah got hired at SVB, as their publicity surrounding her hiring focused almost entirely on her identity-politics qualifications “to create and promote a culture” for “LGBTQ+ inclusion” — as if this is why banks exist? When did the banking industry become obsessed with “inclusion” and why? The simple answer is, White Guilt, which happens to the be the title of an excellent book by Shelby Steele.

“Inclusion” is about cashing in on White Guilt. Jay Ersapah cashed in, and then brought in Suki Sandhu, a brown gay man from England, to have a “fireside chat” to preach the Gospel of Inclusion to the (presumed-to-be-defective) “Straight White Men” working at SVB. The bank probably paid Sandhu a lucrative fee, and there’s an international syndicate of these “diversity” specialists who get paid to promote this nonsense. They have no other skills, no other service to vend, beyond their status as experts in diversity and inclusion, and Corporate America pays out untold millions in consulting fees and salaries for such people.

Why is this happening? On the one hand, I’m prone to suspect that this is a completely cynical gesture on the part of bigtime financiers, who understand perfectly well the shakedown aspect of “diversity” — you don’t want to get sued for discrimination, and the price you pay for protection against such claims is to engage in a lot of virtue-signalling, which takes the form of quota hiring, publicity campaigns with lots of rainbow-flag themes, and of course, giving money to support whatever trendy “social justice” cause is The Current Thing.

From such a cynical perspective, it doesn’t even matter whether an outfit like Black Lives Matter is legitimate. BLM turned out to be a fraudulent racket, but so what? From the perspective of a banking executive trying to purchase protection against claims of racial discrimination, it’s the symbolic value of the contribution that really matters.

Explaining the “inclusion” craze in Corporate America as a function of cynicism is, to me, much preferable to considering the alternative, i.e., that CEOs actually believe all this crap. How could it be that an executive makes it through a top university MBA program, claws his way up the company ladder, lands himself a seven-figure gig as the Big Cheese and then, having reached the summit of success, surrenders to a psychopathology of self-hatred? Because let’s be honest about what White Guilt really is — an irrational impulse, symptomatic of mental illness.

Debutante-turned-terrorist Patty Hearst

“Stockholm Syndrome” was the popular diagnosis in the case of the young heiress Patty Hearst who, after being kidnapped and held for ransom by a radical ultra-Maoist cult calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army, began to identify with her captors and joined their campaign of “revolutionary” violence. That could be understood as a metaphor for what has happened to “woke” corporations.

For the past 10 or 15 years, companies have been more or less compelled to signify their allegiance to various “progressive” causes for fear of being bombarded with online harassment campaigns. Some have traced this back to the campaign of terroristic intimidation against contributors to the Prop 8 campaign in California in 2008. Perhaps as a result of such intimidation, which threatens the targets with destruction of their careers and livelihoods, business leaders became so accustomed to repeating the mantras of “social justice” that they actually internalized this preposterous radical belief system, in much the same way Patty Heart eventually internalized the SLA’s absurd slogan: “Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people!”

In this interpretation of why companies “get woke and go broke,” they are helpless victims of a psyops campaign, coercively brainwashed to adopt the worldview of their enemies until they actually believe the rainbow-flag nonsense they promote in their publicity. As I say, I’d prefer to think otherwise; it makes me uncomfortable to think anyone could really believe that bullshit. Much better to suppose that corporate executives are just cynically repeating these slogans for the sake of making a buck.

Either way, however, there’s no danger that I could be deceived by their sloganeering. My survival depends upon keeping a firm grip on my own sanity amid this swirling carnival of 21st-century madness.

Bert the Samoan Lawyer knows this as well as anybody. He first met me in the aftermath of my disastrous 1979 experiment with psilocybin mushroom tea and Bolivian flake cocaine. Having descended into the psychotic vortex of drug-induced lunacy and managed somehow to escape, I’ve since dedicated myself to a life of respectable bourgeois stability. Given my early experience of pure Gonzo insanity, I consider that being normal is my greatest achievement. So there is no danger of my succumbing to the masochistic neurosis of White Guilt, or the clearly abnormal behavior of corporate executives promoting bizarre causes like Drag Queen Story Hour. Not enough psilocybin on the planet to make me fall for delusions like that. Just going to sit here sanely drinking my coffee and reminding you: Crazy People Are Dangerous.

Category: Gays, Progressivism

What Did China Get for Its Money?

Posted on | March 18, 2023 | 1 Comment

The family of “the big guy” collected over a million dollars:

President Biden’s daughter-in-law Hallie is the mysterious “new” Biden family member who got paid Chinese cash in 2017, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer revealed exclusively to The Post Thursday.
Comer said the payments to first son Hunter Biden’s sister-in-law-turned-former lover were revealed in subpoenaed bank records.
The records show Hallie Biden received $35,000 over two transfers in 2017 from Biden family associate Rob Walker, who got $3 million on March 1, 2017, from State Energy HK Limited, a firm affiliated with CEFC China Energy.
President Biden, who allegedly was the “big guy” mentioned in communications about the same Chinese venture, dined at Hallie Biden’s residence last Friday during his regular weekend trip home to Delaware. It’s unclear if they discussed the looming bombshell, which Comer (R-Ky.) publicly teased Monday night on Fox News’ “Hannity.”
One transfer to Hallie from Robinson Walker LLC was for $25,000 on March 20, 2017, Comer’s staff wrote in a Thursday morning memo to committee members. Another $10,000 was transferred on Feb. 13 — raising “many questions” according to a committee aide because it came shortly before, rather than after, the $3 million haul.
The information creates an unexpected new avenue for investigation — and the memo notes the bank records don’t include the first names of all Biden family recipients, meaning there may be others involved, in addition to Hunter Biden and first brother James Biden.
Hallie Biden is the widow of Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer in 2015, and the mother of two of the president’s grandchildren, Natalie and Robert Hunter. She dated the president’s other son, Hunter, from around 2016 to 2019, a timeframe that included the Chinese dealings.
“Democrats described our subpoena as providing nothing more than records for Papa John’s and Starbucks, but they failed to mention the records we’ve received documenting the Biden family’s business schemes,” Comer told The Post, referring to committee ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin’s disclosure of the subpoenas this week.

What did the Chinese expect in return for this money? That’s the big puzzle. The payment to the Biden family came at a time when Democrats had lost the White House, and one wonders how the Chinese clients expected the family of the former vice president to exercise influence in their favor. Certainly the only “business” involved was influence peddling — what relevant expertise did Hunter Biden offer, other than being Joe Biden’s son? Democrats (and their media allies) seem to believe that the use of cutouts and middlemen to launder these payments from the Chinese is sufficient defense against accusations that Joe Biden himself is guilty of corruption. No sensible person buys this excuse, but still what intrigues me is the question of how the Chinese purchasers of Biden’s influence expected to be repaid for their “investment.”

If we are free to engage in speculation, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Joe getting his family members paid by the Chinese after he left the vice-presidency was in fact the fulfillment of some secret agreement made while he was still vice president. That is to say, Biden did the Chinese favors during the Obama administration, with the agreement that he’d get paid after he left office. This is just wild speculation, of course, but there must be some explanation for this deal, which on the surface doesn’t make much sense from an influence-buying point of view. Maybe the explanation is simply that the Chinese clients didn’t understand U.S. politics well enough to realize that “former vice president” isn’t a very influential position in America.

Category: China, Corruption, Joe Biden, Scandal

In The Mailbox: 03.17.23

Posted on | March 18, 2023 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 03.17.23

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Patron saint of Ireland

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: The Woke Rewrite Literature Because They Can’t Write
EBL: St. Patrick’s Day Rule 5, Saint Patrick ??, and Happy Birthday Michael Caine
Twitchy: California Congressman Shows What Cali Is Doing With All That Stormwater, Stanford Red Guards Rage At Being Named & Shamed By Washington Free Beacon, and Misogynist Leftard Preacher John Pavlovitz Accuses Republican Women Of “Internalized Misogyny”, Gets Rekt
Louder With Crowder: Kamala Harris gets booed of out an Iowa arena when they showed her attempting to pander for March Madness
Vox Popoli: The World They Never Knew, Sigma Game, Checkmate, Putin, and Secular Blindness and Post-Ideology
According To Hoyt: In Praise Of Beauty, Your Lying Eyes, and SVB – A Guest Post by Francis Turner
Monster Hunter Nation: WriterDojo S4 E10: Profanity, also, Back to (Gun) School

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Germany Lurches Toward Schism, also, Conservatives Should Hope
American Greatness: Biden Family Members Paid by Chinese Firm with Ties to CCP
American Thinker: Questioning the January 6 Aftermath, also, ESG Will Bankrupt You — Financially and Morally
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Mexican Drug Cartels Friday
Babalu Blog: Protests likely as Cuban dictatorship’s team arrives in Miami for World Baseball Classic, Cuban terrorists who murdered four American human rights activists should be brought to justice, Are you sure St. Patrick wasn’t Cuban?, and Cuban opposition leader says he’d rather remain imprisoned for life than stain his honor
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For March 17
Behind The Black: Rocket Lab and China launch satellites successfully, Astra asks for more time from Nasdaq before its stock is delisted, Starship launch still stalled by FAA, SpaceX launches another 52 Starlink satellites, and Pushback: Smithsonian ordered to no longer violate the First Amendment
Cafe Hayek: Difficult to Believe that Such An Essay Is Published In March 2023, also, On Hayek
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Chicago Boyz: Harrison Bergeroning
Da Tech Guy: Off to Maine To Continue the Lockdown Birthday Tradition
Don Surber: Libs Want A Trump-DeSantis War
First Street Journal: “I’ll take ‘Things you won’t find in the Inquirer’ for $200, Alex.”
Gates Of Vienna: Klaboosterbach Walks It Back… Sort Of, A Banner Day for Dutch Farmers, Imagine There’s No Migrants — It’s Easy if You Try, and BBB Won a (Useless) Landslide Victory
The Geller Report: BOMBSHELL Pfizer Confidential Documents: Pfizer Knew Its Covid ‘Vaccine’ Caused Myocarditis But Did Not Disclose, also, CDC Bought Phone Data To Monitor Americans’ Compliance With Lockdowns, Contracts Show
Hogewash: Hubble and the Crab Nebula, I’m Not Making This Up, You Know, Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, and A Higher Authority Disagrees with Rep. Harris
Hollywood In Toto: Fox News’ Secret Weapon – Kamala Harris Impressionist Ester Paltielova, also, Rumble Goes All-In on Free Speech with Russell’s ‘Brandemic’
The Lid: Dept. of Defense is Wasting $50 Million/Year Doing Nothing With Trump’s Border Wall Materials
Legal Insurrection: Troy University Closes China-Sponsored Campus Confucius Institute, Boston Mayor Focuses on ‘Green’ Construction as City Struggles to Answer 911 Calls, Pennsylvania Democrat Outraged That Conservatives are Allowed to Speak on College Campuses, Woke Twitter Claims “Woke” Doesn’t Exist If You Can’t Precisely Define It, and Stanford Red Guard Screamed At Conservative Judge: “We hope your daughters get raped!”
Nebraska Energy Observer: Scattershot Friday
Outkick: The Bunny Ranch Welcomes Jimmy Garoppolo To Las Vegas, Invites Him To Pay Them A Visit, Olympic Pole Vaulter Alysha Newman Does Some Resting & Recovering In A Bikini In Miami, Viral Utah State Cheerleader Reacts To Crying During March Madness Loss: ‘Now I’m A Meme’, Double Whammy: Howard Players Endure Cringey Kamala Harris Post Game Speech After Losing To Kansas By 28 Points, and #1 Purdue Loses to #16 Fairleigh Dickinson In Historic Upset
Power Line: Minnesota Is In the News–For Craziness, Hallie Biden in family business, Inside Stanford’s disgrace, and Thoughts from the ammo line
Protein Wisdom Reborn: The Unbearable Lightness Of Being Charlie Sykes
Shark Tank: Diaz-Balart Calls For Investigation Into Exported Cuban Baseball Players
Shot In The Dark: One Morning In The Duchey Household, So Let’s Make Sure We’re Clear On This, Defining His Place, and Metaphor Alert
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday: Panama Debates and Crotchety Conservatives
This Ain’t Hell: I know you’re Fonda Jane, Bus hijacker Soldier to be chaptered out of the Army, The Department of Veterans Affairs to change its motto, and Valor Friday
Transterrestrial Musings: Hilarious Twitter Thread, also, Revisionism
Victory Girls: Banks Are Sound Says Yellen While Bank Execs Made Bank
Volokh Conspiracy: The Declining Political Significance of Irish-American Identity, also, The State-Created Danger Doctrine
Watts Up With That: Best Extinction Prevention Plan? Quit Killing Them, also, Countdown To New York’s Rendezvous With Energy Impossibility
Weasel Zippers: 785 Days After Biden Took Office, WH Says “We’re Going To Secure The Border”, also, Kamala Harris Confirms Her Failed Vice Presidency Is Really An Episode Of Veep
The Federalist: Minnesota Could Be Third State To Adopt Ranked-Choice Voting, Following Alaska And Maine, DOD Pays Media-Rating Scammers To Create Propaganda And Censorship Tech For U.S. Government, San Francisco Moves Forward With $5 Million-Per-Person ‘Reparations’ Handouts While City Falls Apart, In Bemoaning What They ‘Won’t Teach Anymore,’ Educators Reveal 6 Ways They Indoctrinate Students, and ‘Woke’ Effectively Describes The Left’s Insanity, And That’s Why They Hate When You Say It
Mark Steyn: Live Around the Planet: Friday March 17th

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Category: Linkagery

Journalists Against Journalism: Reporter in Crime-Ridden Philadelphia Criticized for Reporting About City’s Crime Wave

Posted on | March 17, 2023 | 1 Comment

If you live near Philadelphia, you almost certainly know Steve Keeley, one of the city’s most popular television reporters, who has been at WTXF-TV (Fox 29) for nearly three decades. The man is a local legend, and in recent years has been covering the outrageous epidemic of criminal violence that has plagued Philadelphia since Soros-backed Larry Krasner was elected the city’s district attorney. As recently as 2014, Philly had fewer than 250 homicides annually, but Krasner was elected DA in 2017 and the homicide rate began rising almost immediately: 353 in 2018 and the same number the next year. Then in 2020, the city well and truly earned the nickname “Killadelphia,” as there were 499 homicides, an astonishing 41% increase in a single year. But 2021 was even worse — indeed, the 562 homicides in 2021 were the most in the city’s history — and the next year, the total fell just slightly from that all-time record, as 516 were victims of homicide in “Killadelphia” in 2022. That’s just murders, you understand, and doesn’t take into account all the armed robberies, aggravated assaults, carjackings, etc. How bad is crime in Philadelphia? Literally worse than Chicago, at least on a per-capita basis.

Obviously, if your city suddenly turns into a chaotic slaughterhouse of lawless violence, that’s a pretty important story for a local journalist to cover, and Steve Keeley has been covering it relentlessly. Covering it so well, in fact, that a bunch of weenies and wusses in Philadelphia’s journalism hive are complaining that Keeley is covering too much crime:

Philadelphia magazine analyzed a study of the city’s media and concluded that Mr. Keeley’s station devoted far more stories to local crime than any other news outlet. In a follow-up piece in the magazine, several critics came forward with negative takes on Mr. Keeley, including some of his media colleagues.
Cherri Gregg, a longtime radio journalist in Philadelphia who now hosts a show for the city’s NPR-affiliated WHYY, told the magazine that Mr. Keeley’s work “definitely makes me cringe” and that “[c]rime coverage can be very harmful and scares people.”
She said she feared that minority communities, specifically men, could be hurt by such journalism. She did not express concern for people in those same communities who have been victimized by crime, nor did she say the reporting was inaccurate.
Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Jenice Armstrong chimed in as well, calling Mr. Keeley’s Twitter feed “disturbing,” but not because of the constant crime in the city.

Let the reader guess what Cherri Gregg and Jenice Armstrong have in common (I checked; your guess is correct), but beyond the obvious fact of their membership in the same demographic group that’s committing at least 80% of the violent crime in Philly, they have something else in common: Neither one of them is anywhere near as experienced as Steve Keeley in covering actual news, as opposed to engaging in the kind of thinly-disguised progressive activism that is considered “journalism” at liberal outlets like NPR and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Dana Pico’s been on the “Killadelphia” beat for years and has a few thoughts on the anti-journalism tendencies of liberal journalists.

Category: Crime, Media Bias, Pennsylvania

In The Mailbox: 03.16.23

Posted on | March 17, 2023 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: The End Of Free Speech In America
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #2022
EBL: Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris, also, DeSantis Deemphasizes War, Urges Peace Between Ukraine and Russia
Twitchy: DeSantis Pudding Story May End His 2024 Presidential Bid, also, State Sen. Scott Wiener (Pedo-CA) Reveals Far Right Attempts To Incite Violence Against Him
Louder With Crowder: A biological male, who competed for boys until this year, leads girl’s track team to state championship, also, New ETF does the exact opposite of what Jim Cramer recommends and it’s already beating the market
Vox Popoli: Star Wars is Dead, History is a Cycle, The Crisis of Empire, and The Problem, Not the Answer

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: America Doesn’t Need Ground-Based Nukes, also, Bishop Barron’s Bottom-Up Revival
American Greatness: Federal Court Rules Against NY Worker Fired for Refusing to Attend LGBTQ Training, also, Angry Taxpayers Respond to Latest Bank Bailouts
American Thinker: January 6 Doesn’t Shine a Candle to COVID, Elections Have Consequences; Stolen Elections Have Catastrophes, and The Communist Tortoise and the Communist Hare
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Air Traffic Control News
Babalu Blog: Castro State Security targets Cuban social media influencers and former prisoners of conscience, Cuba’s tobacco farmers starve while dictatorship enriches itself from cigar sales to foreigners, World’s top expert on the papacy sums up the political legacy of Pope Francis, and Huge protest sign drawn on Havana street
BattleSwarm: More On How SVB Screwed The Pooch
Behind The Black: Red China’s Long March 11 rocket launches classified Earth observation satellite, Student cubesat demonstrates how to use a solar sail for satellite deorbit, Virgin Orbit pauses operations; seeks funding, Endless ripple dunes in Mars’ third largest impact basin, and Today’s blacklisted American: Rhode Island school district blacklists Christian afterschool club because it is Christian
CDR Salamander: 12 Years – Untold Misery – No Accountability
Chicago Boyz: Behind the Banking Crisis, also, Book Review: The Year of the French
Da Tech Guy: Joe Biden issued another gun grabbing Executive Order, also, Some Catholic Thoughts Under the Fedora
Dana Loesch: Bank Collapses, EPA Failures, & Gun Control, Oh My!
Don Surber: The End of Banking?
First Street Journal: WW3 Watch: Neocons who never served are calling an Iraq war veteran “chicken” because he doesn’t want the US involved in Ukraine
Gates Of Vienna: Terror Alert for Churches in Vienna, also, Democratic Party in Italy Bombed by the Anarchists
The Geller Report: TRUMP VOWS TO IMPLEMENT FOUR-YEAR PLAN ‘TO GAIN TOTAL INDEPENDENCE FROM CHINA’, also, New Documents released by Oversight Committee Show Red China Paid Millions to Biden Crime Family
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, also, An Irregular Dwarf
Hollywood In Toto: Angel Studios Goes to the Movies, Challenges Hollywood on Its Home Turf, also, Shazam! Fury of the Gods Keeps the Good Times Rolling
The Lid: The ‘Fact Checkers’ Lied Again: Biden Really IS Trying to Outlaw Gas Stoves
Legal Insurrection: Florida “Stop WOKE Act” Remains On Hold As Appeals Court Refuses To Lift Lower Court Injunction, Arizona Launches Hotline so Parents Can Report Critical Race Theory, Other Woke Subjects in Schools, House Weaponization Committee Investigating Air Force Records Leak to Democrat-Aligned Firm, Is Affirmative Action Hurting Black Students in Law Schools?, and House Hearing Held on Southern Border, Democrat Minority Boycotts
Nebraska Energy Observer: Disgusting
Outkick: Furman Basketball Sends Savage Message With Unintentionally (?) Explicit Chant At March Madness, Conor McGregor Drops F-Bomb During Sean Hannity Appearance, Donates $1 Million To Charity, Roll Madness: Just When You Thought We Could Move On To The NCAA Tournament, Alabama Stepped To The Podium Again, Paige Spiranac Is Fired Up For March Madness, and Deion Sanders Makes Coaches Run For Losing Drill, Kicks Player Out Of Weight Room For The Wrong Socks
Power Line: The Great Neocon Freakout, The Anti-DeSantis Emerges, and Nope, ‘Woke’ Is Not a Polite Way of Saying the N-Word
Shark Tank: DeSantis Blasts COVID “Experts” Over “Woke Virus” Lab Leak Coverup
Shot In The Dark: Primary Education, also, Sartre Was So Close
The Political Hat: Killer Canada – Executing Prisoners; Killing Without Parental Consent; Causing Despair To Encourage Suicide
This Ain’t Hell: Brent A HABETLER – Sir Lies-a-lot. – Stolen Valour Canada, also, Climate change called off
Transterrestrial Musings: The Byzantines, The Office Of Space Commerce, and How We Forgot Pol Pot
Victory Girls: DeSantis Organizing States to Push Back on ESG
Volokh Conspiracy: Ordinary Meaning as Last Resort, also, How Should Law Schools Handle Protests at Student Events?
Watts Up With That: Washington Post: We Must Change the Meaning of Wealth to Appreciate Climate Action, Renewable Fail: Britain to Now Class Nuclear Power as “Sustainable Energy”, and EU Takes Step to Force All Homes, Buildings to Meet Crushing Energy Efficiency Standards
Weasel Zippers: Report: Chinese Communist Party-Linked Company Funneled Over $1 Million To Biden Family Members
The Federalist: How The False Promises Of The Sexual Revolution Created A New Religion, PolitiFact Tries To ‘Fact-Check’ A Federalist Article On Democrats’ Dark Money Election Takeover And Fails Miserably, Republicans Can’t Beat Democrats’ Election-Industrial Complex By Adopting Its Strategies, Internal Memo Shows Biden Admin Wanted To Ban Gas Stoves Before Public Backlash, and N.J. Mom Sues Police & Military Officials For Labeling Her Post About School’s ‘Polysexual’ Poster A ‘Security Threat’
Mark Steyn: The Solitude Quotient

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Category: Linkagery

Is Your Meme a Federal Felony?

Posted on | March 16, 2023 | 1 Comment

How would you like to spend 10 years in a federal penitentiary because of something you posted on Twitter? As strange as it seems, this could be the fate of “Ricky Vaughn,” the DOJ announced in January 2021:

A Florida man was arrested this morning on charges of conspiring with others in advance of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election to use various social media platforms to disseminate misinformation designed to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote.
Douglass Mackey, aka Ricky Vaughn, 31, of West Palm Beach, was charged by criminal complaint in the Eastern District of New York. . . .
“There is no place in public discourse for lies and misinformation to defraud citizens of their right to vote,” said Seth D. DuCharme, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. “With Mackey’s arrest, we serve notice that those who would subvert the democratic process in this manner cannot rely on the cloak of Internet anonymity to evade responsibility for their crimes. They will be investigated, caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.” . . .
The complaint alleges that in 2016, Mackey established an audience on Twitter with approximately 58,000 followers. A February 2016 analysis by the MIT Media Lab ranked Mackey as the 107th most important influencer of the then-upcoming Election, ranking his account above outlets and individuals such as NBC News (#114), Stephen Colbert (#119) and Newt Gingrich (#141). . . .
For example, on Nov. 1, 2016, Mackey allegedly tweeted an image that featured an African American woman standing in front of an “African Americans for [the Candidate]” sign. The image included the following text: “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home. Text ‘[Candidate’s first name]’ to 59925[.] Vote for [the Candidate] and be a part of history.” The fine print at the bottom of the image stated: “Must be 18 or older to vote. One vote per person. Must be a legal citizen of the United States. Voting by text not available in Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska or Hawaii. Paid for by [Candidate] for President 2016.”
The tweet included the typed hashtags “#Go [Candidate]” and another slogan frequently used by the Candidate. On or about and before Election Day 2016, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “[Candidate’s first name]” or some derivative to the 59925 text number, which was used in multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by the defendant and his co-conspirators.

Thus answering the question: How dumb are Democrat voters?

Another question: How did the FBI figure out the identity of “Ricky Vaughn”? To which the answer is, they didn’t. “Ricky Vaughn” got doxxed in 2018 by a HuffPo writer named Luke O’Brien. Trial of “Ricky Vaughn” was scheduled to start this week, until Luke O’Brien popped up again:

Mackey’s trial was meant to commence on March 16 but was delayed at his counsel’s request due to a planned Southern Poverty Law Center article on the defense’s would-be expert witness, George Hawley, an associate professor of political science from the University of Alabama. . . .
While the article by freelance journalist Luke O’Brien has yet to be published, Mackey’s attorney, Andrew Frisch, claimed it “unfairly disparages” Hawley and is partially based on the professor’s “private emails.”
“Mr. O’Brien waited until the start of trial to submit written questions to Professor Hawley in an apparent attempt to paint him as an extremist, including questions based on private emails which Mr. O’Brien obtained, simultaneously asking Professor Hawley if his employer, the University of Alabama, is aware of his proffered testimony at Mr. Mackey’s trial,” Frisch wrote in a letter requesting to delay the trial by at least 14 days.
In response to the unpublished SPLC report, Frisch told U.S. District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis that Hawley has requested to withdraw his name as a witness.
“For these reasons, I have no choice but to request a short adjournment of trial so that I may endeavor to identify a replacement expert witness,” Frisch wrote.

Will federal charges of obstructing justice be filed against Luke O’Brien? Isn’t doing this to a witness in a federal trial illegal? If not, shouldn’t it be? And if the trial goes forward now, doesn’t “Ricky Vaughn” have a ready-made grounds for appeal? But while we’re asking rhetorical questions, MEMES ARE A FEDERAL CRIME? MEMES? ARE YOU F***ING KIDDING ME WITH THIS?

TEN YEARS IN PRISON FOR A FUCKING MEME?#FreeRickyVaughn

cc @elonmusk @ali @DonaldJTrumpJr @RonColeman @pnjaban https://t.co/Z9sn8gtxHl

— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) March 16, 2023

Category: Crime

Yellen’s Banking House of Cards

Posted on | March 16, 2023 | Comments Off on Yellen’s Banking House of Cards

Far be it from me to claim to be an expert in financial institutions. My knowledge of banking is no greater than the average SVB board member, which is to say I know nearly nothing about the subject. But judging from headlines in recent days, I have the distinct impression that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is basically shuffling around piles of money from one troubled bank to another in a desperate attempt to stave off a complete collapse of the international financial system.

Did I mention U.S. banks are bailing out the Chicoms?

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admitted during a Thursday Congressional hearing that Chinese Communist Party-linked businesses that had deposits in Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) will be made whole by the American banking system.
Senator James Lankford (R., Okla.) pressed Yellen on the matter during a Senate Finance Committee hearing held days after Silicon Valley Bank collapsed.
“It has been reported publicly that SVB had a large number of Chinese investors that are there including some companies that were directly connected to the Chinese Communist Party,” Senator Lankford (R., Okla.) asked Yellen during Thursday afternoon’s hearing. “So what I’m asking is: will my banks in Oklahoma pay a special assessment to be able to make Chinese investors whole in Silicon Valley Bank?”
Secretary Yellen confirmed that they would.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) Meanwhile, in Switzerland:

Credit Suisse shares surged Thursday after the Swiss central bank agreed to loan the bank up to 50 billion francs ($54 billion) to bolster confidence in the country’s second-biggest lender following the collapse of two U.S. banks.
Credit Suisse announced the agreement before the Swiss stock market opened, sending shares up as much as 33% before they settled around a 17% gain, to 2 francs ($2.15), in late afternoon trading. That was a massive turnaround from a day earlier, when news that the bank’s biggest shareholder would not inject more money into Credit Suisse sent its shares tumbling 30%. The plunge in price dragged down other European banks and deepened concerns about the international financial system.

Prior to the intervention, there was an incipient panic emerging over Credit Suisse, and such financial brush fires keep popping up:

First Republic Bank, facing a crisis of confidence from investors and customers, is set to receive a $30 billion lifeline from a group of America’s largest banks.
“This show of support by a group of large banks is most welcome, and demonstrates the resilience of the banking system,” the Treasury Department said in a statement Thursday.
The major banks include JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Truist.
The $30 billion infusion will give the struggling San Francisco lender much-needed cash to meet customer withdrawals and buttress confidence in the US banking system during a tumultuous moment for lenders. . . .
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Thursday met privately in Washington with JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon before 11 banks agreed to deposit $30 billion in First Republic Bank to stabilize the teetering lender, according to two people familiar with the matter.

So far, then, the system continues to function, but how much longer can this “crisis of confidence” situation continue, with one bank after another getting wobbly and crying out for Janet Yellen’s intervention?

Everyone’s bank/credit union/financial institutions going full Chip Dillard right now. pic.twitter.com/9wvtU9hnUk

— bluthwayne (@bluthwayne77) March 15, 2023

Nothing to worry about, Secretary Yellen tells Congress:

Yellen touted the federal government’s “decisive and forceful” actions to shore up the banking sector while testifying before members of the Senate Finance Committee.
“I can reassure the members of the Committee that our banking system remains sound, and that Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them,” Yellen said.
“This week’s actions demonstrate our resolute commitment to ensure that depositors’ savings remain safe,” she added.

Just like Joe Biden, repeatedly claiming that everything’s just hunky-dory thanks to his economic agenda, Yellen appears to believe that the banking crisis is basically a public-relations issue. As long as she can continue to convince everybody that there’s no underlying problem with the system, the crisis will be averted: “Americans can feel confident,” she says, as if feelings were the only thing that mattered, and never mind whether your bank has enough assets to meet its obligations.

Can she get away with this? Will her three-card monte game just keep rolling indefinitely? Chip Dillard could not be reached for comment.