The Biden Crime Family

Posted on | October 21, 2023 | Comments Off on The Biden Crime Family

For months now, Joe Biden’s defenders have claimed there is “no evidence” of his corruption. That can no longer be claimed:

House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) today announced the committee obtained bank records revealing a $200,000 direct payment from James and Sara Biden to Joe Biden in the form of a personal check. In September, Chairman Comer issued three subpoenas for Hunter and James Biden’s personal and business bank records.
In 2018, James Biden received $600,000 in loans from, Americore — a financially distressed and failing rural hospital operator. According to bankruptcy court documents, James Biden received these loans “based upon representations that his last name, ‘Biden,’ could ‘open doors’ and that he could obtain a large investment from the Middle East based on his political connections.”
On March 1, 2018, Americore wired a $200,000 loan into James and Sara Biden’s personal bank account — not their business bank account. On the same day, James Biden wrote a $200,000 check from this same personal bank account to Joe Biden.

James Biden’s description of this as a “loan repayment” — was it reported to the IRS this way by both James and Joe? Can the Biden brothers produce records proving that such a loan actually occurred? Because if not, then it would appear that Joe Biden was involved in tax fraud. And considering how much other money was flowing into the Biden family via Hunter’s various foreign clients, maybe this was a vast money laundering/tax fraud conspiracy. “Follow the money,” as John Hoge says.

Category: Corruption, Joe Biden, Scandal

In The Mailbox: 10.20.23

Posted on | October 21, 2023 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 10.20.23

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts, and since I don’t have a convention to run this weekend, I’ll actually get Rule 5 Sunday and the FMJRA done.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Victor David Hanson & Clifton Duncan On The Bigotry Of Low Expectations
EBL: Reservation Dogs, Burt Young RIP, Who doesn’t like Jim Jordan? So how is the Sam Bankman-Fried criminal trial going? and Kraken Krack-A-Lack : Sidney Powell Pleads Guilty
Twitchy: 99% Of These Videos Are Women, James Woods Posts An Insane Calendar Of Woke, and Right On Time – HuffPo Tries Shaming NRCC For Accurate Meme About Ilhan Omar’s “Death Threats”
Louder With Crowder: Amazon Unveils New Robots To Replace Humans…wait, what? J.K. Rowling Says She Would “Happily” Go To Jail If/When The UK Criminalizes Calling Someone The “Wrong” Pronoun, Influencer expects fat dude to simp for her, gets quickly put in her place: “Maybe eat a burger and not be anorexic”, and Tyson Foods Jumps On The Bug Bandwagon, Expands With “Sustainable” Insect Protein
Vox Popoli: Not One for the Faint of Heart, Propaganda is the Priority, The Dayan Principle, THE ALTAR OF HATE in Hardcover, The Red Terror of Free Trade, The Scorpion’s Lament, and Mailvox: Book Update
According To Hoyt: Shut Your Kumbaya, Tired And Kittens, Dangerous, and Why Sarah Disappeared
Monster Hunter Nation: The eARC for Down These Mean Streets is out now, also, Aiming to Change People’s Lives
Jon Del Arroz: Israel Is Under Attack & Author Yakov Merkin Needs Your Help
Stoic Observations: Notions Of Nationhood

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: No Temporary Fixes
American Greatness: Part 1: Q&A with Dinesh D’Souza About His New Film, ‘Police State’, Part 2, Pro-Palestinian Protesters Storm U.S. Capitol, Occupy Cannon Rotunda, and Several Law Schools Encourage Students to Work for Designated Terrorist Organizations
American Thinker: When Gaza has Money Hamas has Rockets, Where There is No Respect for Life, Evil Flourishes, and Beyond Orwell: The High-tech Lynching of America
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News, Animal’s Daily Canadian Energy News, and Rule Five Hiding Harris Friday
BattleSwarm: Ukraine Destroys Russian Helicopter Base, Tank News Roundup For October 18, Are Chicago Citizens Tired Of Ranking Lower On Democratic Party Priorities Than Illegal Aliens? and LinkSwarm for October 20
Behind The Black: Ingenuity completes 62nd flight on Mars, India rocket startup Agnikul raises $26.7 million in new private investment capital, Israel negotiating with SpaceX to use Starlink, Erosion revealing ridges on Mars? SpaceX to push for more than 140 launches in 2024, At Senate hearings numerous launch companies complain of regulatory bottleneck, Japan awards Ispace $80 million to develop larger lunar lander, and Our utterly bankrupt “mainstream” press
Cafe Hayek: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “Sharing prosperity”, also, Another Open Letter to Oren Cass
CDR Salamander: Diversity Thursday, also, Fullbore Friday
Chicago Boyz: The Cuban Missile Crisis As Viewed From a Soviet Launch Facility, also, A Double-Edged Sword
Da Tech Guy: Today’s elitist college students are good at standardized tests, but they can’t figure out good and evil, Hamas vs Actual Nazis – Hamas is Worse, A moment of crisis, Hamas Breathes a Sigh of Relief all the Propaganda, None of the Danger, Five Quick Sports/Gaming Thoughts Under the Fedora, With the Speaker of the House debacle the Republican Party proves once again they are the stupid party, and I Know There Are Are Many More Important Things In the World
Dana Loesch: Anatomy & Malicious Intent of a Smear.
Don Surber: An ungovernable nation, also, Hamas myths we should dump
First Street Journal: Money talks, This is how Hitler got good Europeans to load Jews into cattle cars, Killadelphia, and Fired because they were just plain stupid
Gates Of Vienna: No Speakee Deutsch! Shootout at a Café in Schaerbeek, Firebombing the Jews in Berlin, Och, Those Puir Wee Palestinian Bairns! She Had it Coming, and Israel After the Hamas Attack: Cyber-Experts Locating Missing Hostages
The Geller Report: INSURRECTION: Pro-Terror Genocidal Jew Haters Breach the Capital, RINOS WIN – Jim Jordan Withdraws, Won’t Seek Third Vote, and Biden’s Department of Homeland Security Promoted Former Spokesperson for the PLO and Put Her in Charge of Vetting “Asylum” Seekers
Hogewash: Follow the Money, JWST Looks at Jupiter, Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, A Star With Spiral Arms, and NGC 1807
Hollywood In Toto: Is Kevin Spacey the New Free Speech Hero? Megyn Kelly Slams Alicia Keys Over Paraglider Posts, Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon Stalls at Worst Possible Time, Roy Wood Jr. Compares Daily Show Gig to Being a Marine, Dot Conner Fires Shot Across Disney’s Bow, and Hamas Atrocities Red-Pilling Progressive Stars
The Lid: Biden’s Real Meeting With An Israeli PM, And His Support Of Israel In Hamas War, also, $100 Million For Hamas Will Incentivize More Attacks On Israel
Legal Insurrection: DC Federal Judge Puts Trump Gag Order On Hold Temporarily, Joran van der Sloot Admits to Killing Natalee Holloway & Blackmailing Her Mother, Cornell Professor Apologizes for Comments About Being “Exhilarated” By Hamas Attack on Israel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Taking Votes Away From Trump After Switching to Independent, Hamas Releases Two American Hostages, a Mother and Daughter From Chicago, New Hampshire Governor Will Tackle Northern Border After Silence From Biden Admin, and NYU Law Students Say Their Classmate Losing Job Offer Over Support for Hamas is ‘Violence’
Nebraska Energy Observer: Number Please, A Little of This, and Scattershot Friday
Outkick: Former MLB Executive Roasts Phillies Fans, Greg Schiano Basically Called Michigan A Bunch Of Cheaters Last Month And We All Missed It, Travis Kelce Buys Massive Mansion Amid Taylor Swift Relationship, Features Incredible Specs, Former Ranger Ian Kinsler Shows Support For Israel During First Pitch, Survey Shows College GameDay Fans Hate Pat McAfee, But ESPN Viewers Are Dead Wrong, Victoria’s Secret Bet On Megan Rapinoe, Woke Marketing Push Miserably Backfires, and Caleb Williams’ Numbers Against Top 25 Defenses Are Alarming
Power Line: Shocker! Hamas not a reliable source, Insurrection On Capitol Hill, A Politician For Our Time, and Thoughts from the ammo line
Shark Tank: Moskowitz & Frankel Call For Bipartisan Speaker Deal
Shot In The Dark: Urban Progressive Privilege – Peak Karen, Dude…Like, The Fix Is Totally, Like, In. Dude, Someone Else’s Shoes, and Public Is To Art As It Is To Restrooms
The Political Hat: The Gender Snowman Brought To You By…The Federal Government, Quick Takes – Mandatory Racial Inequality: Racial Preferences In New Zealand Healthcare; Racial Preferences In Canadian Criminal Sentencing; Racial Preferences In Teacher Hiring, and Firing Line Friday: Vietnamization
This Ain’t Hell: Yep, the border is under control, Four More Accounted For, Ukraine strikes deep into Russian occupied territories with ATACMS, Camp Lejeune – One Marine Dead, Another in Custody, Former Navy Chief Sentenced in Fraud Scheme, Coast Guard Short 3,500, Travis King Charged with Eight Counts, Valor Friday, US forces shoot drones down in Iraq, as well as drones and missiles near Yemen, and Military obesity rates double in 10 years
Victory Girls: Brian Stelter Scolds Media For Fake News – Irony Is Dead, Greta Hearts Hamas, Then Deletes And Crops Out The Octopus, and Biden Ignores 32 Dead Americans In Israel
Volokh Conspiracy: LSAT to Drop the “Logic Games” Section
Watts Up With That: “I didn’t expect that”: Catholic Nun Tackles and Drops an Eco-Activist, Milloy: Biden’s Kamikaze Climate Plan for the US Economy, and What Passes for A “Demonstration Project” Among Our Government Geniuses
The Federalist: The ‘Tube Girl’ Trend Shows How Gen Z Lives In The Digital World, Not The Real One, Don’t Look Now, But Slate Just Made An Argument For School Choice , SPLC Lead Attorney Apparently Participated In Unlawful Capitol Anti-Israel Protest, Biden’s Federal Election Interference Scheme Just Entered Its Next Phase, ‘Bidenomics’ Gifts Homebuyers Highest Mortgage Rates In More Than Two Decades, Gaza Hospital Misinformation Is One More Reason To Destroy The Censorship Complex, and The Eras Tour Movie Has Its Problems But None Of Them Are Taylor Swift
Mark Steyn: Modern Blood Libel, Strangers in the Night, Israel Today, The West Tomorrow, and Live Around the Planet: Ten Days to Trial

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

Why Is KiwiFarms.net ‘Harassment,’ But What Taylor Lorenz Does Is ‘Journalism’?

Posted on | October 20, 2023 | Comments Off on Why Is KiwiFarms.net ‘Harassment,’ But What Taylor Lorenz Does Is ‘Journalism’?

Did you know that Taylor Lorenz has her own Kiwi Farms thread? Anyway, the question in the headline crossed my mind after reading KiwiFarms founder Joshua Moon’s complaint about how payment processors have blacklisted him. That was referenced in a comment on yesterday’s post about how Instapundit got demonetized by Google Adsense because of allegedly “dangerous” content.

In case you don’t know, Taylor Lorenz first made herself infamous in 2018 by doxxing the teenage daughters of Pamela Geller.

Considering that Geller was (and still is) known to be a target of ISIS and other Islamic terrorists, and that Geller’s daughters were just Instagram influencers who had nothing to do with politics, this was an act sufficiently egregious that Taylor Lorenz should have been unemployed. Instead, she ended up on the staff of the Washington Post and now, of course, a published author. There is a double standard involved in Lorenz’s continued employment as a “journalist,” while Josh Moon is financially blacklisted because of Kiwi Farms.

Before getting into the topic of what Kiwi Farms is, let me reiterate that this topic suggested itself because of a comment on a post about how Google has banned Instapundit from its Adsense program. Because he’s “dangerous.” How? We don’t know, because the process at Google is completely opaque. Good luck getting them to answer any questions about how people get banned or how their search listings operate. But in the process of trying to explore this, I was shocked to discover that you can’t get to Kiwi Farms via a Google search. Not only doesn’t the site’s URL turn up in the Google results, but no article that links directly to Kiwi Farms is included in the first page of Google search results. That’s why I decided to put the full URL, KiwiFarms.net, into my headline

How extreme is that? Some of us are old enough to remember when, 15 or 20 years ago, Silicon Valley had a libertarian tilt. Entities like Google were very much in favor of free speech and very much against censorship, but more recently, they’ve gone 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Probably the defining event of this shift — the moment when Big Tech’s pro-censorship regime made clear its intentions — was the episode known as “GamerGate,” beginning in August 2014 with the drama surrounding Zoe Quinn (a/k/a the Tattoo-Covered, Mentally Ill Ex-Stripper Whose Real Name Is Chelsea Van Valkenburg).

#GamerGate was my first encounter with Kiwi Farms, which proved to be useful for research on such personalities as Zoe Quinn, Nicholas Edwin “Sarah” Nyberg, and “Brianna Wu” (a/k/a John Walker Flynt) who were involved in the controversy as left-wing SJWs (“Social Justice Warriors”).

What united the SJWs was the rallying cry of “harassment” — #GamerGate was, according to them, about the misogynistic bullying of women in the videogame industry, and claims of victimhood were amplified to promote that narrative, even though the alleged victims of harassment were relatively obscure people who were, at best, marginal to the industry, as I explained:

[P]ractically nobody in the videogame development community had ever heard of these people until #GamerGate happened. Quinn . . . had done one really crappy, primitive game called Depression Quest, [Anita] Sarkeesian had done nothing except some YouTube videos applying critical theory to games, and Wu had done a boring game called Revolution 60 that almost nobody ever played. But then the Great #GamerGate Victimhood Derby of 2014 got underway and by October 2015 there were literally hearings at the United Nations (!!!) with Zoe and Anita testifying about “harassment.”
Never in history had such previously obscure nobodies become “famous,” except perhaps Gavrilo Princip, Lee Harvey Oswald, et al.

This leveraging of victimhood claims for fame and money was a fraud nearly as bogus as the Jussie Smollett “hate” hoax. To my knowledge, no one has ever produced any proof — e.g., an arrest affidavit — that Sarkeesian, Wu, and Quinn were victims of any criminal act. Where are the police mug shots of those dreadful misogynist villains accused of harassing these Courageous Feminist Heroes? Where’s the copy of a restraining order against some #GamerGate miscreant? The absence of such evidence ought to have inspired skepticism among journalists, but instead the media swallowed the victimhood narrative hook, line and sinker. It is easy enough to find screenshots of people saying mean things about Sarkeesian, et al., on Twitter, but it’s not against the law to say mean things about people you don’t like. Plenty of people have said mean things about me, but nobody’s inviting me to the United Nations to testify about it. To this day, it is flatly asserted that #GamerGate was about harassment, as if this were an undisputed fact. While researching Kiwi Farms, I came across a July 2016 New York Magazine article that begins:

We live in the age of the virtual pillory. Across communities like YouGotPosted, the revenge-porn hub/blackmailing scheme, or 8chan’s doxxing and raid board, whose server Fredrick Brennan conveniently formatted after its admin was caught selling Social Security numbers, or Gamergate, the “cringe-worthy breakup story” that became a self-sustaining witch hunt against women in tech, a highly recognizable positive feedback loop of abuse and harassment plays out: A target gets dragged into the public eye, more people begin to abuse them, and that abuse escalates as individual trolls try to one-up each other. In the eyes of the mob, the target’s life is a game, and the object is to screw it up as much as possible.
The largest virtual pillory, and the one that best exemplifies its ethos, is Kiwi Farms, a loose community . . . that specializes in harassing people they perceive as being mentally ill or sexually deviant in some way.

Do you see how this works? The “cringe-worthy breakup story” of Zoe Quinn and her ex-boyfriend had to do with Zoe’s alleged involvement with male journalists covering the videogame industry. What this exposed, according to #GamerGate supporters, was the shabby ethics involved in the journalism-as-free-publicity racket whereby certain independent game developers got promoted while others were ignored or slighted. There was never any valid reason why videogame journalists would say nice things about Zoe Quinn’s lame Depression Quest game, and her ex-boyfriend claimed to have proof that she got favorable attention by the most obvious method (“Five Guys”).

How could anyone believe that complaints about unethical biased journalism were a “witch hunt against women in tech”? In what sense were Anita Sarkeesian or Zoe Quinn “women in tech”?

And as for Briann Wu . . . Well, in what sense was “she” even a woman?

Of course, we aren’t supposed to say such things, because the business of gender counterfeiting (i.e., men using transgenderism to exploit the de facto quota systems that SJWs want to impose) cannot withstand critical scrutiny, and therefore SHUT UP! That’s what it all comes down to, really — a bunch of grifters trying to silence their critics. If you start asking questions about the whole “women in tech” hustle, or about the transgender scam, or any other scam/hustle/hoax that the Left is trying to perpetrate, you’ll be accused of “harassment,” or “hate,” or “disinformation,” and they’ll demand that you be purged, silenced, fired from your job, etc. Who is victimizing whom?

All of this brings me back around to Kiwi Farms and the actually useful service they provide. The site originated with an effort to keep track of a mentally feeble person (“Chris Chan”) who seemed to think that drawing pictures of “Sonichu” (a hybrid of two characters, Sonic the Hedgehog and Picachu from Pokemon) was a path to fame and fortune.

This person turned out to be generally weird enough that lots of people started mocking him on the Internet, and thus did Chris Chan become the original “lolcow,” which is the Kiwi Farms category for people whose online behavior attracts unwanted negative attention. The New York Magazine writer asserts that “being mentally ill or sexually deviant” is sufficient to qualify someone as a “lolcow,” but that’s not it. What matters is the person’s online behavior, which is in some way dangerous, dishonest, annoying or merely ridiculous.

It is true that a lot of “lolcows” are transgender or pedophiles or “furries” or some combination of all three. But it’s only when such a person gets involved in some kind of drama on the Internet that they get themselves a thread in the Kiwi Farms “lolcow” forum. So the question is not, “Why does Kiwi Farms hate people who are mentally ill and/or sexually deviant?” Rather, the question should be: “Why do mentally ill sexual deviants cause such a disproportionate amount of Internet drama?”

The answer, I suggest, is narcissism. Anyone who has had the misfortune of dealing with a sociopath understands how DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) is such a predictable response whenever such a person is faced with consequences for their misconduct. When someone calls attention to the sociopath’s wrongdoing, and tries to hold them accountable for their actions, their response is always to claim victimhood. Oregon psychologist Jennifer Freyd coined the term DARVO to describe a tactic common among sex offenders: “I have observed that actual abusers threaten, bully and make a nightmare for anyone who holds them accountable or asks them to change their abusive behavior. This attack, intended to chill and terrify, typically includes threats of law suits, overt and covert attacks on the whistle-blower’s credibility, and so on. . . . The offender is on the offense and the person attempting to hold the offender accountable is put on the defense.” The witnesses are all liars, the cops are crooked, the district attorney is biased, the judge is corrupt — all through the criminal justice process, the offender keeps accusing others of wrongdoing. And he, the offender, is going to expose this wrongdoing and make them pay for putting him behind bars.

Perhaps this description sounds vaguely familiar.

My point is that, if you’re an unbiased observer who just happens to notice some kind of Internet flame war between two contending parties, it’s difficult to know who’s telling the truth. Both parties claim to be in the right, and each of them blames the other for the conflict, and you — the casual witness who stumbled onto the scene — don’t have time to trace the conflict back to its origins or investigate the character of the parties involved. And that’s where a resource like the “lolcow” forums at Kiwi Farms can be helpful. What typically brings a “lolcow” to the attention of the Kiwi Farm crew is the person’s efforts to silence those who criticize them or call attention to their wrongdoing. Take the case of John Paul Neumann, a/k/a “Chloe Sagal”:

Neumman/“Sagal” was a 30-ish videogame developer, originally from Illinois, whose mental illness was manifested in serious antisocial behavior. At some point, it seems, Neumman/“Sagal” ran a failed startup that left employees unpaid and wrecked Neumman’s/“Sagal’s” credit rating. In 2013, Neumman/“Sagal” launched an IndieGoGo crowdfunding scam. Claiming that a near-fatal auto accident had left toxic metal embedded in his/“her” body, resulting in chronic pain, Neumman/“Sagal” said he/“she” needed $30,000 for a “life saving surgery.” But there was no accident and no toxic metal; Neumman/“Sagal” used the money for sex-change surgery.
A videogame industry journalist named Allistair Pinsof discovered the deception, but Neumman/“Sagal” threatened to commit suicide if he reported the story. Pinsof consulted with his editors, who were hesitant to go with the story, and Pinsof ultimately decided to go public with the truth on his own social-media account. Pinsof was fired and blacklisted by the videogame journalism industry, accused of wrongfully “outing” a transgender person, for reporting the truth about someone perpetrating online fraud.

Do you see what I’m talking about here? This person became a “lolcow” because he/“she” retaliated against someone who was telling the truth about him/“her.” And then, in a final irony, when Neumman/“Sagal” committed suicide by setting himself/“herself” on fire in a public park, the media blamed it on “harassment” by the “hate mob Kiwi Farms”!

You wouldn’t be able to figure out the truth about such people were it not for the KiwiFarms forums keeping track of them, posting evidence — screencaps of social-media posts, etc. — all along the way.

Far be it from me to say that everything on Kiwi Farms is useful, or that there is no “problematic” content on the site. I simply don’t pay enough attention to the site to be able to evaluate it in toto. What I do say is that, in certain cases, Kiwi Farms supplies information that is very valuable in figuring out the facts behind online controversies — information that often is available from no other source.

So why is Kiwi Farms engaged in “harassment,” and Josh Moon is a financial pariah, while Taylor Lorenz gets paid to go after people like Pamela Geller’s daughters and LibsOfTikTok creator Chaya Raichik? How is Taylor Lorenz doing something better — more admirable, more socially responsible — than the unpaid contributors to Kiwi Farms forums who compile documentation about the shenanigans of obnoxious people like Canadian pervert Jonathan “Jessica” Yaniv?

(WARNING: That post includes a link to a photo showing the results of Yaniv’s sex-change surgery. DO NOT CLICK THAT LINK or you could be permanently traumatized. You have been warned.)

Readers may wonder, how did Kiwi Farms get a photo of Yaniv’s “gaping axe wound,” as they (quite accurately) describe it? The answer, of course, is that Yaniv posted that picture himself/“herself”! That’s how it is with narcissistic sociopaths — they’re forever calling attention to themselves, with predictably bad consequences, and then claiming to be victims.

Taylor Lorenz is just another example of this same tendency. She cannot seem to comprehend that there could be valid reasons to criticize her — she seems to think she is incapable of wrongdoing — and so she constantly doubles down on (a) the idea that the targets of her hit pieces deserve whatever harm she can inflict on them, and (b) the idea that she is a victim of wrongful “harassment.” Perhaps it is not necessary for me to point out how these two ideas are related. Taylor Lorenz is one of those liberals who thinks of conservatives as “Literally Hitler,” and because (a) the targets of her journalistic smears and (b) the people who complain about her work are all conservatives, everything they say and do is just more proof of how evil they are. And she is a saintly hero.

Let me just go on record with the prediction that this saga will end badly for her. Sooner or later, Taylor Lorenz will make the kind of grievous mistake that even her ideological comrades at the Washington Post won’t be able to explain away. She’ll wreck herself — it’s inevitable. And, just as inevitably, in the midst of her self-inflicted disaster, she’ll complain that she is an innocent victim of her malicious enemies.

I’ll bet the Kiwi Farm crowd can’t wait for that moment.

It's worth noting that if anyone from the Kiwi Farms did to anyone what Taylor Lorenz did to .@libsoftiktok and her family – the site would've been shut down overnight and seized by the feds

— Trash Radio (@TrashRadio_) September 7, 2023

Taylor Lorenz miraculously found 3 or 4 people more neurotic, clearly unstable, and censorship-happy than she, bestowed them with fake expertise titles, and now the WPost is blasting out her alarmist asylum-worthy babbling to millions. #journalism https://t.co/46SAor33Un

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 25, 2022

Taylor Lorenz is scared of "the other side" of every subject she writes about, so of course she doesn't include it.
The posts in her kiwi farms thread are closer to journalism than the "my Twitter feed, expanded. By Taylor Lorenz" stuff she writes. https://t.co/70NrlNrF4C

— Truth Is (@TruthNotFeels) November 25, 2022

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Category: Journalism, Media Bias

In The Mailbox: 10.19.23

Posted on | October 19, 2023 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 10.19.23

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

Death to the betrayers of the Three Peoples Principles!

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: Obama & New Auschwitz
EBL: My Response To Nikki Haley 2024
Twitchy: The Press Should Not Believe Hamas…According To Ted Lieu? You’re in Luck – Bidenflation Is Good for The Middle Class According to Yahoo, and Cornell History Prof Who Was EXHILARATED by Hamas Attacks on Israel TRIES Backpedaling and Hello BACKFIRE
Louder With Crowder: Victoria’s Secret learns lesson about going broke by getting woke, pledges to bring back attractive models instead, Karma strikes Soros-backed District Attorney, and Watch: K9 Takes A Bite Out Of Some Doofus Jumping “Like A Monkey” Off Roofs And Attempting To Flee
Vox Popoli: The Wailing Monument, Red China Warns Israel, One-Way “Impartiality”, Remember the Biden! Rolling the Loaded Dice, and Don’t Bark if You Won’t Bite
Stoic Observations: The realm of coercion

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: Florida’s solution to the university problem
Dana Loesch: “I don’t want your blood money”
Don Surber: Speakership is the fight we need

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

Why Does Google Hate the Blogfather?

Posted on | October 19, 2023 | Comments Off on Why Does Google Hate the Blogfather?

Wednesday night, explaining the new ads at Instapundit, Professor Glenn Reynolds revealed the censorship he has experienced:

Sorry, the problem is that InstaPundit has been demonetized by Google, for unspecified “dangerous” content. Between the overall trend of ad revenue decline — which hits everyone — and the trend of cutting advertising to right-leaning sites, and now this, ad revenue is down about 90% from its high, I’d estimate, and it may get worse. (The Amazon revenue, which we’ve been phasing out anyway, is similar). At some point I’ll probably have to go to some sort of subscription model — maybe one that lets you buy out of the ads — or a purely donation-supported model.
In the meantime, if you’d like to support the blog you can donate via Stripe or subscribe to my Substack. It’s all much appreciated.

Wow. The weird thing is that back in the day — the first decade of the 21st century, when blogging was invented — the people running Silicon Valley were, if not conservative, certainly libertarian in their general attitude. Companies like Google, Amazon and PayPal were run by people with the plainly capitalist goal of getting rich, and so were inclined to support advocacy of free enterprise, deregulation, lower taxes, etc.

“Demonetizing” is censorship, period, and it didn’t start happening — the orchestrated attempt to shut down independent online publishing — until Obama’s second term. There was a left-wing blogosphere (the “moonbats,” as we called them) and a right-wing blogosphere (the “wingnuts,” as the Left called us), and the existence of two oppositional blogospheres was a fact of life everyone in the game understood.

What happened? It was several factors. Obama’s popularity made leftist politics the “cool kids” thing, and the callow youth had an intolerant attitude toward opposition. Almost as soon as Obama was elected, they began denouncing all criticism as “racist,” and embraced a no-holds-barred approach toward perceived enemies. Well do I remember my experience in 2011 being swarmed by an angry “Occupy” mob that was trying to storm a conference in D.C. where one of the Koch brothers was in attendance. Because the Kochs had supported the Tea Party movement (and free-market advocacy generally), this made them EVIL in the eyes of that brain-dead zombie horde of “Occupy” protesters.

That general idea — exercising the “heckler’s veto” on anyone who disagrees with them — has been used by the Left to organize advertising boycotts of talk radio, Fox News, etc., and so when social media platforms started shutting down conservatives (I was banned from Twitter in 2016), it was merely an extension of the same mob mentality that mobilized the “Occupy” zombies. By the time Twitter (and Facebook and YouTube) began their wholesale “deplatforming” of conservatives during the Trump years, the independent blogosphere was already largely a thing of the past. People decided that venting their spleens on Twitter was sufficient, and so there was no need for the hassles of maintaining a regular blog.

But you could not effectively monetize Twitter. You were giving Twitter your content, and Twitter was monetizing that traffic for themselves. I was happy to use Twitter as a means of promoting the blog, but I was never under any illusion about the transactional nature of Twitter’s business model. When Instapundit and Ace of Spades subsequently stopped using Twitter, it was not so much as a protest against the banning of myself and others as it was an acknowledgement that Twitter was (and is) a parasitical growth that exploits its users.

The vague accusation that Instapundit promotes “dangerous” ideas — well, dangerous to whom? Google doesn’t want to answer that. In fact, when you get banned from their Adsense platform (as I was in 2013), you’ll find it impossible to get any answers at all from them.

Everything we learned from the release of “The Twitter Files,” and everything Republican-led congressional committees have exposed about the relationship between government agencies and Big Tech, tells us that this censorship is not random or coincidental. It is targeted and orchestrated, and the fact that they’ve now targeted Professor Reynolds (known as “the Blogfather,” because he inspired and encouraged so many others bloggers) tells you that no one is safe from this repressive regime.

Category: Instapundit

In The Mailbox: 10.18.23

Posted on | October 19, 2023 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 10.18.23

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Still sufficiently worn out from the convention that I called in sick to the Security Site tour and just went home, where I slept for five hours before rising to take care of this.
Silicon Valley delenda est.

He actually is an astrophysicist.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Apple Doesn’t Care If You’re Being Stalked
EBL: The Battle of Saratoga and the Surrender of General Burgoyne, Nikki Haley wants to let in 1,000,000 Palestinian Refugees? and Bad Sisters
Twitchy: A ‘Disheveled’ Biden Wandered Around AF1 Talking to Reporters (While WH Staff Looked ‘Terrified’), Rep. Rashida Tlaib Breaks Down in Tears Over That Hospital Israel Bombed, and We Found The BEST thread on Victoria’s Secret Walking Back Wokeness
Louder With Crowder: Please enjoy watching this climate whacko get plowed into the ground by a nun, Guy chooses wrong car for TikTok’s “Kia Challenge,” gets throttled all over the streets of Chicago by the owner, and Britney Spears Claims She Got An Abortion While Dating Timberlake Because He ‘Didn’t Want To Be A Father’
Vox Popoli: Why You Don’t Sell, Defending the Narrative, YouTube Aims Left, It is a Mystery, From the Maine to the Maddox, and Ideology is Dead

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: In Israel-Palestine, We Now Hear the Last Gasps of Globalization, also, Katy Faust for Big Marriage
American Greatness: Our Post-Hamas Wreckage, House GOP Introduces Bill to Block Palestinian Refugees from Coming into the U.S., and University of Pennsylvania Loses Major Donor and Board Member over Anti-Semitism
American Thinker: Carbon Dioxide Does Not Cause Warming, It’s The Border, Stupid! and A Time for Good People to Fight Back
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday, also, Animal’s Daily Failing Joe News
Babalu Blog: Number of political prisoners in Cuba continues to rise
BattleSwarm: Dan Patrick Says Dade Phelan Must Go, LinkSwarm for October 13, No Wonder They’re Scared Of Elon Musk, Russia’s Avdiivka Offensive: Lots Of Pain, Little Gain, and Republicans Flip Louisiana Governor’s Mansion
Behind The Black: New Io images from Juno, Blue Origin announces another big project with few details, Red China to launch its second lunar relay communications satellite next year, NASA to award small contracts to develop universal payload interfaces, and Very bad things are on the verge of happening
Cafe Hayek: Kvetching, On James Buchanan, Kenneth Elzinga, and Antitrust, and Free Trade Isn’t the Problem
CDR Salamander: Ayaan Hirsi Ali – Still The Lioness Of The West
Chicago Boyz: The Atrocity in Israel
Da Tech Guy: This week College students across the United States proved just how brainwashed they are, Suddenly Uncle Sam Wants White Males Again, Redefining “violence” in Norfolk, The Perfect Example of How Hell Works & The Jewish Left’s Sudden Encounter With Reality, and I’m Old Enough to Remember When the Left Insisted “All Lives Matter” is a Racist Dog Whistle!
Dana Loesch: House Speaker Fight Round 2 – Electric Boogaloo
Don Surber: Hamas went too far
First Street Journal: I love it when a plan comes together ..and when someone else’s plans fall apart! How many people knew about Josh Kruger’s (alleged) activities? This is what’s wrong with Cracker Barrel, and “There are no friendly civilians!”
Gates Of Vienna: Have Machete Will Travel, The Abomination That Is Islam, Palestinian Jokes, A Culture-Enriching Workout at the Gym, and Emmanuel Macron’s Remarks on World Jihad Day
The Geller Report: US Embassies Being Overrun, Rioting, Burning Fires, in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, Turkey and across the Middle East, GOP RINOs Are Working Deal to Give Speakership to Radical Democrat Hakeem Jeffries and Give Power Back to Dems, The War Against Israel Is All About Islam, and Islam Is All About Terror, ‘Top secret’ Hamas documents show that terrorists intentionally targeted CHILDREN elementary schools and youth center, and Israel’s Last Leftist Government Issued 17,000 Work Permits to Gazans That Helped Hamas Enter Israel
Hogewash: The Spare Tire Nebula, Bad Economic News, The Darkness Before Some Stars Form, Don’t Know Much About History, and Team Kimberlin Post of the Day
Hollywood In Toto: The Keep Remains Michael Mann’s Fascinating Misfire, Tim Dillon on Black Lives Matter: ‘It’s Always Been a Scam’, The Chosen Releases FIRST LOOK at Season 4, and Woke Exorcist Reboot Collapses in Second Week
The Lid: Biden Border Crisis Endangering Us All: 659 Known Terrorists Captured at the Border This Year Alone, What Would Jabotinsky Do? Exactly What Israel is Doing Now! and Was Jesus A Palestinian? Was There Ever A Palestinian State?
Legal Insurrection: House ‘Hamas Caucus’ Snubs Bipartisan ‘Standing With Israel’ Resolution, PA President Abbas, Jordan King Abdullah Cancel Visit With Biden Due to Gaza Hospital Strike, Chutkan Gag Order: Trump Cannot Criticize Anyone Involved in the D.C. J6 Case, Wexner Foundation Cuts Ties With Harvard Over Response to Hamas Attacks on Israel, Protesters Interrupt Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s Speech at U. Minnesota, and Huntsman Family Halting Donations to Penn in Response to Anti-Semitism
Nebraska Energy Observer: Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity, A Lesson from History, and Some things
Outkick: Aubrey Huff Tells Charly Arnolt ‘Nothing Good’ Can Come Of Giants Interviewing Alyssa Nakken For Manager Job, Stephen A. Smith Gets Torched For Saying Tua Just Throws 2-Yard Passes To Tyreek Hill, Tom Brady Complains About NFL Officiating: ‘It’s More Like Flag Football’, Stanford Player Rips Deion Sanders, Says Colorado Football Program Has ‘Mercenaries’, Are We Sure Viral Chargers Fan Isn’t A Paid Actor?, Trevor May Eviscerates A’s Owner After Announcing Retirement, and Outrageous Iowa Offensive Stat Is Almost Impossible To Believe
Power Line: Goodbye Graffiti Girl, It’s Time to Crush Gaza, Thoughts from the ammo line, Deep State Throat Sends a Warning, and She Should Have Kept Her Mouth Shut
Protein Wisdom Reborn: Tilting at self-righteousness
Shark Tank: Moskowitz Responds To Tlaib’s Palestinian Flag – Raises Israeli Flag
Shot In The Dark: Speed, If You Are…, Dick Butkus, Evil, and Where Credit Is Due – Epilogue
This Ain’t Hell: Navy chief arrested for domestic battery after celebrating his promotion, Marines squeak by, Biden reiterates ability to support Ukraine and Israel, Schumer rushing Israel military aid, Second US carrier strike group heading to the eastern Mediterranean, Defense Secretary: The US will support both Israel and Ukraine, and Annual Fund Raiser
Transterrestrial Musings: “Palestinians”, Common Sense, Priorities, Gramscian Damage, and Authoritarian Thugs
Victory Girls: Congressman Steps Up To Bring Americans Home – Again, Biden Sent COVID Relief Funds To Palestine, and DeSantis Brings Home Stranded Americans From Israel
Volokh Conspiracy: 67 Northwestern University Law Faculty on Hamas Massacre, Hamas Attack Should Teach Us the Folly of Hostage Deals with Terrorists, and The Canceling of the American Mind, by FIRE’s Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott
Watts Up With That: Polar bear researchers hiding significant increase in Southern Hudson Bay numbers, Rising Seas and Social Justice, Keeping You Up to Date On New York’s Progress Toward Green Energy Utopia, New Zealand Votes to Ditch Jacinda Ardern’s Climate Crusade, and The Supreme Court of Canada’s Reality Check on Trudeau’s Climate Impact Act
The Federalist: Axios Calls Open Border ‘More Fortified’ Than ‘Ever’, Hate Trump All You Like, The Gag Order Is Still Wrong, Pennsylvania Republicans Take On Democrats’ Early Voting Gambit With New ‘Bank Your Vote’ Campaign, Florida Devises New Rules For Rooting DEI Out Of Higher Ed, A Lawless Justice System Is The Perfect Tool For Criminalizing Opposition To Democrats, Planned Parenthood Uses Aftermath Of Hamas Attack To Fundraise For Its Own Killing Operations, and Leftists Suffer Humiliating Defeats In Australia, New Zealand Elections
Mark Steyn: I am a Jew, Live Around the Planet, Memories are Made of This: Terence Davies and Distant Voices, Still Lives, and The Great Disconnect

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

Violence Against Women Update

Posted on | October 18, 2023 | Comments Off on Violence Against Women Update

Herman Brightman, a/k/a “Nazir Griffiths”

How many times do I have to repeat myself? Online dating is for losers. Ask yourself, who uses dating apps? People who can’t get a date with anyone who actually knows them in real life, that’s who. Merely by downloading a dating app, you’re making a statement about yourself, and it’s not a good statement, OK? Beyond the fact that the people on dating apps are all losers — if they were winners, they wouldn’t need the app, see? — some of them are actually dangerous. As I’ve said before, “Dating apps are a great way for women to meet violent sexual predators.” But hey, it’s not like there are any dangerous people in New York City:

An accused serial predator who met his victims on the popular dating app Hinge was behind bars Tuesday after threatening to carve up a terrified girlfriend with a knife in her Queens apartment.
Handcuffed defendant Herman Brightman, 30, was held with bail following his arraignment in Queens Criminal Court on a seven-count indictment. He is accused of menacing the 28-year-old woman during the chilling Aug. 7 attack following a quarrel at her home, authorities said as the defendant stood mutely in a beige sweatshirt and a COVID mask.
The 5-foot 9, 220-pound suspect, who also goes by the name Nazir Griffiths, climbed on top of the woman, poked her with the tip of his blade and placed his hands on her mouth before threatening her life, according to Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz. Brightman and his victim had met on Hinge months earlier, her office said.
“This defendant terrorized his girlfriend in her own home,” the prosecutor said in a statement. “Wielding a knife, he threatened to gut her, he threatened to kill her. She is fortunate to have escaped with her life.”
Brightman faces additional accusations of threatening two women in the Bronx and a third in New Jersey after contacting them through Hinge, with law enforcement sources saying the FBI was considering bringing charges against him.
In the August attack, Brightman allegedly asked his girlfriend which part of her body she wanted him to cut first before directing her to turn up music playing in the background and peering out a window to check for neighbors before stating his intention to kill her. The defendant taped her mouth shut, bound her wrists behind her back and ordered her to sit in a corner of the room, prosecutors said.
The attacker spent the next six days inside the apartment before the victim convinced him to leave, according to authorities. He initially faced only misdemeanor charges until the case was declared domestic violence, leading to new charges and the decision to call for his imprisonment, the DA’s office said.
The defendant asked for a chance to speak as Tuesday’s hearing wound down, but the judge rejected the request.
Though Brightman claims on his LinkedIn page to be a nurse practitioner at the prestigious Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, a hospital spokesman said they have never employed anyone by that name. Assistant District Attorney Marina Shew said the defendant had attempted to trespass at the hospital and also falsely claimed a job at Stony Brook University Hospital on Long Island. . . .
Before Brightman threatened to slash his girlfriend, he busted her computer monitor during an argument in her Queens Village apartment where he was staying after they began dating, sources said.
The fight escalated, with the defendant destroying her cell phone with a knife before threatening to butcher the woman and tying her up, they added.
The victim was eventually able to calm Brightman down and convince him to untie her, a source said. He broke down in tears at some point, the source added, and the victim was able to go to work.
Six days later, the source said, the victim told Brightman he had to leave the apartment because she had relatives coming to visit. The attacker complied, the source said, and the woman called him a short time later to end the relationship.
Brightman wasn’t done, the source said, and he asked another one of his victims, a 30-year-old Bronx woman, to call the Queens victim, apparently in an attempt to smooth things over.
But when the two women spoke, they bonded over their shared experiences with Brightman and decided to report him, the source said.
On Sept. 8, they each filed a report with the NYPD, with the Queens woman leaving to stay with relatives in Pennsylvania over fears of Brightman’s wrath, according to the source.
The Bronx woman was victimized on Sept. 6, according to court papers, in a confrontation in front of a Mott Haven building on Cypress Ave. in which he allegedly punched the woman in her arm and then grabbed her in a chokehold, one arm around her neck, the other covering her nose and mouth.
Two days later, Brightman attacked the same woman three blocks away, hurling an orange construction cone that struck her in the foot, court papers said. He then allegedly flung a 2-liter bottle of soda at her but she sidestepped it.
Brightman was arrested on Sept. 14 and charged with criminal obstruction of breathing, misdemeanor assault, harassment and weapons possession. Police tacked on a charge of obstructing governmental administration because he allegedly spit in an NYPD sergeant’s face as he was being placed in a holding cell.
He was released without bail and immediately rearrested for the Queens case. He was again released without bail because the charges, all misdemeanors, were not bail eligible, though he was ultimately indicted for second-degree kidnapping, a felony.
But while he was free, Brightman on Sept. 28 attacked another Bronx woman in her apartment on Metropolitan Ave. in the Parkchester section of the Bronx, authorities said.
“I’m going to show you who I truly am,” he said to the 29-year-old victim, according to court papers. “You think I am playing with you?”
When the victim tried to leave, he blocked the door and then threw a glass vinegar bottle at her, court papers stated. The woman retreated to her bedroom and locked the door. Brightman allegedly kicked it in, repeatedly punched her in the head and choked her until she lost consciousness, authorities said.
“Look at me,” he allegedly said before the victim blacked out. “I have nothing to lose. My dad is dying. We don’t work together anymore.”
The woman regained consciousness but the beating continued, the papers said, with Brightman yanking her to the ground by her hair.
“Kneel down,” he allegedly commanded. “You ever been beat before? This is a night you will never forget. You are not going to make it out alive tonight.” , , ,

So far as we know, he hasn’t killed anybody yet, but unless they put him behind bars, it’s probably just a matter of time. How did this monster keep getting arrested and released? Is this some kind of “criminal justice reform,” to turn loose violent predators? Meanwhile, feminists — who claim to care about “violence against women” — haven’t said a peep about Herman Brightman, for some reason . . .

Category: Violence Against Women

In The Mailbox: 10.17.23 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | October 17, 2023 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 10.17.23 (Afternoon Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Still a little tired from Son of Silvercon. It was a great time, though, and we’re already working on next year’s convention.
Silicon Valley delenda est.