Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Monday, February 3, 2025
Perkins Coie is O-U-T. Ballard Partners is I-N in the DC Metro Area!
"I need more hired GUNS!"
Ballard Partners is an American lobbying firm, based in Tallahassee, Florida, and founded by Brian D. Ballard in 1998.
In 1998, Brian Ballard founded the firm in Tallahassee.[1] In 2017, they opened a Washington DC office, following Trump's first election victory.[2]
In 2024, Ballard had federal lobbying revenue of at least $19 million, its best year since 2020, when it earned $24.15 million.[2]
Ballard's clients include TikTok, Nippon Steel, Amazon,[3] Google, Uber, Honda, and the New York Yankees.[4]
Ballard Partners has offices in multiple Florida locations, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Washington DC, Turkey, Israel, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia.[1]
Susie Wiles ran Ballard Partners for nearly a decade,[5] until she left in September 2019, citing "a nagging health issue".[6]
Pam Bondi was a partner, and earning over $1 million, with clients including the Florida Sheriffs Association and Major County Sheriffs of America.[2]
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from Wikipedia:
Perkins Coie LLP is a global law firm headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1912, it is recognized as an Am Law 50 firm.[3][4] It is the largest law firm headquartered in the Pacific Northwest and has 21[5] offices across the United States, Europe, and Asia. The firm provides corporate, commercial litigation, intellectual property, and regulatory legal advice to a broad range of clients, including prominent technology companies like Google, Microsoft,[6] Intel, Meta, and Amazon.[7][8] The firm is known for its pro bono work.[9]
History[edit]
The firm has represented the Boeing Company since the founding of the aerospace company in 1916. Perkins Coie has been named one of Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work For" for 22 consecutive years, recently ranking #23 on the list.[10]
In 2024, Perkins Coie's pro bono team successfully secured a grant of asylum for a former Afghan Air Force Pilot.[11]
The firm was an early representative of fintech and blockchain interests[12] and has one of the largest law firm blockchain and digital currency practices.[13] Perkins Coie also counsels startups and established tech companies.[14] It launched the Perkins Coie Tech Venture index in 2019, which measures the overall health and trajectory of the emerging growth technology and venture capital ecosystem.[15]
In 2018, Perkins Coie joined the American Bar Association's campaign targeting substance-use disorders and mental health issues among lawyers.[16]
In 2019, the firm became a signatory to the Mansfield Rule, which aims to diversify the leadership of large law firms by broadening the candidate pool for senior management positions.[17] Perkins Coie plans to move their Seattle headquarters to the Russell Investments Center in 2025. Previously, they had occupied 1201 Third Avenue since its opening in 1988.[18]Perkins Coie Beijing Office in September 2024
In March 2024, Perkins Coie announced the closure of its office in Shanghai, China.[19] Later in September, the firm confirmed that it has commenced the process of closing its Beijing office and will shift its strategic focus in China to Shenzhen.[20] However, days later Loeb & Loeb announced that it will take over Perkins Coie IP firm, which was set up in 2019 in Shenzhen, as well as Perkins Coie Beijing team of 17 lawyers.[21]
In May 2024, the firm announced the launch of a London office with a technology-focused corporate practice.[22] The London office is led by corporate lawyer Ian Bagshaw.
Clientele[edit]
Perkins Coie is well-known for advising many of the world’s largest technology companies, including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft as well as large corporations like Boeing, Costco, and Starbucks. The firm has advised[23] Microsoft on its growing partnership with OpenAI, the research and development company behind ChatGPT [2023], guided[24] YouTube TV on its Sunday Ticket broadcast agreement with the National Football League [2022], and represented[25] Amazon before the International Trade Commission with respect to patent litigation [2023/4].[citation needed]
Notable cases[edit]
The firm represented Amazon in its initial public offering in 1997.[26]
The firm represented Christine Gregoire in the prolonged litigation surrounding her 2004 Washington gubernatorial election.[citation needed]
A team of Perkins lawyers successfully represented Al Franken in his recount and legal battle over the 2008 Senatorial election in Minnesota.[27]
In 2006, Perkins Coie, led by partner Harry Schneider, represented Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the alleged driver and bodyguard of Osama bin Laden. The case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in which the Court ruled that the Bush Administration's use of military commissions to try terrorism suspects was unconstitutional.[28]
Perkins Coie worked in the Doe v. Reed case concerning petition signatures in state ballot initiative campaigns, which was argued successfully before the U.S. Supreme Court on April 28, 2010.[29]
In 2010, Perkins Coie sought advisory opinions from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) declaring that certain Google[30] and Facebook[31] advertisements were covered by the "small items" and "impracticable" exemptions of the law that otherwise requires a political advertisement to include a disclaimer revealing who paid for it.[31][32] The commission granted Google's request in a divided vote, and deadlocked on Facebook's request.[32] According to The New York Times, "Facebook nonetheless proceeded as if it was exempt from the disclaimer requirement".[32] In October 2017, Perkins Coie lobbied to defeat a bill called the Honest Ads Act, which would require internet companies to disclose who paid for political ads.[32][33]
Perkins Coie was hired in 2015 as counsel for the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.[34] As part of its representation of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Perkins Coie retained the intelligence firm Fusion GPS for opposition research services. Those services began in April 2016 and concluded before the 2016 U.S. presidential election in early November. A notable product of that opposition research was the Steele dossier describing alleged attempts by Russia to promote the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.[35] During the campaign, the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid Perkins Coie $5.6 million and $3.6 million respectively.[35] On October 24, 2017, Perkins Coie released Fusion GPS from its client confidentiality obligation.[35] The FEC conducted an investigation into misreported 2016 payments to Perkins Coie and levied a fine of over $100,000, jointly paid by the DNC and the Clinton campaign.[36]
Perkins Coie was retained to conduct the independent investigation into potential sexual abuse by Richard Strauss during the course of his employment with Ohio State University wrestling program.[37] The firm conducted 600 interviews with 520 subjects over the course of a year, an investigation paid for by OSU and expected to cost over $6.2 million by its completion. Of 177 students who personally confirmed abuse by the doctor, and 38 more who confirmed abuse but could not remember which staff person was the perpetrator, according to the university's investigation, 48 were from the wrestling program.[38] Because the report did not specifically mention the failure to address the abuse, or the lack of same, on the part of Republican Congressman Jim Jordan who coached in the programs for eight years while Strauss was there, Jordan claimed he, therefore, had been exonerated by the investigation.[38]
Following the 2020 presidential election, Perkins Coie handled the responses to dozens of lawsuits filed by the Donald Trump campaign, in which Trump sought to overturn Joe Biden's win.[39] Out of 65 such court cases, Perkins Coie prevailed in 64.[40] In 2021, as several Republican-dominated state legislatures passed laws to tighten election procedures and impose stricter voting requirements, Perkins Coie filed suits challenging the new laws, often within hours of the bills being signed.[40]
Notable alumni[edit]
Alumni of the firm include Salesforce President and CFO Amy Weaver; the 16th Lieutenant Governor of Washington Cyrus Habib; former Attorney General of Washington State Rob McKenna; 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judges Margaret McKeown, Ronald M. Gould, and Eric D. Miller; Federal Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Tiffany Cunningham; Oregon Supreme Court Justice Chris Garrett; and U.S. Representative Colin Allred.[citation needed]
Trump-Russia investigation[edit]
In September 2021, Michael Sussmann, a well-known cybersecurity lawyer at Perkins Coie, was indicted by the John Durham Special Counsel for allegedly making a false statement to the FBI in September 2016.[41][42] Sussmann resigned from Perkins Coie after he was charged by the special counsel.[43] After a jury trial, Sussmann was unanimously acquitted in May 2022.
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Sunday, February 2, 2025
What Bernie "forgot" to mention about Oligarchies in the post below...
...that if Musk and the 'evil' oligarchs on the Trump Inaugural stage are actually running the country now as he states, then he and his colleagues in the Senate and House are merely actors pretending to Represent their constituents. For the Congress represents the "official" Constitutionally-sanctioned "oligarchs" and "oligarchy". And so Bernie now publicly admits that the Congress is completely controlled from the shadows.
So how would changing House and Senate members (mere "actors") per his arguments, change anything? Wouldn't the "shadow oligarchs" still control them and the country?
Bernie's Half-Truths
Did you ever hear him complain when Democrats did sh*t?
"Oh no, Trump's too tough on the media...." @@
vs. the 'Real' Danger
Saturday, February 1, 2025
Ziz-ling Trans Murder Cults...
Ava Mandoli, Daymond Gascon, Erin Caughey and Matthias Gafni, "On the Ziz Cult"
Six violent deaths across the country, including that of a Vallejo landlord and a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Vermont, have been connected to people associated with a fringe offshoot of a Bay Area-based intellectual movement, according to interviews, court filings and social media posts.
The case is dizzying.
Federal prosecutors said Teresa Youngblut, accused of killing Border Patrol agent David Maland in Coventry, Vt., near the U.S.-Canada border on Jan. 20, is associated with “persons of interest” in a double homicide in Chester Heights, Penn., in 2023.
One of those persons of interest in the double homicide, prosecutors said, purchased the firearms used in the fatal shooting of Maland.
Another person of interest detained in connection to the Pennsylvania case is also being investigated in the Jan. 17 fatal stabbing of Curtis Lind, an 82-year-old landlord in Vallejo, according to federal filings.
Moreover, Youngblut had filed an application in November to marry Maximilian Snyder, who was arrested by Vallejo police Friday in Redding on suspicion of murdering Lind.
Lind had survived a previous attack, which left him critically wounded and blind in one eye, in 2022. He shot two of his assailants, killing one, Emma Borhanian. Lind was supposed to be the key witness in an upcoming trial of two of his alleged attackers, Suri Dao and Alexander “Somni” Leatham.
Borhanian and Leatham had previously been involved in a bizarre Sonoma County protest against the nonprofit Center for Applied Rationality with Gwen Danielson and Jack LaSota, known as “Ziz,” in 2019.
Some have called LaSota and her associates the “Zizians,” an offshoot of the modern rationalist movement that believes human decision-making can be improved by logic, evidence and an awareness of uncertainty and cognitive bias.
LaSota’s group espoused extreme veganism and animal rights.
Confused yet? So are we. In this map and timeline, we clarify the connections between the persons of interest, the incidents and where they happened. This is a developing story, and we will update it as we learn more.
Did anyone mention that all the cult members listed above were "trans"? Trans is an "intellectual movement"?
...and their Gyges-Cloak Wielding Media and Political Enablers protect them...
..cults comprised of "those who cannot be criticized" and can therefore kill in the name of the Progressive/ Ethical Kitsch/ Luigi-esque "Good Cause/ Greater Good". After all, they must all defeat Trump-Hitler and White Supremacism!
The Ziz-ers should join forces with Ayn Rand's "Objectivists" and jointly worship at the altar of Big-R "Rationalism".
Friday, January 31, 2025
Why after 2024 Democrats will likely never become a Major Party in US Politics Again....
Every single candidate for DNC Chair just blamed their loss in 2024 on racism and misogyny pic.twitter.com/T8shvrRhUn
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 31, 2025
It's why they NEED to fabricate Hate Crimes. Without Rampant and Out of Control Racism and Misogeny, the Democratic Party has no platform or raison d'etre. White Guilt-Pride lies at the party's very foundation. Anyone on the platform who had failed to raise his hand would have been immediately excommunicated. It's a "purity test" for Party membership. It demonstrates that they're "all in" for maintaining Intersectional Identity Politics as their only way forward. And as Donald J. Trump has shown, it's also their kryptonite.
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Cascading Political Re-Alignments...
Source:
The Democratic Party’s approval rating is nearing an all time low, according to the results of Quinnipiac polling released Wednesday.
Just 31% of registered voters approve of the Democratic Party, the lowest favorability rating the pollster has recorded of the party since it began asking the question in 2008. The Democratic Party’s near-historic low favorability rating follows an election cycle during which Democrats nominated an unpopular presidential candidate to replace Biden after party elites and the corporate media colluded to conceal the former president’s cognitive decline from the American people.
Nearly six in ten Americans disapprove of the Democratic Party’s brand, according to the Quinnipiac poll.
Support for the Republican Party, in sharp contrast, is at a record high with 43% of registered voters holding a favorable view of the GOP, according to the poll.
Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly said Tuesday that he believes House Republicans will be able to hold their majority for the next decade.
The Republican Party’s 12% higher approval rating over the Democratic Party is the largest favorability advantage Quinnipiac has recorded of the GOP over the Democratic Party since its university poll began asking registered voters about their views on America’s political parties, according to background Quinnipiac released on the poll.
Trump’s approval rating is currently 46%, which is ten points higher than when the president was sworn into the Oval Office in January 2017, according to the poll results.
Jeffrey Epstein, We Barely Knew Ye!
Whitney Webb on Why the Justice System will NEVER get to the bottom of 'things Epstein'.
With Palantir backing him, Donald Trump can now Order World Leaders to do his bidding, for the "true heir" now controls the "Chamber of Secrets"
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Monday, January 27, 2025
Saturday, January 25, 2025
NY Times Gets Their Panties in a Bunch Again...
...over unsanctioned speech. Yarvin will NOT be getting a Blue Check from THEIR editors!
Friday, January 24, 2025
I've Got a Hammer... and THAT Looks Like a Nail!
Britain's politicians deliberately dress as fools once more....
...to alleviate their post-colonialist guilt-pride and leave their "unwritten" rules "unspoken"!
Thursday, January 23, 2025
Steve Bannon: The Trump Takover
Paranoiac Progressive Hit Pieces
(The Fascists are Coming...)
Steve Bannon,,,, BOO!
Perhaps the lowest point in the downward spiral of our public life is the “CostCo Guys,” a duo of father Andrew “A.J.” Befumo Jr. and his son Eric Justice Befumo who found popularity on TikTok and YouTube in 2024 for their videos at the warehouse store CostCo. Their first video to go viral on the platform was of them shopping for meatballs for Eric’s mother. They subsequently began making videos of themselves rating products therein, either positively as a “boom” or negatively as a “doom.” These videos are full of paradoxes that defy understanding: they appear to be spontaneous amateur recordings, but we now know that they were carefully staged with the help of assistants; they appear to be publicity for CostCo, but (at first, at least) made for free, with no collaboration of CostCo — the couple was at some point even thrown out of a CostCo store while doing there a recording.
As such, CostCo Boys epitomize a wide-spread tendency of free publicity — recall just that thousands of girls are putting on the web video clips that publicize some brand of body lotions or lipstick or nail polish... a capitalist’s dream come true, and an unexpected of the economic neo-feudalism. This paradox of publicity made for free is much worse than its opposite, free creation which is secretly financed as publicity. It designates the moment when publicity assumes a life of its own — and this is, perhaps, one of the definitions of the end of the world.
This tendency is grounded in the new way of life that is emerging among the younger generations all around the world; its material bases are the new digital spaces of communication — Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok — which imply short attention span, quick jumps from one to another message, and multitasking. The much celebrated new media first appeared as an anarchist dream come true, the overcoming of the divide between private and public, between producers and users-consumers: we are all “produsers” (a neologism coined by Yanis Varoufakis), involved in direct exchange with no center regulating it and posing limits, no big Other limiting our freedom… and we ended as serfs in a neo-feudal private corporate space.
With regard to Donald Trump, he is a liberal in the sense of allowing corporations to operate outside state control — a stance especially dangerous when we are dealing with global warming. We recently learned that “the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative is working to preserve scientific data and research on public government websites amid fears that topics like climate change and green energy will be removed from government websites after President-elect Trump takes office” — a nightmarish scenario where the broad public will be simply deprived of proper information and thus rendered unable to make rational decisions about proper measures in ecology.
There were never so many billionaires in a US government as they are in the list Trump, the self-professed partisan of working people, is proposing. In short, Trump’s liberalism de facto amounts to much more freedom for the new digital feudal masters (to use the term of Varoufakis), and the irony is that Trump himself — who officially opposes big corporations, claiming that they are globalists that exploit American workers — relies on the support of these new feudal masters whose perfect embodiment is Elon Musk. This is why one should be very careful when one designates Trump as a fascist. There is no place for feudal corporate masters in fascism since the ruling fascist party by definition exerts political monopoly. What is happening now in the US – techno-feudal masters directly occupying high government positions – is unimaginable in fascism.
No wonder cracks are already appearing in Trump’s political edifice in the guise of the conflict between digital-corporate masters who support Trump — Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Thiel — and the MAGA populists who pretend to speak for the ordinary workers. Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, co-chairs of Trump’s new “Department of Government Efficiency,” are defending the tech industry’s reliance on foreign-born engineers as the incoming Trump administration prepares to crack down on immigration; Ramaswamy openly complained that Americans are not up to snuff when it comes to competing with brainy foreigners, and he blamed a series of 1990s TV sitcoms for what he saw as a decline in US dynamism in science and technology, leading tech companies to hire more qualified foreign-born and first-generation workers over their mentally lazy American counterparts: “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” he wrote on X.
It is, of course, difficult to harmonize this stance with Trump’s long history of “America First” nativism and racism, calling for “bloody” mass deportations, the end of birthright citizenship, and claiming immigrants were “poisoning the blood of the country.” So it is no surprise that the populist MAGA reaction was quick to come and quite brutal; as expected, the most vocal was Steve Bannon, the old Trumpian “leftist” who openly declares himself as a “Leninist for the 21st century,” saying that Lenin “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Recall that Bannon was thrown out of the White House when he not only opposed Trump’s tax plan but openly advocated raising taxes for the rich to 40 percent, plus he argued that rescuing banks with public money is “socialism for the rich.”
In a CNN interview back in June 2018, Steve Bannon declared his political ideal to be the unity of the right and left populism against the old political establishment. He praised the coalition of the rightist Northern League and the leftist populist Five Star movement which ruled Italy a decade or so ago as the model for the world to follow, and as the proof that the politics is moving beyond left and right. The stake of this (politically and aesthetically) disgusting idea is, of course, to obfuscate the basic social antagonism, which is why it is condemned to fail — although it can cause a lot of misfortunes before its final failure.
While any pact between Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders is excluded for obvious reasons, a key element of the left’s strategy should be to ruthlessly exploit divisions in the enemy camp and fight to get Bannon followers to their side. To cut a long story short, there is no victory of the left without the broad alliance of all anti-establishment forces. One should never forget that our true enemy is the global capitalist establishment and not the new populist right which is merely a reaction to its impasses. If we forget this, then the left will simply disappear from the map, as it is already happening with the moderate social-democratic left in much of Europe, or, as Slawomir Sierakowski put it: “As left-wing parties have collapsed, the sole option remaining for voters is conservatism or right-wing populism.”
The split in the Trumpian movement is thus personalized in two names: Elon Musk versus Steve Bannon. Bannon demanded “reparations” from Musk and other tech leaders for cutting Americans out of jobs; for him, the visa issue is “central to the way they gutted the middle class in this country.” He noted: “We love converts, but the converts sit in the back and study for years and years and years to make sure you understand the faith and you understand the nuances of the faith and understand how you can internalize the faith.” They should not “come up and go to the pulpit in their first week here and start lecturing people about the way things are going to be.”
“If you’re going to do that, we’re going to rip your face off,” he said.
Trump is here in deep trouble: his appeal stands or falls with the “impossible” coalition between digital feudal masters and exploited workers — if he chooses one side, the MAGA movement falls apart. At the end of December 2024, in his first clear choice, Trump took the side of Musk, but in the long term, he is condemned to make compromises — what compromises? The only way out for him that I see is to mobilize distinction between the good (highly skilled and educated) immigrants and the bad ones (criminals, rapists, poor homeless refugees) — in short, he will have to play the racist card more and more.
This strategy may work in the short term, but the paradox is that if it does succeed, its unintended result will be double: new highly skilled immigrants will be well-paid and thus strengthen the rich strata of the US society, while ordinary low-paid Americans will have to take the jobs hitherto reserved for poor or illegal immigrants — anti-immigrant populists will thus be even more dissatisfied with the system. Not to mention the fact that immigrants are doing many (mostly illegal) jobs, from domestic ones (housecleaning, gardening, babysitting…) to seasonal harvest collecting, which enable the middle classes to enjoy their way of life. If Trump goes too far in throwing out illegal immigrants, he will soon face discontent from an unexpected source: it is totally utopian to presume poor white Americans will take over the jobs now covered by illegal immigrants.
Now already a rage is burning among poor Americans, directed at well-paid and highly educated immigrants who employ white Americans to take care of their home life — Indian programmers have already achieved a mythic status (although they are not as numerous as it may appear). More than a decade ago, a young British babysitter employed by a (relatively) wealthy couple of Indian programmers living in Boston was accused of causing the child’s death by her neglect — the surprising fact was that in this case, the public sympathy was on the side of the British nanny, and the hatred directed at the Indian couple. (When the Indian is a nanny serving a white couple, then she is demonized, of course.)
There is also an ideological tension immanent to each of the two aspects of Trumpian politics: the corporate feudal masters present themselves as radical liberals, they advocate the use of mass media free from restrictions imposed by the state (the actual result of this freedom is, as we have already seen, the freedom of digital masters to control their digital feudal domain), while the self-declared partisans of ordinary people are deeply authoritarian, they advocate stronger state control over political and cultural life, banning phenomena they consider subversive — LGBT+ pressures, leftist protest movements). Just recall what legislation was passed in Florida in the last years, from book prohibitions to direct state interventions in curriculums.
Trump advocating ordinary people’s interests is like Kane from Welles’ classic movie — when a rich banker accuses him of speaking for the poor mob, he answers that, yes, his newspaper speaks for the poor ordinary people, but it does that in order to prevent the true danger which is that the poor ordinary people will speak for themselves.
So how will this tension end? There is no automatic solution; the outcome depends on political struggle, not on “objective” socio-economic processes. We can in no way be sure that the described tensions will lead Trumpian politics to ruins — it is quite possible that it will endlessly postpone its downfall through improvised new compromises. We can only be sure of one thing: the longer Trumpian politics reign, the more catastrophic the long-term situation will be.
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
Some Observations on the Trump Broligarchy... the Technofeudal Lords
...apparently no one has noticed the entire world's digital adoption of economic technofeudalism. There aren't even markets (open/ free) anymore. "Search" has captured and now DIRECTS all access and activity in the markets. There are only Technofeudal Lords (Platform owners), Technofeudal Vassals (corporations who make products), and Cloud Serfs (computer users who give away all their data). The only hope for opportunities left are for 'serfs' to achieve 'vassaldom'.. they will never "own the platform". The US IC owns the platform (Jack's Magic Coffee Shop). Now that the entire world economy has been captured, there's no need to hide it any longer. The only question left, is can it all now be "transformed" into a Tofflerian "Third Wave" Prosumer style economy from it's current feudalistic roots?
From a Society of Control... to the Achievement Society (only with a bit less "positivity" than we have currently)
Bernie Picks Up on What Trump DIDN'T Say in his 2nd Inaugural Speech...
Fixing the things Bernie rightly claims are America's greatest challenges can only be sustainably accomplished though a fundamental anti-fragile legal re-building of our economy into one that emphasizes and empowers small businesses and individual agency, not multinational corporations and globalism. THAT is what Bernie didn't pay attention to in Trump's speech and that renders his "complaint", moot. Bernie thinks that the solution to world hunger lies in redistributing fish being caught today instead of fabricating and handing out more fishing poles. Not a single issue Bernie raises addresses the fundamental transformation of the economy needed. Not one. His ground truth premise and assumption is "continued global corporatism" with more generous government directed and controlled handouts. That is his fatal fallacy.
Trump DIDN'T talk about Bernie's issues. Because Trump is operating from a different premise. One that doesn't adopt Bernie's status quo based economic fatal fallacy.
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
A Fine British Whine... :)
When the Left forgot their own rules... Saul Alinsky "Rules for Radicals":
1. "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."
...and a poor American sugar-free imitation Kool-Aid
Monday, January 20, 2025
Sunday, January 19, 2025
Saturday, January 18, 2025
On Saving European Democracy from the Voters
Gert Wilders, "Unlike Trump's America, EU Bigwigs Censor to 'Protect Democracy' from Voters"
Next Tuesday, the European Parliament will discuss with the European Commission the “need to enforce the Digital Services Act to protect democracy on social media platforms, including against foreign interference and biased algorithms.” The Digital Services Act (DSA) is the central European Union legislation regulating social media.
The EU bigwigs in Brussels are up in arms because Elon Musk had a chat on X with Alice Weidel, leader of the Alternative for Germany. The AfD is an increasingly popular right-wing party which the EU establishment wants to isolate in a cordon sanitaire. According to the European Commission, Ms. Weidel’s chat with Mr. Musk “improperly boosts” her agenda over her political rivals ahead of Germany’s upcoming Feb. 23 elections and constitutes “foreign interference” in the German electoral process.
Brussels has also reacted in outrage to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent announcement to end the fact-checking era on Facebook and restore free expression. Zuckerberg regretted that in the past, Facebook had suppressed information, and he confirmed years of systematic online censorship, either on demand of politically biased “fact-checkers” or under direct government pressure. While the American elections were “a cultural tipping point towards prioritizing speech,” Mr. Zuckerberg pointed out that Europe has yet to come to the same conclusion. “Europe has an ever increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship,” he said.
The Meta boss was at once denounced by the European Commission. He is not telling the truth when he says the EU is institutionalizing censorship, European Commission Vice President Henna Virkkunen whined. It is “not true” and “misleading,” she wailed. At the same time, she took a snipe at Elon Musk for his support of AfD on X, threatening the platform with legal sanctions, saying that X has “obligations under our Digital Services Act and X is supposed to assess and mitigate the risks they are posing to our electoral processes and to civic discourse.”
Last December, the presidential elections in Romania were annulled after an outsider had surprisingly won the first round with 23 per cent of the vote. According to the EU bigwigs, this was the result of foreign “disinformation” spread via TikTok and other social media platforms.
While the EU’s Digital Service Act (DSA) pays lip service to freedom of speech, it acts as an instrument to restrict freedom of speech and censor social media platforms so that “risks to the electoral processes and civic discourse” are “mitigated”. On these platforms, politicians such as I, who were the victims of media bias, but also every citizen, can freely speak our minds and voice our opinions without “mitigation” by the powers that be. The fact that platforms such as X and Facebook are owned by Americans is used as a xenophobic pretext to add “foreign interference” to “the risks to Europe’s electoral processes and civic discourse.”
The EU uses the word “democracy” in the same way as the former Communist dictatorship in East-Germany used to call itself the German “Democratic” Republic. In the infamous G“D”R, “democracy” also needed to be protected against critics who were said to be in cahoots with foreign powers.
I am the leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), by far the most popular party in the Netherlands. For decades, the PVV and other parties like mine have hardly ever been fairly treated by mainstream journalists. But never did the European Commission voice any concern about how the disinformation about us might “improperly boost” our political adversaries or how it might subvert the “electoral process.” I am not complaining, just pointing out the EU hypocrisy.Geert Wilders Writes for Breitbart: 2025, Bring It On! https://t.co/sf8VMC7xEA
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) December 17, 2024
I am not complaining, because guess what? The scandalous behaviour of the mainstream media had the same effect as water on a duck’s back. It flowed off us. The voters kept coming to us because voters are mature enough to make their own decisions.
For decades, we were also the victims of outright censorship by some social media outlets. Parties like mine have been censored online for years. I am one of many like-minded European politicians whose views were banned. Whenever we voiced our opinion on Islamization or mass immigration, so-called fact-checkers had our messages removed as “hate speech”. It happened to me on Twitter — before that company was bought by Elon Musk — and on YouTube.
Despite years of social media censorship, however, we kept winning the elections. Voters can feel when they are being lied to. They sense when they are being deceived. They realize well enough that the authorities are deceiving them when social media remains silent about what is happening on the streets of Europe. Indeed, the electorate is mature enough to make their own decisions.
Companies like X and Facebook are abandoning censorship. I applaud them for that. The mainstream media say they “sprint to kiss Trump’s ring” and “suck up to the incoming president,” but the decision is plain common sense. Censorship is a costly business and just not worth the effort. The mainstream media refuse to see it, but they are a dying breed. Who cares about what The Guardian writes?
Parties such as mine have survived decades of media bias and disinformation; if anything, it has only made us stronger and more popular. Ultimately, we won. This will happen everywhere. Ultimately, freedom and truth will prevail! The only “risk to the electoral processes” that I see in Europe, is the EU “interfering” in elections because Brussels does not like the outcome and claims it has to protect “democracy” against the voters.
Thursday, January 16, 2025
What's the Value of Hunter Biden Art?
Hunter Biden has reportedly lost hundreds of his treasured artworks in the Los Angeles wildfires.
According to The New York Post, Hunter’s artworks went up in flames as wildfires continued to ravage the city, leaving thousands of properties in its wake.
The report states:A trove of nearly 200 artworks by Hunter Biden has been destroyed — one of the casualties of the wildfires ravaging Los Angeles, The Post has learned.Hunter’s ventures into the art world have long raised eyebrows for their sky-high valuations and consequent sales.
The controversial art had been in storage near the Pacific Palisades home of Hunter’s Hollywood attorney Kevin Morris and is valued at “millions of dollars,” a source close to the Biden family said.
Morris, who loaned the first son nearly $5 million to help pay a tax bill and has been financing a documentary on him, lives in a sprawling five-bedroom, six-bathroom home which is among the few houses still intact in the posh neighborhood, The Post can confirm.
A lawyer for Hunter Biden, who is a self-taught artist who turned to painting while in recovery from drug addiction, did not immediately return a request for comment.
His abstract and mixed-media pieces have been sold for prices ranging from $75,000 to $500,000, figures that are more likely due to his family connections than his artistic talent.
In fact, many of his buyers have since been revealed to have been purchased by Democratic donors and other wealthy allies of the Biden family.
The most prominent of these buyers was Morris, who bought 11 works of Hunter’s art for $875,000.
Morris also previously covered $2 million in Hunter’s unpaid tax bills taxes o a $50,000 donation to Joe Biden’s campaign in 2020.
Last month, local landlord Shaun Maguire claimed that Hunter owes him $300,000 in back pay rent and had tried to pay him with artwork made of his own feces.
“Hunter was our tenant in Venice, CA. Didn’t pay rent for over a year. Tried to pay w/ art made from his own feces,” Maguire explained.“Absolute shit bag,” he added.
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Trump: The Ultimate Troll's Troll
A MASTER of creating and exploiting a Reflexive Environment...
A reflexive environment is one where everybody has to talk about a certain thing. That thing is going to be very polarizing, and there are either going to be one, or two, right ways to talk about it. Usually they're going to be diametrically opposed to one another, and that means it's a dialectical weapon.
When George Soros famously shorted the the pound sterling in like '92 or whatever, which led to him writing "The Alchemy of Finance" where he said that "Alchemy is not interested in truth like the scientific method, it's interested in operational success." The method he said that they used to do the Alchemy of Finance was reflexivity. The idea is that you start jinning up an idea and make the idea become true because everybody starts talking about it and believing it in a particular way. So "the current thing" takes place in a reflexive environment (often Social Media).
On praising your negotiation "adversaries" (like Kim Jong Il) once an offer has been made:
h/t - Woodsterman
Monday, January 13, 2025
Maryland Struggles to Fund It's Bloated State Gov Bureaucracy...
...and will pay outside consultants 20% of all Budget Savings Identified because the State employees are too incompetent to form their own DOGE like team? I wonder how the Dem politicians in DC would react if Elon were entitled by a Trump-let contract to 20% of all federal budget savings he identified.... 20% of $2 trillion capped at $300b?
Jack Bowman, "Gov. Moore launches Maryland 'modernization' plan, aims for $50 million in savings"
Gov. Wes Moore is directing his administration to scour the state’s spending for waste and inefficiency, with a goal of producing $50 million in savings.
Moore announced the effort, called the Government Modernization Initiative, two days after promising to propose a budget with $2 billion in cuts, an attempt to address a projected $3 billion deficit.
“It’s finding the breakage in the systems and fixing them so we’re not papering it over in more expensive ways later on,” Moore said of the initiative in a Friday announcement.
The initiative is aimed at finding inconsistent or unnecessary spending throughout state government, fixing “things that have long been broken.”
Moore went on to mention inefficiencies including under-utilized state vehicles and inconsistently-priced technology and equipment that, if addressed, could save the state $50 million “this year alone.”
Chief Performance Officer Asma Mirza and the performance cabinet will spearhead the effort. Elisabeth Sachs, a longtime nonprofit and state/local government leader, will also contribute to the project.
Boston Consulting Group will also be brought on to aid in the analysis. In a pay-for-performance contract approved in October, the state will pay the firm, one of the “big three” in strategy consulting, a 20% share of the savings achieved, with a maximum payout of $15 million.
The study will begin this year, with a goal of implementing changes by fiscal year 2026, which begins in July.
“We know the challenges that exist,” Moore said. “It’s created a chance for this team to show what we’re made of, because we will address it, and Maryland will grow.”
Really? $15 million on outside consultants? No wonder they're $3b in the hole... @@
Civilization and Its' Discontents...
...I gotta assuage me some white guilt-pride!
What responsibilities do individuals have in supporting and maintaining their civilization? What sacrifices should we be expected to make for it?
Meden agan!
Perkins Coie
Parallel construction is a law enforcement process of building a parallel, or separate, evidentiary basis for a criminal investigation in order to limit disclosure as to the origins of an investigation.[1]
In the US, a particular form is evidence laundering, where one police officer obtains evidence via means that are in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures (ie - 702 NSA dB search), and then passes it on to another officer, who builds on it and gets it accepted by the court under the good-faith exception as applied to the second officer.[2] This practice gained support after the Supreme Court's 2009 Herring v. United States decision.[2]
Sunday, January 12, 2025
We Cannot Remainheah...
Hundreds of thousands of Romanians furious with the current government for the cancellation of the presidential election marched today (12) through the capital Bucharest to demand that the vote should proceed and that outgoing – and by now illegitimate – President Klaus Iohannis should resign.
Reuters reported:“In a move that polarized voters, Romania’s top court voided the presidential election on Dec. 6, two days before the second round.Reuters is lying, here – the documents show no proof whatsoever of Russian involvement, and the ‘campaign’ they object to was proven to have been financed by Romanians.
The cancellation came after state documents showed frontrunner Calin Georgescu, a critic of NATO, had benefited from an unfair social media campaign likely to have been orchestrated by Russia, accusations Moscow has denied.”🚨BREAKING: Native Romanians have had enough with the EU and start marching towards Bucharest city centre.
— Inevitable West (@Inevitablewest) January 12, 2025
Europa is fighting back. 💥 pic.twitter.com/h9V1CrykTCWatch: 100,000+ take to the streets.🚨BREAKING: Unbelievable scenes in Romania right now as over 100,000 angry Romanians take to the streets after the EU cancel democratic result of ultra-nationalist Călin Georgescu.
— Inevitable West (@Inevitablewest) January 12, 2025
Romania is fighting back. 💥 pic.twitter.com/E2F1sYrwt8
Romania’s top court ordered a re-run of the election. Governing party leaders have agreed – not yet officially – party to hold the two rounds on May 4 and May 18.
Illegitimate President Iohannis, whose term expired on Dec. 21, vows to stay on ‘until his successor is elected’.
Organizers say over 100,000 people were at the protest, but riot police estimated at only around 20,000.“’Our right to vote was broken’, said Bogdan Danila, a 43-year-old truck driver. ‘In addition, Iohannis was in power for ten years and did nothing for the people, while parties betrayed us, they are all corrupt. We want something else’.Romanians are demanding the resignation of Klaus Iohannis, who is illegally occupying the position of President of Romania, as well as that of the entire government
— Daily Romania (@daily_romania) January 12, 2025
Călin Georgescu is the legitimate President of Romania, supported by more than 70% of the population pic.twitter.com/0usf9x7HeA
[…] ‘Authorities must say why they cancelled the election, we want to see the evidence’, said Cornelia, 57, an economist wrapped in a Romanian flag who declined to give her last name. ‘At this rate we won’t be voting anymore, they will impose a leader like in the old days’.”The mainstream media right now is one of the most hated institutions in Romania
— Daily Romania (@daily_romania) January 12, 2025
For 35 years they have lied to us without shame and worked against the interests of the Romanian people
Journalists are being booed at the protest in Romania, where more than 100,000 are attending pic.twitter.com/sthy9DqFl5Protests in Bucharest, Romania continue into the night
— Daily Romania (@daily_romania) January 12, 2025
It's freezing outside yet the people are not done yet!
The illegitimate "president" of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, and the entire government have to resign pic.twitter.com/xSsmmEn6pERomanian Presidential Elections Will Be Held AGAIN on May 4th – Globalist Establishment Desperate That Right-Wing Georgescu Still Has the Support of 40% of the Voters
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