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If you don’t see this for yourselves, you’ll never believe it. In fact, I’ve watched this a few times yesterday, courtesy of Israeli journalist Hen Mazzig, and I still can’t quite comprehend how blithely these radical activists have succeeded in both grooming and indoctrinating children. Radical leftists have combined Drag Queen Story Hour with terror-symp sloganeering and have taken double-barreled aim at toddlers and children barely of school age.

Bill Maher would be appalled, and probably never imagined that the Left would go this far off the deep end, both morally and politically:

“If you’re a drag queen and you know it, shout ‘Free Palestine’!”

As Mazzig notes, this isn’t a Babylon Bee satire or some sort of deep-fake. The organization that staged the event, Valley Families for Palestine in Connecticut Valley, has the longer version on its Instagram channel. “Queer Storytime for Palestine 🌈🇵🇸✨ We came together today in joy and solidarity and learned some important lessons about being ourselves,” their caption reads, “using our voices to speak out against injustice, and being fabulous while we do it.”

The comments on the post were uniformly critical, even from their allies, although these have been scrubbed from their post after I first read them. “As someone who’s queer, middle eastern, and someone who does drag, I find this actually insulting,” wrote another commenter. “Queer people are driven underground and fighting for their right just to stat (sic) alive in Gaza and in many other countries in the ME, such as Iran where my family are (sic) from. Have any of you ever once spoken out about this? I see nothing on your page about it. Yet here you are indoctrinating children to chant FOR a system which enables that. As a queer middle easterner I find your virtue signaling and manufactured sense of moral superiority absolutely nauseating and deeply insulting, not to mention just plain idiotic.”

Another ally wrote: “This is a joke or another level of ignorance? Man I love drag queen story hour and support it every day of the week, especially Sunday,” one person commented. “But the only place in the Middle East drag queens are welcome is Israel 🇮🇱 You will find yourself at the other end of rope in Gaza for doing this.”

A more pithy commenter added, “Involving children and making them chant ‘free Palestine'[] is really something else.” But it really isn’t. The entire purpose of the Drag Queen Story Hour events has been to recruit children into the gender-theory activist movement by rote indoctrination. It certainly isn’t just to entertain children, which doesn’t require drag queens at all, nor to expose them to reading either. It’s to expose small children to the normalization of Queer Theory before they even have a chance to develop their own identities, to confuse them for political exploitation and indoctrination – at the very least.

With that path of indoctrination open to the Left, why wouldn’t they use it to brainwash little children on other parts of their radical agenda? Having a drag queen push children to repeat the “Free Palestine” mantra in order to be good little drag queens themselves is practically a reductio ad absurdum of today’s progressive Left – or it would be if we didn’t have video evidence for it. 

Just this past weekend, Bill Maher took aim at this level of insidious brainwashing with a carefully crafted understatement:

The host also slammed Instagram moms who are “practically OnlyFans-ing” their young daughters to “build social stardom,” and Drag Queen Story Hours. “Not that there’s anything wrong with being a drag queen,” he said. “But maybe it’s time to admit that sometimes Drag Queen Story Hour is more for the Queen than the kids.”

That’s exactly right. This has always been for the adults rather than the children, and that’s true of the entire transgender activist agenda. This is not much different from parents who push their kids on stage or on the playing field to live vicariously through their experiences and gain social acceptance – except acting and playing football don’t turn kids into eunuchs. Indoctrinating kindergarteners in gender-theory and Marxist constructs of politics is not about educating children but about adults seeking validation for their own life choices by the exploitation of children. The purpose is to groom these children, politically at the very least, not to teach them to think for themselves.

Writing this will likely have its consequences. I fully expect that Big Tech will intervene to declare this post “dangerous” in some way, “hurtful” or “hateful,” “misinformation,” or any of the other shibboleths they utter to justify censorship and intimidation. Maher is fortunate to have a platform where he can still discuss these issues rationally – and so am I, but not because I have enough celebrity clout to get past the Big Tech gatekeepers. 

I’m fortunate because we all have readers who support our efforts to challenge the shibboleths and the authoritarian progressive agenda. 

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Alexandra Pelosi has been filming a documentary on January 6th, and apparently she isn’t impressed at all about how the protesters are being treated in court. 

Nor is she impressed with the transparency of the people who have the most information to disclose about what really happened on that fateful day. 

Alexandra Pelosi speaks to J6 defendant Greg Rubenacker after he was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison.

Interesting phone call.

Pelosi is doing a J6 documentary.pic.twitter.com/LdKszjuhto

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) April 24, 2024

This information comes from a recorded phone call between Pelosi and January 6th defendant Greg Rubenacker, who was sentenced to 41 months in prison for his role in the riot. 

So yeah, I got so much for me being, you know, having any power or any access or any, anything. I can’t get anybody to call me back.  Um, yeah, I don’t know why this video, I, I mean, I, I, I want to see all the video. I want to see every and all video because video doesn’t lie. Video tells the truth. 

Yeah, I mean, you  can’t, but does this make sense to you? Anything make sense to you from what I told you and the government side? Well, I gotta tell you a couple things. One,  you got, you got a liberal judge. She is out for blood, that lady. Now, I think I learned in kindergarten that, like, justice is supposed to be fair.

A judge is supposed to be, like, the same. By far the same.  And they’re not supposed to be political, and they’re not supposed to bring politics to it. And even though they’re  Presidents appoint judges, they’re not supposed to be political. And now, it’s like, one judge, the judge you get really makes a difference.

Because the judges, some judges are giving probation and other ones are giving full jail time. So, for the same exact offense, like literally the same exact offense. Now, that is what’s happening.  And that is not what people think is justice. Justice was supposed to be blind, remember? But, okay, so that’s, okay, I know I sound amateur by saying that, but like, Ooh, it’s political, you’re surprised?

Pelosi is, of course, Nancy Pelosi’s daughter and by no means a conservative shill. She’s not some child of a prominent person who has decided to distance herself from her famous parents. 

She’s a lefty. 

But not all liberals or conservatives are hypocrites. Some people say what they believe and actually try to be fair. This is true on both sides of the aisle, as I keep trying to point out. I know more than a few good liberals, and more than a few unfair conservatives. 

I’m not both-sidesing here. You know what I think about the institutional corruption of the Left, and the January 6th trials are a perfect example of that. I’m just happy to have liberals join us in the fight. 

And so it’s, you know, the same offense and different judges are, are like using the opportunity to like make it political. So I think that’s really weird. And I think that people would, I think people would be surprised to know that. But yours is particularly  egregious because it’s so long. The sentence is so long that like it’s, it doesn’t make sense to me.

I, I, I, I. It’s not like anybody talks to me and I can get any answers from anybody about anything. Cause you think I have all this kind of information, but I got nothing. Nobody’s, nobody’s telling me anything. No one’s showing me any videos. I do get people leak me videos, but they’re lawyers for people.

Like I, it’s like I haven’t called your lawyer and asked him to leak it to me because he’s going to say no. But I try to get lawyers to leak me footage. You know how they have that, like that database that all the footage is in. I’ve got, I have a guy who’s, I told to leak me your footage and he’s like, okay, yeah, I have to put it on a hard, uh, thumb drive and I have to like sneak it to you somehow, you know, like that.

Pelosi is, of course, referring to the footage from the Capitol, almost all of which has been hidden from the public. And what little of it has leaked out has often contradicted the official Narrative™, with the “Q-Anon Shaman” being escorted around the Capitol by the police. He was made out to be some near-terrorist, but he prayed with the police. He helped them clear the Senate chamber when asked. 

She just did not care about Greg Rubenacker at all.  It’s a weird story. It’s just like a weird story, and it doesn’t add up. Well, I think it just goes back to what you said. It’s,  it’s not a democratic process, and she’s very being one sided.  Yeah, but I mean, if you’d gotten a different judge, you would have gotten a different sentence.

This is not supposed to be how the law works.  I’m glad I’m glad that I don’t know why the government Like, no one in the government will talk to me. I don’t know why the government wouldn’t say we’re going to knock down some of the charges. Because with everyone they’re like, Okay, we’ll take away the parading.

We’ll take away the, um, obstructing an official proceeding. Like, everybody, everybody, everybody I’ve talked to, they’ve taken away, like, counts. And said, okay, if we did this, we’ll take away this, this, this, and this. And all you have to say is you did this.  It’s like, you’re the first person I’ve ever heard of The government didn’t give you a break. 

The audio we have is from a conversation between Pelosi and a defendant, so we don’t know how much of Pelosi’s sympathy is expressed to elicit more openness from the guy and how much is genuine bafflement at how unfair the process has been. 

But it wouldn’t surprise me at all if a person who spends a lot of time with some of these protesters would come to the conclusion that they are being treated unduly harshly, because they are being treated unduly harshly. As Justice Gorsuch slyly insinuated, Congressman Bowman obstructed an official proceeding, and he isn’t being charged with a felony. 

Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch nukes Joe Biden’s DOJ over January 6th sentences:

Gorsuch lists multiple cases of folks who “obstructed a Congressional proceeding” without receiving a 20 year sentence.

1. Sit-ins at a trial (Kavanaugh protests)
2. Pulling a fire alarm (Rep.… pic.twitter.com/DWETkzi7JI

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) April 16, 2024

Equal justice under the law is a myth. The Democrats have been shoving that fact in our faces for years. 

Let’s hope Pelosi tells that story in her documentary when it comes out. 

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With apologies to Michael Buffer, the boss fight against Hamas is apparently imminent, despite the entire Biden Administration’s attempt to stop it and throw the towel in from the corner to save Hamas from annihilation. 

Since the October 7th massacre carried out all over Southern Israel by Iranian-backed Hamas Nazis, the emergency war cabinet that convened in Israel came up with the plan to deal with Hamas once and for all, from north to south, in the Gaza Strip. It was always going to culminate in Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, bordering Egypt. 

It is believed that at the height of its military power, Hamas leadership had command and control over 24 battalions of terrorists in their ranks, with each battalion constituting roughly a thousand of these inhumane monsters. As of late March, 18 of the 24 battalions had been dispatched. Remnants have scattered and disbursed, but there are about four battalions that have retreated to Rafah, and are literally Hamas’ last stand. Israel, to accomplish their mission not just to weaken Hamas, but destroy it and keep it from becoming a security threat in the near or intermediate future, they have to go into Rafah. Enter Joe Biden and the antisemitic wing of the Democratic Party.

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Hamas’ senior commander, Yahya Sinwar, is believed to be holed up somewhere in Rafah, and has held onto hope that if enough pressure is put on the American president, that pressure would flow downhill to Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israelis, and eventually, a ceasefire would be forced upon them. Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan certainly did their part. We’re going to make changes to our relationship with Israel, they threatened. “Don’t,” is what Biden told Iran, except they ignored it and launched hundreds of rockets, missiles and drones unsuccessfully at Israel. “Don’t,” is what Biden told Netanyahu and the Israelis when contemplating a response back to Iran, resulting in the unveiling of a long-range missile that evaded the Russian S-300 air defense system giving Tehran a false sense of security. 

And “Don’t” is what Team Biden have consistently been telling Israel as Rafah became the next logical and necessary step in their methodical trip through the entire Gaza Strip. The House and Senate just passed an aid package that included more resources to Israel. Biden signed it, because even with all the veiled threats in order to appease the antisemites whose vote he’s courting, he couldn’t veto sending that money to Israel. The political price from Jewish-Americans would be too high. Regardless, the mixed signals coming out of Washington had no input at all on whether Israel would continue the mission or not. From the Times of Israel Thursday:

The Israel Defense Forces has conducted all necessary preparations to take Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah and can launch an operation the moment it gets government approval, a senior Israeli defense official said Wednesday.

Israel deems Rafah the last Hamas bastion in the Gaza Strip and is poised to evacuate Palestinian civilians from there and assault Hamas holdouts, the unnamed official told the Reuters news agency, which didn’t specify whether the source was connected to the IDF.

A spokesperson for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government told the agency that Israel was “moving ahead” with a ground operation, but gave no timeline.

We’ve all witnessed the disgusting protests at Columbia, Yale, USC, UT-Austin, NYU, and dozens of other campuses across the country. It shocks the conscience to see so many ignorant people gathered in support of murderers, rapists, kidnappers, and genocidal maniacs. It’s mind-numbingly stupid to believe that protesting at a college until that institution of learning frees itself from any Jew entanglement, student, faculty member, or relationship with our ally in the Middle East is going to accomplish their goal of a ceasefire and/or the end of the Jewish state entirely. The protests, we have learned from Steven Stalinsky in the Wall Street Journal this week, are not organic in nature. Ultimately, it’s being funded and fomented by Iran. 

Six months after the attack on Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and others aren’t merely cheering those protesting in the streets. They are working with and grooming activists in the U.S. and the West, through meetings, online interviews and podcasts. 

Haytham Abdo, a PFLP representative, highlighted this cooperation in a Jan. 31 interview with Brian Becker, national coordinator of the Answer Coalition, a hard-left antiwar umbrella group. Mr. Abdo said this is the “first time” there has been such a “massive demonstration” of support in the U.S. Claiming that more than 50% of young Americans are now pro-Palestinian, he said, “We see that the Biden, or the American, administration, now, [is] affected by this transformation in the U.S. people.”

Iran and its proxies cannot succeed in turning a chunk of the country against Israel on its own, however. They need useful idiots here to fall for it, hook, line, and sinker. Here are four example. First, a non-celebrity useful idiot from New York University:

I’m especially thrilled to see the ring through her septum. It makes it so much easier for antisemites to have a physical handle by which to lead her astray. You could also be a useful idiot, celebrity edition. Here’s Susan Sarandon Hamas rape denialism. 

Remember the old days during the Bret Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings when 30-year- old rape allegations that had no evidence were supposed to be believed solely because a woman made the claim? Good times.

We know what happened in Israel. We saw the bloody clothes. We’ve heard interviews by women who actually were raped while being held hostage by these modern day Nazis. We’ve heard Hamas terrorists record admissions of their actions proudly because it was being done to Jews. That doesn’t fit Susan’s narrative, so she’s convinced herself it didn’t happen.

There are the Legislative Branch useful idiots like Nancy Pelosi:

Of course, by all means, let’s accept the propaganda by the terrorists on the casualty numbers, because every bit of their actions up to this point demonstrate trust and veracity in their body count.

And there’s the Executive Branch useful idiot. Ladies and gentlemen, President Joe Biden. 

And it wasn’t just this week. Joe Biden has been awful on Israel long before the polling came out of Michigan, too. Remember this horrible idea about sending the military to build a pier that stops just short of the shoreline in Gaza so that we wouldn’t have any boots on the ground, and all of this humanitarian aid would magically float to those who need it among Palestinian civilians?

It was a stupendously stupid idea, and one that didn’t take a lot of foresight to see that it might be somewhat problematic to build and implement. How’s the construction project going, you ask? I24 News out of Israel has the details. 

Gazan terrorists fired mortar shells on Wednesday towards the construction work on the humanitarian pier being built off the coast of Gaza.

i24NEWS has learned that several pieces of American engineering equipment were damaged in the attack. In addition, one person was slightly injured while running to a protected area. The United States has been building the floating pier in order to channel additional humanitarian aid that would arrive via sea route. 

U.S. President Joe Biden announced the plan during his State of the Union address in early March, clarifying that there would be “no U.S. boots on the ground.”

Spectacular. Truly. Now as a bonus, all of these people couldn’t be as ignorant or willfully duplicitous without regime media being just as bad on the subject, yet willing to row their oars in the same direction, because they’re in the same political boat. Here’s Erin Burnett interviewing House Speaker Mike Johnson Wednesday night after getting booed for appearing on Columbia’s campus along with a handful of Republicans to call out what needed calling out. Burnett’s big question? What’s so antisemitic about chanting Free Palestine? 

I know she’s technically in the news business, but she does work for CNN, so perhaps she might have missed out on some of these signs seen in the tent encampments on campuses:

We are Hamas. 

Death to America.

al-Qassam, you make us proud, kill another soldier now!

Kill all Zionists.

Yehudim (Jews), go back to Poland (where the concentration camps were).

The stream of antisemitic filth flows like the river to the sea, another commonly heard phrase from the newly-minted Free University of Palestine. Yet Erin Burnett can’t seem to understand what all the fuss is about trying to stop these poor kids from being good humanists and standing up for their oppressed brethren in Gaza.

Karen Finney, the former press secretary for Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, offered up this criticism of Speaker Johnson speaking truth at Columbia Wednesday morning. 

No, the gas on the fire of antisemitism is Joe Biden’s failed two-state solution – trying to pretend to support Israel while simultaneously appeasing antisemitism from his own base without calling it out in a Sister Souljah moment. Gas on the fire is what Iran and its proxies are doing to jump start these protests in the first place. 

The fire is the dumpster that will be the Democratic Convention in Chicago in just a few months. The gas that’s on this fire will be caused by a large chunk of the Democratic base. Before you argue with me that these people are opportunists and anarchists, not Democrats, let me stop you right there. 100% of Joe Biden’s policy towards the Middle East have been reactionary in nature in order to make a play for their votes. Joe Biden believes the antisemites are Democratic voters, or potential Democratic voters that have to be converted to motivated Biden voters after a turnout effort. The Democratic Party will not cast them out like dead weight. Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman remains the only national Democrat who calls out the antisemitism in the Democrats’ midst. 

Rafah is coming. Nothing can stop it. The train wreck at the convention is also coming. Nothing or no one seems to be able to stop that, either.  

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Hamas spokesperson Khalil al-Hayya said yesterday that the terror group is prepared to offer a peace deal to Israel. At first glance, that might sound like a hopeful sign of progress, but when you look into the details of the “offer” you quickly realize that it’s complete nonsense. Speaking to the Associated Press, al-Hayya suggested a scenario where Hamas would not surrender or even pledge to permanently put aside its attacks on Israel. Instead, he said that the Hamas fighters would “lay down their weapons” for a period of up to five years. In exchange for that, Hamas would demand that Israel recognize an Independent Palestinian state existing in both the West Bank and Gaza. In addition, Israel would have to surrender much of its current territory and return to the borders that existed prior to 1967. Israel hasn’t even bothered to comment on the “offer” at this point.

A top Hamas political official told The Associated Press the Islamic militant group is willing to agree to a truce of five years or more with Israel and that it would lay down its weapons and convert into a political party if an independent Palestinian state is established along pre-1967 borders.

The comments by Khalil al-Hayya in an interview Wednesday came amid a stalemate in months of cease-fire talks. The suggestion that Hamas would disarm appeared to be a significant concession by the militant group officially committed to Israel’s destruction.

But it’s unlikely Israel would consider such a scenario. It has vowed to crush Hamas following the deadly Oct. 7 attacks that triggered the war, and its current leadership is adamantly opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state on lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.

Surely, Khalil al-Hayya must realize that he sounds completely delusional. His is the side that is losing this war and losing it badly. Hamas has no remaining leverage in this conflict except for the hostages, and most observers have concluded that many of them are likely already dead. We are expecting Israel to begin its final push into Rafah any day now, at which point they will destroy the last four battalions of Hamas’ original twelve fighting groups. It’s understandable that Hamas may be desperate at this point, but this nonsensical peace offering isn’t going to save them.

And what of the hostages? Would this supposed deal include the return of all of them, including the bodies of the dead? The AP asked al-Hayya about that. He responded by saying, “If we are not assured the war will end, why would I hand over the prisoners?” When asked about the number of people involved, he claimed that he did not know how many of them remained alive at this time.

Demonstrating that they are not serious about a peace deal, al-Hayya also threatened to attack the floating pier being constructed to deliver aid to the Palestinians. He said that the attacks could include strikes at Americans and other workers, saying that they “reject any non-Palestinian presence in Gaza, whether at sea or on land.” 

Hamas is also in complete denial in terms of how badly they are losing. Their spokesman boldly claimed that Israel has not destroyed more than 20% of  their “capabilities, neither human nor in the field.” He also chillingly suggested that wiping out Hamas’ fighters would not end the conflict, saying, “Let’s say that they have destroyed Hamas. Are the Palestinian people gone?” This is something I’ve been warning about from the beginning. Even if Israel kills all of Hamas’ uniformed fighters, the people of Gaza still broadly support Hamas and seek the destruction of Israel. When their fighters are dead, others will simply take up arms and continue what they’ve been doing for decades. Israel needs to treat the Gaza Strip like a rat hole. It’s never enough to simply kill the rats you see. You have to clean out the nest. Israel should ignore this nonsense and get on with the task of finishing the job they have started. The loss of life is obviously regrettable, but Israel didn’t start this war. They do need to finish it, however.

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Talk about a case of whiplash. The day after a county judge dismissed state charges against 140 illegal aliens who caused a riot against National Guard troops, a grand jury indicted the illegal aliens. 

Essentially, the grand jury overruled the county judge. The illegal aliens are still in jail because they have an ICE retainer against them. That’s the federal jurisdiction. 

A county court-at-law judge found no probable cause on Monday to continue holding 140 illegal aliens at the El Paso County Jail. They were detained on state riot charges. So, El Paso County Court-at-Law No. 7 Judge Ruben Morales agreed with El Paso County Chief Public Defender Kelli Childress that there was not enough evidence presented to charge them. Childress accused authorities of trying to make headlines. 

These are some of the illegal aliens who stampeded over the Texas border crossing and began a riot to get across the border. They tore down razor wire along the Rio Grande River and rushed the border fence at Marker No. 36 in the Riverside area of El Paso’s Lower Valley. Most of them were male and from Venezuela. 

“The citizens of El Paso, through the grand jury, essentially overruled the judge’s ruling and found probable cause to believe that the riots did occur,” El Paso County District Attorney Bill Hicks told reporters Tuesday.

Kelli Childress-Diaz, the El Paso Public Defender who is representing the 141 defendants, said she wasn’t surprised.

“I imagine they had that already prepared before the hearing even started yesterday,” she said.

After the stampede and riot in March, Governor Abbott responded by sending 700 additional National Guard troops to El Paso.

El Paso County District Attorney Bill Hicks was appointed to his job in 2022 by Governor Abbott. He said that it isn’t common for a grand jury to indict misdemeanor cases but that it was fair to pose the cases before them. Hicks estimated they had arrested more than 350 people on rioting charges since March.

Those still in jail aren’t going anywhere right now. Childress-Diaz wants to turn the illegal aliens into innocent victims that government officials are exploiting. 

If convicted, those charged could each face up to 180 days in county jail and a fine of up to $2,000. Those in jail still face federal charges, and Hicks said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could still pick them up from jail to process them on an illegal entry offense.

“It turns my stomach that these people are nothing more than, you know, political coins in a bet that some of our government officials have hedged,” Childress-Diaz told The Associated Press.

It turns my stomach about what is happening at the southern border. The Biden border crisis is a humanitarian crisis and a national security crisis. 

Do you wonder why there is such a mad rush happening now along the southern border? Some observers think it may be because those who plan to cross the border are worried that Joe Biden may not win re-election. With the political atmosphere now, that is a legitimate concern. Re-election isn’t looking good for Dementia Joe. They are rushing up to the border to get in before anything changes. 

If Donald Trump wins the presidential election in November, he has promised to get control of the southern border beginning on his first day back in the White House. He will begin deportations and continue building the wall. He will bring back the policies and agreements that worked during his previous administration. The grown-ups will be in charge. 

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The Democrat attacks on Trump have brought to mind a scene from Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan–the only really good Star Trek movie ever made. 

Khan keeps trying to kill Kirk, and he keeps failing despite his supposedly being a superior being. He is bigger, smarter, faster, and a survivor, but somehow can’t beat the everyman captain. After yet another failed attempt to kill Kirk, one of the key memorable scenes plays out:

What brought this to mind was the results of a Morning Consult/Bloomberg poll of the key swing states, which shows Biden’s support in the key swing states pretty much collapsing. 

Early polls…Snapshot in time…<insert a disclaimer here>…blah blah blah. All true. But man, this poll sucks for the senile old man. 

🇺🇲 SWING STATES GE: MC/Bloomberg

NORTH CAROLINA
🟥 Trump 51% (+10)
🟦 Biden 41%
—
🟥 Trump 48% (+10)
🟦 Biden 38%
🟨 RFK Jr 5%
🟪 Other 2%
—
Generic Ballot
🟥 GOP 47% (+5)
🟦 DEM 42%
——
NEVADA
🟥 Trump 51% (+8)
🟦 Biden 43%
—
🟥 Trump 48% (+14)
🟦 Biden 34%
🟨 RFK Jr 7%… pic.twitter.com/EDI2cOJH0a

— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) April 24, 2024

Biden down 10 points in North Carolina? 8 points in Nevada? The only states he is in striking distance are Pennsylvania and Michigan, for God’s sake! 

Biden’s approval numbers are horrible–more people have a very unfavorable opinion of him than very and somewhat favorable combined. Same for Harris. 

Biden could of course beat Jeffrey Dahmer in a straight-up election battle, but Dahmer, thankfully, is dead. 

Now Trump isn’t exactly beloved by the masses either, although a larger fraction of the people strongly approve of him than Biden. The exact some number strongly disapprove, suggesting that if enthusiasm matters Biden has a problem. 

Of course, there is lots of other evidence that Biden has a problem, so who cares about this one factor? It seems that Trump gets most of the votes of everybody who doesn’t hate him, and Biden barely gets the votes of those who love him. 

People are not thrilled with all that Bidenomics, and Bidenomics is what is killing him. 

Notice how they no longer talk about “Bidenomics?” All that reassurance that we are thriving is not convincing anyone. 

Expect Biden, instead, to spend a lot of time talking about abortion, since 75% of voters think it is either a very important or somewhat important issue, and it is about the only issue out there where he has an edge. 

For how many people is this the single issue? I have no idea. Too many, but probably not enough to save Biden. The economy and immigration are the top two issues for people–the only ones breaking into double digits. 

Looked at another way, voters were asked who they trust to handle the important issues, and let’s just say that the confidence level that Biden enjoys is underwhelming. 

Biden does beat Trump on Climate Change, so there is that. 3% of voters call that their most important issue, so Biden may have a lock on them. 

In the aggregate of the swing states, Trump beats Biden by 5 points in a three-way race and 6 in a two-way, suggesting that who is on the ballot in these states may not matter. Even if Biden voters come home, Trump will likely pick up some of the third-party voters and still come out ahead. 

Biden’s border policies are killing him with swing state voters. There is zero ambiguity on this, which makes you wonder why his administration hasn’t pivoted at all on the issue. 

I have a guess: pivoting wouldn’t help him with voters who already know Trump will be better on the issue, but it would hurt him with his left flank. He can’t win, so don’t play. 

The crosstabs for the poll are very interesting, and I have to praise Morning Consult and Bloomberg for releasing all the data in every state. You can check out everything in all its glory here. 

Biden has been outspending Trump 5-1 in these states, and one has to wonder if any of that money has done any good. 

Well, wonder no more; in public opinion the answer is not at all, but a lot of that is going to building an infrastructure that can target voters and harvest votes in ways that don’t reflect the polling. It doesn’t just matter what everybody thinks; it matters who votes and who counts the votes. 

That is the only place that Biden’s money can do any good. He is going to get HIS voters out and hope not too many people who hate him will go to the polls. 

But here’s the rub: Biden barely won in the states that matter, and he has only become less popular since then. All the low-hanging fruit was harvested in 2020, and many of those voters who showed up for him won’t this time. 

Trump’s numbers have improved, and Biden’s have gone down. That makes ballot harvesting at the 2020 scale not nearly enough. 

This is why Democrats have exerted so much effort in blocking ballot security measures. They need wiggle room to juice the numbers. 

But there is only so much juicing you can do, and I am unsure whether this time it will be enough. 

Update:  Headline changed to better reflect the content … although we’re all curious what Dems have in mind next. 

This post was originally published on this site

One of the most embarrassing things about modern America is how grossly ignorant our “educated” class is. 

They haven’t a clue about anything. They are, for the most part, a brainwashed group of pseudo-intellectual communists who know as much about history and world affairs as they do about how nuclear fusion works. 

Probably less, come to think about it. They are just ignorant about nuclear fusion; most of what they “know” about world history is 2nd-grade-level Howard Zinn fantasies taught to them by people who speak nonsense about “our truths.”

🚨VIDEO: A REAL interview we had at NYU:

QUESTION: “Why are you protesting?”

PROTESTER #1: “I don’t know. I’m pretty sure there’s something about Israel [turns to other person] Why are we protesting?”

PROTESTER #2: “I wish I was more educated.”

PROTESTER #1: “I’m not either.” pic.twitter.com/8aB2ZoTCCk

— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) April 24, 2024

Not one of them could pass an entrance exam from an elite university from the 19th century. I would bet my life on it, or at least the life of one of these morons. I couldn’t because my education was comparatively weak. Translations from Latin and Greek, geometric proofs, ancient geography, and history. Xenophon, Pericles, the Pelloppensian war. 

How far we have fallen. 

Many people are defending the idiocy of these students by comparing them to the idiocy of students of yore. That is only half fair and only true of students from the past 50 or so years. American education has sucked for a long time, and if you don’t believe me, then read letters from Civil War soldiers, who were often educated in rural grade schools. 

Today’s protesters don’t know what they are protesting for or against, and when pressed admit: “I wish I was more educated.”

These are Ivy League students. 

I went to an elite college and got a Masters’ degree at an elite university, and having studied ancient and modern political philosophy, I developed a deep sadness about how relatively uneducated I am. Still, my education puts these students’ to shame. 

It’s dispiriting to see such passion matched with such ignorance. People with 16 years’ education under their belts who have as much knowledge of history as the sans-culottes in the French Revolution. They are a mob. 

When I see “Queers for Palestine,” I shake my head, totally unsurprised at the level of idiocy. These are people whose knowledge about the world is so deeply distorted that they see Islamists as their allies. 

When you see videos of students rejecting the idea that Hamas should release the hostages, all you can do is wince. These poor schlubs have been indoctrinated so much and at such a young age that their moral compass is permanently destroyed. 

This video is hilarious, please watch it

You should also bookmark it so you can throw it in the face of anyone who pops in to tell you the protestors aren’t pro-Hamas… because when asked it generally turns out that the protestors are, in fact, pro-Hamas pic.twitter.com/QVWtnEppMl

— Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) April 24, 2024

I don’t believe that all these kids are stupid. Many of them, in fact, are pretty smart. But they are ignorant fools and indoctrinated into a reflexively anti-Western mindset that would fit comfortably in China. 

Not that the Chinese regime would ever let its own kids be this poorly educated in practical matters. They can’t even figure out how to cut a string:

So…none of them are smart enough to cut a string? https://t.co/AFQw3g80j8

— Aelfred The Great (@aelfred_D) April 24, 2024

Our educational system, from kindergarten to graduate school, is broken; worse, it is dedicated to brainwashing students. And the more elite the institution the more dedicated it is to brainwashing. 

“I wish I was more educated.” That should be the motto of today’s students. 

This post was originally published on this site

Students at the University of Southern California set up a tent camp Wednesday to emulate the protest taking place at Columbia and other schools.

The encampment in Alumni Park — where the university’s main-stage commencement is scheduled to take place next month — went up before sunrise and grew into the late morning as students, wearing keffiyahs and holding “free Palestine” and “liberated zone” signs, banged drums and chanted.

“Disclose! Divest! We will not stop, we will not rest!” said the crowd, which billed itself in a statement as the”USC Divest from Death Coalition.”…

.@USC students have began a ‘Gaza Solidarity Occupation’ at Alumni Park. DPS officers are stationed nearby, their presence becoming more prominent as time goes by. pic.twitter.com/v9wZhQbSWl

— angie (@angorellanah) April 24, 2024

Like Columbia, USC has a no camping policy and campus police informed students the tents would need to come down. 

DPS is taking away the tents @USC pic.twitter.com/qS60MWmEDG

— angie (@angorellanah) April 24, 2024

As ever, there is nothing leftist protesters like more than shouting at the police.

“Is this your legacy?” Students ask DPS officers at @USC pic.twitter.com/NItQ58R13T

— angie (@angorellanah) April 24, 2024

“Disclose, divest, we will not stop. We will not rest,” @usc students chant as DPS officers try to take their tents pic.twitter.com/LdSVnNGRNw

— angie (@angorellanah) April 24, 2024

The school released a statement suggesting some of the protesters were not part of the school.

“The people remain in Alumni Park — most appeared to be unaffiliated with the university,” the statement continued. “Our students, faculty and staff are allowed to express their views and have been doing so throughout the school year.”

Just before noon, things took a turn as police began clearing the camp and scuffles broke out.

But at around 11:20 a.m., campus officers began dismantling the encampments, gathering folding chairs, blankets and boxes belonging to the protesters, who then started moving their tents and belongings around to avoid confiscation.

About 30 minutes later, some demonstrators could be seen violently clashing with campus safety and LAPD officers as the crowd grew to more than 100.

Officers appeared to be making an arrest and took out their batons to keep the crowd back.

DPS officers put their hands on a @USC student; take out batons pic.twitter.com/gPx8TwSqqj

— angie (@angorellanah) April 24, 2024

I honestly can’t tell if this is the same incident from a different angle or something else.

This is turning very ugly at USC with protesters, not all are students, face off with campus police pic.twitter.com/CfmFcBAplD

— Josh Haskell (@abc7JoshHaskell) April 24, 2024

One person was taken to a nearby police car but students surrounded the car and refused to let it leave. Some NSFW language here.

“Blockade the car!” pic.twitter.com/6M4in1RTeD

— angie (@angorellanah) April 24, 2024

They call this de-arresting.

BREAKING: At USC’s Gaza solidarity encampment, protestors surround an LAPD car and successful de-arrest a student. Brutal crackdown by police is ongoing but the students are undeterred pic.twitter.com/nub0TqtQcf

— Palestinian Youth Movement (@palyouthmvmt) April 24, 2024

Aerial view of @usc students blocking DPS car with detained student inside pic.twitter.com/VpMxRFkoTb

— angie (@angorellanah) April 24, 2024

Eventually, the police gave in.

DPS releases the detained @USC student; crowd goes back to alumni park

Also, there’s been an LAPD helicopter flying overheard for a while now pic.twitter.com/0BdFGSWiYC

— angie (@angorellanah) April 24, 2024

Because all of this was happening, USC announced the campus was closed.

There is still significant activity at the center of the UPC campus due to a demonstration. The gates are closed, so anyone coming to campus should be prepared to show an ID at the gates for class or for business. Please continue to avoid the center of cam https://t.co/t9yoo28FCU

— USC (@USC) April 24, 2024

All of this follows an earlier controversy in which the school’s valedictorian was asked not to speak over controversy involving her views on Israel.

As Karen pointed out Tabassum was selected as Valedictorian from a group of about 100 people. Apparently the school didn’t know or care about her views at the time which, as you can see above, called for the complete eradication of Israel.

That seems to be all of the drama at USC for now but if USC follows the pattern being set by other schools, this protest could go on until the end of the school year.

This post was originally published on this site

People are increasingly beginning to realize that the next generation of Artificial Intelligence can do almost anything. That produces both positive and negative effects, but it appears that we will all have to deal with it as best we can. But what’s equally true is that when AI is placed in the wrong hands, it can screw up almost anything. It turns out that scammers have caught on to the usefulness of AI when seeking victims. CBS News recently dug into this phenomenon and learned that scammers have been using the technology to lure people in via dating apps and cause a lot of trouble. AI is also invading the cryptocurrency exchange market. Some of the stories of people being fleeced through dating apps are particularly horrific.

Victims who were sucked in by scammers have shared their stories with CBS 2 time and time again. They were romantics left with broken hearts and empty wallets.

“My mind was so brainwashed.”

“I believed this person. That’s why I fell for her.”

“This person doesn’t even exist. This person wasn’t a real person.”

CBS interviewed one man who works as a cover model for romance books and magazines. As you might imagine, he is considered quite attractive by the ladies and a given percentage of the guys as well. There are videos of him all over various TicTok accounts offering private chats and opportunities for trips and romantic getaways… for a price. The problem is, this guy doesn’t even have a TicTok account. All of those “offers” are being made by AI-generated models that look and sound exactly like him. A lot of people have shelled out cash for the chance at a relationship with him and they were all robbed.

Some of the scammers take things to the next level by incorporating cryptocurrency wallets into their arrangements. The tricky part about pulling that sort of scam is getting paid without the money being able to be traced back to you. Using AI and a bitcoin wallet, however, the victim can transfer money instantly and it can disappear just as fast. This makes it far harder for investigators to track down and identify the scammers.

One scammer that they did manage to track down was using as many as eight or nine different wallets per day. She was using a beautiful AI model to promise romance and more to prospective suitors and arrange for sensual getaways. But neither the woman on the screen nor the supposed air flights and hotel reservations actually existed. The CBS study found that in the city of Chicago alone, there were more than 6,000 “deceptive practice” cases in police files last year where bogus cryptocurrency exchanges took place. Many were in connection with dating apps and romance forums. So there is clearly a lot of this going on.

We’re not talking about small sums of money, either. Check out some of these eye-popping figures:

That includes one case in June of 2021, where a 28-year-old woman was defrauded of more than $260,000 while purchasing Bitcoin, or another where a 58-year-old man lost $240,000 worth of Ethereum cryptocurrency in September of 2022 when advised to invest in a company. That victim, a Rogers Park resident, claimed to have met the offender on Facebook, according to a police report of the incident.

As noted in the linked report, you don’t need an advanced degree in computer programming to pull off these sorts of stunts. Most of the current AI applications being used to generate fake personas and transfer payments is available for free. Anyone with the ability the operate a laptop and a desire to find victims can figure it out with a bit of practice. And as the AI continues to improve, the phonies will be harder and harder to spot until it’s too late. There’s not much else to say here except a reminder that everyone needs to be careful out there when venturing into cyberspace. And you should probably try to meet your prospective love interest in person rather than solely through a screen. That sultry bikini model who seems to be smitten with you and looks too good to be true very likely is too good to be true.

This post was originally published on this site

Last week Google fired 28 employees who had participated in a sit-in aimed at getting the company to end cooperation with Israel.

“Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior,” a Google spokeswoman said in a statement.

Years before the dismissals, tensions had been simmering between the company’s management and some activist employees over Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion Google and Amazon deal to supply the Israeli government with cloud services, such as artificial intelligence…

That seemed to be the end of it until yesterday when another group of 20 employees got the axe.

Google has fired an additional 20 employees who participated in a protest last week against the company’s defense contract with the Israeli government.

This brings the total number of employees laid off due to the protest to 50, according to the group that organized the demonstrations, No Tech for Apartheid.

Jane Chung, a spokesperson for the group, said some of the dismissed employees were “nonparticipating bystanders” during the sit-in protests held on April 16 at Google’s offices in Sunnyvale and New York. The group labeled the tech giant’s action as an “aggressive and desperate act of retaliation.”

But Google disputes the claim that some of the fired employees were bystanders. It carried out its own investigation and said everyone who was fired was participating in the protest.

Google had conducted an investigation into the “physical disruption inside our buildings on April 16,” the spokesperson said. “Our investigation into these events is now concluded, and we have terminated the employment of additional employees who were found to have been directly involved in disruptive activity,” the Google spokesperson added.

“To reiterate, every single one of those whose employment was terminated was personally and definitively involved in disruptive activity inside our buildings. We carefully confirmed and reconfirmed this,” the Google spokesperson said.

This is just another example of the kind of internal disruption I wrote about earlier at NPR. Every liberal organization has been plagued with these kind of disruptions. The difference here is that, unlike NPR, Google isn’t tolerating it. Google’s head of search recently warned that the competitive environment had changed and Google employees needed to step up.

“I think we can agree that things are not like they were 15-20 years ago, things have changed,” Raghavan said, according to audio of the event obtained by CNBC. He was referring to the search industry, which Google has dominated for two decades, emerging as one of the most profitable and valuable companies on the planet along the way…

“We’ve had a lot go on in these last three months,” consisting of “really high highs and low lows,” he said.

In that time, Google introduced its AI image generator. After users discovered inaccuracies that went viral online, the company pulled the feature in February…

Organic growth is slowing and the number of new devices coming into the world “is not what it used to be,” Raghavan said.

Last January, Google’s parent company announced it would be laying off about 12,000 people. So the message is that things are tougher than they were a decade or two ago and that’s why the company can’t afford to play games with employees who want to hold political sit-ins on company grounds.

“But ultimately we are a workplace and our policies and expectations are clear: this is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics. This is too important a moment as a company for us to be distracted,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote on Thursday…

“Business leaders are sending a warning to staff: Dissent that disrupts the workplace won’t be tolerated,” according to a report from the Wall Street Journal Sunday. “Bosses are losing patience with staff eager to be the conscience of their companies, especially as employees pressure them on charged issues such as politics and the war in Gaza, executives, board members and C-suite advisers say.”

The protest group No Tech for Apartheid has vowed to keep making demands and holding protests. Hopefully, Google will keep firing them. Eventually, they’ll be able to get rid of most of the partisan troublemakers and the ones who remain will know that distractions from work are an express ticket to unemployment.