Category Archives: culture

Naked Extortion

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This is the new fund-raising technique of the Progressive-Democratic Party—new for Party, but a much older mechanism for other families. The not very veiled threat comes from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D, NY):

The era of unbridled corruption visited upon the country by the Trump cartel will soon come to an end[.]

Then,

Expected targets for House Democrats include companies that have made large donations to Trump or Trump’s projects and those tied to Trump’s family members or children of the president’s senior aides, including Steve Witkoff and Howard Lutnick.

The threat made explicit: Cooper Teboe, a Silicon Valley donor adviser and Progressive-Democratic strategist said it straight out:

His advice to companies who’ve been publicly cozying up to Trump and ignoring Democrats: “Get right with God.”
“You’re going to be totally f—ed next year or you’re going to figure it out this year and you’re going to make amends—and amends are going to be much more costly than they were previously[.]”

Companies are starting to pay the vig:

Meta Platforms and others are writing big checks for [Progressive-]Democrats ahead of the midterms, according to people familiar with the matter, a counterbalance to the tens of millions they gave to the White House ballroom and Republican initiatives.

Companies like Paramount Skydance and Kalshi are accepting Party-designated consiglieri—excuse me, Progressive-Democrat advisors—into their management teams to “help” them run their businesses.

Nice company ya’s got there. Be too bad if somethin’ was to happen to it.

A Remaining Question

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GSA says it has discovered more than $13 billion in suspected fraud by federal contractors since March.

Since then, the task force has announced a litany of fraud busts, spanning multiple agencies.

That’s just a small sample of the $250 billion in public funds fraud that the newly formed anti-fraud task force led by Vice President JD Vance (R) has found.

Left unaddressed, though, is what will GSA, DoJ, and the respective Department Secretaries and Agency Directors will do about those bureaucrats who enabled, if not actively facilitated, all of that fraud, whether out of personal ideology, crookedness, or incompetence? These also need to tracked down, prosecuted, and if convicted jailed for a good long time.

Exposing Truth in Belgian Universities is a Punishable Offense

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Nathan Cofnas, a post-doc at Ghent University in Ghent Belgium, has been suspended by the school’s Rector, Petra De Sutter. Cofnas expects to be fired, and he may well be by the time you read this. He was, you may recall, the man who exposed (former, now deceased) Cambridge Professor Jason Arday’s fraudulent activities, activities that were primarily broad based plagiarism.

Calling out an academician’s dishonesty, though, is strickly verboten in Belgium.

University Rector Petra De Sutter:

[T]he University takes the recent public statements made by a postdoctoral researcher [Cofnas] at Ghent University regarding this matter very seriously. Ghent University has decided to take appropriate action within its powers and the applicable framework.

Never call out an academic. That’s the Ghent message to academia.

“Healthcare is a right”

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That’s the mantra of the Left and of their Progressive-Democratic Party politicians, most recently articulated by Democratic Socialist Angie Nixon in her successful campaign for the Progressive-Democratic Party nomination for Senator from Florida.

She, and they, are wrong on this, though.

What is the actual right intrinsic in all of us as human beings and in particular via our Declaration of Independence, us Americans, is our right to Life. Full stop.

Health care is merely a tool in protecting that right and preserving the object of that right, our Lives. If this tool is a right in itself in the meaning of the Nixons of our nation, then so are other tools critical—even merely useful—to our ability to protect our right to Life.

These other tools include seemingly peripheral things like our right to vote to choose who we will have represent us in our government, a right currently threatened by the Left’s moves to allow illegal aliens to vote and resistance by the Left to purge voter rolls even of those accidentally registered, all of which dilute the value and effectiveness of legitimate votes. That dilution diminishes our ability to choose our own representatives in government, and that puts the quality of our lives in jeopardy, and that degradation risks our Lives.

Other tools include more directly impacting matters like barring abortion, which denies a baby’s right to its Life.

That last raises another failure in the Left’s healthcare is a right mantra. Rights are universal; we don’t get to pick and choose who has the right, and who does not. The right to Life includes the right of all babies to their Lives, whether they’ve been born or they’re still gestating. Health care is an important tool for preserving the object of that right to Life, the Lives of those babies. Healthcare is only that, though, only a tool for effecting the babies’ rights, it is not a right in itself.

Chilling Effects

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Who’s doing the chilling, though?

The FCC has opened an early review of the broadcast licenses of eight of ABC‘s broadcast stations, and ABC has sued to put a stop to it. The FCC says the review is over ABC‘s—in particular, Disney’s—use of DEI initiatives to determine whether they violated the agency’s prohibition on unlawful discrimination. ABC‘s executives claim the review is based on President Donald Trump’s (R) dislike of two program’s anti-Trump coverage.

There’s this, though, that exposes the underlying problem regardless of those competing motives.

In its filing, ABC said the FCC’s actions are already influencing editorial decisions and having a chilling effect on its news operations.

If the executives think the government’s move really is about suppressing ABC speech, any supposed speech chilling is not from anything the government is doing. These executives are preemptively chilling their own speech. If they had the courage of their convictions, they would press ahead with their editorial decisions unchanged. By chilling—altering—their decision making, they could be seen to be tacitly admitting that the FCC’s review is justified—especially since the review is only just getting started and no evidence has yet been collected.