And even sadder than the previous post — make this stop; OH, MAKE IT STOP!

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Stonewall, UK's Largest Trans Rights Organization, Turned Out to Be a USAID Front

DAVID STROM:

Stonewall UK, which in recent years has been at the tip of the spear in the fight to transify the UK, is slashing their staffing by 50% and even then may be in trouble. 

Why? USAID cuts. Stonewall UK is a USAID front with some outside donors. 

Stonewall could be forced to cut up to half of its staff after President Trump’s decision to freeze foreign aid, The Times understands.

Workers at the LGBTQ+ charity were told on Thursday that restructuring would take place, and that only roles with dedicated funding would be safe.

Simon Blake, the chief executive of Stonewall, made the announcement in an office-wide Teams call, which was said to have left its 114 staff “shellshocked”.

Sources said they believed up to half of the workforce could be made redundant in the move, which they were told would “secure the future of Stonewall for the long term as a significant LGBTQ+ organisation able to deliver impactful campaigns and legislative change across the UK and further afield”.

Insiders believed the announcement was linked to decisions made by Trump over the provision of foreign aid. Blake has previously warned of the impact Trump’s move would have on Stonewall’s operations.

Why, you may ask, is the United States government the biggest provider of funding to Stonewall, and organization that has been vilifying women and lesbians in particular for a decade? 

Stonewall UK began as a gay rights organization and reached its primary goal of normalizing gays and gay marriage in 2014. Since then it has focused on transgenderism, eliminating same-sex space, putting men into women's space, criticizing lesbian rights, transing the kids (although not as much as Mermaids) and promoting the idea that lesbians are bigots for not dating transgender "women." It is funded primarily by the UK and US governments, and in the process, fundamentally changed British culture and law. 

Funding from the US came to Stonewall through the Global Equality Fund (GEF), administered by the US state department, which has given the charity more than half a million pounds in the past three years. The GEF focuses on “advancing LGBTI rights around the world” and is a pooled fund with contributions from numerous countries and private businesses, but it has not published accounts since 2015.

In recent years the GEF has been Stonewall’s largest funder. Charity accounts show the GEF increased its funding for Stonewall year on year, handing over £137,254 in 2021-22, rising to £204,442 in 2022-23 and reaching £233,583 in the most recent set of accounts.

Sad

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will draft your bill for food

The Democratic Party Is Starving to Death

Scott Pinsker:

…. Not too long ago, when politicians had minimal control over businesses, businesses generally ignored politicians. No point alienating half your audience, right? But in today’s age of crony capitalism, favor-peddling, and partisan lawfare, businesses can’t afford to be apolitical anymore. It’s too expensive.

Instead, they’ve gotta pick a side and pay the admission fee. It’s basically the “protection racket” that “Italian gentlemen” (ahem) perfected in the 1950s.

This is what happens when politicians meddle in business: They’re rewarded with riches and showered with money because it’s easier to bribe them than to fight them!

It’s just too dangerous out there today. Your business needs D.C. “muscle” to survive. This means that you must pick one of the two major crime families: The Republican Party or the Democratic Party. You've gotta pick one side or the other.

So the businesses give money to the politicians. Then the politicians “do favors” for the businesses — helping ‘em out and kneecapping their rivals. (“Fuhgedda bowdit!”) That’s how the political game is played.

For most of the past 50 years, neither party has been incentivized to change the rules of the game. Hey, why should they? In a binary political system, both sides benefited from the arrangement! Partisan politics is literally a billion-dollar industry. 

…. But the trouble is, the system has a fatal flaw: What happens when one of the crime families loses their muscle?

There’s no point, after all, in paying protection money to someone who can’t protect you. 

The Hill published a fascinating story today: “Angry Democratic donors turn off the flow of money.” The first two quotes said it all:

“I’ll be blunt here: The Democratic Party is f***ing terrible. Plain and simple,” said one major Democratic donor. “In fact, it doesn’t get much worse.”

A second donor was equally as pointed. “They want us to spend money and for what? For no message, no organization, no forward thinking,” the donor said. “The thing that’s clear to a lot of us is that the party never really learned its lesson in 2016. They worked off the same playbook and the same ineffective strategies and to what end?” 

The three scariest letters to the Democratic Party aren’t GOP — it’s ROI: return on investment. And right now, there just isn’t any. Businesses might as well be setting their money on fire.

…. Since they’re aligned with the losing losers of the Democratic Party, not only did they waste their money — they’re now vulnerable to political reprisals.

That’s what happens when your muscle loses its manhood.

“Folks are saying right now ‘what’s the Democratic Party to me as an investment?’ I’m hearing from [DNC] members, they don’t really believe where we’re at right now. They don’t believe that we can counter Trump, so why lose dollars?” said the strategist.

But Pinsker, cynical fellow that he is, has a warning for the complacent:

The Democratic Party is starving to death. It lost its muscle and lost its turf. But that doesn’t mean it's dead and buried. Eventually, a new Godfather will rebuild the crime family and monetize a new racket: “Leave the bribe. Take the cannoli.”

Still, it gives MAGA a brief, flickering opportunity to pursue its agenda with minimal pushback. This opportunity won’t last forever. D.C. is still a two-party con game. So enjoy it while you can.

“Forget it, Jake. It’s D.C.”

There's a reason short sellers exist — the world needs skeptics

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taking off from the NYSE a bit earlier in the day than scheduled

Electric Truck Company Nikola Turns Out to Be As Badly Manipulated As Its Videos

Another EV pie-in-the-sky adventure declared bankruptcy today. This one, around the idea of manufacturing electric (and hydrogen) semi-trucks, was started by a guy named Trevor Milton and eventually got to be worth $30B before the floor fell out...or the battery drained.

Today was the day they pulled the life support for reals.

...At its peak in 2020, Nikola was valued more than Ford Motor at $30 billion, signed a multibillion-dollar deal with General Motors, and was considered the pinnacle of auto startups to go public through reverse mergers and special purpose acquisition companies.

Nikola released its first teaser video that year, and most of Wall Street and the world were bowled over by the visuals. The company proudly assured everyone it was a 'fully functioning vehicle, not just a pusher' or, in other words, it could run and didn't need to be shoved.

Pretty impressive, huh?

As I said, it was to almost everyone who watched it, except a guy who ran a hedge fund (Hindenburg Research) named Nathan Anderson, who noticed something hinky about the video.

It turns out that, technically, the company wasn't exactly lying - they hadn't 'pushed it' but they hadn't exactly said the truck in the video was 'running', either.

What Anderson discovered was that the company had towed the truck up an incline, turned it loose, and then let gravity take it back downhill in order to get the visual of the truck 'running' on the open highway.

Short seller Nathan Anderson, founder of Hindenburg Research, was one of the first to expose electric vehicle and energy company Nikola Corporation's deceptive 2020 promotional video, which showed its Nikola One truck rolling down a hill to simulate full functionality...

YOICKS

Milton's company didn't see it quite that way because, yo - they never said the truck was running. That's kind of your problem if you thought that's what they meant.

...One of the biggest allegations hurled against Nikola is that the company faked a glossy corporate video of its prototype trucks driving up an inclining highway. Short seller Hindenburg claimed that the truck was actually towed up a hill and didn't do it on its own merit. In response, the company asserted, “Nikola never stated its truck was driving under its own propulsion in the video.” Therefore, the company didn’t find it deceptive.

In mid-September 2020, the stock tanked, and Milton was forced out of the company under a cloud of accusations raining down.

Mr. Milton was sentenced to four years in a federal country club in December 2023 but will serve just 12 months and then be released to a halfway house, where he’ll have to stay for an additional six months. He stole billions; it’s a good thing he didn’t take a stroll through the Capitol while he was engaged in that thievery.

RELATED?

CHANGE: US Agency Reportedly Plans to Shut Down 8,000 EV Chargers, Offload EVs.

The General Services Administration (GSA), an agency that manages the federal government’s buildings, is planning to shut down all 8,000 of its electric vehicle chargers, The Verge reports.

The GSA is also expected to offload its current stock of EVs, though it’s unknown if the vehicles will be sold or put into storage. The agency will reportedly begin instructing employees to remove the chargers—which are used for both federally owned EVs and employees’ personal vehicles—as early as next week.

Just wait until the USPS dumps the electric fleet foisted on it by Congress. But while you’re waiting, there’s this story from August ‘23 to amuse and entertain you:

Proterra, Electric-Bus Maker Touted by President Biden, Goes Bankrupt

And then there’s the late EV School Bus Tsar Kamala’s project. How’s that going?

Several Maine school districts are still dealing with anxiety over underperforming electric school buses. For more on this story, visit: https://bit.ly/3Cn7lWL …

As it turns out, surprise! School districts throughout the country’s colder sections — you know, places that have winters — have discovered that electric buses’ batteries don’t go very far in cold weather, and are incapable of travelling the long routes in rural areas, so they’re sitting, useless, in fields and parking lots. If only anyone had pointed this out beforehand!

The real takeaway from this combination of reports is that some (most of?) Wall Street’s big swingers are as dumb and gullible as the general public.

Not an unusual story to emerge from the swamps of a Blue state, but Stephen Green does have a couple of questions

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“And see, dear? They come wrapped in lovely foil packets.”

(Actual photo)

2. Who are the condoms for in pre-school?

I grok, man

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Musk explains his email demanding that federal employees send a list of five things they’d accomplished in the ast days at work

The billionaire Tesla founder revealed on Sunday he was simply eager 'to see who had a pulse and two working neurons' amid concerns that some government workers have it so good that they don't even check their emails.

Regarding his missive, Musk wrote on X: 'Consistent with President Trump's instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week.' 

'Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.'

The email was sent late Saturday night, and employees had until Monday evening to respond, sparking panic among the workforce.

Earlier on Sunday, Musk had also pointed out that 'many do not read their email at all', indicating the move was more about seeing which staff had checked their messages and bothered to reply, rather than the reply itself.

This theory was further amplified when Musk shared a conversation he had had with AI tool Grok, asking: 'Make up five things I accomplished at work this week that they can't really verify, I work for the government, keep it brief.'

Grok spat out five examples, including 'streamlining a filing process, briefing a senior official on a classified project, debugging an internet database glitch, sparking a new interdepartmental initiative and conducting a discreet security audit.'

Lawyers usually bill by segments of time, and, associates especially, are expected to record and account for every minute of their day (can you bill a client for time you spent thinking about his case while taking a shower? The jury’s still out on that.) One of the first “lessons” I was taught by a senior partner upon joining his firm was to never just enter “phone call with client: 15 minutes” on my timesheet “because sure as hell, the asshole’s gonna complain ‘I timed that call, and we were on the phone for only 12 f**king minutes!’ So”, my new boss continued, “enter ‘review file, and t/c with client’. He can’t argue with that, because he can’t tell if you’re lying or not.”

Grok obviously had the same tutor I did.

(For those few of you born after the Free love/flower power/Purple Owsley had passed — or you had too much of that Owsley and can’t remember the 60s — and if you don’t have the patience to watch the very interesting, but longish video above, here’s a succinct definition of the word, from the master himself):

Of course he has

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pete’s got nothing on me!

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers introduces budget recommendation that replaces "mother" with "inseminated person"

No room for an obsolete term like “mother” in progressive Wisconsin — not when there are so many officially-approved non-gendered words one can use.

and if this can be called a girls track meet, why quibble about the event formerly known as mothers Day being renamed inseminated persons day?