Category: Uncategorized

The Persecution of Ricky Vaughn

The US federal government is shattering the Constitution and inadvertently revealing the existence of the surveillance state in its persecution of a memelord.

Last month, Revolver profiled the Biden Administration’s persecution of former Twitter anon Doug Mackey, who was a famous pro-Trump voice back in 2016 under the moniker of Ricky Vaughn…

In its latest filings, the DOJ reveals that one of the group chats it is currently using as evidence against Mackey contained a person who is now working with the FBI as a federal informant. According to the government, the “Confidential Witness” (or CW) was a pro-Trump, “alt right” leader who pleaded guilty to the same conspiracy to deprive civil rights charges that Mackey faces, and is now collaborating with the government.

In its filings, the government declines to say what CW’s current role with the government is, except that he is “presently engaged in proactive investigations, working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), and may engage in additional investigations in the future.” Based on that statement, the government is asking that CW’s identity be kept secret, and that Mackey’s defense team be barred from asking any questions about CW’s current work.

This is a much bolder request than it might seem to the legally uninitiated. The Sixth Amendment of the Bill of Rights guarantees the right of any criminal defendant to “be confronted with the witnesses against him.” Like most constitutional rights, this law is not absolute, but limitations to it have historically been very limited. Courts have long disallowed anonymous witnesses due to the Sixth Amendment, except in extreme circumstances involving violent, organized criminal organizations with the capacity to retaliate against witnesses and their families. And even then, courts have restricted the right to testify anonymously. For instance, in 2014, the U.S. 10th Circuit said this, about the possible danger of retaliation from the ruthless Salvadoran street gang MS-13.

“…a generalized statement about danger — such as anyone who testifies against one of [MS 13’s] members faces danger from [MS-13] — would be insufficient to show that a threat against a witness was actual and not a result of conjecture.” [United States v. Gutierrez de Lopez, 761 F.3d 1123, 1140 (10th Cir. 2014)]

But now, in the Mackey case, the Biden DOJ asserts that its witness’s identity must be hidden, because if not, he might face, wait for it… harassment on the Internet!

CW through the CW’s internet moniker(s) occupied a prominent position within the online, alt-right community. In that capacity, the CW participated in, among other things, the online harassment of individuals with whom the CW maintained political disagreements, including by encouraging the CW’s followers on Twitter and other social media to amplify the harassment. In this case, the government anticipates that the CW will provide inculpatory evidence against the defendant and other individuals who, like the CW, had engaged in such harassing behavior. As such, the government anticipates that, if the CW’s true identity were to become known, then those with whom the CW associated online would likely engage in such behavior towards the CW. Revealing the CW’s true identity would also likely lead to the public exposure of the CW’s physical whereabouts. This could in turn subject the CW to more than simply online harassment and could very easily jeopardize the CW’s safety.

Mackey has never been convicted or even accused of a single violent crime, or of threatening violence online. There is no evidence at all of any kind of organized or predictable effort by the online “alt right” to physically target witnesses. Yet now, the government claims that Mackey’s Sixth Amendment rights can be nullified because of the vague possibility a witness against him might face “harassing behavior.”

This particular federal informant is widely rumored to be none other than “Baked Alaska”. But that’s not what is interesting, at least to me. What I believe to be more significant is this observation from AC:

Notice, Ricky had an informant before he had any hint of anything prosecutors might try to charge him with, going on around him. He was just a a squeaky clean, preppy guy, posting funny memes on Twitter. With an informant sent in. Which means an FBI/intelligence agent assigned to him.

So one guy posting on Twitter had an informant sent in and an intelligence operation dedicated to him on nothing more than the basis of his rhetorically-effective memes. What this means is that literally everyone with more than 200+ followers on any social media platform is being targeted, tracked, and infiltrated.

Given my family background and my national press syndication dating back to 1994, I’ve been aware of being on the radar for at least three decades, if not four. It comes with the territory and it’s understandable; no society will tolerate its iconoclastic outliers going too far astray. But it is nevertheless a little startling to see confirmation that the surveillance state in the USA is at least as prevalent and comprehensive as it was in East Germany during the Soviet years.

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Knock-On Effects

The SVB failure is having serious consequences for the California wine industry.

California’s wine industry is on the brink of a financial crisis following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

The bank had been the main financial institution for bank for wineries in the Golden State for almost three decades.

The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation closed the bank on Friday following a run by venture capital customers.

On Friday night, thousands of wineries found that they were completely locked out of their accounts with no clear timeline as to when they might be able to access their funds…

Wineries represented 2 percent of the bank’s total loan business but the ramifications are far-reaching including an inability to pay employees, bills, or credit card payments. Silicon Valley Bank, the nation’s 16th largest bank, had extended more than $4 billion in loans to wineries and vineyards since 1994.

Interesting that it says “16th largest” when just two days it was being reported as the 14th largest. But this demonstrates the folly of both the easy credit economy and allowing banks to buy other banks, as the consequences of single failure points become considerably more serious. In this case, the negative effects are crossing not only the United States, but the Atlantic Ocean.

Following SVB’s collapse, tech companies in Britain have had their accounts frozen, meaning they have no access to their money and are unable to pay staff.

Major firms such as online retail giant Shopify and Pinterest are also directly affected by the failure.

UK business leaders have raised concerns that the failure could create further problems in Britain, warning they face going bust if they cannot get their funds from the bank – which could cause thousands of job losses.

There are also fears the crash of the bank will spread around the world, with bases in countries including China, India and across Europe.

These knock-on effects may have even affected us. Starting Friday night, without any reason being provided or communication from our account manager, Castalia was suddenly locked out of one of our regular book production sites for the first time in nine years. This will have no effect on the Library, but could affect our traditional book publishing business. Fortunately, we already have an alternative lined up, although I very much doubt that it will be necessary.

UPDATE: Yellen: No federal bailout for collapsed Silicon Valley Bank

UPDATE: Treasury: New York State regulators are shuttering Signature Bank – a major New York bank – adding that all depositors both at Signature Bank, and also the now insolvent Silicon Valley Bank, will have access to their money on Monday.

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Onward to Valhalla

The great Bud Grant has died at the age of 95:

Hall of Fame head coach Bud Grant, who led the Vikings to four Super Bowl, has died. He was 95.

Born May 20, 1927 in Superior Wisconsin, Harry Peter Grant Jr. played in the NBA, the NFL, and the CFL. He was the oldest living NBA champion, a member of the 1950 Minneapolis Lakers.

Grant later played for the Philadelphia Eagles and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. He coached the Blue Bombers from 1957 to 1966, taking the job at the age of 29. He won four Grey Cups with the Blue Bombers.

In 1967, Grant succeeded Norm Van Brocklin as head coach of the Vikings. Grant took the Vikings to Super Bowl IV, Super Bowl VIII, Super Bowl IX, and Super Bowl XI. He coached the team until 1983, retiring for a year and then returning after a disastrous 3-13 season under Les Steckel.

Grant, known for an always-stoic sideline demeanor, had a record of 168-108-5 in his NFL coaching career. He went 118-64-3 in the CFL. In all, he coached 466 games, winning 286 times.

For better or for worse, I owe my stoicism to Bud Grant. When asked once about my emotional imperturbability in the face of open hatred, I answered that as a lifelong Vikings fan, I no longer had any capacity for disappointment or tears in the face of defeat. I always admired how he could meet success or failure with stone cold equanimity, and how he refused to bow even before the bitter cold of the Minnesota winters.

One by one, our heroes are leaving us. May we be worthy of them.

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Bösenschadenfreude

ITEM: BREAKING: HARRY AND MEGHAN STAND TO LOSE MILLIONS IN COLLAPSE OF SVB BANK. Sources tell iSN the couple set up accounts following the advice of friends in Silicon Valley. “This is a major blow,” said our source, “They had all of Harry’s money there.”

ITEM: OPRAH LOSES MILLIONS IN SVB COLLAPSE. iSN has learned Oprah kept millions at the failed bank. “Like other celebs she went all in and now may have lost serious money,” said a person familiar with the situation.

That’s just too good to be true, isn’t it? Is there really that much justice to be found in a fallen word?

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It Was Never About the Trinity

While I have been reluctant to pay the matter any attention whatsoever, I have come to the conclusion that there is a lot more going on here than the usual Internet drama and JimBob is something very, very different than he purported to be when he joined the Bear community and began lavishing attention on Owen. Not only does JimBob increasingly appear to be directly connected to some very bad actors, but his few defenders in the Bear community increasingly appear to be infiltrators as well, as they are shamelessly lying about JimBob, Owen, and now me as well.

For example, JimBob appears to have some connection to this woman, whom he tagged in his 2016 post about pizza-related jewelry.

He also tagged the artist below on the same Instagram post, whose highly-sexualized work is rife the same one-eye symbolism along with plenty of grotesque and evil imagery. There is a LOT more, and a lot worse, than what is seen here.

In response, JimBob’s dishonest defenders have resorted to everything from (a) claiming that the screenshots taken directly from Instagram yesterday, one of which I personally took myself, were fakes…

@WhiskeyDelta It’s a fake screenshot, created by a bear to troll JB. Vox is only sharing it because he’s good friends with Owen. I’m not even sure what site this is on. A search of that exact text finds nothing. If it does exist somewhere, I bet good money the account was created in the last week from an IP in Idaho… I’m not sure what Owen’s end game is here. Whatever happened to the Christian principle of turning the other cheek?

To (b) attempting to redefine the very concept of rhetoric while attempting to change the subject.

@BattleBrotherBear It’s rhetoric because there was no investigation just couple of photos PROVES the TRUTH. Vox and Owen are the wizards…

To claiming that I am lying about the fact that Owen’s subscriber numbers on UATV have increased since the so-called “debate”.

@WhiskeyDelta UaTv doesn’t publish subscription numbers, and Owen’s a proven liar. I stopped watching Owen after this, but in one of his last rants he complained Jimbob was “stealing his audience”. You don’t do that when your cup runneth over.

As I pointed out on Gab, these things are not, as yet, conclusive proof of anything. But the rabbit hole is definitely getting deeper. And considerably darker. It should be informative to see what the VFM and the Troll Hunters learn about the gentleman, his wife, and their associates, as there will certainly be an investigation now.

UPDATE: JimBob’s inept defenders are beginning to retreat. From Gab.

VD: You’re a complete and shameless liar. The screenshots were taken directly from JimBob’s own Instagram page. I took the pizza necklace screenshot dated August 15, 2016 myself.

WhiskeyDelta: Fair enough. I didn’t notice the date.

VD: The date has nothing to do with it. Do you admit that you lied when you stated this? “It’s a fake screenshot, created by a bear to troll JB. Vox is only sharing it because he’s good friends with Owen.”

UPDATE: The genuine Bears have reached a conclusion that appears to be at least partially correct.

Anyone who is defending jimbob is literally defending satanism

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First Domino Down

Silicon Valley Bank just crashed so hard that the FDIC had to step in and seize it on a Friday morning before the close of business.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation seized the assets of Silicon Valley Bank on Friday, marking the largest bank failure since Washington Mutual during the height of the 2008 financial crisis.

The bank failed after depositors — mostly technology workers and venture capital-backed companies — began withdrawing their money creating a run on the bank.

The FDIC ordered the closure of Silicon Valley Bank and immediately took position of all deposits at the bank Friday. The bank had $209 billion in assets and $175.4 billion in deposits as the time of failure, the FDIC said in a statement. It was unclear how much of deposits was above the $250,000 insurance limit at the moment.

Notably, the FDIC did not announce a buyer of Silicon Valley’s assets, which is typically when there’s an orderly wind down of a bank. The FDIC also seized the bank’s assets in the middle of the business day, a sign of how dire the situation had become.

But don’t worry. We are cross-the-FDIC’s-heart pinky-swear assured that there is little danger of contagion throughout the financial industry because all of the other banks are absolutely just fine and have totally no issues at all. It’s just a flesh wound, nothing more.

Please continue to consume with confidence and don’t forget to be tolerant and inclusive!

PS: this is what debt-deflation looks like. Billions of dollars in debt-wealth vanishing in an instant.

UPDATE: Wells Fargo customers have reported that their direct deposits were missing from their accounts on Friday morning, according to reports.

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EVERYTHING is Fake and Gay

There is not one single thing that Clown World has told you is true that can withstand the light of even a half-serious investigation. NOT ONE SINGLE THING. It doesn’t matter what the subject is, from evolution to the Moon, from Covid-19 to Vatican II, all of it is fake and gay, all of it is obviously and provably false.

At this point, the only rational, logical, and sane thing to do is to assume, a priori, that everything the mainstream media reports as fact or history is misleading at best and on average false. This superskeptical heuristic will point you in the direction of the confirmable truth far more often than assuming the mainstream narrative is more or less true will.

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One Can’t Call Them Traitors

The neocons never had any loyalty to America or to the Republican Party in the first place.

Never Trumper Bill Kristol called on Republican voters to support Democrat politicians “for a while,” and said he would support a 2024 presidential ticket led by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Kristol over the weekend addressed a crowd of disillusioned Republicans about the need to get rid of “Trump Republicans” from the party.

“It turns out that once you let the toothpaste out of the tube, so to speak, demagoguery and bigotry and all that, some people like it. It’s hard to get it back,” Kristol said. “You can’t just give them a lecture.”

Kristol’s remarks came during the Principles First Summit held at the Conrad Hotel in Washington, DC. The summit featured prominent Never Trumpets and “was implicitly constructed as a counterweight,” to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held the same weekend, Politico reported.

Anyone who takes neocons like Bill Kristol or Ben Shapiro seriously, let alone at face value, is literally retarded. I mean, one has to be seriously stupid to believe one single word that comes out of any neocon’s mouth. Bill Kristol’s father, Irving, even coined the ridiculous term to be sure that they distinguished themselves from conservatives, despite the fact that they already had a perfectly useful term to describe them, namely, Trotskyites.

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The Reward for Virtue-Signaling

The speed with which white people adopting a black child inform others of this fact is only surpassed by how quickly a Harvard graduate informs everyone what school he attended, and makes it clear, at the very least, that they expect this will ensure that no one will call them racist. But Colin Kaepernick has corrected their misapprehensions.

Colin Kaepernick has accused his white adoptive parents of ‘perpetuating racism’ by telling him as a teen that corn rows looked unprofessional, and says he had to experience ‘very problematic things’ while growing up in their house.

Kaepernick was adopted as an infant by Rick and Teresa Kaepernick, a white couple from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. They moved to Turlock, California when he was four.

They had two biological children but lost two sons to congenital heart defects.

Speaking to CBS to promote his new graphic comic memoir, Kaepernick gave the example of his mother telling him corn rows were not professional.

He claims she told him he ‘looked like a little thug’ when he showed her the hairstyle.

‘I know my parents loved me. But there were still very problematic things that I went through,’ he said.

And they thought no one would call them racist.

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