Beware ‘Ragebait Engagement Farming’
Posted By: Hazymac, 7/13/2025 6:18:42 AM
Cynical Publius, a poster on X, accurately describes for me the fantastical conspiratorial posts this week about Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Jeffrey Epstein records and death as “ragebait engagement farming.” I hate mobs and mob thinking, and I think Bondi has achieved a remarkable courtroom record against a tsunami of judicial insurrection. This week the Department of Justice she heads, for example, just won its 13th Supreme Court victory in six months. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirms that the President is proud of her and considers the “continued fixation or sowing discord on [his] cabinet is baseless and unfounded in reality.
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Beware ‘Ragebait Engagement Farming’
14 replies
Cynical Publius, a poster on X, accurately describes for me the fantastical conspiratorial posts this week about Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Jeffrey Epstein records and death as “ragebait engagement farming.” I hate mobs and mob thinking, and I think Bondi has achieved a remarkable courtroom record against a tsunami of judicial insurrection. This week the Department of Justice she heads, for example, just won its 13th Supreme Court victory in six months. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirms that the President is proud of her and considers the “continued fixation or sowing discord on [his] cabinet is baseless and unfounded in reality.
It’s common for leftists to refer to Trump in the most luridly negative ways they can come up with, and to insert these references everywhere they can, no matter how inappropriate, so as to demoralize patriots and give them the impression that the left’s cultural victory and hegemony are total. Just the other day, by way of example, I was innocently reading the local sports section and saw a columnist decrying gambling in baseball and saying that with a “convicted felon” in the White House, what could anyone expect? Generally, however, the left’s claims about Trump, while wildly misleading and tendentious, aren’t legally actionable.
They say states are the laboratories of democracy. If so, Florida and New York are running vastly different experiments -- and the results could not be more instructive.
In the now current fiscal year, New York passed a $237 billion state budget, while Florida passed a budget less than half the size at $116.5 billion -- even though Florida now has millions more residents than New York (U.S. Census, 2024). This is not about population. It is about two distinct philosophies.
A glimpse of where one of these philosophies leads emerged recently in New York City, where Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic mayoral nomination. Mamdani openly advocates for
It was a slow news week, and we are into the midsummer doldrums. Lots of people are on vacation, perhaps including some of those who normally feed me memes. The supply was down this week. Maybe the meme-makers are on vacation, too.
There was a little flap over the “Epstein files.” I may write about it in due course, but in the meantime a number of Epstein memes made their way into this collection.
Of course, a slow news week is a good thing. So let’s sit back and enjoy it. A shortage of memes is a small price to pay for peace and quiet.
One thing, though:
The good news for Warner Bros./DC Studios is that its new Superman movie is quickly becoming a cultural touchstone, the standard by which all future superhero movies will be judged. The bad news is that it’s the low-end benchmark, representing the absolute worst that a superhero movie can be while not going straight to streaming. Director James Gunn is suddenly the Mario Mendoza of action filmmaking, and his Superman denotes the Mendoza Line, the trough of superhero futility. Or, as political commentator Ben Domenech put it, “This movie absolutely, totally sucks. The CGI sucks. The writing sucks. The cast, which is, for the most part,
Environmental Disaster
12 replies
Wind and solar energy, along with the batteries and transmission lines they require to function even minimally, are inherently bad for the environment. But sometimes they are even worse, as when turbine blades fail. This sad story from the Nantucket Current is one we have seen repeatedly around the country:
GE Vernova will pay the town of Nantucket and island businesses $10.5 million as part of a settlement related to the offshore wind turbine blade failure in July 2024 at the Vineyard Wind farm.
***
The town announced the settlement Friday morning with GE Vernova, the manufacturer of the Haliade-X turbine that failed, nearly one year since the 300-foot-long blade
Hang Them From the Yardarm!
18 replies
On Sunday, Yemenis, commonly referred to as Houthis, attacked a ship called the Magic Seas, a Greek-owned vessel, in the Red Sea. The pirates attacked and captured the Magic Seas:
It is thought the Yemen-based terror group initially attacked using a swarm of boats, small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. They then used kamikaze drones.
Having seized control of the bulk carrier, the gunmen simultaneously detonated multiple charges around the ship’s hull, causing it to sink. The crew abandoned ship after being accosted by the pirates and, I believe, were rescued.
The Yemenis released shocking, and highly sophisticated, drone-shot video of their attack. The sinking of the Magic Seas is stunning: (X)
Labor Unions Kill Jobs
16 replies
Progressives love unions.
Not only do unions protect workers, they say, unions gave us the weekend and the middle class.
I say, capitalism created the middle class. Employers, competing for better workers, gave us the weekend.
But whatever you think about capitalism, few people question the claim that unions help workers.
But I will. It's the focus of my new video.
A couple years ago, the Teamsters demanded more pay from UPS. Seemed like UPS could easily afford it. The company made almost $13 billion in 2021.
UPS used some of that money to hire more union workers. Then they offered them raises.
But Teamster boss Sean O'Brien wanted more. He threatened a strike.
Former White House physician Kevin O'Connor's closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee ended after less than an hour on Wednesday morning, with the doctor giving investigators virtually no new insights.
O'Connor pleaded the Fifth Amendment to multiple questions about his time with former President Joe Biden during his sit-down. It resulted in a hasty end to what could have been an hours-long deposition.
"I'm going to read the first two questions that were asked. 'Were you ever told to lie about the president's health?' He pleaded the Fifth Amendment. He would not answer that question.
Stacey Abrams Still Can’t Take a Hint
14 replies
Like a particularly nasty case of herpes (or so I’m told since I don’t have personal experience), Stacey Abrams just won’t go away. No matter how hard Georgia voters try to send her down the memory hole, Abrams pops up from time to time for some uninformed rhetoric that shows how untethered she is to reality and how committed to left-wing cliches she is.
The two-term governor of Georgia — check that, two-time loser in the Georgia governor’s race — spoke at a retreat where she outlined “10 steps to autocracy”: She later appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” with guest host Anthony Anderson to trot out that old left-wing trope that
The influencer 4xtra, who co-hosts the No Jumper podcast, asked his fanbase who wants to get blown up in a video that went viral on social media. He was seen carrying some unlit fireworks in the clip.
"Who wants to get blown up today," he said in the video.
"I’m going to blow your a– up! I’m blowing somebody up today.”
4Xtra was left injured following the fireworks accident, his sister Emily said in a GoFundMe page that has since been created. Emily paid tribute to her brother, whose real name is Resan.
“Resan is someone who lights up every room with his humor and energy,” she said.
A picture of 4Xtra kneeling on the
Whose Flag?
12 replies
Over this July 4th holiday weekend, the controversy over the Minnesota state flag has re-emerged. From the Minneapolis Star Tribune,
Some communities won’t fly new state flag: ‘It’s not a greater Minnesota flag.’
“Greater Minnesota” is how we refer to the rural parts of the state, which represent the vast majority of the state by area. Here is the old state flag, which flew in more or less this form from 1893 to 2024. Apparently, the problem was, buried deep in the emblem, is the depiction of a Native American riding a horse. That, and the state’s motto (The Star of the North) is rendered in the original French.
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A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to temporarily halt immigration raids in Los Angeles and several other counties in California, after ruling in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union's civil rights lawsuit. "As required by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, Defendants shall be enjoined from conducting detentive stops in this District unless the agent or officer has reasonable suspicion that the person to be stopped is within the United States in violation of U.S. immigration law," U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong wrote in her ruling. The judge determined that federal agents cannot "rely solely" on certain factors
President Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Saturday to defend his Attorney General Pam Bondi after major figures within the MAGA movement attacked her following the decision not to release the Epstein files.
“What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’” Trump wrote on his social media platform. “They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB!”
The president went on to urge his supporters to unify, saying he doesn’t “like what’s happening.”
“We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein,” said Trump.
Iran, the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism, despite having its nuclear weapons program disassembled by Israeli and American explosives, is still run by the mullahs. And those mullah's mouths are still writing checks their butts can't cash.
In the latest, Iran has now placed a $40+ million bounty on President Trump.
An Iranian movement has reportedly raised more than $40 million for the assassination of President Donald Trump, as the country’s senior religious clerics make clear that "every cell of the resistance in the West is charged with carrying out this sentence."
Iranian leaders recently issued two death warrants, or fatwas,
You knew in your heart of hearts from the very beginning.
Even as you watched those first flames take the first houses and then leap up through the canyons and down through the hillsides, through the breaks, even jumping PCH to gobble up the houses tucked next to the highway itself - those uniquely SoCal structures sandwiched between the asphalt and that big, blue Pacific surf...you knew.
You knew would never see it again, for all the gargoyle grin assurances of the mayor who couldn't be bothered to be there when the flames broke out. For all the slickster, huckstering, faux promises
The good news for Warner Bros./DC Studios is that its new Superman movie is quickly becoming a cultural touchstone, the standard by which all future superhero movies will be judged. The bad news is that it’s the low-end benchmark, representing the absolute worst that a superhero movie can be while not going straight to streaming. Director James Gunn is suddenly the Mario Mendoza of action filmmaking, and his Superman denotes the Mendoza Line, the trough of superhero futility. Or, as political commentator Ben Domenech put it, “This movie absolutely, totally sucks. The CGI sucks. The writing sucks. The cast, which is, for the most part,
“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin predicted that a day of “reckoning” is coming for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who have taken steps to protect their identity while carrying out their duties.
Today’s dangerous political climate has now made it necessary for some ICE agents to wear masks to prevent being doxxed, a preferred method of terrorism regularly used by leftists.[snip]
and the show’s house racist ominously told viewers that “there will be a reckoning” for ICE.
in my world, you mask yourself because you don’t want to be seen
On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Weeknight,” Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) accused the Trump administration of not providing sufficient disaster assistance to different states and wondered, “what are you doing with the money? Is it because you want to make sure that we’ve got more Alligator Alcatrazes, like, what is it?”
Crockett said, “I still don’t know if they’ve even officially declared an emergency as it relates to what happened in Missouri since this administration has been in, right there in my hometown in St. Louis, the tornadoes that devastated that area, I know that there were concerns about FEMA’s response
Many people surmise the Trump administration is unaware of the ongoing MAGA backlash to the DOJ and FBI position on matter of Jeffrey Epstein.
For a significant -albeit unknown- portion of President Trump’s support base, the case against Jeffrey Epstein was/is a strong part of how they positioned their MAGA support. That coalition is now furious and threatening to withdraw support for President Trump on all other policy areas. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino are all telling the same story.
There is trouble afoot.
(snip) the colosseum held a very fickle crowd.
A federal judge in Los Angeles is trying to shut down ICE enforcement of the nation’s popular immigration laws on the claim that it is illegally “profiling” people in California.
Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, issued two restraining orders late on Friday. Frimpong was nominated by President Joe Biden and is the daughter of two immigrants from Ghana. She was selected by both Harvard and Yale universities.[snip]The suspects’ race and ethnicity, their difficulty speaking English, their location at sites known for hiring illegal immigrants, and their class of work do not meet the “probable cause” requirement for arrests, the judge ruled.
Tears and Rage: Left-Wingers Inside and
Outside the State Department Lose It Over Layoffs 22 replies
Outside the State Department Lose It Over Layoffs 22 replies
The State Department was inundated with emotions on Friday, ranging from tears to open rebellion. The Trump administration moved forward with laying off over 1,300 career officials after the Supreme Court gave the go-ahead in a recent decision. Over a thousand more had already taken voluntary deferred resignations.
The move comes as part of a restructuring led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. That includes getting rid of various departments centered on "diversity, equity, and inclusion." I'm going to guess that includes those who gave the order to fly pride-progress flags at U.S. embassies.
In response, some flooded the lobby of the State Department
It happened. That judge shut down Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in southern California last night. According to Fox News’ Bill Melugin, Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong drafted a tentative decision this week, which sides with the American Civil Liberties Union that virtually shuts down federal agents doing their jobs across several counties. Last night, she made that opinion official. It's absolute lunacy: [Tweets, video]
How did this person get confirmed? Well, ask the 25 Republican senators who never bothered to show up for her confirmation vote. I’m not kidding:
In a bombshell revelation, investigative journalist John Solomon confirmed to Steve Bannon on Real America’s Voice that the Department of Justice and the FBI have been quietly building a major criminal conspiracy case targeting the Deep State’s decade-long effort to derail Donald Trump. According to Solomon, the scope of the investigation could finally deliver the accountability that many in the MAGA movement have long demanded.
“I think next week, over the next 10 days… the base, who’s been wondering, ‘Where is all that accountability?’—they’re gonna get some big surprises,” Solomon said. He claimed the case reaches back to the summer of 2016, before Crossfire Hurricane was launched,