Walz's Minnesota was such a big playground for fraud it drew 'fraud tourism'

Monica Showalter 

"To really make a state "third world" what's needed is a Democrat or a third-world satrap on the other end, dispensing the cash."

"How bad was Minnesota's problem with fraudulently dispensed state funds?

"It was so bad it drew "fraud tourists," according to a CBS News report — eighteen billion dollars' worth.

Federal prosecutors announced new indictments Thursday in the widening Minnesota fraud scandal, this time involving two Philadelphia-based men accused of traveling to Minneapolis after a friend told them the taxpayer-funded programs there presented "a good opportunity to make money."

Anthony Waddel Jefferson and Lester Brown are accused of siphoning millions from federally funded programs administered by Minnesota officials that were meant to help people with disabilities and those suffering from addiction.

Unlike many of the individuals previously caught up in the state's sprawling fraud scandal, they don't appear to have ties to Minnesota's large Somali-American community. Prosecutors say they don't appear to have ties to Minnesota at all.

"Minnesota has become a magnet for fraud, so much so that we have developed a fraud tourism industry — people coming to our state purely to exploit and defraud its programs," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson, who brought the new charges. "This is a deeply unsettling reality that all Minnesotans should understand."

"They defrauded Medicaid, others in this batch of busts defrauded a housing stabilization service for the homeless, still others defrauded child autism programs. They all found Minnesota a tourist's paradise, not for its lakes and scenery, but for every kind of fraud. That's because every agency on Gov. Tim Walz's watch apparently never said 'no' to anyone. Word got around about 'a good opportunity to make money' as one of the accused fraudsters put it, the cash went out like water through a sieve and now the busts are rolling in." . . .Full article....

Rob Reiner took the high road on Charlie Kirk, but James Carville goes for the gutter

 Olivia Murray 

 "Carville doesn’t want to give the right any more ammo, but then tells conservatives and Republicans our martyred hero isn’t even a pimple on an ass, handing us a MOAB of insanity and malice."

"In the wake of Rob Reiner’s brutal murder, allegedly at the hands of his own son, AT’s own J.R. Dunn penned an essay about how Reiner had actually expressed genuine empathy and humanity for Charlie Kirk after Kirk’s own killing. This was news to me, and honestly, quite a surprise—all I knew of Reiner and his politics were his unhinged and maniacal rants against President Trump and conservatives. What I saw was a fat, sputtering, vile old man, who clearly wasn’t a thinking or moral guy—but as Dunn revealed, he did actually have a heart.

"So, despite a history of TDS and conservative hate, Reiner chose compassion and sympathy when one of our own was targeted and gruesomely killed over personal beliefs and convictions.

"James Carville did the exact opposite—while Reiner took the high road, Carville went straight for the gutter. According to a new article at Breitbart, Carville recently denigrated Kirk as not even being a “pimple” on Reiner’s “a**”:" . . .  More...

Virtue Signaling Isn't Virtuous

Why the Left Will Never Stop Virtue Signaling

"As I said in my previous article, these virtue signals are a deadly game to play, and it's made more disgusting by the fact that the first people usually victimized by virtue signaling are the innocent. Namely, the poor, whom the left claims to champion but never actually does. "

This should pretty much cover it all

. . . "As I highlight in that quote, the backbone of virtue signaling is peer recognition. 

"Virtue signaling serves a lot of purposes. Seducing the ignorant is, of course, a large part of that. Making someone who doesn't know any better believe you have a moral high ground that you actually don't can make them put a bit of trust in you that you don't actually deserve. Pretending to be virtuous by using nebulous phrases and buzzwords is a time-honored tradition of the left, and too often the right. 

"But for the left, virtue signaling is a baked-in part of the culture. You must express virtues to be accepted. Failure to do so could result in you being sidelined at best, made an enemy at worst. It doesn't matter if you actually believe these things or not; you just have to be willing to profess them. A solid example of this in recent history is the left's profession that women's rights are holy, but this goes out the window the moment a man in a dress and makeup shows up. 

"You can see these examples in almost every facet of society and nearly every subculture." . . . 

—and Actually Makes Political Tribalism Worse

"But useful though it may be, virtue signaling is far less demanding, and far less constructive, than virtue itself. Unless the former is matched with the latter – that is, unless words are matched with actions – mere signaling is insufficient."

War On Jihad: The Channukah Massacre Was Inevitable

 Douglas Murray 

  "Does anyone think that if there had been anti-Muslim or anti-Arab demonstrations on the streets every week for the two years following the 2019 attack—expressly celebrating the attack and calling for it to happen again—that the Australian authorities would have stood by, or actually placated the mob? To ask the question is to answer it."

One more Jew...

"Do words have any meaning? Most people think so, which is why there is an endless debate about which words should be permitted by law, which should be a matter for the law, and which words should be debated in the realm of manners.

"Where does “Gas the Jews” fit into that? There are contexts where those words could be in the realm of manners. For instance, somebody might use them in a comedy club, doing a routine about forbidden statements. But how about using them immediately after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust? How about if the words are used on the streets by a mob—not in a spirit of jest, but of intent?

"That’s what happened outside the Sydney opera house on October 9, 2023—two days after Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists invaded Israel, slaughtered 1,200 people, and took another 250 hostage. The people in the mob outside the opera house that night were not objecting to the war that resulted from that massacre. They were not trying out some new comedy material. They were using the massacre of Jews as the impetus to stand in their own city, oceans away, and advocate for the gassing of Jews.

"Of course, the Australian authorities did not take any meaningful action regarding that protest. No more than they chose to take action against the numberless protests in major Australian cities since October 2023 in which protesters have chanted “Globalize the Intifada” and much more.

"Which is not to say that the Australian government are free-speech absolutists. They are not. Nor does Australia have an equivalent of the First Amendment which strictly protects Free Speech, even up to the point of incitement. On the contrary, the Australian authorities are among the toughest in the world when it comes to policing speech.

"Just this past June, Australia barred an Israeli called Hillel Fuld from coming into the country. Fuld is a pro-Israel activist whose brother Ari Fuld was stabbed to death by a jihadist terrorist in 2018. Ari Fuld was a hero in his life and in his final moments when, taking on the terrorist, he saved many more lives. But the Australian authorities were persuaded that the brother of the slain Ari could cause a risk to “health, safety or good order” in Australia. And so, he was barred from entry.

"It is worth digesting that for a moment. A man whose brother was killed by a terrorist should not enter Australia because he could potentially alert people to the threat of Islamist terrorism. Which could in itself cause public disorder." . . .  Full article here...