How do you audit expenditure you can't find?

 

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of D.O.G.E.'s task in auditing federal government expenditure is that much of the latter is hidden from sight, and has to be dug out of the darker corners of our governing bureaucracy.  Real Clear Investigations reports:

The total amount of spending across “all agencies,” as recorded at usaspending.gov, appears to be 50% higher than most experts interviewed for this article think it actually was.

In Fiscal Year 2024, for instance, the website pegs total spending at $9.7 trillion, when several experts said it was probably around $6.5 trillion. No one could explain the much bigger figure. Officials with usaspending.gov conceded to RCI that their totals were wrong and said the error, which shows up in similar fashion for the last five fiscal years would be fixed soon. They offered neither an explanation for their higher total nor an estimate of what it should be. Two weeks later, the erroneous figures remain.

. . .

The federal government has become so big and so expensive that even experts have trouble navigating the morass of contracts, awards, grants, loans, and other items that have transformed the U.S. spreadsheet into a labyrinth pitted with dead ends and rabbit holes ... The complexity and layers Musk’s team has encountered are a feature, not a bug, according to this view.

. . .

DOGE’s real accomplishment so far has been to bring attention to the federal government’s broken accounting systems.

Despite the hue and cry raised over DOGE, previous alarms have been rung by some other agencies only to be ignored.

On Jan. 16, four days before Biden vacated the White House, the Government Accounting Office said it was “unable to provide an opinion on the reliability of the federal government’s consolidated financial statements for fiscal year 2024 and 2023.” 

The Office of Management and Budget has also flunked six of the 24 departments and agencies it looked at, including Labor and Education. The Defense Department has failed seven consecutive audits, while the Department of Education hasn’t gotten a “clean” opinion for three years.

It is hard to pass an audit when you don’t follow the basic rules of accounting.

There's more at the link.

As the article says, the dysfunction built into federal accounting systems is a feature, not a bug.  If something can't be properly audited, nobody can be held accountable for any malfeasance or criminal conduct, because it can't be proved.  I daresay a lot of politicians have used that feature over the years to direct money to causes and projects that would make the average taxpayer scream in outrage if he knew about them.  The USAID financial imbroglio tends to bear that out in microcosm.  USAID is one agency out of well over 400 in the federal government.  How much financial jiggery-pokery will we find in the rest of them?  Will there be as much wasteful spending in them as we found in USAID, and if so, will we be able to recover it?  Hopefully D.O.G.E. will be able to answer those questions.

Perhaps it's time to write into every expenditure bill that passes through Congress and the Senate a provision detailing how the money is to be accounted for, and what audits are mandated for its use over time.  It would be nice to think that the normal audit procedures of the federal government would suffice, but clearly they haven't in the past, so why would they be good enough in future?

Peter

There's method in President Trump's diplomatic "madness"

 

Remember a week or two back, when President Trump said the US will take over the Gaza Strip and redevelop it?

Looks like the Arab states in the region really don't like that idea.

A $53bn (£41.4 billion) reconstruction plan to rival President Donald Trump's idea for the US to "take over Gaza" and move out more than two million Palestinians has been approved by Arab leaders at an emergency summit in the Egyptian capital Cairo.

"The Egypt plan is now an Arab plan," announced the secretary general of the Arab League Ahmed Aboul Gheit at the end of this hours-long gathering.

Without referring specifically to President Trump's ideas, he underlined that "the Arab stance is to reject any displacement, whether it is voluntary or forced".

There's more at the link.

The Arab League's action comes after Israel supported President Trump's initiative, which would mean that many Palestinians from Gaza would have to be "resettled" elsewhere.  That concentrated some minds wonderfully, because the Arab states have systematically refused to resettle Palestinians on their territory - but any resettlement would have to involve them, because there's nowhere else for the Palestinians to go.  Furthermore, the cost of rebuilding Gaza is now for the Arab League's account, not America's.  $53 billion is not small change!

I daresay something like this is what President Trump had in mind all along, just like calling for and imposing reciprocal tariffs is designed to "encourage" other nations to relax their tariffs on American goods and services.

Ah . . . diplomacy!

Peter

In case you missed it...

 

... 22 Democratic Party senators just released individual video statements criticizing President Trump.  Nothing wrong with that - except that they all used precisely and exactly the same script, word for word, parroting each other.  Originality?  Thinking for themselves?  Not so much!

Needless to say, President Trump and Republican politicians are having a field day responding to such ham-handed criticism.  Elon Musk has even offered a free Cybertruck to anyone who can identify the author of the script.  I imagine there's a lot of searching going on right now!

To be fair, President Trump's claim that he would bring down prices, starting on day one of his presidency, has not yet been visible in the marketplace - except in the Washington D.C. area, where housing prices are falling under the weight of fired federal officials and bureaucrats!  However, the amount of waste, fraud and financial abuse he and his team have uncovered in the federal government means that a great deal of money will be saved in future, which should help our inflationary situation.  As for high prices in general:  I don't know whether or not they will come down.  They've certainly gone up during the Biden administration, but historically, when that's happened, they've been slow to come down again.  Will producers be able to save enough on their input costs to lower their prices on their finished products?  That remains to be seen, and it's not something a President can dictate.

Perhaps the price of finished copycat videos will go down, thanks to heavy demand for them from Democratic Party senators?

Peter

If "democracy dies in darkness", so does evidence

 

The Washington Post adopted a new slogan when President Trump was elected:  "Democracy dies in darkness".  I don't know why it felt the inauguration was so dark, but they're entitled to their opinion, I guess.

Now it emerges that the Southern District of the FBI in New York City had been sitting on "a truckload" of evidence from the Jeffrey Epstein case, and had not even reported its existence to its superiors in Washington D.C.  What better way to interfere in the administration of justice than to keep the evidence so dark, nobody in high places knows it exists?

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi revealed that the Department of Justice has received more Jeffery Epstein files from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after the document release she touted last week fell flat. 

Speaking to Fox News host Sean Hannity on Tuesday night, Bondi confirmed that a "truckload" of Epstein files were delivered by the FBI after she gave the agency until 8 a.m. on Friday morning to deliver them. 

"I gave [the FBI] a deadline of Friday at 8 a.m. to get us everything," Bondi explained. "And a source had told me where the documents were being kept, Southern District of New York, shock. So we got them all by Friday at 8 a.m."

"Thousands of pages of documents. I have the FBI going through them...and Director Patel is going to get us a detailed report as to why the FBI withheld all of those documents," she continued.

There's more at the link.

I see that the boss of the Southern District was given a choice between immediate retirement or being fired (he chose the former).  However, he's only one person.  How many others of the same ilk had he recruited and/or transferred to his district, to ensure that it would be run the way he wanted it?  How much more evidence and important information is still hidden in the files and computer servers of the Southern District?  And how much may already have been destroyed, rather than admit its existence?

A few years ago I said that "The FBI can no longer be trusted in any way, shape or form".  I hope that, with the changes that have just begun to be introduced under the Trump administration, that judgment may be revised . . . but this latest brouhaha over the Epstein evidence doesn't give me any immediate cause for relief.  There's still an awful lot of partisan political deadwood in the FBI that needs to be pruned back and burned out.

Peter

Deep Schools corruption???

 

We've heard of the Deep State often enough, but Tulsa, Oklahoma looks to have a Deep Schools problem.

The highly anticipated state audit for Tulsa Public Schools released Wednesday [last week] accuses former leaders of promoting a culture where financial misappropriation ran wild for years.

. . .

Byrd pointed to various areas of concern highlighted in the audit, noting that her office found more than 1,400 financial discrepancies. She said multiple district administrators fostered a culture of financial noncompliance and disregarded laws and policies meant to protect taxpayer money.

Key findings from the audit:

• Byrd says the investigation focused on more than $37.7 million in expenditures.
• $25 million of the money investigated, according to the audit, violated the district’s own policies.
• Former Chief Learning and Talent Officer Devin Fletcher was able to commit fraud because of lax financial and internal controls. Fletch was convicted and sentenced to 20 months in federal prison in 2024.
• Tulsa Public Schools paid more than 700 vendors without receiving proof of services.
• Some vendor contract language was vague.
• Some invoices didn’t list services on them at all.
• State auditor’s office experienced difficulty obtaining some records pertaining to the audit due to poor record-keeping practices.
• Processes were taken to bypass the local board of education to avoid oversight.
• Conflicts of interest in awarding vendor contracts.

“Oklahoma law states that no payments can be made without an itemized invoice, as well as proof of receipt of goods or service,” said Byrd. “TPS’ disregard for this statute was perhaps the most pervasive issue uncovered during our investigation.”

. . .

News 4 also received late reaction to the audit findings Wednesday from Governor Kevin Stitt who encouraged Drummond to take action:

I requested this audit in 2022, and today Auditor Byrd finally confirmed what myself and many other Oklahomans believed to be true— where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And it’s deeply troubling to see Tulsa Public Schools having engaged in such gross financial misconduct. The release of the audit is only the first step in holding wrongdoers accountable. The Attorney General needs to take immediate action and bring charges wherever possible. This can never be allowed to happen in Oklahoma again.

There's more at the link.

As if we needed any more evidence of why a D.O.G.E.-style investigation of any and all administrative bodies, in federal, state and local government, is vitally necessary!  $25 million is chump change on a federal level, where we're talking expenditure in the billions and trillions of dollars;  but it's a huge financial burden on the taxpayers of Tulsa, who are now on the hook for however much can be proved to have been stolen or misused.  How long will it take them to make up that loss?  And how much impact will that have on their children?

Full marks to the Governor of Oklahoma for pushing for this investigation, three years ago;  and full marks to the auditor for pushing for its publication, despite resistance from Tulsa Public Schools.  As usual, the administrators and bureaucrats are scuttling for cover now that their misdeeds have been uncovered.  I hope much of the money can be recovered from those responsible for its loss, and that those guilty of criminal malfeasance in office will spend long enough behind bars to regret their error of judgment.

I wonder how many other school districts have similar problems that haven't yet been detected?  I'm willing to bet it's more than a few, in every state in the nation.

 

Peter

Friday's little diplomatic bust-up has revealed a lot

 

When President Zelensky tried (and failed) to maneuver President Trump into providing security guarantees for Ukraine, he not only damaged his country's relationship with ours, he also acted as the spark to a fuse that's since revealed all sorts of interesting behind-the-scenes information.

First off, it's clear Zelensky was manipulated into acting as he did.  A cabal of Senators met with him beforehand, and appear to have assured him that if he insisted on guarantees, Trump would cave in and provide them.  Did they do that because they actually believed their assurances, or because they wanted to make President Trump look bad in front of the world's press?  I'm betting on the latter - and the fact that he didn't cave in, but stood firm on his original premise, appears to have shocked those Senators as much as it did Zelensky.  Francis Porretto put it like this:

Zelensky met with a bipartisan group of Senators before meeting with Trump and Vance. I have yet to see such a report that went into the details of the meeting. How did those Senators advise the Ukrainian? Unclear. Worse, the ABC report concludes with a statement from two Democrat Senators castigating Trump and Vance!

[Minnesota Senator Amy] Klobuchar and [Delaware Senator Chris] Coons came out with posts on X in defense of the Ukrainian president after his exchange in the Oval Office, particularly the moment in which Vance accused Zelenskyy of being “disrespectful” toward his American hosts.

“Answer to Vance: Zelenskyy has thanked our country over and over again both privately and publicly. And our country thanks HIM and the Ukrainian patriots who have stood up to a dictator, buried their own & stopped Putin from marching right into the rest of Europe. Shame on you,” Klobuchar wrote.

“Every time I’ve met with President Zelenskyy, he’s thanked the American people for our strong support. We owe him our thanks for leading a nation fighting on the front lines of democracy — not the public berating he received at the White House,” Coons wrote.

The transcript of the Trump / Vance / Zelensky meeting makes it plain that the backhanding the Ukrainian received was only what his conduct had earned. Why, then, would two United States Senators characterize it in the exact opposite fashion?

Because they [like Zelensky] are animated by hatred.

If there’s anything the Democrat Party despises without limit, it’s a Republican president who refuses to play by their rules. Atop that, Trump is an outsider: one who, by their lights, doesn’t belong in the corridors of power ... They want his hide tacked up on their barn wall as a warning to others who contemplate intruding on their domain.

There's more at the link.

Nor is such behind-the-scenes encouragement limited to politicians.  Deep State neocons were part of it too, as Mollie Hemingway notes.

Zelensky repeatedly declined opportunities to sign the deal in Kyiv and Munich, and requested the meeting at the White House. It later came out that [Susan] Rice and Tony Blinken, Victoria Nuland, and Alexander Vindman may have been personally advising Zelensky to do this meeting in the way he did -- that they recommended him to be hostile and to try to goad Trump into blowing up. Even though he didn't, and even though Zelensky's actions horrified many normal Americans, the Obama team went on the airwaves to falsely characterize what happened.

I think their goal was to have a wonderful performance by Zelensky, an angry Trump appearing to scuttle the deal, and the support of the neocon portion of the GOP to start applying pressure on Trump to have US Troop commitments as part of the "security guarantee." It was a set-up, in Susan Rice's interesting choice of words.

. . .

As you can see from the hostility of the bureaucracy to any Republican oversight, no matter how reasonable or minor it may be, the entrenched bureaucracy and permanent DC apparatus is quite active. That goes quadruple for the deep state in the Intelligence Community. I'd expect more and more shenanigans and to be prepared so that you don't fall for the next information operation. The post-WWII architecture in Europe and the US needs this war to continue or be settled on "US troops on the ground" type guarantees, even though that's not what Americans want.

Things will heat up here, and it's a very dangerous time.

Again, more at the link.

What steps are being taken to bring charges against those US "advisers" for interfering in foreign affairs?  At the very least, they should be registered as foreign agents if they want any say in the matter.  If they're not, they've broken the law, and should be charged.

We also see that the so-called "Deep State" isn't limited to the USA, but is an international operation, with "Deep States" (for want of a better term) active in every European nation and in the European Union as a whole.  That was made very clear when several European leaders consoled and encouraged Zelensky in precisely and exactly the same words.  It was like those news broadcasts we've seen in the USA, where dozens or scores or even hundreds of nominally "independent" TV news stations all parrot exactly the same words and phrases to their audience, clearly reading from the same script.  Those European leaders were using a script for public consumption when they encouraged Zelensky.  It's as plain as the nose on your face, and demonstrates how forces and individuals behind the scenes are manipulating the situation.

The lack of logic and rationality behind the European approach was illustrated by Polish prime minister Donald Tusk when he pointed out that "500 million Europeans are asking 300 million Americans to defend them against 140 million Russians."  Europe appears willing to fight to the last American to defend Ukraine - and President Trump's not playing that game.  Now they have to figure out how to do it themselves, without American firepower to support them - but they've cut their armed forces to the bone in order to pay for entitlement programs.  How are they going to do it?  The short and simple answer is that, without the USA, they can't.  As Divemedic put it:

There is not a reason to spill a single drop of American blood, nor waste a single American dollar on a war that simply isn’t our problem. Let Europe worry about this one. I don’t think that Russia is going to go to war with the European Union unless the EU keeps beating war drums and trying to start one. We need to stop letting France, Britain, Russia, and Germany drag us into the wars that they have been fighting in Europe for over 1,300 years. If they want to keep fighting, let them, but there is no reason for us to be involved.

More at the link.  I said much the same thing three years ago.

Finally, the Telegraph advises that there may be "wheels within wheels" on this issue.

The president appeared to make an initial offer to Putin that contained nearly everything the Russian dictator wanted ... But there may well be a more sophisticated logic behind Trump’s seeming madness.

The Trump administration is thought to view China, not Russia, as the gravest threat to the United States and Europe in the long-term, having declared in the 2017 National Security Strategy that it is a “revisionist” power that seeks “to erode American security and prosperity”. China’s Belt and Road initiative is widely seen as a disguised attempt to secure control of future land and sea routes, by laying out massive transport, energy, and telecommunication infrastructure across the Eurasian landmass.

. . .

The Trump administration has every incentive to undo China’s Grand Strategy.

Team Trump may well have concluded that this can only be achieved through radical changes to US foreign policy elsewhere. In the first instance, it necessitates cutting the West’s losses in Ukraine and conserving US combat power to deter Beijing. US officials seem to have realised that Putin is prepared and willing to fight, at almost any cost to Russia, until the last surviving Ukrainian and until the last missile is left in the West’s stockpiles.

. . .

A peace deal in Ukraine might have the benefit of giving Nato members the breathing space – as well as the incentive – to finally re-focus their economies towards defence, so that they can meet Trump’s call for 5 per cent of GDP to be spent on their militaries. On Tuesday, Starmer committed to increase UK defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP, up from 2.3 per cent now. Others are likely to follow suit. A rearmed Nato would serve as a much stronger deterrent against both Russia and China in the long-term, minimising the chances that Putin might attack a Nato country in the future.

. . .

Trump may be preparing to signal to Putin that he is content with Russia serving as the dominant power in Eurasia, as long as it doesn’t invade a Nato country. By having direct talks with Russia and excluding Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, at least for the time being, Trump has already played on Putin’s sense of vanity, Russian national pride, and Moscow’s long-term sense of being a great power that deserves a seat at the table with the big boys.

. . .

Peace in Ukraine, a reshuffle of alliances in the Middle East, and a new settlement with Russia would allow the United States to return to a version of the original Monroe Doctrine, refocusing on hemispheric defence and freeing Washington up to directly confront Beijing. Having renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, Trump is signalling to China to get out of the US sphere of influence and strategic security perimeter. 

The US would protect the Western Hemisphere – North, Central, and South America, including the surrounding islands. Russia would dominate Eurasia. Europe would look after itself. And with US assistance, Japan, Australia and South Korea would, within a Joint Deterrence Force framework, take the lead in ensuring stability in the Indo-Pacific. 

Could this be Trump’s latest Art of the Deal? We may be about to find out.

More at the link (may be paywalled).

The Telegraph is quite correct.  President Trump can't allow himself to fixate on Ukraine and its problems.  He has to sort out our own country's internal mess and deal with geopolitical issues across Europe, the Middle East, Eurasia and the Far East, all at the same time.  Committing too much US effort to Ukraine would force him to short-change all those other areas . . . to the undoubted pleasure of China, North Korea, Iran and other trouble-makers, who would instantly move to take advantage of such preoccupation elsewhere.

I'm very sorry for the people of Ukraine, who find themselves pawns in a battle of nations and alliances and are bleeding and dying while the politicians wring their hands and search for solutions.  Ukrainians are the real victims here . . . but nobody's talking about them.  They aren't even on the globalists' radar screen.  They're the "little people".  They don't count.

May God have mercy on them.  They're going to need it.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 251

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

Following last weekend's look at dwarf metal, I came across this rather strange piece of heroic fantasy music.  It's certainly metal-ish, and brings in most of the tropes and tales of the genre.  You'll recognize the voice of Christopher Lee as the narrator.  I'm not sure I like it, but it's different enough that I thought I'd let you hear it and make up your own mind.  (If you want the lyrics, they may be found at the video's YouTube page.)

It's . . . well, it's different!

Peter

The two sides of government job cuts

 

Zero Hedge warns that massive job cuts in the federal government may lead to a recession in certain parts of the country.

The Trump administration's epic purge of federal workers is shaping into one of the most significant job cuts in a generation. Early indicators suggest Northern Virginia, Washington, DC, and Maryland may be in the beginning innings of an economic downturn, as jobless claims rise and a surge in active housing listings signals a very ominous outlook.

On Thursday morning, Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo, joined Bloomberg TV, warning, "The consensus expects total DOGE-related job cuts to be 300,000 ... However, studies show that for every federal employee, there are two contractors. As a result, layoffs could potentially be closer to 1 million," Slok noted.

There's more at the link.

I suppose Mr. Slok has a point;  one side of the coin, if you will.  However, the other side of the coin is much more advantageous to all of us.  It's our tax dollars that created and paid for the jobs that are now being cut.  Effectively, they were an unnecessary tax on the entire nation, not just certain areas.  Now that they're being cut, all of us should feel the economic relief from that tax, one way or another.  Quite how that will work out remains to be seen, but I'd much rather remove that economic burden from our budget and use the savings to pay down the national deficit that we've incurred through unnecessary and wasteful spending.

Yes, the Washington D.C. area may slip into local recession with all the job losses that may be incurred.  However, those jobs are the reason why, until now, it was the highest-paid region in the country, with the most expensive houses and other amenities.  Perhaps that will now come back into balance with the rest of us plebs!

Peter

More fallout from the Catholic clergy sex abuse tragedy hits New Orleans

 

I'm not sure how far the news has spread, but the Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans is involved in a fairly significant scandal concerning one of its associated ministries, Second Harvest Food Bank.  Here's a summary from Grok AI, X.com's artificial intelligence system, compiled from several news and commentary sites on the Web.  It seems accurate to me, according to the information at my disposal.

The dispute between New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond and Second Harvest Food Bank centers on a clash over money and control, escalating tensions between the two entities, which had been partners in fighting hunger for over 40 years. The conflict erupted when Aymond, leveraging his authority as the "sole member" under Second Harvest’s bylaws, fired longtime CEO Natalie Jayroe and several board members in late January 2025, replacing them with the archdiocese’s chief financial officer, Dirk Wild, as interim CEO. This dramatic move sparked widespread controversy and allegations about the archdiocese’s intentions.

The core issue stems from claims by the ousted leaders—backed by statements from former board chair Bert Wilson and others—that the archdiocese pressured Second Harvest to contribute up to $16 million to help fund its ongoing bankruptcy, initiated in 2020 to address over 500 clergy sexual abuse claims. These leaders argued that reallocating donor funds, intended solely for combating food insecurity across 23 Louisiana parishes, would violate legal agreements with major donors like Feeding America and the MacKenzie Scott Foundation, which prohibit non-secular expenditures. Second Harvest’s 2024 audit revealed $89 million in net assets, including $32 million in investments, but the former leadership insisted these resources were restricted for feeding the hungry, not settling church liabilities unrelated to the food bank’s mission.

Archbishop Aymond has denied that donor funds were ever used or intended for the bankruptcy, asserting in a February 3, 2025, video statement that “not a single dollar” from Second Harvest donations has gone to anything but its mission. He framed the $16 million figure as a theoretical discussion about Second Harvest buying its independence from the archdiocese, not a direct demand. Aymond also justified the firings by claiming the ousted leaders refused to sign a tolling agreement—meant to shield church affiliates from lawsuits during bankruptcy negotiations—potentially exposing Second Harvest to legal risk. However, former board member Nick Karl disputed this, noting the court-set deadline for the agreement was May 1, not January 31 as Aymond suggested, and that negotiations were ongoing.

The fallout has been intense. Community outrage, reflected in petitions and donor backlash, accuses Aymond of jeopardizing Second Harvest’s integrity and operations, with some, like major donor Morris Bart, threatening legal action to reclaim contributions if funds are diverted. Aymond’s quiet amendment to Second Harvest’s articles of incorporation on January 29, expanding his power to fire leadership “without cause,” further fueled perceptions of a power grab. Meanwhile, a committee is exploring a potential separation of Second Harvest from the archdiocese, though details—like whether it involves the $16 million—remain unclear as of February 27, 2025. The dispute highlights broader tensions between the church’s financial pressures and the food bank’s secular mission, leaving its future uncertain.

This is a tragedy for the food bank, and is likely to further damage the Catholic Church in New Orleans as well.  I don't know exactly why the Archbishop was exerting pressure on Second Harvest to make at least some of its reserves available to the Archdiocese, but I have little doubt that the latter's declaration of bankruptcy in the face of hundreds of claims from child sex abuse survivors is at the root of it.  I've spoken with a couple of clergy acquaintances in the Archdiocese, and they feel the same way about it.  In so many words, the Archdiocese appears desperate for money to pay the claims against it and get back to normal operations, and the reserves of the food bank were probably an irresistible target, given that it's nominally (legally) part of the Archdiocese, although its operations are secular and have (until now) been completely separate from religious affairs.  The Archbishop's most recent statement on the affair appears to sidestep such issues.  Dare one say it's just another case of "follow the money"?

This is yet another example of how the Catholic Church in America has inflicted long-term damage upon itself.  If only the bishops had, way back in the post-World-War-II era, insisted upon orthodoxy of faith, and imposed strict discipline upon the selection of candidates for the priesthood and their education in seminaries, the problem would have been far smaller and more manageable.  (It can never be eradicated completely, unfortunately, because human beings remain sinners, and one can't detect all of them in time to stop the damage from their sins.  Inevitably, some will slip through the screening - but in this case, the entire screening process appears to have become infected by the very sins - and sinners - it was supposed to detect and exclude.)  Since that was not done, the damage incurred was vastly greater, and it continues to have repercussions to this day.  Furthermore, a number of those who became clergy during the "evil years" are still in office, and continue to do damage (just look at the isolated, but well-publicized cases of priest abusers that continue to be unmasked to this day).  One might go so far as to say that the Catholic Church has abdicated its moral authority, to such an extent that it no longer possesses any in the eyes of much of the world.

I fear that, no matter how this issue is ultimately resolved, it will further damage the Catholic Church in the eyes of many of the faithful.  I know that a very large proportion of Catholics have stopped donating to the Church, because of unease about how their donations will be used, and I expect that problem will grow exponentially worse in southern Louisiana after this news.  I could wish with all my heart that the Archdiocese had left the food bank severely alone, and not tried to change anything . . . but the allure of millions of dollars in donations and reserves was probably irresistible, given the Archdiocese's bankruptcy declaration.  Sadly, the food bank is now likely to lose support from outside, non-Catholic sources who were happy to support secular food aid, but are not willing (or, in some cases, legally able) to support a religious enterprise.  That's going to directly impact up to about four hundred thousand people who depend on the food bank on a more or less regular basis.

I hope something can be done to compensate those dismissed by the Archbishop because they would not conform to his views.  They've contributed decades of their lives to their work, and to be summarily fired for reasons totally unrelated to the food bank's primary operations must have been a terrible blow.  Do they have pensions?  If they have suffered financial loss or hardship, will the Church make good those costs?  So far, nobody is talking about any of that.

What a mess . . . and the only winner might be said to be the devil himself.

Peter

That's why half the country feels like our leaders have abandoned us - and why President Trump won the election

 

The Wall Street Journal pointed out earlier this week that "The U.S. Economy Depends More Than Ever on Rich People".

[Rich] consumers now account for 49.7% of all spending, a record in data going back to 1989, according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics. Three decades ago, they accounted for about 36%.

All this means that economic growth is unusually reliant on rich Americans continuing to shell out. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, estimated that spending by the top 10% alone accounted for almost one-third of gross domestic product.

Between September 2023 and September 2024, the high earners increased their spending by 12%. Spending by working-class and middle-class households, meanwhile, dropped over the same period.

. . .

Taken together, well-off people have increased their spending far beyond inflation, while everyone else hasn’t. The bottom 80% of earners spent 25% more than they did four years earlier, barely outpacing price increases of 21% over that period. The top 10% spent 58% more.

There's more at the link.

That sharp divide in the economy shows up in many ways, not least in our politics.  I daresay most conservative Americans are in the "bottom half" of the country, economically speaking - with shining exceptions like Elon Musk, of course.  If you look at most of the progressive left, they live in larger cities with larger incomes, and react to the nation and the world from within that "economic cocoon" that shelters them from the harsher reality many of us face.  I daresay the readers of this blog average rather less than six-figure incomes every year.

I've lived from hand to mouth, from paycheck to paycheck.  When you're worrying about where the baby's next meal will come from, or juggling rent and a car payment, or having to give up holiday plans because you simply can't afford them any more . . . it gives you a radically different perspective on the economy and on our nation than those who can blithely wave a credit card and do as they please.

The news that the Biden administration was paying illegal migrants far more per month than Social Security recipients added more fuel to the fire of resentment and outrage;  and that boiled over when we learn that disaster victims in North Carolina were being abandoned to their own resources by FEMA because all of the money allocated for that purpose had been redirected to assist illegal migrants.  To make matters even worse, most of that money came from borrowing rather than income, leaving us with the biggest national debt in the nation's history - one our children's children will probably still be struggling to repay.  You may be sure that outrage was a major contributing factor to President Trump's electoral victory last year.

The most worrying thing is that our political elites largely appear to ignore this reality.  Just look at the budget debates going on in the Republican Party right now.  So few of our politicians need to exercise care in managing their money that they ignore the perspective of those of us who do.  There's a breakdown in understanding, in perception.  The politicians seemingly can't resist spending money we don't have.  I'd like nothing more than a balanced budget law (or even better, a Constitutional amendment), specifying that our national budget must balance income and expenditure before it can be passed, and that any loans required to balance it may be no greater than a (very small) percentage or proportion of the total budget, and must be paid off in full before new loans can be authorized.  Obviously, national emergencies (disasters, wars, etc.) might be grounds to suspend the balanced budget requirement for a period, but this should be limited as far as possible.

What say you, friends?

Peter

Ouch!

 

J. K. Rowling is hated by the progressive left for her refusal to approve of genderism and the transgender cult.  Fortunately, she's not afraid to speak up for her beliefs, and can hit back with acid humor when needed.  Yesterday:

Love it!

Peter

Yes, laughter is the best medicine

 

Those of us old farts who remember the Pink Panther movies will recall with glee the constant battles between Chief Inspector Dreyfus and Inspector Clouseau.

Here's a compilation of most of their to-ings and fro-ings - not all, but some of the best.  It had me laughing out loud at several points.

I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.

Peter

Fifteen minutes of insight and exposition

 

Last Monday I mentioned Glenn Beck's analysis of the Deep State's "money trail".  He used analysis from Datarepublican to illustrate the incestuous links between various NGO's and each other, and between them and State organs such as USAID, whereby taxpayer dollars were distributed wholesale to causes and activities that were clearly way outside US priorities.

Yesterday, digging deeper, I learned that Mr. Beck has just interviewed the lady known as Datarepublican.  They spent 15 minutes discussing what's been going on, and how the links now being uncovered between departments of state and NGO's are redefining what we know about corruption and misuse of taxpayer funds.  It's very interesting, and well worth your time.

All this should have been known years ago, of course.  The only reason it hasn't is that the mainstream media have ignored their job of investigative reporting, and helped to conceal all this chicanery and deception.  Today, thanks to the Internet, President Trump, D.O.G.E. and millions of concerned citizens, the truth is coming out, and the mainstream media are powerless to stop it (although they're doing their best, I'm sure).  I daresay it'll take years to analyze it all, but please God we'll get it done in the end.

It's been claimed (albeit from a source I've generally considered unreliable and untrustworthy) that:

Algorithms created by the United States Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have finally achieved what they are calling "God Mode" access to every Executive Branch Agency spending system.

Algorithms are now inside all the Executive Branch systems actively tracing ALL transactions, cataloguing all the requisite information, and creating output files for Executive (Presidential) Review.

No expenditure of money can be hidden by vast networks of "pass-throughs" as was possible for the past fifty years.. No bank account destinations can be shielded anymore.

There's more at the link.

For once, I hope that source is accurate!

Peter

Yet another boondoggle

 

For the benefit of overseas readers who may not have heard of it:

The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) is a national trade union center that is the largest federation of unions in the United States. It is made up of 61 national and international unions, together representing nearly 15 million active and retired workers. The AFL-CIO engages in substantial political spending and activism, typically in support of progressive and pro-labor policies.

"Progressive" is right . . . the AFL-CIO and its member unions have consistently advocated for pro-labor, anti-capital positions, and have actively sought to organize workers in many other countries.  Unfortunately, it looks like they were doing so by illicitly using US taxpayer dollars to fund their operations.

The American taxpayer should not be subsidizing an international NGO that serves as the global arm of a partisan U.S. labor union. Yet, through an intricate web of grants, bureaucratic allocations, and foreign assistance programs, millions of taxpayer dollars flow directly into the coffers of the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center, an entity functionally indistinguishable from the union itself. This relationship is not only improper; it is a textbook example of a conflict of interest—one that permits an ideologically driven labor federation to extend its influence under the auspices of U.S. democracy promotion while working against the very interests of the American worker.

The Solidarity Center is not a neutral NGO pursuing disinterested humanitarian labor reform. It is, in reality, an extension of the AFL-CIO, created and staffed by the very same individuals who dictate the federation’s domestic agenda. The leadership structure reveals this plainly: the chair of the Solidarity Center’s board is none other than the AFL-CIO president. The Center’s policies, hiring, and operations mirror those of the union itself. This is not a loosely affiliated advocacy group that happens to share an ideological affinity with the AFL-CIO—it is a fully integrated arm of the same organization, masquerading as an independent NGO to secure government funding.

Consider the implications of this arrangement. If a politically aligned, privately run trade union can establish a non-governmental organization that then siphons taxpayer money under the guise of promoting “labor democracy,” the result is a system in which the federal government is effectively underwriting the union’s political ambitions abroad. This dynamic is especially troubling given that the AFL-CIO, like all labor unions, exists to serve a narrow set of economic interests—those of its leadership, its dues-paying members, and its preferred political allies. When the AFL-CIO lobbies for policies that increase unionization rates or protect entrenched labor privileges, it does so in direct opposition to large segments of the American workforce—especially independent contractors, small business owners, and workers in right-to-work states who have chosen not to unionize. The Solidarity Center allows these domestic priorities to be exported under the banner of international development, reinforcing the power of organized labor with government assistance.

Moreover, the funding pipeline that sustains the Solidarity Center is largely opaque. The Center’s operations rely almost entirely on U.S. government grants—more than 96% of its funding comes from agencies like USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the U.S. Department of Labor. This is not an organization sustained by voluntary contributions from like-minded donors; rather, it is a taxpayer-funded project that continues to receive tens of millions of dollars in federal grants despite its direct alignment with a partisan domestic institution. There is no meaningful oversight mechanism that prevents these funds from being used to advance AFL-CIO interests rather than genuine labor reform abroad. Even more troubling, there is little transparency about how funds are spent in the dozens of countries where the Solidarity Center operates.

There's more at the link.

Isn't it nice to know (NOT!) that our taxes have been wasted on such activities, rather than spent on things that this country really needs?

I'm beginning to think that Elon Musk's early estimate that D.O.G.E. might be able to find up to $2 trillion in wasted and/or fraudulent and/or unnecessary expenditure might be conservative.  He and his team have been at work for only a few days longer than a month, yet already they're uncovering such problems left, right and center.  I understand that so far, they've clawed back wasteful expenditure amounting to well over $100 billion, with perhaps as much again on their radar for further investigation - and they haven't even started to get into the really big candidates for fraud and abuse, such as Defense, Medicare/aid and Social Security.  Here, just for interest, is what they announced yesterday among their latest "recoveries":

Meanwhile, one hopes that this little shenanigan by the AFL-CIO will be nipped in the bud, right smartly.  I'm also looking forward to learning just how much money was spent on progressive left-wing NGO's and their allies over the years.  To name just one example, the innocuously-named but Soros-affiliated East-West Management Institute is said to have received over $270 million in US taxpayer funds from USAID, with a further $90 million obligated through various contracts.  That's not small change!  How does funding to the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center compare over the same period?

Peter

I hadn't thought about this road hazard...

 

From American Truckers on X.com, we learn this.  Click the image for a larger, readable view.

I don't regularly drive on ice and snow (thank you, Texas weather!), but from my (very) limited exposure to it, I know I don't do well under those driving conditions.  I'd never considered the hazards of commercial vehicles, particularly 18-wheeler truck/trailer combinations, when their drivers have the same problem.  Now that drivers can come in from Mexico (where snow isn't exactly commonplace, to put it mildly) and drive all the way to the US/Canadian border or even further north, I can see that would make for . . . interesting times on the highway.

How about you, readers?  Have any of you run into this problem (hopefully not literally!)?  If so, please tell us about it in Comments.  It might help keep all of us safer on the road.

Peter

This is not only morally sickening, it's a criminal misuse of taxpayer dollars

 

British apologist G. K. Chesterton is renowned for the premise that "The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything".  He never used those exact words, but several times in his writings that principle is clearly stated.

We've just been shown another example of what happens when human beings decide there's nothing Divine in which to believe, and that therefore anything goes.  This time it's in our intelligence services.

The “intelligence community” is one of the most powerful parts of the American national security apparatus. In theory, it works tirelessly to keep the nation safe. But according to internal documents that we obtained, some intelligence agency employees have another on-the-job priority: sex chats.

We have cultivated sources within the National Security Agency—one current employee and one former employee—who have provided chat logs from the NSA’s Intelink messaging program. According to an NSA press official, “All NSA employees sign agreements stating that publishing non-mission related material on Intelink is a usage violation and will result in disciplinary action.” Nonetheless, these logs, dating back two years, are lurid, featuring wide-ranging discussions of sex, kink, polyamory, and castration.

. . .

These revelations come at a moment of heightened scrutiny for the intelligence community. President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have each made the case that the intelligence agencies have gone “woke,” prioritizing left-wing activism over national security. These chat logs confirm their suspicions and raise fundamental questions about competence and professionalism.

According to our sources, the sex chats were legitimized as part of the NSA’s commitment to “diversity, equity and inclusion.” Activists within the agency used LGBTQ+ “employee resource groups” to turn their kinks and pathologies into official work duties. According to the current NSA employee, these groups “spent all day" recruiting activists and holding meetings with titles such as “Privilege,” “Ally Awareness,” “Pride,” and “Transgender Community Inclusion.” And they did so with the full support of NSA leadership, which declared that DEI was “not only mission critical, but mission imperative.”

In this case, “diversity” was not a byword for racialism, but rather a euphemism for sex talk.

There's more at the link, much of it a lot more explicit than the excerpts I published above.  Read at your own risk.

As the article points out, this is a violation of policy and a disciplinary offense;  but that didn't stop those involved from discarding every rule and regulation and indulging their, shall we say, baser natures.  I doubt very much whether any of them adhere to any major religious belief (except perhaps Satanism), because their attitude and conduct transgresses the moral teaching of every such religion of which I'm aware.  I think this is a very clear example of believing in themselves and what feels good, rather than a higher power and what is morally or philosophically good.

There are those who say that doesn't matter;  that such individuals can't be blackmailed or shamed into providing intelligence to foreign powers and enemies of our country, because nowadays society accepts their ways and nobody cares any more.  Allow me to assure you, that's not the case.  Firstly, society isn't nearly as open across the country as it is in a few selected areas where people with such tendencies have chosen to congregate.  Secondly, even those who cast discretion to the winds and throw themselves wholeheartedly into such a lifestyle still don't want to lose people in their lives who are important to them - parents, siblings, close friends - but who may not accept or tolerate their lifestyle.  They can be embarrassed or shamed into cooperating with such enemies.  I know it.  As chaplain in a high-security penitentiary, one comes across . . . I won't say "is exposed to" for fear of misunderstandings . . . one comes across such people from time to time, serving years, even decades behind bars because their misdeeds and "secret lives" finally caught up with them.  They're pretty miserable critters, let me assure you.  I doubt very much that they'd tell you it was all worth it.

I hope and trust that everyone involved in this perversion will be identified, tracked down, and disciplined to the fullest possible extent, and will also lose their security clearances and associated career prospects.  I don't say that out of a spirit of vengefulness, but because I want to minimize any further damage they might do to our country, and end any they may already have done.  For those of us who are people of faith - any faith - I also suggest that we pray for those involved, because if anyone needs repentance and conversion, they do!

Peter

EDITED TO ADD:  Jeff Childers has some trenchant thoughts on the matter.

The response was swift, not to say coordinated. Within hours, Director Gabbard roundly condemned the spooks’ sexy chatting:

It used to be that harboring bizarre sexual kinks and revolting fetishes was an automatic disqualifier for top-secret clearance. Standards have obviously fallen faster than Senator McConnell navigating a steep marble stairway. I would go farther than most and suggest these concupiscient chatterers probably suffer from diagnosable mental illnesses, which apparently was a pathway to advancement in the Biden Administration’s intelligence agencies.

. . .

It was a devastating, carefully calculated takedown. Frankly, it explains a lot. But in the battlefield of public perception, this grotesque disclosure of what the NSA’s disobedient employees have been doing in secret will justify nearly any change that Tulsi Gabbard needs to make to reorganize the intelligence agencies.

This might be remembered as the moment when the public finally glimpsed the rot festering behind the glass and concrete walls of the intelligence fortress. A glimpse raising an even bigger, more uncomfortable question: If this is what we’re allowed to see—what’s still hidden?

There's more at the link.

That's a very good question, isn't it?

The money-laundering trail

 

I've never been a fan of Glenn Beck, but now and again he comes up with a very interesting insight or analysis of what's going on.  He's just taken a look at the flow of money from the "Deep State", quite legally through Congressional approval, to layer after layer of non-government organizations (NGO's).  He accurately calls it money laundering.

Take a look at this video.  It's only twelve minutes long, and very informative.

This is what's being revealed by D.O.G.E.'s "deep dive" into government expenditure.  We're finding tax dollars popping up in all sorts of unexpected (and inappropriate) areas.  Independent analysts like Datarepublican on X are taking that raw data, running it through spreadsheets and AI programs, and uncovering the trail of a tax dollar from place to place and organization to organization.  It's a long, complex process, and it's nowhere near complete yet.  It'll take months to uncover the money trail . . . but it must be done if we're to deep-six the Deep State.

Don't get impatient with the process if there are no new earth-shattering revelations, the way there were in the first couple of weeks of President Trump's term.  The process goes on, and digs deeper and deeper every day.  My worry is that the impatient American public will get bored with waiting, and demand something new and exciting every day.  That's unlikely to happen.  Instead, I suspect that after six months to a year, we're going to see a very, very large organization chart appear, tracing the links between all sorts of organizations.  There will also be flowcharts (or equivalents) showing how tax dollars made their way from government to private organizations, and why, and what they did with it.

I think we're also going to see just how much money certain congressional representatives and Senators have directed to their favored causes, and how much of that has come back to them in so-called "kickbacks" or "consulting fees" or "donations to re-election expenses".  I wonder how many of our legislators will face criminal charges as a result?  I won't be surprised to learn the number reaches into three figures.

That, of course, means that legislators (and their allies in the mainstream media) will be frantic to shut down the investigations, or mislead them, before they can be identified as guilty parties.  It's going to be like a cockroach-infested kitchen in the small hours of the morning when the light is suddenly switched on.  The panic and scurrying for cover of our political insects - on both sides of the aisle - should be epic . . .

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 250

 

A quarter of a millennium (numerically, not annually) of memes!

As always, gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

Ever heard of "dwarf metal"?

The question almost isn’t “Did you know there was such a thing as Dwarf Metal” but rather “How did it take so long for this to come into being?”

Like mithril forming under the earth’s crust, Dwarf Metal (also referred to as Dwarven Metal) began in the mind of young Francesco Cavalieri, from Pontedera, Italy. Growing up on a steady diet of Tolkien, World of Warcraft, and MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball, Cavalieri and his mates found a way to combine all their loves into a completely unique metal sub-genre.

. . .

Looking for a way to “stand out from the crowd,” Cavalieri and his bandmates tapped into their other childhood obsessions. “I played World of Warcraft. And then the Lord of the Rings movies were released in 2001. These years changed my life,” says Cavalieri. “I realized that I wanted to be a warrior!”

The band—now called Wind Rose after the way of graphically presenting wind and weather conditions for use in navigation—started out as a progressive power metal band, keeping its true intentions hidden while they established their cred.

. . .

Cavalieri, along with bandmates Claudio Falconcini (guitar), Federico Meranda (keyboards), Cristiano Bertocchi (bass), and Federico Gatti (drums), then began honing their stage presentation, enlisting the help of LARP costume-makers to create their dwarven armor. However, they quickly realized they needed to find a middle ground between cosplay and actual battle-ready armaments. “You see these people at Blizzcon and Comic Con with just the most beautiful armor,” says Cavalieri. “But it’s too big and fragile for us to use onstage. It’s not made for our kind of work!”

Wind Rose then recorded a cover of a 2010 parody song called “Diggy Diggy Hole,” written by UK-based comedy podcast YOGSCAST. The original song reached 50 million people worldwide on YouTube, and Cavalieri saw it as a way to give the band more visibility and show that they have a sense of humor about what they’re doing. “It’s a song about dwarfs! And it’s a funny song we can have some fun playing onstage.”

There's more at the link.  Interesting reading.

We've played that original version of "Diggy Diggy Hole" here before, as well as Wind Rose's original version of it.  In case you've forgotten, here's how it started.

Knowing that background, I was nevertheless amazed to see Wind Rose perform the song live as their closing number at the Legends Of Rock 2024 concert in Villena, Spain, in front of thousands of cheering metal fans complete with a circular mosh pit.  The original composers of the song could surely never have dreamed of this!

Still recovering from that last one, I found that Wind Rose had gone so far as to record a combined metal/disco/techno remix of "Diggy Diggy Hole" during the COVID lockdown a few years ago.  I've never encountered that mixture before, and I'm not sure I want to again:  but, for posterity and completeness, here it is.

There you are - a uniquely "underground music" start to your Sunday!

Peter

Heh

 

Found on Gab:

A Coolidge anecdote is that at a state fair, Mrs. Coolidge and her party came across an exhibit of chickens. The man who owned the chickens informed Mrs. Coolidge, “That rooster can perform his services six or seven times a day,” to which Mrs. Coolidge replied, “See to it that the President is given that information!”

When President Coolidge came to the same exhibit sometime later, the owner told him, “Mrs. Coolidge wanted me to tell you that that rooster can perform his services six or seven times a day.” Coolidge thought for a moment and then asked, “Same chicken every time?” to which the owner said, “No, Mr. President, different chickens.”

Coolidge then said, “See to it that Mrs. Coolidge is given that information!”

Peter

Larry Correia brings the smackdown to wannabe auditors

 

The inimitable Larry Correia, best-selling author and friend, has written another outstanding (and rather profane) rant against those who presume to know what's involved in an audit, such as those currently being conducted of the operations of government administration.  (Being a chartered accountant and a forensic auditor, he knows whereof he speaks.)  Here are some excerpts.

Watching everybody I know on the left pontificating about the proper way to conduct audits, after getting their accounting degrees from the University of Internet this week, is absolute cringe for me.

Guys, listen, I say this with love… You don’t know **** about **** and it’s fucking embarrassing. Just stop. You sound like idiots.

So now, as a guy who used to be an auditor, who has defended companies from dozens of audits from different government agencies, I’ll try to correct some of your incredibly stupid NPC talking points you keep endlessly barfing up.

. . .

But but but Elon is posting things on Twitter that aren’t 100% perfectly accurate according to liberal fact checkers from liberal news organizations which up until recently have been receiving large amounts of tax payer money for phony baloney reasons!

So what?

The stuff that’s been made public so far is what’s called findings. Findings aren’t the final report. That takes time. And you’ll probably never see those final reports because again, say it with me, INTERNAL. The only way you’ll ever see the complete detailed final report for any given agency is Donald Trump feels like it. Same as any CEO can drop whatever internal company info he feels like.

But DOGE is going TOO FAST! Well no ****. They are on a tight time frame. The republicans control everything right now (barely, and many of them are every bit as corrupt as the dems) only the government is ******* huge, Trump got elected on cutting it, and mid terms are in two years.

. . .

The time for a gentle, caring, measured (slow), careful pruning of government to only remove the bad tissue with a scalpel was generations ago. We are now at the axe and TQ time before the patient dies. Yeah, that sucks, but that’s what happens when you procrastinate going to the doctors while a cancerous tumor the size of a ******* watermelon grows out your back.

. . .

Will government programs you like get cut? Absolutely. Will this suck for a lot of people? Yes. Will good hard working employees get cut along with the legions of useless ******* dregs? Yup. Is this still necessary so our entire nation doesn’t collapse into utter dog **** under the weight of the all consuming federal leviathan, where to survive we huddle in the ruins eating rats cooked over piles of burning dollar bills? Also yes.

They’re called budget cuts because they hurt. If they were pleasant they would be called budget tickles.

. . .

If a company’s records were full of broken bullshit, the government would assume the worst, fine the ever living **** out of you, and possibly send you to jail. Because the government’s default assumption when a company’s books are all ****** up is that it is on purpose to hide fraud.

Except when our government’s books are filled with things like 30 million dollars to fund a Transsexual Peruvian Orchestra, and 99% of that money never made it out of northern Virginia, we’re supposed to assume that’s just nice fluffy goodness, and HOW DARE YOU assume there’s anything dishonest going on.

There's more at the link.

Refer to this morning's cartoon for the likely, devoutly-to-be-wished consequences of such audits . . .

Peter