Sunday, January 22, 2023

Last Call For Documenting Both Sides

With news that a voluntary Justice Department search of President Biden's Delaware residence turned up more classified documents from when Biden was a Delaware senator, the effort to paint Biden's full cooperation as worse than Trump's year-plus long cavalcade of lies, mistruths, and efforts to illegally keep hundreds of documents is underway in our "liberal" press, and the latest polling is showing that it's working as intended.

Strong majorities of Americans believe that both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump acted inappropriately when it came to their handling of classified documents, but in weighing their severity, a plurality of the public believes Trump's actions were more serious, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds.

Over three-quarters of the public, 77%, feel that Trump acted inappropriately in the way he handled classified files, while 64%, say the same of Biden. Condemnation expectedly aligns along party lines, with 96% of Democrats saying that Trump's handling of classified documents was not appropriate compared to 47% of Republicans.

More than eight in 10 independents (83%), believe that Trump's behavior was inappropriate, per the ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel.

Reaction to Biden's actions on this matter similarly varies by party, with 89% of Republicans saying that Biden's handling of classified documents was not appropriate compared to 38% of Democrats and two-thirds of independents (66%).

Both Biden and Trump are under heavy scrutiny due to the discovery of classified files located amid personal items or in unsecured facilities, instead of housed at the National Archives where they belong, though there are key differences in each case.

Earlier this month, reports revealed that a small number of such documents were found in November at an office Biden kept in Washington, D.C. More documents have since been found in his Wilmington, Delaware, home.

The White House maintains that aides immediately contacted the Archives upon learning of the Biden documents and are cooperating fully with the Department of Justice. Trump, on the other hand, faces allegations from the DOJ of obstruction of justice, after his team allegedly left out key details and made multiple unfounded or false claims with investigators during initial efforts to retrieve classified documents stored in his Mar-a-Lago home.

Both now face special counsel investigations appointed by the Justice Department.

The poll was conducted before the Saturday revelation that DOJ investigators found additional classified documents after a consensual FBI search of Biden's Delaware home.
 
As a result, the Villagers have already declared Biden's 2024 run dead and buried, and are openly speculating on whether or not That Horrible Cackling Bitch Kamala Harris™ will even bother to run.
 
Republicans seem to think this is a plot to force Biden out of office and are counting the days before his resignation...after his inevitable impeachment.

A lot of people have decided that Biden and Harris are done.

I'm not one of them, of course. Biden followed the law.

Trump still hasn't.

That's the difference.


 

Welcome To Gunmerica, Con't

Kids have to be taught to hate, and kids have to be taught to shoot, too. Of course the Virginia elementary school teacher shot by a first-grade MAGA kid who brought one of his family's many, many firearms to school had her pleas that the kid was a time bomb ignored.
 
The Virginia teacher who was shot by a 6-year-old student repeatedly asked administrators for help with the boy but officials downplayed educators’ warnings about his behavior, including dismissing his threat to light a teacher on fire and watch her die, according to messages from teachers obtained by The Washington Post.

The previously unreported incidents raise fresh questions about how Richneck Elementary School in Newport News handled the troubled student before police say he shot Abigail Zwerner as she taught her first-grade class earlier this month. Authorities have called the shooting “intentional” but are still investigating the motive.

Many parents are already outraged over Richneck officials’ management of events before the shooting. Newport News Superintendent George Parker III has said school officials got a tip the boy had a gun that day and searched his backpack, but that staffers never found the weapon before authorities say the 6-year-old shot Zwerner. Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew said his department was not contacted about the report that the boy had a weapon before the shooting.

Police and school officials have repeatedly declined to answer questions about the boy’s disciplinary issues or worrisome behaviors the 6-year-old may have exhibited and how school officials responded, citing the child’s age and the ongoing law enforcement investigation. The boy’s family said in a statement he has an “acute disability,” but James Ellenson, an attorney for the family, declined to comment on accounts of the boy’s behavior or how it was handled by the school.

School district spokeswoman Michelle Price said in a phone interview late Friday that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law protecting students’ privacy, prohibits her from releasing information related to the 6-year-old.

“I cannot share any information in a child’s educational record,” she said. “A lot of what you’re asking is part of the child’s educational record, and it’s also a matter of an ongoing police investigation and an internal school investigation. Unfortunately, some of these details I’m not even privy to.”

Screenshots of a conversation held online between school employees and Parker shortly after the shooting show educators claiming that Zwerner raised alarms about the 6-year-old and sought assistance during the school year.

“she had asked for help,” one staffer wrote in that chat, referring to Zwerner.

“several times,” came another message.

“Yes she did.”

“two hours prior”

“all year.”

The messages, which were provided to The Post by the spouse of a Richneck Elementary schoolteacher, do not detail what specific assistance Zwerner sought, or to whom she directed her requests. Zwerner and her family have not returned repeated messages from The Washington Post.
 
Again, this battle was lost ten years ago at Sandy Hook. If anything, guns in schools are far more prevalent today, because America fucking refuses to do anything about it, and anything we try gets blocked by the gun fetishists.
 
Even at the cost of kids' lives.
 
They all want to be Kyle Rittenhouse. They all want to kill liberals and get away with murder in "self-defense". 

And they won't be stopped by asking nicely.

Sunday Long Read: Charlie And The Great Class Excavator

This week's Sunday Long Read comes from the NY Times's Rob Lieber, who brings us yet another colossal Millennial con, the story of how 30-year-old Charlie Javice took the mighty JP Morgan Chase to the cleaners for $175 million dollar investment in her entirely fake college financial planning empire.


When JPMorgan Chase paid $175 million to acquire a college financial planning company called Frank in September 2021, it heralded the “unique opportunity for deeper engagement” with the five million students Frank worked with at more than 6,000 American institutions of higher education.

Then last month, the biggest bank in the country did something extraordinary: It said it had been conned.

In a lawsuit, JPMorgan claimed that Frank’s young founder, Charlie Javice, had engaged in an elaborate scheme to stuff that list of five million customers with fakery.

“To cash in, Javice decided to lie,” the suit said. “Including lying about Frank’s success, Frank’s size and the depth of Frank’s market penetration.” Ms. Javice, through her lawyer, has said the bank’s claims are untrue.

JPMorgan’s legal filing reads like pulp nonfiction, with jaw-dropping accusations. Among them: that Ms. Javice and Olivier Amar, Frank’s chief growth and acquisition officer, faked their customer list and hired a data science professor to help pull the wool over the eyes of the bank’s due-diligence team.

What JPMorgan mostly left out, however, is the story of how Ms. Javice found herself in a nine-figure negotiation with the bank in the first place.

When Frank was born, in 2016, Ms. Javice was 24 years old, displayed great media savvy and claimed to have real-world experience with financial aid and the struggle to pay for college. “It’s grueling, it’s emotional,” she told The Daily Pennsylvanian, a student newspaper at the University of Pennsylvania, adding that her mother would frequently cry while talking to financial aid officers.

Ms. Javice’s personal story — and pledge to cut through the painful thicket of government forms, jargon and regulations surrounding the aid process — must have made compelling reading for angel investors and venture capitalists. Especially those who have little firsthand knowledge of how financial aid actually works.

By promising to help users file financial aid forms more quickly and easily — and deliver billions in savings to teenagers who needed help — her business plan had the halo of doing well while doing good. It eventually added a dot-org web address for good measure.

“I thought it would be an advocacy organization,” said Carly Gillis, who was Frank’s director of content and community for several months in 2018. “A real David and Goliath story.”

At least some of its good deeds, however, may never have been done or were at least highly exaggerated. When many people were still home during the pandemic, Frank started offering “amazing prices” for online classes that earned “real college credits.” This past week, however, schools that appeared on Frank’s website with hundreds of supposedly available courses expressed confusion in interviews about their presence on the site during that period. At one school, nobody had ever even heard of the company.

Ms. Javice’s story is an archetypal tale of late-stage start-up hustle culture — a teenage prodigy turned Ivy League social enterprise maven and shape-shifting savior of higher education.

Or so she would have the world believe.
 
Now, this is a story of nine-figure fraud and corporate greed on a fantastic level, all made possible by a completely broken higher education system that preys on the least wealthy and most needful of us.
 
But I can't be completely furious with Javice, as she absolutely fucked JP Morgan Chase over for $175 big ones, and it couldn't have happened to a shittier bank (except maybe Wells Fargo.) 

I'm really kind of cool with that.