G. Gordon Liddy, 1930-2021 (R.I.P.)

Gordon Liddy has passed away.

I'll just note, briefly, that Liddy was, of course, one of the MAJOR figures in the Watergate scandal, a topic I cover every semester, and teach the history of which, during my week of coverage on the presidency in my POLSC 1 classes. And of note, while Liddy himself has been really no interest to me all these years, the Watergate scandal has been. You see, in my very first "Introduction to American Politics Class," at Saddleback College, in 1986, our professor had all students read two books (besides the required textbook), and students were required to write a review and analysis of their chosen books, and I read two by the late, great American journalistic icon, Teddy White, who was, perhaps, one of the most important chroniclers of the Watergate scandal. These two tomes were, The Making of the President 1960, and Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon, both of which I still have copies sitting on my bookshelf; and which, especially the latter, I read parts thereof, from time to time (especially when similar such scandals erupt in current politics, and I need to "get a grip" and perspective on things).

In any case, read the obituary, at the New York Times (with video here, featuring Judy Woodruff, at the P.B.S. News Hour, who is not a "newbie," and would actually know something about what happened back then), "G. Gordon Liddy, Mastermind Behind Watergate Burglary, Dies at 90":

G. Gordon Liddy, a cloak-and-dagger lawyer who masterminded dirty tricks for the White House and concocted the bungled burglary that led to the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in 1974, died on Tuesday in Mount Vernon, Va. He was 90.

His death, at the home of his daughter Alexandra Liddy Bourne, was confirmed by his son Thomas P. Liddy, who said that his father had Parkinson’s disease and had been in declining health.

Decades after Watergate entered the lexicon, Mr. Liddy was still an enigma in the cast of characters who fell from grace with the 37th president — to some a patriot who went silently to prison refusing to betray his comrades, to others a zealot who cashed in on bogus celebrity to become an author and syndicated talk show host.

As a leader of a White House “plumbers” unit set up to plug information leaks, and then as a strategist for the president’s re-election campaign, Mr. Liddy helped devise plots to discredit Nixon “enemies” and to disrupt the 1972 Democratic National Convention. Most were far-fetched — bizarre kidnappings, acts of sabotage, traps using prostitutes, even an assassination — and were never carried out.

But Mr. Liddy, a former F.B.I. agent, and E. Howard Hunt, a former C.I.A. agent, engineered two break-ins at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex in Washington. On May 28, 1972, as Mr. Liddy and Mr. Hunt stood by, six Cuban expatriates and James W. McCord Jr., a Nixon campaign security official, went in, planted bugs, photographed documents and got away cleanly.

A few weeks later, on June 17, four Cubans and Mr. McCord, wearing surgical gloves and carrying walkie-talkies, returned to the scene and were caught by the police. Mr. Liddy and Mr. Hunt, running the operation from a Watergate hotel room, fled but were soon arrested and indicted on charges of burglary, wiretapping and conspiracy.

In the context of 1972, with Mr. Nixon’s triumphal visit to China and a steam-rolling presidential campaign that soon crushed the Democrat, Senator George S. McGovern, the Watergate case looked inconsequential at first. Mr. Nixon’s press secretary, Ron Ziegler, dismissed it as a “third-rate burglary.”

But it deepened a White House cover-up that had begun in 1971, when Mr. Liddy and Mr. Hunt broke into the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, looking for damaging information on him. Over the next two years, the cover-up unraveled under pressure of investigations, trials, hearings and headlines into the worst political scandal — and the first resignation by a sitting president — in the nation’s history.

Unlike the other Watergate defendants, Mr. Liddy refused to testify about his activities for the White House or the Committee to Re-elect the President, and drew the longest term among those who went to prison. He was sentenced by Judge John J. Sirica to 6 to 20 years, but served only 52 months. President Jimmy Carter commuted his term in 1977.

“I have lived as I believed I ought to have lived,” Mr. Liddy, a small dapper man with a baldish pate and a brushy mustache, told reporters after his release. He said he had no regrets and would do it again. “When the prince approaches his lieutenant, the proper response of the lieutenant to the prince is, ‘Fiat voluntas tua,’” he said, using the Latin of the Lord’s Prayer for “Thy will be done.”

Disbarred from law practice and in debt for $300,000, mostly for legal fees, Mr. Liddy began a new career as a writer. His first book, “Out of Control,” (1979) was a spy thriller. He later wrote another novel, “The Monkey Handlers” (1990), and a nonfiction book, “When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country” (2002). He also co-wrote a guide to fighting terrorism, “Fight Back! Tackling Terrorism, Liddy Style” (2006), and produced many articles on politics, taxes, health and other matters.

In 1980, he broke his silence on Watergate with his autobiography, “Will.” The reviews were mixed, but it became a best seller. After years of revelations by other Watergate conspirators, there was little new in it about the scandal, but critics said his account of prison life was graphic. A television movie based on the book was aired in 1982 by NBC.

Mr. Liddy found himself in demand on the college-lecture circuit. In 1982 he teamed with Timothy Leary, the 1960s LSD guru, for campus debates that were edited into a documentary film, “Return Engagement.” The title referred to an encounter in 1966, when Mr. Liddy, as a prosecutor in Dutchess County, N.Y., joined a raid on a drug cult in which Mr. Leary was arrested.

In the 1980s, Mr. Liddy dabbled in acting, appearing on “Miami Vice” and in other television and film roles. But he was better known later as a syndicated talk-radio host with a right-wing agenda. “The G. Gordon Liddy Show,” begun in 1992, was carried on hundreds of stations by Viacom and later Radio America, with satellite hookups and internet streaming. It ran until his retirement in 2012. He lived in Fort Washington, Md.

Mr. Liddy, who promoted nutritional supplements and exercised, was still trim in his 70s. He made parachute jumps, took motorcycle trips, collected guns, played a piano and sang lieder. His website showed him craggy-faced with head held high, an American flag and the Capitol dome in the background.

George Gordon Battle Liddy was born on Nov. 30, 1930, in Brooklyn to Sylvester J. and Maria (Abbaticchio) Liddy. He grew up in Hoboken, N.J., a fearful boy with respiratory problems who learned to steel himself with tests of will power. He lifted weights, ran and, as he recalled, held his hand over a flame as an act of self-discipline. He said he once ate a rat to overcome a repulsion, and decapitated chickens for a neighbor until he could kill like a soldier, “efficiently and without emotion or thought.”

Like his father, a lawyer, Gordon attended all-male St. Benedict’s Prep School in Newark and Fordham University in the Bronx. After graduating from Fordham in 1952, he took an Army commission with hopes of fighting in Korea, but was assigned to an antiaircraft radar unit in Brooklyn. In 1954, he returned to Fordham and earned a law degree three years later. In 1957, he married Frances Ann Purcell. The couple had five children. Along with his son Thomas and daughter Alexandra, he is survived by another daughter, Grace Liddy; two other sons, James Liddy and Raymond J. Liddy; a sister, Margaret McDermott; 12 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Mr. Liddy’s wife died in 2010.

From 1957 to 1962, Mr. Liddy was an F.B.I. field agent in Indianapolis, Gary, Ind., and Denver, and a supervisor of crime records in Washington. He then worked in patent law for his father’s firm in New York for four years. He joined the Dutchess County district attorney’s office as an assistant prosecutor in 1966.

In 1968, he began a dizzying, three-year rise from obscurity in Poughkeepsie to the White House. Challenging Hamilton Fish Jr. in a primary for the Republican nomination for Congress in what was then New York’s 28th District, he fell short, but his consolation prize was to take charge of the Nixon campaign in the mid-Hudson Valley, which the president won handily.

His reward was a job at the Treasury Department in Washington as a special assistant for narcotics and gun control. He helped develop the sky marshal program to counteract hijackers. Impressed, Egil Krogh, a deputy assistant to the president, recommended him in 1971 to John N. Mitchell, the attorney general, who recommended him to John D. Ehrlichman, the president’s domestic policy adviser...

Still more.

 

Media's Entire Georgia Narrative Is Fraudulent, Not Just The Fabricated Trump Quotes

It's Mollie Hemingway, at the Federalist. 

She's day in and day out, a one-woman wrecking-crew demolishing the endless lies streaming from all the hate-addled (and despicable) leftist media outlets, be they print, broadcast, cable, or whatever. I'm glad she's on our side. 

She's the author, most prominently, of Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court, but also, Trump vs. the Media (Encounter Broadsides Book 51).

Also, my apologies for the light blogging today, but the pace of posting should pick up a bit over the next couple of days, and into the weekend.

Be well. 

Hoo Boy!

Holy cow!

I've been off everything today, and frankly, I just scheduled my sixth "discussion forum" a little while ago, to go live at 12:01am on Tuesday, in less than 50 minutes from now, and the first thing I see when I click over to Instapundit is this, dang!

It's Sharyl Attkisson:

Biden, Harris, Psaki and Other Top Staffers Afraid to Appear in Sunday News Shows (VIDEO)

You know why these ghouls won't go live on air to take real questioning about the administration's so-called "BFD" victories --- they'e scared sh*tless to actually have to face the music. And I freakin' watched "Face the Nation" this morning, because Margaret Brennan's the only Sunday morning host who I can take seriously (not to mention, she's quite easy to gaze upon).

And who does the administration give the "O.K" to appear? This Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, who is not just "Chair of the White House's COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force," but is also the "Associate Dean for Health Equity Research" at Yale. Now that's some privilege, dang! I think I barely made it through the interview, but I did listen to this women's "equity speak," and she's got the whole "equity, inclusion, and diversity" boondoggle down cold. 

So, in the end, Biden had to send, really, a lower-lever White House aide, who is a black woman, and thus pretty much impervious to criticism, lest anyone who does have a word of opposition wants to be branded a "racist." 

These people are despicable, and even Ms. Brennan, who is noticeably pregnant (which is admirable and shows that women do have incredible opportunities in the leftist media world these days), didn't drill down hard enough against this "woke" medical "social justice warrior" administrative shill as she could have.

Oh brother. It's bad. And it's going to be a long-four years; and keep in mind, my family's not opposed to getting the checks. But I'll bet like millions of other Americans, we're definitely not so happy about the, what?, near-90 percent of the bill which is practically a $2 trillion grab bag of pork-ladened goodies for far-left constituencies that helped these clowns gain office in the first place. 

I can't even. *Sigh.*

At Politico, "POLITICO Playbook: Biden stiffs the Sunday shows":

President JOE BIDEN just signed the first BFD of his administration — a massive Covid relief bill to boost the fortunes of everyday Americans. But you barely heard a peep about it from his own administration on the Sunday shows. Yes, Biden is hitting the road this week to sell the package. But on his way out the door, he skipped a major audience on Sunday — a day many people will actually sit back and watch something of substance, hence the gangbuster ratings for CBS’ “60 Minutes.”

Just one senior administration official was booked on the five major Sunday shows: Treasury Secretary JANET YELLEN on ABC’s “This Week.” She fended off questions on whether $1.9 trillion in new spending would drive inflation and balloon the debt. Sunday show producers tell me the White House only offered medical staff like ANTHONY FAUCI, who appeared on CNN, NBC and FOX, and MARCELLA NUNEZ-SMITH, who went on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” This was despite requests for chief of staff RON KLAIN, VP KAMALA HARRIS and Biden himself. Senior communications staffers like JEN PSAKI, KATE BEDINGFIELD and SYMONE SANDERS were not even offered to explain the bill.

“They’re leaving a vacuum on the Sunday shows,” said one senior producer, who called the whole thing “baffling.”

A senior administration official downplayed the light presence on the Sunday programs, saying that Biden and Harris “look forward to hitting the road this week and engaging directly with the American people through events and interviews.” The official noted that the administration has done and will continue to do plenty of other press — national and local — on the Covid bill.

But the Sunday shows combined reach an audience of about 10 to 15 million each weekend and help drive newspaper coverage on Monday. Biden himself has said BARACK OBAMA erred in not selling the 2009 economic rescue package to the public aggressively enough, and they paid a price for it in the 2010 midterms.

Biden, who hasn’t held a news conference since he took office, is expected to interview with local media during his roadshow...

There's still more, but all it says is that "China Joe's" gonna talk sometime soon with fake journalist and high-paid Democrat-media-shill George Stephanopoulos, on ABC's morally bankrupt "Good Morning America," and KAMala (don't you dare say KaMALa) Harris will sit down with "CBS This Morning's Gayle King who is nice, but she's got heavy baggage as an Oprah lackey, and she's one who's guaranteed to be soft as a feather in interviewing the actually not-truly "black" vice president (at least, not truly black in the sense that she's never experienced the grinding poverty of real inner-city blacks who've been screwed by Democrat policies in the big urban leftist strongholds for decades), not to mention that King for sure won't press the former high-falutin' Brentwood local who's lied through her teeth about "marching" for civil rights, and don't you dare mention she's just as bad a plagiarist as Joe "Neil Kinnock" Biden (and both her parents, minorities they might be, earned doctoral degrees at U.C. Berkeley), so cry me a river about our "oppressed" second-in-command, who is perhaps more than any V.P. in history, literally a "heartbeat away" from taking her seat at the "resolute desk" for herself. 

See what I mean, how bad things are? Gosh, the 2022 midterms can't come soon enough.   

Governor Andrew Cuomo Says He Won't Bow to 'Cancel Culture'

What a f*cking arrogant, pissant, goober creep. Gawd, this man is indeed the worst governor I can remember in my lifetime, and that's saying a lot, given California's stream of dumb leftist governors over decades, including "Arnold."

"Cancel culture" for you, but not for me, the asshole. 

At NYT, "Cuomo Says He Won’t Bow to ‘Cancel Culture’ and Rejects Calls to Resign":

Nearly all of the Democrats in New York’s congressional delegation, including Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, say that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has lost the ability to govern.

A raft of powerful Democratic members of New York’s congressional delegation, including Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jerrold Nadler, called on Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to resign on Friday, saying Mr. Cuomo had lost the capacity to govern amid a series of multiplying scandals.

“Governor Cuomo has lost the confidence of the people of New York,” said Mr. Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and one of the highest-ranking members of Congress. “Governor Cuomo must resign.”

Mr. Cuomo immediately rejected the calls for him to step down, telling reporters at a quickly convened news conference that he would not resign or bow to “cancel culture.” He also denied ever abusing and harassing anyone.

“I did not do what has been alleged, period,” Mr. Cuomo said.

The calls for his resignation, which came in rapid succession and appeared to be a coordinated message, were the sharpest rebuke yet of Mr. Cuomo from the upper echelons of the Democratic Party.

A least 13 House Democrats from New York said Friday that Mr. Cuomo should leave office following a string of sexual harassment allegations and controversy over his administration’s handling of nursing homes during the pandemic. Another House Democrat, Kathleen Rice of Long Island, had previously called on Mr. Cuomo to resign.

In remarks to reporters, Mr. Cuomo reiterated that he respected the right of women to speak out, but suggested that some of the accusations may have been ill-motivated and had to be thoroughly investigated.

He said that politicians who had called for his resignation without knowing the facts were “reckless and dangerous.”

“The people of New York should not have confidence in a politician who takes a position without knowing any facts and substance,” he said, adding that “politicians take positions for all sorts of reasons, including political expediency.” He added that “part of this is that I’m not part of the political club.”

“And you know what?” he said. “I’m proud of it.”

President Biden and Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York have not called on Mr. Cuomo to step down, instead reiterating their support of an independent investigation into the sexual harassment claims overseen by the state attorney general, Letitia James. That investigation, conducted by two outside lawyers deputized by Ms. James, began this week...

More at that top link.

 

Can Freakin' Governor Andrew Coumo Resign Already? Sheesh (VIDEO)

I've been going pretty hard on my own state's moronic governor, but even the idiot Newsom's not near as bad as the predator in Albany, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

It's gotten so bad for the Emmy winning "author" that mainstream news outlets simply can't ignore the story, and that's keeping in mind that the story itself wouldn't have broken, had not leaked video surfaced, featuring top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa. And the nursing home debacle? This story just keeps getting worse, and there's big headlines this morning, at NYT, "Cuomo Aides Rewrote Nursing Home Report to Hide Higher Death Toll," and WSJ, "Cuomo Advisers Altered Report on Covid-19 Nursing-Home Deaths."

Even far-left CNN's been reporting (and not Chris Cuomo, who's totally complicit at this point), so that tells you something: 

And from this morning Los Angeles Times (which also can't avoid the story, on both of these dolts), here, "News Analysis: Cuomo and Newsom, once pillars of the Democratic Party, now look for paths to survival":

WASHINGTON — It wasn’t supposed to be like this for Democrats, who expected to honeymoon into spring as Republicans sifted through the political wreckage Donald Trump left behind. But the bad behavior and grave unforced errors of two of the party’s biggest outside-the-Beltway stars are spoiling that reprieve, distracting from the Democrats’ work in Washington and forcing them to divert their attention to triage in parts of the country where they usually draw strength.

The missteps and aloofness that now have California Gov. Gavin Newsom facing the threat of recall from office have been overshadowed by the sexual harassment scandal that has rapidly engulfed his counterpart in New York, Andrew Cuomo. The two men took very different paths in their descent from favorites of liberal voters to the targets of scathing parody on “Saturday Night Live,” but both share problems so big they are stealing oxygen from a party that doesn’t have much to spare.

“I feel awful about it,” Cuomo said Wednesday of his behavior that led two women decades his junior who worked for him and a third he met at a wedding to accuse him of sexual harassment. “And frankly, I am embarrassed by it.”

He pledged at a news conference to cooperate with an investigation by the state attorney general, while still maintaining that he did not intentionally harass or inappropriately touch anyone. “I’m not going to resign,” Cuomo said, adding later: “I never knew at the time I was making anyone uncomfortable.”

Cuomo is vowing to serve out the rest of his term at the same time Newsom is battling a well-funded effort to eject him before his term ends. Political experts predict that if the recall qualifies for the ballot, by the time the election is held, voters are likely to be more forgiving of Newsom’s missteps: dining maskless at the Michelin-starred French Laundry while ordering the state locked down, bobbling school reopenings, botching the vaccine rollout, failing to halt billions of dollars in fraudulent unemployment payments.

Nobody is counting either of them out at the moment, as both Cuomo and Newsom have clawed their way back from the political abyss before — Newsom from personal scandals as San Francisco mayor, Cuomo from ethical lapses as governor that resulted in his allies going to prison. But the realities of the #MeToo era for Cuomo and a pandemic that has brought voters to the brink may have made obsolete the playbooks that worked so well for the men in the past. Calling in political favors, circling wagons inside the party and public displays of contrition are less potent tools than they once were.

Cuomo, in particular, is finding the aggressive tactics that helped him survive multiple scandals over the course of his three terms in office are not all that effective when facing claims of unwanted sexual advances. Putting party officials on notice that their loyalty will be rewarded and dissent punished, as Cuomo has in the past, is not going to fly. The allegations compounded a political crisis Cuomo had already created for himself by hiding data related to COVID-19 deaths at nursing homes.

“His problem right now is really big,” said Robert Shrum, director of the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future. “He’d be lucky to stay governor, and incredibly lucky to run and get reelected.”

If you keep reading, LAT authors Evan Hapler and Seema Mehta can't resist accusing Republicans of hypocrisy regarding the allegations against Cuomo, comparing them to the totally bogus accusations Christine Blasey Ford leveled against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. 

But it is what it is, and I'll be cheering here in the once-"Golden State" when that recall makes it to the ballot. And I don't know what the citizens of New York are waiting for, but they need to remove the perverted Cuomo, and fast. 

Time's Up Golden Globes?

This is exactly why I didn't watch the stupid Golden Globes last night: all the overwrought and stupid hand-wringing about "not enough diversity."

And here I am, an actual diverse guy, with an actually diverse family, to boot. 

Interesting, though, I did watch "Nomadland" last night, starring the phenomenal Frances McDormand. And you know what? It's a freakin' conservative movie! Yep. The film is almost all platitudes to rugged individualism, with all kinds of settings in rustic, "small-town" America, and "Fern" (McDormand) gives a raw and compelling performance that is indeed deep, genuine, and award-worthy. And the kicker is that the director, Chloé Zhao, is freakin' Chinese! I mean, you can't make this up. Zhao is a woman and an ethnic minority, but oh! That's not enough --- it's never enough for the gouging nobodies who put on these idiotic awards shows. 

And these dolts with their stupid hashtags, like "#TimesUpGlobes," are whining about not enough blacks, waah! Well, if they wanted more blacks, why the f*ck did they have ultra-white babes Tiny Fey and Amy Poehler hosting? You'd think someone, somebody, anybody, might have asked, ahead of time, "Aren't there any beautiful black women on T.V. we could have host the program?" I'm dyin' over here. *Shrugs.* 

Again, I think it's just best to watch shows that might interest you, rather than pay attention to the stupid media people who rag endlessly at these showbiz [slash[ media orgs, like the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. These are stupid, un-self-aware elites, who don't deserve the attention they so desperately crave. 

And no surprise, the self-flagellating story is at the Los Angeles Times (FWIW, really!), "‘Nomadland’ and ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’ win at Golden Globes, as HFPA tries to move past controversy."

Explosive Lindsey Boylan Sexual Harassment Allegations Against Govenor Andrew Cuomo (VIDEO)

I was watching "Outnumbered" this morning on Fox News, and the news was just breaking on this Lindsey Boylan blockbuster story.

And there's additional Fox News reporting here.

She's posted her whole story at Medium, "My Story of Working with Governor Cuomo":

“Let’s play strip poker.”

I should have been shocked by the Governor’s crude comment, but I wasn’t.

We were flying home from an October 2017 event in Western New York on his taxpayer-funded jet. He was seated facing me, so close our knees almost touched. His press aide was to my right and a state trooper behind us.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” I responded sarcastically and awkwardly. I tried to play it cool. But in that moment, I realized just how acquiescent I had become.

Governor Andrew Cuomo has created a culture within his administration where sexual harassment and bullying is so pervasive that it is not only condoned but expected. His inappropriate behavior toward women was an affirmation that he liked you, that you must be doing something right. He used intimidation to silence his critics. And if you dared to speak up, you would face consequences. That’s why I panicked on the morning of December 13.

While enjoying a weekend with my husband and six-year-old daughter, I spontaneously decided to share a small part of the truth I had hidden for so long in shame and never planned to disclose. The night before, a former Cuomo staffer confided to me that she, too, had been the subject of the Governor’s workplace harassment. Her story mirrored my own. Seeing his name floated as a potential candidate for U.S. Attorney General — the highest law enforcement official in the land — set me off.

In a few tweets, I told the world what a few close friends, family members and my therapist had known for years: Andrew Cuomo abused his power as Governor to sexually harass me, just as he had done with so many other women.

As messages from journalists buzzed on my phone, I laid in bed unable to move. I finally had decided to speak up, but at what cost? Parts of a supposed confidential personnel file (which I’ve never seen) were leaked to the media in an effort to smear me. The Governor’s loyalists called around town, asking about me.

Last week, Assemblymember Ron Kim spoke out publicly about the intimidation and abuse he has faced from Governor Cuomo and his aides. As Mayor de Blasio remarked, “the bullying is nothing new.” There are many more of us, but most are too afraid to speak up. I’m compelled to tell my story because no woman should feel forced to hide their experiences of workplace intimidation, harassment and humiliation — not by the Governor or anyone else. I expect the Governor and his top aides will attempt to further disparage me, just as they’ve done with Assemblymember Kim. They’d lose their jobs if they didn’t protect him. That’s how his administration works. I know because I was a part of it.

I joined state government in 2015 as a Vice President at Empire State Development. I was quickly promoted to Chief of Staff at the state economic development agency. The news of my appointment prompted a warning from a friend who served as an executive with an influential civic engagement organization: “Be careful around the Governor.”

My first encounter with the Governor came at a January 6, 2016, event at Madison Square Garden to promote the new Pennsylvania Station-Farley Complex project. After his speech, he stopped to talk to me. I was new on the job and surprised by how much attention he paid me.:

My boss soon informed me that the Governor had a “crush” on me. It was an uncomfortable but all-too-familiar feeling: the struggle to be taken seriously by a powerful man who tied my worth to my body and my appearance.

Stephanie Benton, Director of the Governor’s Offices, told me in an email on December 14, 2016 that the Governor suggested I look up images of Lisa Shields — his rumored former girlfriend — because “we could be sisters” and I was “the better looking sister.” The Governor began calling me “Lisa” in front of colleagues. It was degrading...

Keep reading. 

As all the hipsters like to say now, the woman's "got the receipts." (She's posted all kinds of screenshots of implicating texts and email, etc.)

A Week in 'Woke' America

 It's the phenomenal Caroline Glick, "One Week in Progressive America":

The Democrats had a lousy week. It began with former President Donald Trump’s acquittal in the Senate.

Trump’s acquittal was a major blow to the Democrats. It isn’t that anyone believed Trump would be convicted. Whether Republicans love or hate the former president, the fact is that it is unconstitutional to hold an impeachment trial for a former officeholder. And for that reason alone, there was no chance that more than a smattering of Republicans would support the move.

But once their farcical trial ended, public focus moved to the Democrats – who now control both houses of Congress and the White House. True, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is already planning to drag Trump back to center stage with her “January 6 Truth Commission.” But that won’t happen for several months. And in the meantime, for the first time in five years, the Democrats find themselves, and their actions, the focus of public attention.

The first casualties of the scrutiny have been the Democrat governors of the most populous Democrat-run states in the Union – Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gavin Newsom of California.

After a nearly a year in which Cuomo was lavished with adulation for his leadership of the coronavirus pandemic in New York; upheld as the future of the Democratic Party; touted as a possible candidate for Attorney General; and even won an Emmy for his press conferences, the truth has caught up with “America’s governor.”

Last March, as the number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized in New York hospitals mounted and fears that hospitals would be overwhelmed rose, Trump ordered the Army to set up a field hospital at the Javits Center and sent the Navy’s USS Comfort floating hospital to New York harbor. Not wanting to give any credit to Trump, Cuomo ordered nursing homes to take in COVID-19 patients from hospitals. The result was disastrous. COVID-19 spread like wildfire among the most vulnerable population and thousands of elderly New Yorkers died.

Republicans and conservative journalists long pointed out that Cuomo’s move was lethally misguided. But protected by the media, Cuomo indignantly denied the allegations.

Recently, though, his ability to deny the charges was dealt a fatal blow. New York’s Democrat Attorney General Letitia Jones released a report that showed Cuomo’s data on nursing home deaths from COVID-19 were false. Whereas Cuomo claimed that 8,500 nursing home residents died of COVID-19, the real number is more than 15,000.

This week, Associated Press reported that Cuomo also understated the number of COVID-19 patients that were transferred to nursing homes from hospitals by nearly 40%. In the face of the actual data, many Democrats have joined Republicans in calling for federal and state authorities to open criminal investigations against Cuomo.

Last December, the chorus of California business owners and parents making impassioned pleas to Governor Gavin Newsom to lift his draconian COVID-19 lockdowns that barred California children from school and shuttered most businesses, including restaurants for both indoor and outdoor dining was becoming a groundswell. As he imperiously rejected the calls, Newsom and his wife were photographed dining with friends at a swanky French restaurant in Napa Valley. Newsom’s mind-blowing hypocrisy reinvigorated a Republican campaign to recall him from office in special elections. This week, activists garnered the requisite one and a half million signatures – a month before the deadline – and so guaranteed that California will hold a gubernatorial election later this year. Facing an enraged public, Democrats fear that they may lose their total control over their deep blue state for the first time in 15 years.

This then brings us to President Joe Biden. Less than a month into his presidency, Biden has managed to turn off US allies and anger his own voters.

Both during the campaign and since taking office, Biden pledged to rebuild America’s standing in the world after Trump allegedly destroyed respect for America with his “America First” foreign policy. Yet, as Walter Russell Mead laid out in the Wall Street Journal this week, US allies are not at all pleased with how Biden’s “return to normalcy” is shaping up...

Still more.

 

Texans Face Skyrocketing Energy Bills

As readers have noted, I've not been defending Texas state officials, neither Governor Abbott nor Senator Cruz.

That said, perhaps the governor and senator can redeem themselves by vacating the high energy bills Texas residents are facing due to the failed power grid, which, once more, was no fault of their own.

At NYT, "His Lights Stayed on During Texas’ Storm. Now He Owes $16,752":

After a public outcry from people like Scott Willoughby, whose exorbitant electric bill is soon due, Gov. Greg Abbott said lawmakers should ensure Texans “do not get stuck with skyrocketing energy bills” caused by the storm.

SAN ANTONIO — As millions of Texans shivered in dark, cold homes over the past week while a winter storm devastated the state’s power grid and froze natural gas production, those who could still summon lights with the flick of a switch felt lucky.

Now, many of them are paying a severe price for it.

“My savings is gone,” said Scott Willoughby, a 63-year-old Army veteran who lives on Social Security payments in a Dallas suburb. He said he had nearly emptied his savings account so that he would be able to pay the $16,752 electric bill charged to his credit card — 70 times what he usually pays for all of his utilities combined. “There’s nothing I can do about it, but it’s broken me.”

Mr. Willoughby is among scores of Texans who have reported skyrocketing electric bills as the price of keeping lights on and refrigerators humming shot upward. For customers whose electricity prices are not fixed and are instead tied to the fluctuating wholesale price, the spikes have been astronomical.

The outcry elicited angry calls for action from lawmakers from both parties and prompted Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, to hold an emergency meeting with legislators on Saturday to discuss the enormous bills.

“We have a responsibility to protect Texans from spikes in their energy bills that are a result of the severe winter weather and power outages,” Mr. Abbott, who has been reeling after the state’s infrastructure failure, said in a statement after the meeting. He added that Democrats and Republicans would work together to make sure people “do not get stuck with skyrocketing energy bills.”

The electric bills are coming due at the end of a week in which Texans have faced a combination of crises caused by the frigid weather, beginning on Monday, when power grid failures and surging demand led to millions being left without electricity.

Natural gas producers were not prepared for the freeze either, and many people’s homes were cut off from heat. Now, millions of people are discovering that they have no safe water because of burst pipes, frozen wells or water treatment plants that have been knocked offline. Power has returned in recent days for all but about 60,000 Texans as the storm moved east, where it has also caused power outages in Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia and Ohio.

The steep electric bills in Texas are in part a result of the state’s uniquely unregulated energy market, which allows customers to pick their electricity providers among about 220 retailers in an entirely market-driven system...

No state, especially nominally "Republican" states like Texas, should be in need of MORE federal regulation of their energy markets, but I'll be damned if I said that Texas should benefit from some kind of exceptions. I mean, the screwballs in Austin (and Houston, Sen. Cruz's residence) messed up, and bad. Frankly, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is doing a better job helping Texans than any of the elected officials in the Lone Star State, which must be embarrassing, frankly.

More at the link, FWIW.

Janice Dean Slams Andrew Cuomo's 'Bullying and Threatening' of Critics (VIDEO)

I blogged briefly about Ms. Dean here, "Chris Cuomo's Conflicts of Interest (VIDEO)."

The lady's a one-woman incinerator of Democrat sleaze and corruption, and she's got ultra-moral authority on the issue.

In any case, here's the video of her appearance on Hannity's last night, so enjoy:

RELATED: At the New York Post, "Rattled Andrew Cuomo rants about nursing home scandal ‘lies,’ won’t take responsibility."

Well, this should get interesting, as it's not just Fox News now that's hammering the New York Governor. The idiot's on the ropes, and it's beautiful, lol

Ted Cruz's Cancún Blunder

Following-up from yesterday, "Ted Cruz Flew to Cancun with His Family Amid Power Crisis in Texas (VIDEO)."

I wanted to highlight this NYT piece on Senator Cruz, which is kinda shocking in its details. What's so interesting is the text messages Cruz's wife sent out before the trip, to some of her neighbors and friends in Houston, which were later leaked to the press, which I guess seems both naturally appropriate and gross and sleazy at the same time.

See, "Ted Cruz's Cancún Trip: Family Texts Detail His Political Blunder":

Like millions of his constituents across Texas, Senator Ted Cruz had a frigid home without electricity this week amid the state’s power crisis. But unlike most, Mr. Cruz got out, fleeing Houston and hopping a Wednesday afternoon flight to Cancún with his family for a respite at a luxury resort.

Photos of Mr. Cruz and his wife, Heidi, boarding the flight ricocheted quickly across social media and left both his political allies and rivals aghast at a tropical trip as a disaster unfolded at home. The blowback only intensified after Mr. Cruz, a Republican, released a statement saying he had flown to Mexico “to be a good dad” and accompany his daughters and their friends; he noted he was flying back Thursday afternoon, though he did not disclose how long he had originally intended to stay.

Text messages sent from Ms. Cruz to friends and Houston neighbors on Wednesday revealed a hastily planned trip. Their house was “FREEZING,” as Ms. Cruz put it — and she proposed a getaway until Sunday. Ms. Cruz invited others to join them at the Ritz-Carlton in Cancún, where they had stayed “many times,” noting the room price this week ($309 per night) and its good security. The text messages were provided to The New York Times and confirmed by a second person on the thread, who declined to be identified because of the private nature of the texts.

For more than 12 hours after the airport departure photos first emerged, Mr. Cruz’s office declined to comment on his whereabouts. The Houston police confirmed that the senator’s office had sought their assistance for his airport trip on Wednesday, and eventually Mr. Cruz was spotted wheeling his suitcase in Mexico on Thursday as he returned to the state he represents in the Senate...

Now who was it who leaked those texts to the New York Times? I mean, if you can't trust your "friends and neighbors," who can you trust (that is, if you should be trusting these same "friends" and "neighbors" with this kind of bombshell "vacation" planning in the first place)?

That said, for the second day this story's headlining at Memeorandum, so you know hated-addled leftists can't get their fill of their hateful demonic schadenfreude. *Shrugs.*

ADDED: Via Ashley Parker on Twitter, and yes, it is funny. "Cancún-gate," lol. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

 

Ted Cruz Flew to Cancun with His Family Amid Power Crisis in Texas (VIDEO)

At Fox News, via Memeorandum.

The surprising thing is Senator Cruz is a really smart guy, so this "vacation" to Cancun was a huge "own goal" on his part. 

And, while I haven't seen them, apparently some "top" conservatives on Twitter have been defending the Texas senator, for behavior that is political indefensible. 

Not me.

I like Ted Cruz, but he's failing his constituents by taking "his children" on vacation, away from the state's weather disaster, while Texas residents are literally freezing to death.

WSJ Pushes Back Against the Left's 'Renewables' Lobby Amid Texas Energy Catastrophe

Following-up from yesterday, "Global Warming is Man-Made," the Wall Street Journal comes back with a humdinger of an editorial.

See, "Texas Spins Into the Wind: An electricity grid that relies on renewables also needs nuclear or coal power":

While millions of Texans remain without power for a third day, the wind industry and its advocates are spinning a fable that gas, coal and nuclear plants—not their frozen turbines—are to blame. PolitiFact proclaims “Natural gas, not wind turbines, main driver of Texas power shortage.” Climate-change conformity is hard for the media to resist, but we don’t mind. So here are the facts to cut through the spin.

Texas energy regulators were already warning of rolling blackouts late last week as temperatures in western Texas plunged into the 20s, causing wind turbines to freeze. Natural gas and coal-fired plants ramped up to cover the wind power shortfall as demand for electricity increased with falling temperatures.

Some readers have questioned our reporting Wednesday ("The Political Making of a Texas Power Outage") that wind’s share of electricity generation in Texas plunged to 8% from 42%. How can that be, they wonder, when the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot) has reported that it counts on wind to meet only 10% of its winter capacity.

Ercot’s disclosure is slippery. Start with the term “capacity,” which means potential maximum output. This is different than actual power generation. Texas has a total winter capacity of about 83,000 megawatts (MW) including all power sources. Total power demand and generation, however, at their peak are usually only around 57,000 MW. Regulators build slack into the system.

Texas has about 30,000 MW of wind capacity, but winds aren’t constant or predictable. Winds this past month have generated between about 600 and 22,500 MW. Regulators don’t count on wind to provide much more than 10% or so of the grid’s total capacity since they can’t command turbines to increase power like they can coal and gas plants.

Wind turbines at times this month have generated more than half of the Texas power generation, though this is only about a quarter of the system’s power capacity. Last week wind generation plunged as demand surged. Fossil-fuel generation increased and covered the supply gap. Thus between the mornings of Feb. 7 and Feb. 11, wind as a share of the state’s electricity fell to 8% from 42%, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Gas-fired plants produced 43,800 MW of power Sunday night and coal plants chipped in 10,800 MW—about two to three times what they usually generate at their peak on any given winter day—after wind power had largely vanished. In other words, gas and coal plants held up in the frosty conditions far better than wind turbines did.

It wasn’t until temperatures plunged into the single digits early Monday morning that some conventional power plants including nuclear started to have problems, which was the same time that demand surged for heating. Gas plants also ran low on fuel as pipelines froze and more was diverted for heating.

“It appears that a lot of the generation that has gone offline today has been primarily due to issues on the natural gas system,” Electric Reliability Council of Texas senior director Dan Woodfin said Tuesday. The wind industry and its friends are citing this statement as exoneration. But note he used the word “today.” Most wind power had already dropped offline last week.

Gas generation fell by about one-third between late Sunday night and Tuesday, but even then was running two to three times higher than usual before the Arctic blast. Gas power nearly made up for the shortfall in wind, though it wasn’t enough to cover surging demand...

Still more.

 

Chris Cuomo's Conflicts of Interest (VIDEO)

My wife and I have been talking about this for weeks. 

You see, we were both watching a lot of CNN back in March, April, May or so of last year, and some of these segments were the "family hour" on Chris Cuomo's prime-time show on CNN. Honestly, I thought some of the brotherly back-and-forth was pretty funny, although even then I was thinking, "This is probably not a good look for a purportedly "non-partisan" news outlet," but what the heck? Comic relief during the pandemic? And of course, no one knew then what we know now, and what we know now, about Andrew Cuomo, is criminal.

In any case, I watched Governor Cuomo's press conference on Monday, and he looked like he was lying remorselessly. I think later I even caught a critical segment discussing the governor on CNN, but not with Chris Cuomo. Maybe HE should be fired. 

In any case, WaPo, of all places, has the story, "CNN’s Chris Cuomo is reminding us why conflicts of interest poison the news":

On his Monday night CNN program, host Chris Cuomo provided an update on the biggest story of the past year. “Now, good news: When it comes to coronavirus, we’ve had the best week we’ve seen so far, in terms of getting people vaccinated. And every week since New Year’s, the rate has only improved,” said the host.

Here’s an update that he skipped: Just hours before “Cuomo Prime Time” aired, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo held a news conference to address his state’s nursing-home scandal. Under his leadership, the state has shown a staggering lack of transparency regarding the extent of coronavirus-related deaths in New York nursing homes. “We should have provided more information faster,” said Cuomo in the press briefing, which addressed an undercount of nursing-home deaths in the state.

That story — the hottest on the covid beat on Monday — didn’t make the cut on “Cuomo Prime Time.” Perhaps that shouldn’t be a surprise: Chris Cuomo and Andrew Cuomo are brothers, and journalists can’t reliably cover their brothers.

Except that Chris Cuomo did cover his brother, famously, during the early months of the pandemic. As the coronavirus spread around the country, Andrew Cuomo turned in more than 10 appearances on “Cuomo Prime Time.” The heartwarming moments stick out: In May, Chris Cuomo presented a gigantic test swab to joke about the governor’s televised coronavirus test. They laughed about their parents quite a bit, too. At the end of one appearance, Chris Cuomo thanked his brother for coming on the air. “Mom told me I had to,” replied the governor. The TV host rolled his eyes...

Well, it's not so funny now, is it?

And if you're watching Fox News at all, do try to catch a segment with Janice Dean, the network's weather-caster. She lost her in-laws (husband's parents) after they were sent to nursing homes during the height of New York's deadly pandemic, and Ms. Dean has never been political in her life, and certainly not on her network, but she's been out there with all cannons firing, and wants prosecution and imprisonment for the perpetrators of the deaths of thousands of thousands of New York's elderly covid-19 victims.

What an awful story, man.

Jeff Bezos to Step Down as Amazon C.E.O. (VIDEO)

Just catching this news, at AoSHQ, "World's Richest Man, Top Oligarch and Cartel Princeling Jeff Bezos to Step Down as CEO of Amazon."

And here's the segment from Fox News:

I don't care personally what Bezos does with his money, but since he's one of the biggest of the left's Big Tech Media Conglomerate (as he owns WaPo), this is actually pretty good news.

Disclaimer: I will continue to promote product sales through my Amazon links here at the blog. Unlike the dicks at Google, Amazon has never sent a notice about "objectionable" content here, so at least I can still get a piece of all the billions the company generates, what, every month? Gawd, if there isn't a better example of a Big Tech monopoly driving mom and pop shops out of business, what else is there? Amazon's bigger than Walmart, in online sales at least. The company's a freakin' behemoth in the Karl Marx nightmare of worker exploitation. *Shrug.*

Tucker Carlson from Last Night (VIDEO)

I know a lot of folks on the right are hatin' on Fox News, but frankly, I mostly just watch "Tucker" and "Ingraham," and that's only if I'm in the mood. All the cable networks are over the top right now, especially "moderate" CNN (and Jake "Asshole" Tapper, especially).

Anyway, Tucker is always worth a watch. Here's his opening segment from last night:

Hunter Biden Planning 'Art Show" With 'Shady' Dealer 'Who Was Charged With Terrorist Threats

And his dealer has "links to China"?

Well blow me down! 

This can't be true. And we know this can't be true because the leftist-Dem-Big-Tech-Media Oligarchy suppressed any information about our "beloved and wonderful" Hunter, to rig the election last October in favor of Hunter's most "honest and caring" father, the serial liar, Joseph Robinette Biden.

Funny how the idiots in the lamestream fake-news media assume their non-readers are just bunches of backwoods redneck rubes. *Eye-roll.*

At the New York Post, "Hiding Hunter Biden laying low in LA, starting art career with shady dealer":

As federal prosecutors continue their criminal probes into Hunter Biden’s taxes and international business dealings, the President’s son — shuttling between Washington DC and a sprawling Hollywood Hills home — is lying low, consulting with lawyers and focusing on his new career in art.

Biden, who turns 51 next week, is prepping a solo show with Soho art dealer Georges Berges, who currently represents Sylvester Stallone. Berges was once arrested for “terrorist threats” and assault with a deadly weapon in California and has strong ties to China.

Biden, who continues to hold business interests in a billion-dollar Chinese investment firm, moved into the 2,000-square foot hilltop Los Angeles home with his wife Melissa Cohen in January 2020, two months before the birth of their baby boy.

The home is connected to Shane Khoh, a Los Angeles-based entrepreneur and real estate investor who is CEO of SXU Investment Holdings LLC, the California company that has owned the $3.8 million property since 2011, according to public records. Khoh, an American who is fluent in Chinese, sits on the board of Siong Heng Realty Pte Ltd., a Singapore-based real estate holding company, according to his LinkedIn profile. He is also listed as a “venture partner” of Diverse Communities Impact Fund, a private-equity group that features former Democratic New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on its board of advisors.

The house was featured in a New York Times profile of Biden as an emerging abstract painter last year. Last year Khoh told The Washington Examiner that Biden was paying $12,000 a month for the property, which features a pool house that Biden has turned into an art studio. Khoh denied any prior relationship with Biden to the newspaper...

Still more.

I'm just gobsmacked at how stupid I've been to actually hold on to any thread of optimism that this miraculous new era of national "unity" is indeed truly on the way. Don't leftist always say, "Help is on the way"? 

Well, I don't want any of their help, except to have the Democrat-idiots now in "power" indeed fulfill some of their many, many promises to reach out and "help" regular folks. I mean, shutting down the "Keystone Pipeline," putting tens of thousands of highly skilled tradesmen and women out of work has just gotta do wonders for pulling people back together, to say nothing of "reviving" the economy. But it's still early morning, and I've cut back on my coffee consumption, because drinking coffee right now only compounds my not-so-positive reactions to the daily monstrous stupidity I see from our totally and morally bankrupt Democrat coastal and beltway elites now claiming a "mandate" to literally destroy what's left of our once-beloved republic.

THE CRUSHING OF DISSENT WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES

Following-up from earlier, "John Eastman Resigns From Chapman University Law School."

From Glenn Reynolds, at Instapundit, "Colorado Relieves John Eastman of His Duties, Chapman Bars Him From Speaking at Law Review Symposium He Organized; Eastman Speaks at Arizona State Federalist Society Event Despite Opposition From Students and Dean." 

Click through to read it all at the link.

California's Employment Development Department Was Completed Unprepared for the Flood of New Claims During the Pandemic, And It's a Scandal of Lessons Not Learned During Earlier Crises, Such as the 'Great Recession'

Boy, is it ever a scandal. 

While New York is no doubt the worst state in its handling of the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown, the once-Golden State is so bad that Governor Newsom is nipping at Governor Cuomo's heels.

At LAT, "EDD’s lack of planning deprived jobless Californians of needed benefits amid pandemic, audit finds":

SACRAMENTO — Poor planning and ineffective management left California’s unemployment agency unprepared to help workers left jobless by the COVID-19 pandemic, and it failed to address problems in its system that were known for nearly a decade, according to an emergency state audit released Tuesday.

The report by State Auditor Elaine Howle was ordered by a bipartisan group of 40 state lawmakers who had criticized the state Employment Development Department for large backlogs of significantly delayed claims and its failure to prevent widespread fraud since the pandemic forced many businesses to close, putting millions of Californians out of work.

“Although it would be unreasonable to have expected a flawless response to such an historic event, EDD’s inefficient processes and lack of advanced planning led to significant delays in its payment of [unemployment insurance] claims,” Howle wrote to the governor and Legislature on Tuesday.

Howle said the agency was unable to automatically process nearly half of the claims submitted online between March and September 2020, and was forced to instead have the claims manually processed by staff.

“As a result, hundreds of thousands of claimants waited longer than 21 days — EDD’s measure of how quickly it should process a claim — to receive their first benefit payments,” Howle said. “EDD has begun to modify its practices and processes to increase the rate at which it automatically processes online claims, but the automation it has gained during the pandemic is not fully sustainable.”

The audit recommends the agency develop plans for times of high unemployment and address problems including call centers unable to handle large numbers of phone calls.

“EDD has at times been unable to help virtually any of the claimants that contact its call center and has not answered all web correspondence that claimants submit,” the audit said.

State lawmakers who requested the audit, including Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco), said Tuesday the report confirmed their worst fears about the agency’s preparedness and operations.

“This audit confirms that EDD has known it has been failing Californians for over a decade but hasn’t taken anywhere near the necessary steps to fix its situation,” Chiu said.

EDD director Rita Saenz, who took over the agency from outgoing director Sharon Hilliard on Jan. 1, told reporters Monday that she was working to address the problems in the state’s unemployment system, which has paid out an unprecedented $114 billion in benefits since the pandemic began in March 2020.

“We know that too many Californians are waiting on their payments, and we are working quickly to validate their claims and get their benefits to them,” Saenz said during a conference call.

In a written response to the audit released Tuesday, Saenz acknowledged that there were issues that needed to be addressed but said steps were being taken to improve the department.

“While there are additional improvements that EDD must make,” she said, “the department has taken steps to increase efficiencies, expedite payment processes and prevent fraud.”

The audit said the EDD knew of problems going back to the Great Recession of a decade ago but that in March 2020 the agency “had no comprehensive plan for how it would respond if California experienced a recession” and jobless claims surged.

“The 2020 claim surge was unprecedented and would have presented significant challenges no matter how prepared EDD was, but it failed to act comprehensively to prepare for downturns and to address known deficiencies,” the audit said.

Howle also said that EDD responded to the claim surge by suspending its determination of eligibility for most claimants, “thereby compromising the integrity of the UI program.”

State officials on Monday said they had confirmed that some $11.4 billion in benefits paid out by California involved fraud, and they are investigating suspicious claims involving another $19.3 billion in benefits.

Efforts to block fraud are hindering EDD’s work to get claims paid quickly, Saenz said.

“Security is stopping fraud and unfortunately creates longer waiting times,” she said. “Of course people are frustrated and angry.”

The lawmakers asked the state auditor to evaluate the performance of EDD call centers, the effects of the agency’s outdated technology, and the reasons for a backlog of delayed claims that last week totaled 941,000.

The EDD has made improvements in response to a strike team report by government experts in September, including hiring a contractor who put in place an identity verification system that allows more claims to be approved online, reducing the delays that accompany manual processing...