Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Ottawa’s year-end books show a $39.3 billion deficit, but the release never says so

The Liberal government’s audited books for the year that ended March 31 show a $39.3 billion deficit, yet the Treasury Board release announcing the Public Accounts of Canada never uses the word. Revenues came to $526.4 billion and spending to $565.7 billion.

The detailed tables behind the release show what else it left out: $12.7 billion in debts written off or forgiven, a refugee health bill past $1 billion, and a $105.1 million pandemic-era loss at the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) that is still on the books.

Treasury Board President Shafqat Ali tabled the Public Accounts in the House of Commons on November 6, one day after Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne’s budget. The release lists revenue sources and spending categories in detail, with growth rates for each, and leaves readers to do the math. Annex 1 of Champagne’s budget shows the same deficit, listed as a budgetary balance of minus $39.3 billion for 2025-26.

The final number is far smaller than Finance Canada’s preliminary count. The March Fiscal Monitor, published before the books were closed, reported “a budgetary deficit of $55.3 billion for the April 2025 to March 2026 period” on revenues of $500.0 billion.

Audited revenue is $26.4 billion higher than that tally, and the release does not explain the gap beyond noting higher customs import duties and personal income tax of $247.7 billion, or 47.1 per cent of all revenue, up from 45.9 per cent the year before.

Interest on the debt cost $53.5 billion, or 9.5 per cent of all spending. That is more than the $51.8 billion Ottawa collected in GST (goods and services tax) in the same year.

Canadian Taxpayers Federation president Franco Terrazzano called debt interest the budget’s biggest waste in an interview with Ezra Levant, saying it costs Canadians more than $1 billion every week.

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Meta’s AI Will Now Guess Your Age On Instagram… Even If You Say You’re An Adult

Meta Platforms is expanding its AI-powered age-estimation technology to identify Instagram users suspected of being teenagers, even if they registered with an adult birthdate, and automatically apply stricter safety settings to their accounts.

Meta said in a Nov. 9 statement that the expansion will mean millions more teenagers worldwide will receive Teen Account protections, offering built-in safeguards that automatically limit the content they see, time spent on the app, and who can contact them.

Starting this month, U.S. parents on Instagram will receive a notification explaining how Meta will apply the age-appropriate protections for teens and how they can help ensure that their teenage child is logged in with the correct age, Meta said.

Meta uses AI and other signals to estimate a user’s age, including information from profiles, comments, posts, captions, and bios, such as references to school grades or birthdays, Larry Magid, CEO of nonprofit ConnectSafely, wrote in a Nov. 6 post on Meta’s website.

The company can also analyze photo and video visual patterns to determine a person’s age.

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Mass Hoax Bomb Threat Hits Thousands of Italian Schools

Numerous schools across Italy were evacuated on Wednesday after some 6,300 education centers received a hoax bomb threat via email.

The public broadcaster Rai reports that thousands of Italian schools received the threatening email during the morning hours of Wednesday, right as a new school day was underway. The situation prompted the evacuation of some, but not all of the thousands of schools. Police officers searched through the premises of the evacuated centers, but found nothing.

Italian Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara affirmed to reporters that there was a “non-existent risk” derived from the hoax email, but pointed out to the recent string of false bomb threats across Europe.

Rai, and other Italian outlets, published the contents of the hoax threat — which was reportedly sent to the schools through email addresses from Taiwan. In the text, an anonymous individual claiming to be “Mikhail Andropov” from the Vilayat (“Province” in Arabic) of “Misoginistan” threatened with the “annihilation” and “genocide” of  Italians.

“I have been preparing for this for a long time: to kill every single one of you. I have just left a powerful explosive device with a remote detonator inside a plastic bag in your building,” the hoax email reportedly read.

“I positioned it so that the shock wave will spread throughout the entire building. All that will remain of you are bones and a bloody pulp,” the text continued.

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Report: Gavin Newsom Builds Wine Empire Using Illegal Migrant Labor

A report from City Journal accuses California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) of building his multi-million-dollar wine empire using illegal migrant labor — suggesting the potential presidential candidate has held a secretive, vested financial stake in promoting illegal immigration.

The report, published by Christopher Rufo, Ryan Thorpe, and Kenneth Schrupp, investigated Newsom’s PlumpJack Collection of Wineries and Oso Vineyard, which was purchased by PlumpJack in 2022.

Newsom, who continues to hold a financial stake in PlumpJack, and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, reported at least $11 million in income from 2019 to 2024, according to the report, with most of the money coming from Newsom’s stake in wineries and restaurants.

The report, which the journalists write is based on court documents, labor reports, and interviews with various sources in California’s wine industry, reveals that “Newsom’s business has contracted the services of a vineyard management company with a long history of employing illegal labor.”

City Journal reports:

And as governor, Newsom has leveraged tax dollars to facilitate the presence of illegal immigrants in California, which, in turn, helps prop up the struggling Napa wine industry from which he profits.

…

But according to multiple industry sources in Napa, the real percentage of illegals working in the vineyards is considerably higher.

“I think it’s 80 percent,” said the owner of a vineyard management company, who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity. “If you’re legal, you have your Green Card, you have your driver’s license and all these things, you don’t want to be working in the vineyards.”

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David Sacks Sounds Alarm Over Democrats’ Most Terrifying Censorship Plan Yet

David Sacks, who stepped down as President Trump’s AI and crypto czar in March, says it’s “100%” that the Democrats who just won Congress will make a major push for AI legislation, and that the end state is “a surveillance and censorship state that’s turbocharged by superintelligence.”

Sacks was answering co-host Jason Calacanis on the All-In podcast released Nov. 7. Calacanis asked for odds on a scenario co-host David Friedberg had laid out, in which only the government can use the tools. Sacks said he didn’t think it would go that far, then laid out the road map he does expect: “You create a department, a federal department of AI. You require that all the so-called frontier models have to be reviewed and approved by that.”

“The regulators give their notes on it. You can’t get a model released unless you address their concerns,” Sacks said. Those concerns, in his telling, would be “disinformation and misinformation and dissonant thought” – “all the things that the government was pressuring the social media companies to crack down on and censor during COVID.”

“They’re going to basically reenact that whole regime again using AI. And it’s going to be infinitely more powerful because we’re talking about superintelligence here,” Sacks said. “So I do believe that that is the regime that we’re headed towards.”

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Dem. Judge Picked by Dem. CA Gov Removed from Bench Over Racist, Sexist Comments

A Los Angeles County judge appointed by former California Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown has been removed from office over a persistent pattern of misconduct in the courtroom.

On Tuesday, the California Commission on Judicial Performance ordered Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert Draper to be removed from office for making a number of racist and sexist remarks in court, according to Courthouse News Service.

“Judge Draper persistently violated the standards governing judicial behavior and engaged in extensive and severe misconduct,” the commission said in a statement.

“Judge Draper’s misconduct reflected either a concerning lack of familiarity with ethical precepts, or an unwillingness to conform to those precepts,” the statement continued.

The California Commission on Judicial Performance’s 87-page order listed numerous examples of Draper’s behavior, including one from February of 2023, when he was presiding over Odom v. Los Angeles Community College District, a sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit.

During a posttrial hearing featuring a black female attorney working for the defense, Draper launched into an unsolicited discussion about the skin tones of blacks, interracial relationships and racial mixing, black football players and the history of black quarterbacks, and Lyndon Johnson and the Civil Rights Act.

When talking black skin tones, he used terms like “coal black” and “light brown.”

The commission found these comments irrelevant and gratuitous, and concluded that they constituted prejudicial misconduct.

During another incident connected to the Odom litigation, Draper invited two female attorneys into his chambers. During the ensuing conversation, he recounted how male attorneys at his former law firm supposedly treated female secretaries.

At one point, he described the male attorneys telling their secretaries, “You better be able to f*** better than you can type.”

The commission concluded that this behavior also constituted prejudicial misconduct.

The most serious finding from the order was that in June of 2023, Draper sent an email to commission personnel and several other judges, including retired Judge Lance Ito (who presided over the 1995 double-murder trial of former football star O.J. Simpson), that included confidential records from a 2017 juvenile dependency case involving child sexual abuse allegations.

Among the records were multiple photographs of two minors naked in a bathtub. The commission found that disclosing these confidential juvenile records was misconduct.

According to the commission’s report, Draper also repeatedly made inappropriate comments about female colleagues.

For example, on two occasions he told Presiding Judge Samantha Jessner that she was “cute when [she was] mad.” After Jessner explained that the remark was inappropriate, Draper doubled down and repeated it, the report stated.

Draper also repeatedly told court administrator Lindsey McFarlane that she was cute, including in emails copied to other employees. In addition, he patted female court counsel Phu Nguyen on the head several times during a hallway encounter. She testified that she hadn’t welcomed the contact and was embarrassed, the report stated.

The commission concluded that this behavior reflected gender bias and was inappropriate for a judge.

In its final report, the commission slammed Draper for refusing to accept responsibility or display even a modicum of remorse.

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Fed’s Goolsbee calls inflation report ‘borderline disturbing’ as central bank weighs more hikes

Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee called the latest inflation data “borderline disturbing.”

“It’s another distressing report — borderline disturbing,” Goolsbee said in an interview with “PBS NewsHour” on Tuesday.

“We’ve got a real inflation issue on our hands that has been developing,” Goolsbee said. “We’re going to have to deal with that.”

The consumer price index rose 0.4% on a seasonally adjusted basis in October, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Tuesday morning release. That was higher than economists had predicted, and the third straight month of outsized price increases.

Goolsbee said he had not seen drivers of prices like tariffs fade over time like he had hoped. He also said continuously high inflation on services concerned him.

And the Chicago Fed chief said lofty prices are a top issue for many people he meets.

“It’s on everyone’s mind,” Goolsbee said. “It’s on business mind. It’s on nonprofits’ minds. It’s on ordinary consumers’ mind.”

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Trump Picks Palantir’s Security Chief To Run CISA

The White House said on Monday it nominated Michael LoSapio to lead America’s premier cyber defense agency. If confirmed by the Senate, LoSapio will take over from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) acting director, Nick Andersen.

CISA, which leads the national effort to understand, manage, and reduce risk to cyber and physical infrastructure, has lacked a Senate-confirmed leader for almost 22 months, since Jen Easterly resigned in January 2025.

LoSapio’s nomination comes after large-scale breaches at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI were disclosed in the past few months.

According to his LinkedIn profile, he has served as Palantir’s chief information security officer (CISO) since September 2024. Since 2017, he has led the company’s infrastructure and network security group.

President Donald Trump nominated Sean Plankey as CISA chief in March 2025. However, Plankey withdrew his name from Senate consideration in April this year.

When Democrats take control of both legislative chambers, including the Senate, in January, they can block or delay Trump nominees. CISA has lost some staff since Trump returned to office.

For example, according to a September report from the federal watchdog Government Accountability Office, CISA’s active personnel dedicated to chemical sector activities declined from 214 to 52 in fiscal year 2024-25. Congressman James R. Walkinshaw (D-Va.), a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection, claimed on Sept. 21 that one-third of CISA has been “hollowed out.” The Epoch Times has not independently verified these claims. In July, DHS probed a cyber breach in an unclassified legacy information-sharing system used to exchange sensitive data with law enforcement partners.

The breach affected the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN), which oversees sharing sensitive but unclassified information with foreign law enforcement, local authorities, and other organizations.

The incident is thought to have occurred sometime between late May and early June.

An internal database with personal information identifying more than 41,000 employees at the DHS, including undercover immigration officers, was hacked by activists and published online, the group claimed on Oct. 28.

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Hakeem Jeffries’ Plan for Affordability Includes Returning DACA Recipients to the US and Paying Them

Someone should ask Hakeem Jeffries to explain how his latest statement will help address Americans’ affordability concerns, because we’re at a loss. While Jeffries was quick to say after the midterms that Democrats were focused on “affordability” and ” accountability” instead of impeachment, his fellow Democrats — with an assist from Thomas Massie — jumped right to impeachment talk, threats of investigations for President Trump and his family, and even threatened businesses who “cooperated” with the administration.

Now Jeffries is telling the country his party plans to bring back deported DACA recipients and compensate them for being removed from the country.

“Well, certainly on the immigration front, we have a broken immigration system,” Jeffries said. “It needs to be fixed. It should be fixed in a comprehensive way. Immigration enforcement should be fair, just, and humane.”

That means they’ll only deport the South Africans Trump granted asylum to, and not the criminals, drug dealers, and others.

“We’re not going to provide a dime for this administration’s violent mass deportation machine,” Jeffries continued, “let’s work together, perhaps beginning with moving the Dream and Promise Act this Congress as a foundation for the type of work that can be done in the next Congress.”

“That Dream and Promise Act, of course, impacting the DACA recipients. I should point out, it’s been reported some, dozens of DACA recipients are among those already deported under this administration’s immigration crackdown,” said host Amna Nawaz. “Would you support efforts to bring them back into the U.S.?”

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