To me, the most incredible story this week was well-buried in the press: The arrest of “La Diabla,” the female cartel member who butchered pregnant women, stole their organs, and sold their babies. 

The day’s most astonishing crime-fighting anecdote came from Tulsi Gabbard, who described a story reported last month in the New York Post under the headline, “Female cartel member ‘La Diabla’ busted for running horrific baby-trafficking, organ-harvesting rings.” Tulsi described a new “Fusion Cell” at the ODNI that works with governments like Mexico to find and arrest evil cartel serial killers like “La Diabla” (the Devil), who in assembly-line fashion lured pregnant Mexican women, murdered them, harvested their organs, took the babies via c-section, and sold the infants on the international baby market (located right down the street from Mexico City Mega Walmart, next to Spirit Halloween.)

Much more attention was focused on the arrest across 11 states of 31 high-profile NBA figures and suspected members of the American branch of the Sicilian Costa Nostra. They are charged with wire fraud, money laundering, extortion, and illegal gambling.

Publicly mentioned by the New York Times were Portland Trail Blazers Coach, Chauncey Billups, former Cleveland Cavaliers assistant coach Damon James, and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier. 

Not only did Billups and Rozier throw games using contrivances like faking injuries, but they also lured marks into rigged Mafia-arranged poker games, getting a cut of the take.[snip] Whereas Biden’s Justice Department focused on Capitol tourists, Catholics and pro-life protesters, Trump’s DOJ is rooting out murderous baby-snatching demons and elite, predatory sports cheaters who are hollowing our beloved national pastimes from the inside.

The Great Ballroom Fandango

In 1942, during the war, a bunker was built on White House grounds topped by a rushed building providing increased, needed office space. By now the building, known as the East Wing, is rapidly deteriorating with substantial issues, including failed plumbing and outdated, inadequate electrical capacity. At the same time the White House can house only 300 guests for major state events, and has to engage at the cost of millions of dollars, tents, temporary catering facilities, and port-a-potties for larger capacity crowds. There are reports that the bunker also needs a major redo. The President has long wanted to provide more suitable facilities for such events and offered to undertake the construction of one for Obama who refused it (though Obama spent almost $400 million creating a basketball court on the White House grounds.)

The first I ever heard of Trump, it was in connection with his renovation of the Central Park Wollman skating rink. In case you need a refresher -- here it is, showing how his managerial and construction skills bailed out a city government incompetent to complete the task.

The city promised to reopen it by 1985. But Koch’s incompetent commissioners and contractors let the job run $12 million over its original $4.7 million budget, and by 1986, the finish line was nowhere in sight.

Enter Trump. The young Trump Tower developer was known more for self-promotion and for an ugly, name-calling feud with Koch over tax abatements and zoning rules.

In June 1986, Trump brashly offered to reopen the rink before Christmas. “If Koch doesn’t like this offer,” Trump said, “then let him have the same people who have built it for the last six years, do it for the next six years.”

Koch held his nose and gave Trump the keys. Trump got the ice rink reopened to the public on Nov. 1. Maybe any able construction company could have done the same. But Trump’s success was a tonic to a crime-torn, crumbling city that needed some good news. It showed how private enterprise could handily whip government bureaucracy.

This time around Trump is beginning a well-publicized plan to redo the crumbling East Wing which is not historic, and which serves largely to house the First Lady, the Social Director, and a small theater room, and replace it with a modern facility “including a modern ballroom with modern catering facilities modern sound and lighting, and much upgraded security including a steel reinforced roof (drone protection) and an upgraded walkway from the White House.”

Unlike the Obama redo, no taxpayer funds will be used for the renovations, which are being funded by donations by individuals and corporations, including Amazon, META, Comcast, Google, and Apple.

Still, with Congress out of session and nothing left to do but peddle nonsense, the internet is full of preposterous claims about the renovations, the latest being that the President is undertaking this because he won’t leave when this term is up. One of the most outrageous -- though it’s a tough field in which to pick the biggest loser -- is Ms. Tara Setmayer, who tweeted: ”It’s [sic] feels almost the same as when I saw the Pentagon damage on 9/11”

One of the all-time greats on X, Data Republican (small r) checked out Ms. Setmayer’s background “expecting to find an Uber driver or a random influencer.” Instead, she found and posted a résumé that “perfectly captures everything broken about America’s ruling class.” Stints at the House of Representatives, AEI, Stand up Republic, the Lincoln Project, the Harvard Institute of Politics, and her own PAC, the Seneca Project.

No, a woman vetted by Harvard, CNN, and AEI sincerely comparing Trump-era construction to an act of terrorism isn't an accident.

It's a symptom of how unserious, insulated, and toxic the "defenders of democracy" class has become.

You represent the performative elite consensus that destroyed public trust in every institution it touched.

And let's be honest: if anyone but Trump had approved those renovations, you'd be calling it "historic restoration.”

"Your tribe is no longer about "democracy." It has become a closed loop of technocrats and oligarches. We're catching onto you.

I am puzzled by the motives for these ridiculous orchestrated attacks on the reconstruction. The best I can come up with is they do not want something on the White House grounds credited to Donald Trump. Perhaps, my favorite senator, John Kennedy, nailed it:

“The socialist wing of the Democratic Party’s hatred of President Trump is not rational. It’s gotten to the point that, if President Trump came out in favor of breathing to live, many Democrats would hold their breath.”

Hope may be on the way.  Avi Loeb, Harvard astrophysicist, suggests an alien spacecraft is nearing earth and warns us to take vacations before October 29.