Worth Knowing, Probably Not Quite Threadworthy 3/19

[SVPete]

Democrat Senator Nukes Gavin Newsom Over His Creepy Smear of Nick Shirley

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2026/03/18/democrat-senator-goes-nuclear-on-newsoms-creepy-smear-of-nick-shirley-n4950802

Gov. Gavin Newsom had a choice. When independent journalist Nick Shirley exposed over $170 million in suspected fraud in California's government-funded programs, he could have promised accountability. The fraud involved daycare centers, hospices, and adult care facilities billing taxpayers while allegedly delivering nothing. Newsom could have said his administration would investigate.

Instead, his press office posted an AI-generated image implying Shirley was a child predator.

Creepy X meme from Noisome's Press Office)

The governor's press office didn't refute a single allegation. They didn't point to oversight measures. They just tried to paint a journalist investigating government fraud as a predator lurking outside a children's facility. The post was state-run propaganda dressed up as a meme. That kinda tells you everything you need to know.
...
Shirley then turned his camera on California, releasing a video titled "I Exposed California's Billion Dollar Fraud Crisis," going face-to-face with operators of daycare centers, hospices, and adult care facilities. What he found was brazen. Fraudsters living in luxury, driving six-figure cars, and businesses billing the state millions while providing little or nothing in return. One adult daycare alone had allegedly billed California $19 million. Shirley's team says the total suspected fraud they uncovered exceeds $170 million. The full scope of the California crisis dwarfs even what he found in Minnesota.

Fetterman strikes again.

[SVPete]

Left-Wing Icon Accused Of Serially Sexually Abusing Young Girls

https://www.dailywire.com/news/left-wing-icon-accused-of-serially-sexually-abusing-young-girls?author=Nathan+Gay&category=undefined&elementPosition=0&row=3&rowHeadline=Latest+News&rowType=Vertical+Carousel&title=Left-Wing+Icon+Accused+Of+Serially+Sexually+Abusing+Young+Girls

A shocking report from The New York Times revealed Wednesday that labor union “hero” Cesar Chavez allegedly sexually abused multiple young girls and women prior to his death in 1993.
Multiple women accused Chavez, who co-founded and led the United Farm Workers (UFW) labor union, of assault, harassment, and rape dating back to 1960.
The previously unpublished allegations were corroborated by the Times investigation, which was based on more than 60 interviews with Chavez’s top aides, relatives, and former UFW members. Reporters also reviewed hundreds of pages of union records, confidential emails, photographs, and audio recordings of UFW board meetings.
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Several other women accused Chavez of sexual abuse, including his longtime confidant and fellow UFW co-founder, Dolores Huerta, who is now 95 years old. Huerta accused Chavez of raping her in 1966 in a vehicle and of an earlier coerced sexual encounter during a work trip in 1960. She says two children resulted from these encounters.

The Times investigation concluded that Chavez fathered at least four children with three women outside his marriage based on 23andMe test results.

I have not read the NYT's article about Chavez, so some of the above is news to me. A few things leap out to me:

1. Timeliness aside, the NYT seems to have done good investigative work. I'll give the NYT a kudo for that, but only one. A little more diligence and willingness by MSM outlets like the NYT to see Chavez's clay feet, legs, and @#$% could have saved some women and girls decades of pain and secret shame.

2. Numerous higher-ops among Chavez's organization knew very well what Chavez was, but kept silent "por La Causa. May they, if they have not repented, and their cause roast in Hell.

3. Dolores Huerta (and possibly some other women) knew very up close and VERY personally what Cesar Chavez was. Her (and unnamed others) silence enabled Chavez's 20 or 30 or ?? years of rape of women and girls barely in their teens. I won't get detailed and graphic, but if she/they have not repented for their enabling, their eternal present and/or future is or will be unpleasant.

Personally, after decades of farmers having been and still being tarred with Chavez's slander, my only regret is that this his happening 50 or 60 years too late. Assuming he never repented, I very mentally picture Chavez being in an infernal place being slowly roasted on a spit from his mouth through to his, ummm, number 1. I know, very Dante-esque of me.

[DLR Pyro]

Left-Wing Icon Accused Of Serially Sexually Abusing Young Girls

I'm anxiously waiting to see how all the woke cities who re-named streets, expressways and boulevards after St. Chavez scramble to remove any trace of their fallen hero from their cityscape
 

[SVPete]

I'm anxiously waiting to see how all the woke cities who re-named streets, expressways and boulevards after St. Chavez scramble to remove any trace of their fallen hero from their cityscape
 

IMO, few will. Horndogs JFK, RFK, and Teddy the Snorkel are still Lib/Prog icons.

[SVPete]

When Heroes Have Feet of Clay: Cesar Chavez Was a Serial Abuser of Young Girls

https://pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2026/03/19/when-heroes-have-feet-of-clay-cesar-chavez-was-a-serial-abuser-of-young-girls-n4950816

Cesar Chavez, a civil rights icon and Mexican-American saint, had a dark past that many of his contemporaries knew about but refused to act upon.

Chavez liked underage teen girls. He took several of them to his private office about 100 miles outside of Los Angeles, where he would molest and rape them, some as young as 12 years old. He also assaulted and raped adult women.

Everyone who knew kept quiet to avoid tarnishing the icon's reputation or hurting the cause he fought for.

The shocking revelations were printed in the New York Times on late Wednesday afternoon and sent a shockwave through the liberal community. The five-year Times investigation interviewed more than 60 people and examined thousands of pages of personal papers, union board meeting notes, and dozens of tape recordings.

A handful of Mr. Chavez’s relatives and former U.F.W. leaders have been aware for years about various allegations of sexual misconduct, but there is no evidence that they made efforts to fully investigate the accusations, acknowledge the victims or apologize to them. Instead, many of the women say they were discouraged from speaking out in order to preserve Mr. Chavez’s public image.

Internal emails dating back over a decade show union members discussing Ms. Murguia’s claims of abuse and the impact it had on her life. One of Ms. Murguia’s relatives confronted Mr. Chavez while he was still alive, in the 1980s. According to the relative, Mr. Chavez offered no defense and responded only by clearing his throat.

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Ninety-six-year-old Dolores Huerta, Chavez's closest advisor, tells the Times, "Mr. Chavez drove her out to a secluded grape field, parked and raped her inside the vehicle." Huerta, who was 36 at the time, said "she chose not to report the assault to the police because of their hostility toward the movement, and she feared that no one within the union would believe her."

Several young girls ended up as victims of Chavez, who used his power and the girls' hero worship of him to abuse them.

Article author Moran honors what he believes Chavez accomplished. Maybe Moran or his family benefited from the UFW.

This farmer's son sees those "accomplishments" as crap-coated by Chavez's and his Dem pols' broad-broom slander of the many farmers who did NOT abuse their migrant workers. My father was among the numerous non-abusers Chavez slandered. These revelations, IMO, are of another layer of crap coating Chavez's "accomplishments", his abuse of the women and girls he was supposedly benefiting and the complicity in that abuse of the women coworkers he raped. And even after his death, the union Leaders and activists still hid what he was to keep the gravy in the gravy train of his icon-hood flowing.

[SVPete]

BREAKING: EU and Japan Flip, Pledge to 'Contribute' To Hormuz Protection

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2026/03/19/new-japan-eu-flip-pledge-support-for-hormuz-protection-n3813027

European leaders, including Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, flatly rejected Donald Trump's request to provide escort support for commercial traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump responded by calling the US commitment to NATO's common defense into serious question, calling these countries "allies" in care quotes, and that the relationship had been proven a "one way street." Trump expanded on his remarks in a press avail at the White House, telling reporters that the Hormuz crisis was a "great test" of NATO's faithlessness.

Two days later, Europe has seemingly changed its tune:
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The joint statement, published by the UK's Starmer government, appears to commit the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Netherlands to participating in escorts through the Strait, emphasis mine:
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That may not be an ironclad, explicit commitment to send naval assets to the Strait. It does, however, contradict the explicit refusals earlier this week from Starmer, Macron, and Germany's Friedrich Merz. European leaders wasted little time in making it clear that they did not see the war with Iran as "theirs," and scoffed at Trump's attempts to get them involved after hostilities had already started.

It fell to John Bolton to warn these allies that this argument would backfire in a big way with Trump. He's already skeptical about how NATO and Europe have stuck the US with the war in Ukraine, and Europe may have just handed Trump a precedent for telling them to solve the issue themselves. Reciprocity is the key to any alliance, after all:

Maybe someone reminded the posturing Euro-"Leaders" that the US is a net exporter of oil, and told them that much of the oil being carried through the Strait is "their" oil.