Posts Tagged ‘Everytown for Gun Safety’

Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for March 23, 2020: And Then There Were Two

Monday, March 23rd, 2020

Biden wins again, Gabbard drops out, Slow Joe makes himself scarce, and everybody hunkers down due to The Current Unpleasantness. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!

By now the clown car has shrunk so far that all the occupants could fit in a Smart Car. (Note: That reflects the name brand of the car, not the mental acuity of the occupants.)

In theory, there’s nothing insurmountable about Biden’s 300+ delegate lead. In reality, it would take something extremely drastic (like Biden keeling over or wandering naked in front of a camera) to change the dynamics of the race. 538 gives Biden a 98% chance of winning the nomination. On the other hand, everyone thought they knew how the 2016 election would turn out as well…

Delegates

Right now the delegate count stands at:

  1. Joe Biden 1,193
  2. Bernie Sanders 888
  3. Elizabeth Warren 82
  4. Michael Bloomberg 58*
  5. Pete Buttigieg 26
  6. Amy Klobuchar 7
  7. Tulsi Gabbard 2

*Three less than last week. Some settling may occur…

Polls
Once again, there’s not a single poll that has Sanders up over Biden at the state or national level, so not much point in listing them here.

  • Real Clear Politics polls.
  • 538 poll average.
  • Election betting markets.
  • Pundits, etc.

  • Biden wins Florida, Illinois and Arizona, padding his delegate count over Sanders.
  • “If elections can be bought so easily, why did Bloomberg and Steyer flop?”

    The political world is practically giddy at the failed campaigns of Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer. The Democratic primary’s billionaire candidates rediscovered an age-old truth: money can’t buy love.

    It couldn’t buy love for Hillary Clinton, who nearly doubled Donald Trump’s spending in 2016 and had three times as many positive ads. Or for Jeb Bush’s wealthy backers in the Republican primary preceding that race. Or for self-funders from years past like Meg Whitman, Linda McMahon, and Steve Forbes. Money can help a campaign’s message get heard, but it doesn’t mean that listeners will like what they hear. Yet fears of campaign spending “buying” elections continue to drive our campaign-finance laws. The result is bad law and poor policy.

    Last year, the House passed H.R. 1, a sweeping rewrite of campaign-finance and election laws. The bill would have imposed a variety of new restrictions on paid political speech. Its authors asserted that current law lets wealthy individuals and special interests “dominate election spending, corrupt our politics, and degrade our democracy through tidal waves of unlimited and anonymous spending.”

    But as Bloomberg and Steyer found out, voters easily reject messages and campaigns with which they disagree. Congress shouldn’t assume that voters just buy whatever is advertised. They don’t.

  • How much money did Bloomberg waste on his presidential run? Would you believe…

    …yep, one BILLION dollars!

  • Hey, remember how Elizabeth Warren ranted about dark money and swore up and down she was different? Yeah, about that:

  • Indiana moves its primary out to June 2nd due to the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic.
  • Hill pundit pushes Klobuchar as veep pick.
  • Now on to the clown car itself (or what’s left of it):

  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. With Biden’s rise, the establishment comes out of hiding:

    As funny as it may be on the surface, there is something dark and sad about Biden’s rise. The Democratic Party establishment knows Biden is unfit for office. They don’t care. With Biden, the political machinery that usually operates in hiding, in the shadows, has come out into the light, in aviator sunglasses and a sunny grin. The powers-that-be are declaring, openly, that their right to rule will not be reined in by anything, least of all the perception that they are incompetent and out of touch.

    Thanks to decades of failed and corrupt leadership, many Americans are developing a creeping and cynical feeling that they don’t have a voice, that voting is like choosing from a carefully crafted menu of options with the same mediocre results. President Biden would prove them right. He would eliminate the mystique that once allowed them to believe our political system is one worth respecting and complete the decline into decadence that characterizes American managerial democracy, which is now at such a late stage of decay it no longer matters if a presidential nominee can tell his wife and sister apart.

    Biden’s comeback proves that many things which people thought mattered in the great American clown show of presidential politics actually don’t.

    The standards are through the floor: Biden has no policies, no core philosophy, and no special qualities to recommend him other than a perception of “electability” that is driven almost entirely by a sycophantic news media.

    A vote for Joe Biden is a vote to remove Trump from office, not to elect Joe Biden. He would be the first president who upon election everyone, most of all his supporters, knows would not be calling the actual shots.

    Sanders supporters have now learned a harsh lesson: power, not ideology, is what matters most.

    With the win all but in the bag, Biden’s team doesn’t want to screw things up by letting him be visible to potential voters. “Three reasons Joe Biden will never be president.” Too long a tenure in the Senate (he spent 36 years there, and no one who served as long as 15 years there ever became President), the difficulty in moving from Vice President to President, and the 14 year rule. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Biden tries to become the Social Justice Warrior pandering grand champion by saying he’ll only consider black females for the Supreme Court. He was endorsed by “the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), which represents 1.3 million workers in the health care, grocery, retail and other industries.” Everytown for Gun Safety, the latest head of the Brady Bunch Astroturf hydra bankrolled by Michael Bloomberg, endorsed Biden.

    This just in: Grandpa Simpson ain’t popular with the youn’uns. Biden plans to start vetting his affirmative action veep pick in the next few weeks. Incumbent Michigan governor Grethen Whitmer says it’s not going to be her. (A previous Michicgan governor, Jennifer Granholm, is constitutionally ineligable, being born in Canada to Canadian parents.) “Hunter Biden Trips Cost Taxpayers Nearly $200,000.”

  • Update: Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: Dropped Out. She dropped out March 19 and endorsed Biden. Postmortem from 538:

    Gabbard entered the race in January 2019 with an intriguing profile: a woman of color, a military veteran, a millennial who advocated for new voices within the Democratic Party (despite a congressional voting record that skewed more moderate than the rest of the party, she resigned as vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee in 2016 to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders).

    But it was hard for Gabbard to make inroads with Democratic voters — the more Democrats got to know her over the course of the campaign, the less they liked her. This was probably compounded by the fact that perhaps the most attention Gabbard received all cycle long was when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested Republicans were “grooming” her to be a third-party spoiler and when Gabbard was one of only three Democrats who did not vote in favor of impeaching President Trump.

    There were many other long-shot candidates in 2020, but what set Gabbard apart was how long she stayed in the race despite not winning more than 4 percent of the vote in any contest except tiny American Samoa (where she was born). Other candidates stuck in the 1 to 2 percent range in national polls dropped out once voting began, if not before. She even gave up a safe House seat to stay in the presidential race, announcing in October that she would not run for reelection even though Hawaii is one of the few states that allows candidates to run for Congress and president at the same time. Even by March, after candidates like former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who were polling above 10 percent nationally, were dropping out of the race, Gabbard pushed on.

    By then, Gabbard’s campaign looked more like a protest campaign than one with any intention of winning. She did not contest multiple key states on the primary calendar, including Iowa, where she did not hold a public event after Oct. 24, 2019. In early March, she told ABC News she was staying in the race in order to speak to Americans “about the sea change we need in our foreign policy” and promote her pet issue of ending military intervention abroad. It was beginning to look like Gabbard would take her campaign almost all the way to the convention, following in the footsteps of past presidential candidates who were misfits in their own party, like former Reps. Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. But money may have been an issue for Gabbard; in January, she raised only $1.1 million but spent $1.8 million, an obviously unsustainable rate.

    Upon dropping out of the race, Gabbard also endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden, despite the fact that her 2016 pick, Sanders, is still in the race, albeit a heavy underdog. It was an interesting olive branch to the establishment wing of the party with which Gabbard has openly feuded so much in the past. It would also seem to foreclose the possibility that Gabbard will run as a third-party candidate in the general election.

    Farewell to the last Democratic candidate in the race born after World War II…

  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Bernie’s Whole Campaign Was Based On a Misreading of the 2016 Election“:

    Four years ago, Bernie Sanders put up a surprisingly strong fight against Hillary Clinton on the strength of his support among white working-class voters, who proceeded to desert Clinton in November. On the basis of those two elections, the left quickly formed a series of conclusions. The working class had become alienated by neoliberal economics and was searching for radical alternatives. Because the Democrats had failed to offer the kind of progressive radical alternative Sanders stood for, voters instead opted for Trump’s reactionary attack on globalism. In order to win them back and defeat Trump, Democrats needed to reorganize themselves as a radical populist party.

    On the left, this explanation was accepted so widely it became foundational, a premise progressives would work forward from without questioning its veracity. The Sanders campaign argued that its connection to the white working class would enable Bernie to compete in areas that had abandoned Democrats years ago. “Some in the Sanders camp envision possibly making a play for Iowa, Ohio, and Indiana, as well as states such as Kansas, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Montana,” reported Politicoone year ago. Every left-wing indictment of the Democratic mainstream was made in explicit or implicit contrast to this imagined counterfactual of a Sanders-led party riding triumphant through the heartland of red America.

    Snip.

    The second Sanders campaign has shown conclusively how badly the left misunderstood the electorate. It is not just that Sanders has failed to inspire anything like the upsurge in youth turnout he promised, or that he has failed to make meaningful headway with black voters. White working-class and rural voters have swung heavily against him. In Missouri and Michigan, those voters turned states he closely contested four years ago into routs for his opponent. Some rural counties have swung 30 points from Sanders 2016 to Biden 2020. The candidate in the race who has forged a transracial working-class coalition is, in fact, Joe Biden.

    The factor that actually explains 2016, as some of us chagrined liberals insisted at the time, was Hillary Clinton’s idiosyncratic personal unpopularity. It turned out large portions of the public, even of the Democratic electorate, simply detested her.

    True, but not the entire truth. More and more of the electorate loathes Democratic policies as well, no matter how many carefully-worded, crosstab-slanted, cherry-picked polls say otherwise. And they hate the naked disdain the SJW-infected leftwing elites display when it comes to ordinary Americans. But this final quote rings true: “Sanders has inspired a sizable faction of one party. But his vision of mobilizing a hidden national majority is, and always was, a fantasy.” (Hat tip: Ann Althouse, a couple of whose commenters make some cognizant points: First: “The ‘chagrined liberals’ were unable to point out Hillary’s unpopularity because the woke feminists saw Hillary as their champion to ‘break the glass ceiling’ allegedly preventing a female President. Anyone like Jonathan Chait who might express misgivings about Hillary’s electability was promptly dismissed as ‘a cis white man’ who had no right to express his opinion on the issue.” Second: “There is another explanation, that Trump has basically dominated the populist lane by delivering on much of the agenda he had that overlapped with Bernie, you know, the popular and effective part of it. But that would require giving Trump some credit, so it won’t receive much consideration.”) The New York Times already has a prebituary piece on his campaign, the sort where insiders leak self-flattering “if only he had listened to my advice” tidbits while preparing to swim away from the wreckage:

    In mid-January, a few weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Senator Bernie Sanders’s pollster offered a stark prognosis for the campaign: Mr. Sanders was on track to finish strong in the first three nominating states, but Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s powerful support from older African-Americans could make him a resilient foe in South Carolina and beyond.

    The pollster, Ben Tulchin, in a meeting with campaign aides, recommended a new offensive to influence older black voters, according to three people briefed on his presentation. The data showed two clear vulnerabilities for Mr. Biden: his past support for overhauling Social Security, and his authorship of a punitive criminal justice law in the 1990s.

    And there’s your primary leaker/spinner.

    But the suggestion met with resistance. Some senior advisers argued that it wasn’t worth diverting resources from Iowa and New Hampshire, people familiar with the campaign’s deliberations said. Others pressed Mr. Tulchin on what kind of message, exactly, would make voters rethink their support for the most loyal ally of the first black president.

    And there’s your “But good old Bernie was just too high-minded!” positive spin.

    Crucially, both Mr. Sanders and his wife, Jane, consistently expressed reservations about going negative on Mr. Biden, preferring to stick with the left-wing policy message they have been pressing for 40 years.

    The warnings about Mr. Biden proved prescient: Two months later, Mr. Sanders is now all but vanquished in the Democratic presidential race, after Mr. Biden resurrected his campaign in South Carolina and built an overwhelming coalition of black voters and white moderates on Super Tuesday.

    While Mr. Sanders has not ended his bid, he has fallen far behind Mr. Biden in the delegate count and has taken to trumpeting his success in the battle of ideas rather than arguing that he still has a path to the nomination. His efforts to regain traction have faltered in recent weeks as the coronavirus pandemic has frozen the campaign, and perhaps heightened the appeal of Mr. Biden’s safe-and-steady image.

    In the view of some Sanders advisers, the candidate’s abrupt decline was a result of unforeseeable and highly unlikely events — most of all, the sudden withdrawal of two major candidates, Senator Amy Klobuchar and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who instantly threw their support to Mr. Biden and helped spur a rapid coalescing of moderate support behind his campaign.

    Any excuse will do, as long as it’s not “socialist ideas are unpopular even with most Democrats.” Sanders has entered the dreaded “considering many options” phase of his campaign. 538 wonders what concessions Sanders can wring from the Biden campaign. I have a pretty good idea:

    Sanders Raised $2 million for “coronavirus relief”. But look closer: “The money raised will go to No Kid Hungry, One Fair Wage Emergency Fund, Meals on Wheels, Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund and the National Domestic Workers Alliance.” With the possible exception of Meals on Wheel, it looks like all those are adjuncts to lefty organizing causes.

    Bulwerker hyperventilates that Bernie continuing his campaign is a threat to the Republic. Because mere voters must of necessity bow to the DNC’s candidate preferences. As if playing footsie with Castro wasn’t enough, Sanders has now been endorsed by history’s greatest monster. You know that “focusing on the crisis” he talked about?

    Heh:

  • Out of the Running

    These are people who were formerly in the roundup who have announced they’re not running, for which I’ve seen no signs they’re running, or who declared then dropped out:

  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti.
  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams
  • Actor Alec Baldwin
  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet (Dropped out February 11, 2020)
  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Dropped out March 4, 2020 and endorsed Biden)
  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (Dropped out January 11, 2020)
  • Former California Governor Jerry Brown
  • Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock (Dropped out December 2, 2019)
  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg (Dropped out March 1, 2020 and endorsed Biden)
  • Former one-term President Jimmy Carter
  • Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.
  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro (Dropped out January 2, 2020)
  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
  • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
  • New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (Dropped out September 20, 2019)
  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney (Dropped Out January 31, 2020)
  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (Dropped out August 29, 2019)
  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum
  • Former Vice President Al Gore
  • Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (Dropped out August 2, 2019)
  • California Senator Kamala Harris (Dropped out December 3, 2019)
  • Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (Dropped out August 15, 2019; running for Senate instead)
  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: Dropped Out (Dropped out August 21, 2019; running for a third gubernatorial term)
  • Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine
  • Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.
  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar.(Dropped out March 2, 2020 and endorsed Biden.
  • New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu
  • Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe
  • Oregon senator Jeff Merkley
  • Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton (Dropped out August 23, 2019)
  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: (Dropped out November 20, 2019)
  • Former First Lady Michelle Obama
  • Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda (Dropped out January 29, 2019)
  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (Dropped out November 1, 2019)
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (constitutionally ineligible)
  • Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (Dropped out February 12, 2020)
  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan (Dropped out October 24, 2019)
  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak (Dropped out December 1, 2019)
  • Billionaire Tom Steyer. (Dropped out February 29, 2020)
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. (Dropped out March 5, 2020)
  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson (Dropped out January 10, 2020)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang (Dropped out February 11, 2020, later endorsed Biden)
  • Like the Clown Car update? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    LinkSwarm for February 16, 2018

    Friday, February 16th, 2018

    This has probably been my busiest February on record. Enjoy a complimentary Friday LinkSwarm, try the waitress and tip the veal:

  • “It’s doubtful you can find a more succinct example of TDS than a seemingly inebriated Democrat Senator asking the aggregate intelligence apparatus, during a public session of congress, to give specific details of U.S. covert intelligence efforts to thwart Russian, Chinese and North Korean cyber-warfare.” Democratic Senator Jack Reed continues to long, proud tradition of questionable Rhode Island political figures…
  • In January, the first month under the Trump tax cuts, the federal government pulls in record tax revenues and runs a surplus. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “The Genius Of Trump’s Food Stamp Proposal: You’re Not Supposed To Like Being On Welfare.”
  • Michael Leeden thinks the Islamic Republic of Iran is doomed. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Reminder: Everytown’s “school shooting statistics” are pure fabrication.
  • Democrats Fleeing Blue States, Infecting Red States With Failed Liberal Disease.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Not only are a new German frigate’s computer systems FUBARed, but the ship can’t even float right.
  • Wired writer doesn’t understand the difference between “Islamist” and “Muslim.”
  • “In Wake Of Corruption Trials, Maryland Ponders Disbanding Baltimore Police Department.”
  • For Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez, illegal aliens are more important than bullet-proof vests for officers.
  • Asian student at Harvard discovers that identity politics is a dead end.
  • Stop Trying To Shove Women Into STEM.” “There’s this big push to get girls into STEM — while there’s no commensurate push to get women into oil rig work, no complaints that there aren’t enough women hanging off the back of garbage trucks.” Also:

    We’ve recently found that countries renowned for gender equality show some of the largest sex differences in interest in and pursuit of STEM degrees, which is not only inconsistent with an oppression narrative, it is positive evidence against it. Consider that Finland excels in gender equality, its adolescent girls outperform boys in science, and it ranks near the top in European educational performance. With these high levels of educational performance and overall gender equality, Finland is poised to close the sex differences gap in STEM. Yet, Finland has one of the world’s largest sex differences in college degrees in STEM fields. Norway and Sweden, also leading in gender equality rankings, are not far behind. This is only the tip of the iceberg, as this general pattern of increasing sex differences with national increases in gender equality is found throughout the world.

  • Moron thinks poor people are too stupid to cook food.
  • Do you need carbs for Thyroid health? Science says no.
  • Cool. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Texas Democratic state Rep. Dawnna Dukes’ campaign is more than $700,000 in debt due to legal fees from the (now dropped) felony charges against her. And she’s running for reelection.
  • Bill Crider, RIP.
  • Setting ablaze a giant matchsphere.
  • Every book I bought in the last half of last year.
  • Syria: Sometimes All the Options Are Bad

    Tuesday, October 25th, 2016

    Certain factions of the Washington establishment (here’s a good example) are demanding that Obama “do something” to stop the fighting around Aleppo in Syria, the “something” in this case being the threat of force, or even actual use thereof, to stop Russian airstrikes and prevent a “humanitarian disaster.” And Hillary Clinton is calling for a no-fly zone.

    To which I reply: Why?

    We can’t back the good guys in the Syrian civil war because there are no good guys. Assad’s ruling faction are scumbags. The Russians backing Assad are scumbags. Hezbollah, fighting on Assad’s side, are scumbags. The Iranian mullahs backing Assad are scumbags. Turkey is currently ruled by Erdogan’s Islamist scumbags, and Turkey is more interested in attacking the Kurds than the Islamic State. The Free Syrian Army is riddled with Islamist scumbags. The al-Nusra front are scumbags. The Islamic State is made up of the very worst scumbags in the region (and world). The only notable faction that aren’t scumbags are the Kurds, who, as an ethnic and geographic minority, are in no position to rule Syria, or even a significant fraction of it.

    To the extent that Obama’s imaginary red lines and desultory, ineffectual backing of Syrian rebel groups have harmed America’s reputation for competence in the region, the damage has already been done. (Indeed, the Obama/Clinton/Kerry strategy for fomenting regime change in the hope that things would turn out better, like a liberal funhouse mirror distorted reflection of George W. Bush’s far more limited regime change goals in Iraq, have made things worse across the region.) We have no pressing national interest at stake in the Syrian civil war, there’s not a contending faction (outside the peripherally-involved Kurds) worth backing, and it’s not apparent what such an intervention might reasonably achieve.

    All of which makes me incredulous when I read pieces that suggest that Obama is considering military actions in Syria.

    Even some on the right have been agitating for the United States to “do something” in Syria, and S. E. Cupp’s Twitter timeline has gone to an “all heart-tugging photos of Syrian children” format without saying why it is the United State’s interest to intervene in Syria or proposing anything concrete as to what form that intervention should take.

    A large part of the current push to intervene in Syria seems to be coming from an interest group called The Syria Campaign. Who is behind it?

    From that Zero Hedge piece:

    A careful look at the origins and operation of The Syria Campaign raises doubts about the outfit’s image as an authentic voice for Syrian civilians, and should invite serious questions about the agenda of its partner organizations as well.

    A creation of international PR firms

    Best known for its work on liberal social issues with well-funded progressive clients like the ACLU and the police reform group, Campaign Zero, the New York- and London-based public relations firm Purpose promises to deliver creatively executed campaigns that produce either a “behavior change,” “perception change,” “policy change” or “infrastructure change.” As the Syrian conflict entered its third year, this company was ready to effect a regime change.

    On Feb. 3, 2014, Anna Nolan, the senior strategist at Purpose, posted a job listing. According to Nolan’s listing, her firm was seeking “two interns to join the team at Purpose to help launch a new movement for Syria.”

    At around the same time, another Purpose staffer named Ali Weiner posted a job listing seeking a paid intern for the PR firm’s new Syrian Voices project. “Together with Syrians in the diaspora and NGO partners,” Weiner wrote, “Purpose is building a movement that will amplify the voices of moderate, non-violent Syrians and mobilize people in the Middle East and around the world to call for specific changes in the political and humanitarian situation in the region.” She explained that the staffer would report “to a Strategist based primarily in London, but will work closely with the Purpose teams in both London and New York.”

    On June 16, 2014, Purpose founder Jeremy Heimans drafted articles of association for The Syria Campaign’s parent company. Called the Voices Project, Heimans registered the company at 3 Bull Lane, St. Ives Cambridgeshire, England. It was one of 91 private limited companies listed at the address. Sadri would not explain why The Syria Campaign had chosen this location or why it was registered as a private company.

    Along with Heimans, Purpose Europe director Tim Dixon was appointed to The Syria Campaign’s board of directors. So was John Jackson, a Purpose strategist who previously co-directed the Burma Campaign U.K. that lobbied the EU for sanctions against that country’s ruling regime. (Jackson claimed credit for The Syria Campaign’s successful push to remove Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad’s re-election campaign ads from Facebook.) Anna Nolan became The Syria Campaign’s project director, even as she remained listed as the strategy director at Purpose.

    From The Syria Campaign’s own website:

    The Syria Campaign is a non-profit organisation registered as a company in the United Kingdom as The Voices Project—company number 8825761. (You can’t be a registered charity in the UK if most of your work is campaigning.)

    We have a Governing Board who are legally responsible for the organisation and oversee strategy and finance for The Syria Campaign. The board members are Daniel Gorman, Ben Stewart, Sawsan Asfari, Tim Dixon and Lina de Sergie.

  • Jeremy Heimans co-founded “a campaign group in the U.S. presidential elections that used crowd-funding to help a group of women whose loved ones were in Iraq hire a private jet to follow Vice-President Dick Cheney on his campaign stops, in what became known as the “‘Chasing Cheney’ tour” among other leftist activism.
  • Daniel Gorman heads “the UK’s largest festival of contemporary Arab culture.”
  • Ben Stewart is a Greenpeace activist who has a grudge against Russia for detaining 30 of his fellow travelers.
  • Sawsan Asfari is “active in various charities that help Palestinians across the Arab world” and is the wife of Syrian-born British billionaire Ayman Asfari.
  • Lina de Sergie seems to more commonly go by Lina Sergie Attar. “She is a Syrian-American architect and writer from Aleppo. She co-developed Karam’s Innovative Education initiatives: the creative therapy and holistic wellness program for displaced Syrian children and the Karam Leadership Program, an entrepreneurship and technology program for displaced Syrian youth.” Yes, I’m sure “holistic wellness” is a big priority for Syrian refugees. Karam’s Mission Statement: “We develop Innovative Education programs for Syrian refugee youth, distribute Smart Aid to Syrian families, and fund Sustainable Development projects initiated by Syrians for Syrians.”
  • Tim Dixon has quite an extensive resume, being a former speechwriter to two Australian Labor Party Prime Ministers and involved in a large number of causes:

    – a large-scale initiative to help change hearts and minds on the global refugee crisis;
    – The Syria Campaign, to move the world to action on the humanitarian crisis in Syria;
    – Everytown, the movement to tackle gun violence in America

  • Etc.

    So, to summarize: It’s run by international left-wing activists in favor of Europe accepting more “Syrian” “refugees”, soft jihadis, and gun banners.

    These are not the sort of people I want driving American national security decisions.

    The situation in Syria is horrible, but outside territory held by the Islamic State, it’s the same type of horrible that has plagued the Middle East pretty much constantly absent control by a ruling power with sufficient force to keep the endemic ethnic strife under wraps. Wars there are fought under Hama rules, not those of the Geneva Convention.

    It is not in the best interests of the United States to intervene militarily in Syria. We have no compelling national security interest in Syria right now, there’s no faction worth backing, and trying to “create safe areas” or “establish no-fly zones” would be dangerous, cost-prohibitive and unlikely to succeed.

    Sometimes the best choice is doing nothing at all.

    LinkSwarm for May 5, 2015

    Tuesday, May 5th, 2015

    Happy Cinco de Mayo! My efforts to move the LinkSwarm back to it’s usual Friday position by posting early have failed, so I’m trying to get it there by letting it drift back one day later each time…

  • “Canadian Partnership Shielded Identities of Donors to Clinton Foundation.” Just in case you missed that. Because trying to keep up with all the sleazy bribery angles of the Clinton Foundation is like trying to drink from the firehose…
  • Speaking of which:

  • “Hillary may want to talk about inequality, but is there any better example of a couple who gorged at the trough of Wall Street and foreign autocrats, chose not to follow the rules, never could stop chasing more and more money and (in Hillary Clinton’s case) went to extraordinary lengths to destroy “personal” e-mails that might have pulled back the curtain on all that?” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Hillary hires Scott Hogan, an organizer of the failed “Everytown” gun-grabber astroturf to run her “Grassroots” campaign. Hopefully he’ll bring Hillary the same outstanding success he brought to gun control…
  • Russian stooges in Ukraine: “Soviet terror famine? No, that was all just a big misunderstanding!” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Islamic State murders 600 more Yezidis. (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
  • The Islamic State also claimed post facto credit for the Garland attack.
  • Speaking of which, here’s an interview with Bosch Fawstin, the winner of the Draw Mohammed contest. (Hat tip: Legal Insurrection.)
  • Emergency room visits up under ObamaCare.
  • Lefty lawyer Laurence Tribe calls Obama’s “force everyone to use green energy without congressional approval” plan unconstitutional. “After studying the only legal basis offered for the EPA’s proposed rule, I concluded that the agency is asserting executive power far beyond its lawful authority.”
  • Drug cartel violence heats up in Mexico: “Gunmen shot down a Mexican military helicopter Friday in the western state of Jalisco, killing three soldiers, and set fire to buses, blocked roads, and attacked banks and gas stations in a sharp escalation of violence against the government.” This is evidently the handiwork of the New Generation drug cartel.
  • Minimum wage hike hits San Francisco Comic Store.
  • When the Social Justice Warriors started attacking the company Protein World over their “Beach Ready” ad campaign, Protein World didn’t cave, they fought back. Result: They earned an additional $1 million in four days.
  • Not understanding that the Presidency is not an entry level job, and that the Republican field was already packed, Ben Carson joins the Presidential race.
  • Ditto Carly Fiorina, whose tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard was not an unqualified success, and whose 2010 California Senate race lost to Barbara Boxer by 16 points.
  • And evidently Mike Huckabee is going to run as well.
  • Texas Democrats are furious that a new ethics bill might keep them from scratching each other’s backs. (Hat tip: Push Junction.)
  • The Austin American Statesman is moving printing and packing operations to San Antonio and Houston, resulting in about a 100 jobs lost in Austin. Previously. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Social Justice Warriors can’t even win elections at UCLA.
  • Austin’s Highland Mall closed on April 30th.
  • Gun and Crime Roundup for July 31, 2014

    Thursday, July 31st, 2014

    Time for another gun and crime roundup, and oh boy, is there a lot of stupid to go around this week:

  • DC Gun ruling put on hold. (Hat tip: Alphecca.)
  • The “Everytown for Gun Safety” head of the Bloomberg hydra just made the strongest case for women owning a gun I’ve ever seen on TV. Even the women on The View said as much, which is saying something. It’s like an ad for Taco Bell promising “Rectal bleeding and serious diarrhea, guaranteed!”
  • And the inevitable video recut:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades.)

  • Did gun owners kill Operation Choke Point? Great news if true, but bad ideas in the Obama Administration just never seem to entirely go away… (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
  • Doctor ignores hospitals anti-gun policy and prevents a massacre.
  • The “Moms Demand Action” head of the Bloomberg hydra protests topless in Austin. Sadly, they seem to be made up of exactly the women you don’t want to see topless. “Put it on! Put it all on!”
  • Restaurant owner puts up sign welcoming gun owners. Result? Business explodes.
  • Beretta says goodbye to Maryland and hello to Tennessee.
  • Is New York DHS offering $500 rewards to snitch on preppers? (Hat tip: Sipsy Street.)
  • DHS seize Land Rover:

    (Hat tip: Sipsy Street.)

  • Police in La Joya, Texas (West of McAllen and Mission) kill gang member in shootout a mile from the Mexican border.
  • ProTip: If you break into a restaurant, don’t try to order something from that same restaurant later the same day wearing the same clotehs captured on the security camera.

  • ProTip: If you’re trying to rip off a convenience story, don’t pick the one where an MMA fighter works:

  • Guns Roundup for June 12, 2014

    Thursday, June 12th, 2014

    It’s been a while since I did a roundup of gun news, so here it is. Just don’t be surprised if you read some of this on gunny blogs weeks ago…

  • Obama praises “Australia’s gun laws.” Which is to say, the total confiscation of all firearms from law-abiding citizens.
  • So how much “safer” has New York’s gun-grabbing SAFE act made New York City?

    In the last month alone, 129 people were shot, according to the latest CompStat figures, or 43.3 percent more than for the same period last year.

    Since January, there has been an overall 13.2 percent increase in shooting victims, while 10.2 percent fewer guns have been recovered compared to 2013.

    Of course, some of that is probably due to the work of new Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio…

  • Oklahoma’s House and Senate successfully override governor Mary Fallin’s veto of a bill establishing a 15 day denial window for local law enforcement to turn down approval of certain NFA-regulated firearms and accessories (silencers, suppressors, short-barreled rifles and shotguns, machine guns, etc.), after which approval becomes automatic. Why a Republican governor tried to veto a popular pro-Second Amendment bill (which passed 39-0 in the Senate and 86-3 House, which puts Fallin to the left of many state Democrats) in a deep red state is a deep mystery…
  • CNN admits it got played by the lying liars at Everytown for Gun Safety, who produced a map of “school shootings,” 80% of which were easily debunked as bogus. (Hat tip: Alphecca.)
  • George Soros-funded Moms Demand Action demands Tulsa Chipolte kick out the Oklahoma Open Carry group. The result?

    The manager refused to kick out OKOCA and even gave them free drinks. MDA activists then proceeded to take pictures of the gun owners and attempted to portray them as intimidating and threatening. The management wasn’t having any of it; he threw Moms Demand Action out of his store!

  • How did I miss this? The son of infamous Philadelphia abortion doctor (and now convicted felon) Kermit Gosnell “shot several times” by a homeowner during an “alleged home invasion.” Gosnell family values…
  • Why does the sheriff of an Indiana county with a population of 13,124 need a 60,000 pound mine-resistant MRAP vehicle? (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • School shooting stopped by good guy with a gun. (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
  • Why Civil Rights and Gun Rights Are Inseparable. This is a review of Nicholas Johnson’s Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms.
  • The NRA says, in effect, “Hey, cool it with the Open Carry hi-jinks.”
  • Target considering a gun ban. Contact links there to let them know this is a bad idea…
  • Armed Cincinnati homeowner confronts three home invaders. Result: All three arrested, one with life-threatening injuries. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes…
  • Probably the saddest story you’ll read all year. Seriously. We’re talking industrial strength sad here. Click with caution. (Hat tip Dwight.)
  • Debunking the latest over-hyped bullet.
  • Gun and Crime Roundup for May 7, 2014

    Wednesday, May 7th, 2014

    Time for another roundup of gun and crime news. As always Democrats are trying to take guns away from the good guys, while the good guys are shooting the stupidest of the bad guys:

  • Supreme Court refuses to hear Drake v. Jerejian, leaving intact New Jersey’s anti-Second Amendment law requiring citizens to “show need” before being allowed a concealed carry permit. This leaves Heller nominally in place, but allows states to deprive law-abiding citizens of the Second Amendment rights for essentially capricious reasons.
  • The big news in the gun-grabber ranks, just in case you hadn’t noticed, is Bloomberg merging two of his gun-grabbing front groups into the single Everytown for Gun Safety. The goal, of course, remains the same: The complete disarmament of American civilians. But you couldn’t tell that from their website or spokespeople, who are deliberately vague when asked for specifics. Hint: Your need to keep changing your name is a sign you’re losing.
  • In related news, the head of Bloomberg’s Mayors Against illegal guns quits.
  • Louisiana wants to give lawmakers gun rights not enjoyed by ordinary citizens. I think you’ve got some equal protection clause issues there, Catou… (Hat tip: Alphecca.)
  • Hillary Clinton attacks “gun culture.” How nice of Hillary to remind gun owners that she’s a genuine foe of the Second Amendment prior to 2016. (Hat tip: Alphecca.)
  • Bonus:

  • Is the NRA falling victim to its own success and losing focus?
  • Missed this earlier: Smith & Wesson and Ruger leave California over unworkable microstamping law.
  • New Orleans teen shot in the head during a burglary attempt is arrested for another burglary attempt just blocks away from where he got shot Dude, being shot in the head is a giant clue that you should be pursuing a different career path…
  • Two burglars shot dead in Sacramento.
  • Murderer has sentence reduced and is to be released into the hands of director Richard Linklater, who made the movie Bernie about him. Uh, I don’t think this is the way the justice system is supposed to work… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Man shot through door by fake policeman.
  • Try to steal a man’s worktools from his truck three times? That’s an ass-shooting.
  • If I had a hammer/I’d hammer the pizza delivery guy/But if he had a gun/He’d shoot my stupid thug ass.
  • Bad gun use in popular media. With an entire section on The Walking Dead. (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)