Hunter Biden’s laptop takes another turn in the news cycle, Democrat-connected sex offenders are popping up everywhere, a killer camel, and the return of Florida Man. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
And virtual no Russo-Ukrainian War news, since I did that yesterday.
I would say that everyone outside of the Democratic Media Complex knew that two years ago, but of course, more than half the Democratic Media Complex knew that as well and simply lied about it to get Biden elected.
Got to say this treat aged pretty well.
1. The Hunter Biden laptop story was true. 2. The story implicated Joe Biden in global pay-for-play graft from countries like Russia, China and Ukraine. 3. The #DemocraticMediaComplex suppressed the story because they wanted Biden to win.
The Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo has been transformed into a warzone after the arrest of a top cartel boss. Burning vehicles littered the streets, and heavy gunfighting was reported causing the U.S. consulate to go on lockdown and the U.S. border crossing to be temporarily shut down on Monday.
The chaos erupted late Sunday when Juan Gerardo Trevino, or “El Huevo,” the leader of one faction of the Northeast Cartel, the successor group to the Zetas Cartel, was arrested. He is also a U.S. citizen, a Mexican government official told Reuters. Trevino is on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) list of most wanted cartel members.
Trevino faces a U.S. extradition order for drug trafficking and money laundering.
In response to the arrest, cartel members hijacked and burned vehicles and attacked law enforcement and military personnel.
“During the night of Sunday, there were shootings, burning of trucks, and a grenade attack on the U.S. consulate,” Mexican newspaper El Occidental said.
On Monday, Nuevo Laredo Mayor Carmen Lilia Canturosas warned citizens in the border town to take cover.
The woke want to destroy science. “The giant plan to track diversity in research journals. Efforts to chart and reduce bias in scholarly publishing will ask authors, reviewers and editors to disclose their race or ethnicity.” Translation: Science is not sufficiently biased in favor of our political goals.
According to the latest Winston Group poll, voters still believe Democrats want to defund the police by a 48%-34% margin.
“In terms of what is the position of the Democratic Party, voters tend to believe that Democrats want to defund the police, ” pollsters David Winston and Myra Miller explain. “Among groups outside the Democratic Party, Hispanics believe this is what Democrats want (49%-32%), as do suburban voters (45%-36%). Independents believe this slightly at 41%-33%, but especially conservative independents (61%-20%).”
Despite the efforts to distance themselves from the movement, some in the Democratic Party still openly support defunding the police, which means that the public will continue to believe Democrats still embrace the radical Black Lives Matter. movement, not police.
Federal Reserve raises interest rates .25%, bringing it to .5%. Remember, in order to kill the last bout of inflation, Paul Volker hiked rates up to 20%. There’s a lot more pain ahead…and given the huge amount of quantitative easing centrals banks have done, and the extensive budget deficits most of the governments in the developed world are running, 20% may not be enough.
Researcher Kyle Becker produced in-depth, acclaimed portrait of just how much money Anthony Fauci was making. Result: Forbes fired him. (Hat tip: 357 Magnum.)
The electorate is increasingly pessimistic about the direction in which President Biden and Democrats are steering the country and feel that the party’s priorities do not align with their own.”
What’s the solution?
The pollsters advise that if Democrats want to have “a fighting chance in the midterms – as well as a shot at holding on to the presidency in 2024,” that they need to embark on a “broader course correction back to the center,” and show voters that they are focused on solving quality-of-life issues.
In short, Democrats need to reject their progressive wing and its embrace of big government spending and identity politics.
Indeed, a majority of voters (54 percent) — including 56 percent of independents — explicitly say that they want Biden and Democrats to move closer to the center and embrace more moderate policies versus embracing more liberal policies (18 percent) or staying where they are politically (13 percent).
Most voters (61 percent) also agree that Biden and Democrats are “out of touch with hardworking Americans” and “have been so focused on catering to the far-left wing of the party that they’re ignoring Americans’ day to day concerns” such as “rising prices” and “combatting violent crime.” -The Hill
The top issue for voters is inflation – which sits at its highest level in 40 years – according to 51% of respondents, followed by the economy and job creation (32%). Yet, just 16% of voters believe the economy is Biden’s main focus, and trust Republicans over Democrats to manage it (47% vs. 41%) and control inflation (48% vs. 36%).
Voters also see Biden and Democrats as weak on crime (56%) – perhaps due to four years of Democrats pushing ‘defund the police’ under Trump, while our sitting Vice President raised bail money for BLM rioters.
Speaking of groomers: “Clinton-Connected Haiti Pastor Indicted For Child Sexual Abuse & Assault…The United States is charging pastor Corrigan Clay with child sex abuse after “engaging in illicit sexual conduct” with a Haitian orphan he adopted…Corrigan is the co-founder of the non-profit charity “Apparent Project”, which is a Clinton-connected group selling jewelry, clothing and art made by Haitian orphans.”
Speaking of Democrats being soft on sex offenders, Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley uncovers why Biden Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson deserves to be rejected:
Judge Jackson has a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes, both as a judge and as a policymaker. She’s been advocating for it since law school. This goes beyond “soft on crime.” I’m concerned that this a record that endangers our children
With the Nickel market shuttered after a Chinese stainless steel tycoon was caught with a historic, potentially fatal $8 billion margin call hanging over its head, today the London Metal Exchange announced that it will reopen its nickel market on Wednesday, more than a week after it was closed last Monday, after the Chinese company at the center of the epic short squeeze was bailed out by a consortium of banks led by JPMorgan which is also the largest counterparty to the short (for a detailed breakdown read “The 18 Minutes of Trading Chaos That Broke the Nickel Market”) .
Trading in nickel will resume after Xiang Guangda, whose massive short position equivalent to approximately 150,000 tons of nickel, sent shockwaves across the commodity market last week, announced a standstill with his banks to avoid further margin calls as Bloomberg first reported earlier. Xiang’s Tsingshan Group had been in discussions with banks led by JPMorgan about a loan facility to backstop his short position and said Monday that talks on the funding would continue during the standstill period. As a reminder, Xiang is JPMorgan’s largest counterparty, and owes Jamie Dimon several billion, money which the largest US bank would not receive unless it bailed out the Chinese firm.
If you owe the bank $100,000, you have a problem. If you owe the bank $8 billion, the bank has a problem…
Category: Extremely unexpected horrifying headlines: Petting zoo camel kills two. Not in the zoo, fortunately, as Humpy had busted out of the joint and was on the lam… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Heading toward Fourth of July weekend, I was looking through YouTube for more things that go boom when I came across this video of a gun infamous for not going boom. Ladies and gentlemen, feast your eyes on the nightmare-fueled horror that is the Zip 22:
It’s bad enough that it’s butt-ugly, cheaply made and anti-ergonomic, but is also infamous for malfunctioning. “Worst gun ever” has to be a target-rich environment, but the Zip 22 seems like a real strong contender. (I suppose the World War II Japanese Nambu Type 94 Shiki Kenju 8mm pistol, which could be fired accidentally by touching the sear, is actually worse from a safety viewpoint.)
But the detail that made write this post was the fact that the manufacturer offered an optional backward Picatinny rail for the top so you could mount this gun on the rail of a real gun. It’s like all those “Chainsaw bayonet attachment” memes come to life.
How unreliable is it? Ian McCollum was surprised he was actually able to fire off an entire magazine before it malfunctioned.
Here’s a guy shooting a Zip 22, who experiences a host of malfunctions (failure to eject, double-feed, etc.) in the course of firing off six magazines.
And the ejection port is so close to your finger that sometimes you get hot brass jammed up against your digits, as in this NSFW video:
Don’t think I’ll be buying one of these anytime soon…
ExJon suggests that you stop driving yourself crazy with social media outrage clicks. “This Thanksgiving, and in the days to follow, choose gratitude. Be thankful for the nation, for your life, for those whom you love and those who love you, flaws and all. Like a muscle, you can strengthen this virtue with regular exercise.”
The Advisory Board will be made up of Naomi Aberly, Jeremy Bird, former Dallas Mayor and Ambassador Ron Kirk, Congressman Joaquin Castro, Eric Johnson, Austin Ligon, Jennifer Longoria, Brownsville Mayor Tony Martinez, Eddy Morales, Amber Mostyn, Carrin F. Patman, Carrin Mauritz Patman, Marvin Ragsdale, Kirk Rudy, and Lynda Tran. Jenn Brown, who started as executive director for Battleground Texas, is now chairwoman of the advisory board.
Sure, that’s Battleground Texas’ big problem: Not enough advisers.
The real news here, I think, is the demotion-by-promotion of Jenn Brown.
Ron Kirk might back Hillary (who he’s donated to), or he might back Biden.
I think the advisory board may be a move to cement Battleground Texas more firmly in Hillary’s orbit, thus foreclosing the possibility that Bernie Sanders might start picking up activist support in Texas. After all, she still needs to win the primary before getting to the general…
Just when you think you’ve already seen the most idiotic ideas in firearms “safety” gizmos, this comes along. It’s a mini clip-on airbag condom for police sidearms to reduce the muzzle velocity of their first shot to nonlethal velocity.
This is like trying to prevent automobile deaths by creating a cumbersome device that ensures the parking break is always on.
Evidently the super-genius developers of this gizmo failed to notice that police already have a wide range of non-lethal force at their disposal, including tasers, beanbag rounds and rubber bullets.
So: a stupid, unworkable solution to a non-existent problem (fatal police shootings have been declining, not rising) hyped for political reasons (they have to find some way to keep black Americans voting for Democrats) that won’t be purchased by police departments and wouldn’t be used by cops even if the department did.
I would say it’s a mystery why the people behind this think criminals would be deterred by a nonlethal shot when they’ve already failed to be deterred by a policeman aiming a semiautomatic weapon directly at them and yelling at them to freeze (because that’s just a natural prelude to wacky hi-jinks), but these are probably the same people who thought gun-free zones would work…
Never mind the usual pro-cop-killing idiocy. Nothing says “I’m a badass” quite like holding a gun store’s AR-pattern rifles in each hand…while the anti-theft chains are still attached…
Netanyahu just declared victory and will likely have enough votes to form a coalition government in the Knesset. To be sure, polls are still close and his opponents are saying his declaration is premature, but it looks like Likud will end up with 27-28 seats, up from their 18 in the current Knesset
Assuming that holds, it means that Jeremy Byrd, who worked for the anti-Likud V15 group (which evidently bussed Arab voters to the polls) has continued his impressive streak of helping the politicians he opposes win bigger victories for their parties than the previous election…
Via PushJunction comes word that Amber Mostyn (wife of rich trial lawyer Steve Mostyn) is stepping down as chair of Annie’s List. What’s Annie’s List, you ask? Essentially an attempt to do Emily’s List for Texas, i.e. elect liberal female Democrats to office.
So how did Annie’s List do in 2014? By one measure they were quite successful: They raised 18th largest amount of money of any statewide political entity in 2014, raising $1,422,009.16 and spending $1,601,945.83.
Wendy Davis – Candidate for Governor: Lost to Greg Abbott 2,790,227 votes (59.3%) to 1,832,254 votes (38.9%).
Leticia Van de Putte – Candidate for Lieutenant Governor: Lost to Dan Patrick 2,718,406 votes (58.1%), to 1,810,720 votes (38.7%).
Libby Willis – Candidate for Senate District 10 (Wendy Davis’s old seat): Lost to Konni Burton, 95,484 votes (52.8%) to 80,806 votes (44.7%).
Susan Criss – Candidate for House District 23 (Galveston Island, La Marque and Texas City): Lost to Wayne Faircloth 17,702 votes (54.6%) to 14,716 votes (45.4%).
Kim Gonzalez – Candidate for House District 43 (San Patricio, Jim Wells, Kleberg and Bee Counties): Lost to Jose Manuel Lozano 17,273 votes (61.4%) to 10,847 votes (38.6%).
Susan Motley – Candidate for House District 105 (Irving and Grand Prairie): Lost to Rodney Anderson 13,587 votes (55.4%) to 10,469 votes (42.7%).
Carol Donovan – Candidate for House District 107 (Dallas, Garland and Mesquite): Lost to Kenneth Sheets 16,879 votes (55%) to 13,803 votes (45%).
Leigh Bailey – Candidate for House District 108 (Dan Branch’s old district): Lost to Morgan Meyer, 24,953 votes (60.7%) to 16,170 votes (39.3%).
Celia Israel – Candidate for House District 50 (Austin, Pflugerville and Wells Branch): The lone bright spot among their endorsed candidates, she Won, beating Mike VanDeWalle 22,651 votes (58.7%) to 14,339 votes (37.1%). This is the district Democratic incumbent Mark Strama left to run Google Fiber Austin.
So Annie’s List racked up a winning percentage of .111 for the races they publicly supported, which is pretty far below the Mendoza Line, and their lone win came for a seat Democrats already held. Going through Annie’s List campaign reports for 2013-2014 (more about which anon) shows two other campaigns they backed at some point in the cycle:
Incumbent Mary Ann Perez’s campaign to retain House District 144 (Southeast suburban Houston area near the chip channel). She Lost to Gilbert Pena, 6,009 votes (50.7%) to 5,854 votes (49.3%). Maybe because it wasn’t a “new” endorsement, they didn’t do as much for Perez, but at just over 150 vote difference between the two candidates, this is one of the few races where additional support could have made a difference.
Incumbent Toni Rose’s successful attempt to win the Democratic Primary for House District 110, a 90% black southeast Dallas district that drew no Republican candidate in the 2014 general election.
For the sake of completeness, and providing a “one stop shop” for information about Annie’s List, here’s their official filing information via the Texas State Ethics Commission:
POLITICAL COMMITTEE INFORMATION
Annie’s List
Account: 00053715
Committee Type: General Purpose
Files Reports: Semi-Annually
8146-A Ceberry Drive
Austin, TX 78759
TREASURER INFORMATION
Pinnelli, Janis W.
P.O. Box 50038
Austin, TX 78763
(512) 478-4487
And here are their electronic filings covering the 2013 to 2014 fundraising period:
Beyond Mostyn and Lisa Blue Baron, some of the names who gave significant amounts to Annie’s List include Obama bundler Naomi Aberly, Lee and Amy Fikes, and Serena Connelly, the daughter of late billionaire businessman Harold Simmons. So your usual batch of rich left-wing pro-abortion feminists. Fortunately for Texas, the state’s voters seem actively hostile to precisely the message they seek to push…
