Posts Tagged ‘I-35’

Report On The State Of Hillsboro

Sunday, February 25th, 2024

Hillsboro is a large town/small city of some 8,000+ people that most Texans have probably driven through at some point. They’re a county seat, sit smack dab in the great plains agricultural belt and have some light manufacturing, but their main economic advantage is being right where I-35E and I-35W join/split to I-35 traveling south to Waco, Austin and San Antonio. Hillsboro is perfectly positioned to be a road trip snack and restroom break stop.

For years one of Hillsboro’s most notable features was its outlet mall, with a variety of national brands. I bought a Fossil watch from their store many, many years ago.

Well, I traveled through there to and from the Metroplex for a funeral, the outlet mall is dead. Though the two open air mall segments have space for some 86 stores, there’s now precisely one open, a Bath and Body Works. The Hillsboro outlet mall was already ailing before the Flu Manchu lockdowns, but that seems top have accelerated the decline. (San Marcos outlet malls, also on the I-35 corridor, seem to done a much better job weathering the economic headwinds.) This would suggest Hillsboro has entered a period of economic stagnation and decline.

Not so fast! Buc-ess, the Texas mega convenience store chain, is opening a store in Hillsboro. Also, Buc-ess pays pretty good wages for a convenience store: “$18.00 * Medical * Dental * Vision * 3 Weeks Paid Time Off * 401k 100% Match up to 6%.”

This is the point where I’m supposed to insert some pithy “when one door closes another opens” aphorism. But I rather strongly suspect this particular mall closing scenario plays out very differently in a blue locale like New York or California, where everyone with the means to do so is moving away from those failing high-tax, high-crime states as fast as they can.

There’s no one coming to save those towns.

Everyone: “I-35 Sucks.” TxDoT: “You Need To Add Four Lanes ASAP.” Austin City Council: “Nah! Let’s Delay Some More!”

Tuesday, October 31st, 2023

Once again, the Austin City Council is doing what it does best: Make life worse for Austin residents.

As the population boom in Texas’ capital city has led to increased demands for improvements to its highway system, a recently approved expansion plan is set to be underway but is not without its detractors.

Austin — as well as Texas, the second most populous state in the country — has seen population growth at an explosive rate. Many of these new residents are younger and want to live in the most economically viable areas of the state.

In response to the growing demands of the booming population in Austin, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) approved the $4.5 billion Capital Express Central Project that plans to add four lanes to Interstate 35 in downtown Austin.

TxDOT contended that the I-35 improvements are necessary because the highway currently “does not adequately accommodate current and future travel demand and does not meet current federal and state design standards.” It goes on to say that “deficiencies” in the safety and operational management of I-35 “can impact crash rates and peak period travel times.”

Austin is known for having some of the worst traffic conditions in the state and a report from earlier this year found that the roads are getting more dangerous with an all-time high in fatalities due to traffic crashes, at least 125 in 2022. TxDOT expects traffic on the Austin section of I-35 to increase by “45 percent between 2019 and 2050.”

Everyone in the greater Austin area knows that I-35 traffic has been horrible essentially forever. In the 1980s, it was only bad at rush hour, but now it’s bad most days, evenings and weekends as well. The only time it didn’t suck was during the Flu Manchu lockdowns, and we all know how well those worked out.

So is Austin going to move forward to help the problem? Of course not.

Despite TxDOT’s plans to move forward with the I-35 expansion, the Austin City Council has been more skeptical about its prospects.

The council recently approved a resolution asking TxDOT to postpone their construction on I-35, claiming that the environmental impact statement (ESI) is insufficient in addressing “reducing transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions.”

“I believe TxDOT’s project design should not be finalized until the findings and recommendations from the regional plans can be taken into consideration,” said Mayor Pro Tem Paige Ellis. “While I-35 Central’s groundbreaking is inevitable, Austinites have shown strong support of efforts to reduce car-dependency and slow climate change, and it can’t be stressed enough how important it is to get this multigenerational project right.”

In the sense that they’re stupid enough to keep voting for radical leftwing Democrats who hate cars and the people that drive them, then yes. But I fail to see how having more cars idling on I-35 gridlock helps fight “climate change,” no matter how much Soros-stooge run Center for American Progress (also quoted in opposition) says so. I suspect most Austinites would just like to get somewhere on time for a change.

The request resolution passed by the Austin City Council would require two environmental plans to be finished before TxDOT begins construction, but Council Member Chito Vela told Community Impact that “the project is moving forward, and I’m not aware of any legal or political strategy that will stop it.”

Good.

Has Austin Started Enforcing The Homeless Camping Ban?

Wednesday, September 1st, 2021

Some developments in the clearing of illegal Austin transient camps.

Today the statewide homeless camping ban went into effect:

Beginning Wednesday, there will be a second law prohibiting homeless camping in Austin — this one in the form of a statewide ban approved by the Texas Legislature that could bring stiff consequences if officials in the capital city do not comply with it.

The statewide camping ban — which is among more than 660 new laws going into effect as of Sept. 1 — impacts all local jurisdictions in the state. But it was written with Austin in mind due to the city’s unsheltered homelessness problem and the perception from a number of statewide officials that local leaders don’t have a workable plan to fix it.

Also, by an amazing coincidence, the city of Austin finally started clearing some homeless camps on Tuesday:

The City of Austin moved 23 people from a homeless campsite at the underpass at Highway 183 and Oak Knoll Boulevard on Tuesday, according to a press release.

The individuals experiencing homelessness are now temporarily staying at the Southbridge shelter and the Northbridge shelter. The City-owned Southbridge shelter has 75 bedrooms.

  • Note the “individuals experiencing homelessness” PC neologism that’s become ubiquitous recently, presumably because it focus-tested better than “sturdy beggars” or “drug-addicted criminal transients.”
  • The Northbridge shelter is at 7400 I-35 North.
  • It remains to be seen if this clearing will be extended to other locations, or only those that that can be housed by the Homeless Industrial Complex.

I haven’t been out to check if the 183/Oak Knoll camp has truly been cleared. The one at McNeil and 183 was still there Monday. Might the Austin City Council finally be obeying the will of the people?

I wouldn’t bet on it.

In the interim, here’s a form to report encampments and request cleanup. Not sure if it will actually work, but we can try.

FYI, you can now see some Austin homeless camps in Google Maps aerial view, like the one along 290 median west of I-35:

Texas Legislature Considers Statewide Camping Ban

Tuesday, March 16th, 2021

So tremendous is Austin City Council stupidity that the Texas legislature is considering a statewide camping ban:

In a not-so-subtle broadside against its capital city, the Texas legislature will consider legislation to ban camping in public places and creating a criminal offense for violation of it.

Austin’s national renown for its live music has been all but supplanted by the notoriety for its homeless situation — featuring a nebulous inverse relationship between music venues still operating and tent encampments dotting the roadside.

The city’s camping and laying ordinance rescission of July 2019 created an impassioned reaction from Austin citizens across the political spectrum. But the city council has remained largely resolute behind its policy.

Reinstatement of the camping ban will appear before voters in May, but it will effectively become a formality if state Republicans have their way.

Two bills to explicitly ban public camping statewide have been filed. Rep. Giovanni Capriglione’s (R-Southlake)House Bill 1925 and Sens. Dawn Buckingham (R-Lakeway), Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston), and Charles Schwertner’s (R-Georgetown)Senate Bill 987.

“A person commits an offense,” the identical bills read, “if the person intentionally or knowingly camps in a public place without the consent of the officer or agency having the legal duty or authority to manage the public place.”

It establishes a Class C misdemeanor for violation of the law, which is a fine-only charge.

The bill carves out the ability of a state agency to establish designated camping areas, like Camp R.A.T.T. located near the Highway 183-Ben White Boulevard intersection.

It would also explicitly prohibit contradictory local orders, stating, “A local entity may not adopt or enforce a policy under which the entity prohibits or discourages the enforcement of any public camping ban.”

If this passes and makes it to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk, I would fully expect him to sign it:

Hopefully both this and the May 1st ballot initiative will both pass. (Did you notice that Texas Supreme Court forced a minor change in the ballot wording?)

Only the Austin City Council and their hard-left enablers think lifting the camping ban has been anything but a disaster for Austin:

In other Austin homeless news:

  • Nine days ago, a fire in a homeless camp damaged a Ben White to I-35 flyover.
  • A lawsuit has been filed to stop the NW Austin homeless hotel sale:

    A lawsuit has been filed against the City of Austin in an attempt to stop the sale of the Candlewood Suites hotel, which the City intends to convert into a supportive housing facility for Austinites experiencing homelessness.

    Lawyer and Hampton Inn and Homewood Suites CFO Rupal Chaudhari said her “Chaudhari Partnership” business filed the suit on Thursday, seeking injunctive relief, monetary relief and a declaratory judgment preventing the finalized purchase “without proper notice and compensation for the loss of value of its properties and easement.”

    “The City has engaged in a regulatory taking, constitutional due process violations and is in violation of deed restrictions on an easement jointly held with Chaudhari Partnership,” Chaudhari said in a release.

    Candlewood Suites is located near State Highway 45 and U.S. 183 in Austin and partially in Williamson County. It is adjacent to Chaudhari’s business.

    Williamson County leaders have said they were caught off guard when they learned the Austin City Council was even considering buying Candlewood Suites to house the homeless at the end of January.

    Commissioners asked Austin councilmembers to delay the purchase and vote by six months so they could have more time to work with Austin leaders and discuss the matter.

    But on Feb. 4, the Austin City Council bought Candlewood Suites for up to $9.5 million, making it the fourth hotel Austin plans to use to house the homeless. The City is now in a 90-day due diligence period.

    In addition to Thursday’s lawsuit, Williamson County commissioners gave the green light to their general counsel to start interviewing law firms last month, propelling the county toward a lawsuit against the City of Austin, including the potential involvement of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

    “Negotiating in secret, never engaging citizens and taxpayers until the deal is essentially complete, disregarding community feedback and taking a pre-determined vote – that is not how any trustworthy City or organization operates,” Chaudhari said. “Their behavior and current process is more than unprofessional – it’s irredeemable.”

  • Maintaining public order to secure the life, liberty and property of citizens is one of the first duties of government. The Austin City Council and Mayor Steve Adler have not only ignored this duty in repealing the camping ban in 2019, they’ve actually gone out of their way to subvert it. It’s high time both Austin citizens and the legislature reign in their madness.

    LinkSwarm for July 12, 2019

    Friday, July 12th, 2019

    The Jeffrey Epstein child sex trafficking scandal dominates today’s LinkSwarm, as does other people getting arrested for the same offense. Some kind of crackdown going on? We can only hope so.

    Also, if you live in Austin, traffic on I-35 is going to be screwed up again this weekend.

  • The Jeffery Epstein scandal may be even worse than we thought:

    Even by the standards of stomach-turning celebrity criminal scandals, the bits of information about multi-millionare Jeffrey Epstein and allegations of an underage sex-trafficking ring are utterly bizarre, pointing to something perhaps even bigger and worse going on. Just the reports out this morning prompt at least ten big questions.

    One: How did Jeffrey Epstein make his fortune in the first place? One claim is a massive Ponzi scheme.

    Two: Could Epstein really have been connected to some sort of intelligence service? In yesterday’s press conference, labor secretary Alex Acosta offered a weird, vague, contradictory, meandering answer when asked about this. If Epstein was working for some sort of spy agency, which one? What was the aim, to collect blackmail on prominent figures? Who was being blackmailed, and what did they do?

    Three: Why did the office Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance try to keep Epstein from being registered as a top-level sex offender? “A seasoned sex-crimes prosecutor from Mr. Vance’s office argued forcefully in court that Mr. Epstein, who had been convicted in Florida of soliciting an underage prostitute, should not be registered as a top-level sex offender in New York.” The judge denied the request and declared, “I have to tell you, I’m a little overwhelmed because I have never seen a prosecutor’s office do anything like this.”

    Four: After Epstein was labeled a “Level 3 sex offender” — meaning the worst — Epstein was required by law to check in with the NYPD every 90 days. He never checked in at all over an eight-year span. How did that not generate any consequences?

  • And speaking of Epstein, why is nobody talking about former Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Krischer.

    The former Palm Beach County State Attorney had made national news three times during his career. Once when he went after Rush Limbaugh, then after Ann Coulter, two Republicans, and when, after being handed the case of Epstein, a co-founder of the Clinton Global Initiative, he gave him a pass.

    Barry Krischer is a Democrat. Jeffrey Epstein is a billionaire donor to Democrats.

    As Chief Prosecutor, Krischer had made his reputation with a zero-tolerance policy of prosecuting juveniles as adults. But after Epstein had abused underage girls, Krischer, according to the detective on the case, ignored police efforts to charge him with four counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor and instead the billionaire abuser was indicted only on a minor charge of solicitation of prostitution.

    Interviews with over a dozen girls and witnesses were ignored.

    The victims were not notified of when they needed to appear before Krischer’s Grand Jury. Calls by the police to issue warrants for the arrest of Epstein and his associates were ignored by Kirscher’s subordinates. Eventually, Kirscher’s people stopped taking phone calls from the police.

    The Palm Beach police chief claimed that information was being leaked to Epstein’s lawyers and wrote a public letter attacking Krischer and urging him to disqualify himself from the case. Instead the travesty went on. State prosecutors allowed Epstein to skip sex offender counselling, and hire a private shrink.

    When the judge asked assistant state prosecutor Lanna Belohlavek if all the victims had signed off on the deal, she claimed that they had. The lawyer for the victims has said that was not the truth.

  • “Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta on Friday resigned from his post amid scrutiny over a plea agreement he cut with wealthy investor Jeffrey Epstein for sex abuse charges over a decade ago.”
  • Over on Althouse’s blog, many commenters are suggesting that Scott Walker replace him. To which I say: Bring it!
  • Even after pleading guilty and registering as a Level 3 sex-offender, Jeffrey Epstein is still mingled with the Hollywood elite.
  • Speaking of child sex offenders, singer R. Kelly has been arrested on 13 federal sex trafficking charges, including “child pornography, enticement of a minor to engage to engage in criminal sexual activity and obstruction of justice.” The only question is, after all the similar crap Kelly has pulled over the years, how is he not already in jail for the rest of his life?
  • “Epstein, Bean & Buck: The Democratic Donors’ Sex-Creep Club.”

    While serving as the highest-ranking elected woman in America for decades, San Fran Nan has chronically downplayed, whitewashed or excused the sleazy habits and alleged sexual improprieties of a long parade of Dem pervs — from former San Diego Mayor Bob Filner to former New York Reps. Eric Massa and Anthony Wiener to former Oregon Rep. David Wu to former Michigan Rep. John Conyers and current presidential candidate Joe Biden.

    Since the woke-ty woke Democrats are now gung-ho on undoing special treatment of wealthy liberal sex creeps, perhaps they will soon be revisiting the matter of two of their other “faves,” Oregon real estate mogul and deep-pocketed left-wing White House donor Terry Bean and West Hollywood Clinton pal Ed Buck.

    Here, let me help.

    Terry Bean is the prominent gay rights activist who co-founded the influential Human Rights Campaign organization. He is also a veteran member of the board of the HRC Foundation, which disseminates Common Core-aligned “anti-bullying” material to children’s schools nationwide.

    Like Epstein, Bean had a penchant for rubbing elbows and riding on planes with the powerful. Upon doling out more than $500,000 for President Barack Obama and the Democrats in 2012, he was rewarded with a much-publicized exclusive Air Force One ride with Obama. His Flickr account boasted glitzy pics with Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton.

    Buck, of course, is the Democratic donor who had two dead overdosed black men in his apartment on different occasions. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Speaking of our supposed betters raping children, “Ex-U.N. Worker Jailed for 9 Years in Nepal for Raping Two Boys in ‘Alarm Bell for the Humanitarian Community.'” Oh, now there are alarm bells over Canadian Peter John Dalglish raping children? But not so much when various UN peacekeepers did the same thing in Africa in past decades.
  • Dow-Jones Industrial Average hits record high of 27,000.
  • Meet the anti-woke left. The usual quotient of socialist claptrap, but also a fierce critique of victimhood identity politics and the dysfunction of the Democratic Party.

    Just as significant as Trump’s victory was Hillary Clinton’s loss, they tell me, in that it represented a rejection of an era of neoliberalism. ‘I’m from Indiana’, Frost tells me. ‘Bill signs NAFTA. That obliterated the towns where I’m from. People are extremely bitter about Bill Clinton for very good reasons. And she is married to that, literally and figuratively – she defends that legacy. How did we not see Trump coming?’

    What’s more, Trump represented a repudiation of the entire establishment – Democrats and Republicans. ‘There is a severe crisis of legitimacy in our institutions’, says Frost: ‘The Republicans did not want Trump to win either… He was nobody’s first choice, except the American people’s, apparently.’

    Snip.

    Three years on from the 2016 presidential election, Democrats are still largely in denial or in despair about Trump’s victory. The now-discredited Russia-collusion narrative provided an excuse to avoid any soul-searching. ‘The whole Rachel Maddow and the NBC crowd have infected the minds of boomers with this dystopian narrative’, Khachiyan tells me. ‘Even my mom, who’s from Russia, buys the collusion narrative.’

    ‘The narrative isn’t itself so interesting’, she argues, but it shows ‘the willful failure of the Democratic Party. Again and again, they fall on their face. There’s some kind of Freudian, masochistic thing they have where they get off on publicly humiliating themselves.’

  • E-Verify will do more to deter illegal aliens than the wall.
  • “Democratic lawmaker unloads on Ocasio-Cortez, chief of staff for ‘using the race card.'” The AOC-Pelosi tiff reminds us, yet again, that the primary purpose of “social justice” is to force in-group ideological conformity on the left. But when it comes to actually threatening a politician’s ability to get their beak into the trough, Rep. Clay and others still know which side their bread is buttered on. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Democrats have tapped former fighter pilot Amy McGrath to lose to Mitch McConnell in the Kentucky senate race. In one day, she raised $2.5 million…and flip-flopped on whether she would have confirmed Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. She lost her last race by 10,000 votes, and expect her to do much, much worse against Cocaine Mitch.
  • “The Data Shows Socialists — Not Sanctions — Destroyed Venezuela’s Economy.”
  • John O’Sullivan wonders if anyone can beat Boris Johnson for Tory leadership and the PM spot. Probably not, but it provides a light romp through Borismania…
  • David Scheller of Ammo To Go wrote to point out his deep, detailed look at suppressors. I was happy to see that Texas has more silencers owned than the next three states combined.
  • How bad is the cartel violence in Mexico? Would you believe a 30 minute shootout at Kindergarten graduation?
  • Greek conservatives win in a landslide over leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ Syriza’s party. Kyriakos Mitsotakis took over as Prime Minister on July 8.
  • Did the Russians who died aboard the A-12 Losharik submarine prevent a “planetary catastrophe?” Color me skeptical. Short of a Red Tide nuke launch scenario, it’s hard to conceive of any sort of accident, up to complete meltdown or even nuclear warhead detonation, that would result in “planetary catastrophe” on the Russian arctic seafloor. Assuming they were actually in the Barents Sea when the fire broke out, I don’t see how they’d be tapping undersea cables (as widely speculated), as the only one there is the Norway-to-Svarbald cable, which is hardly of crushing information importance. But the Russians have been known to lie before, and the fact that no less than seven first rank captains died aboard the ship (all but unheard of on a submarine) only fuels the speculation. And the arctic is way too far north for discovering either Cthulhu or Godzilla…
  • Seattle City Council candidate Brendan Kolding wants to clean up the homeless drug user problem.

    “It’s gotten worse under this entire current council,” he said. “Because we’ve practiced the policy — and I give Chris Rufo credit for this — the policy of false compassion where we’re not holding people accountable, where we’re not investing in adequate services, where we’re not allowing our law enforcement professionals to do their job.”

    “We just need a sea change at City Hall. We need to reverse the culture because it’s only getting worse … We can offer them treatment and shelter and then insist that if they don’t accept services, we will enforce the law unless they choose to move along. We need both carrot and stick.”

  • “I-95 proves that the government cannot provide services that don’t suck.”

    For those readers who blessedly have not had to drive I-95, it is a national disgrace. It has been congested for as long as I can recall (over 30 years of personal experience with the stretch shown, and what we drove yesterday). It has been congested in exactly the same locations for those 30 years.

    The same exact locations. 30 years. Offered for your consideration, the 20 miles on each side of Fredericksburg, VA. It was a parking lot in the 1980s; it was a parking lot yesterday. The reason then was that the highway lost a lane (more lanes in Richmond to the south and Washington to the north). The reason now is the same.

    So riddle me this, Big Government Man: how in 30 years is it not possible to widen 40 miles of Interstate to remove what everybody in the Northeast Corridor knows is a notorious choke point? And please don’t be so dim and predictable as to say “there isn’t enough funding” – we spent a cool trillion dollars on a “stimulus” that the President swore would be “shovel ready” projects. You don’t get more shovel-ready than widening I-95.

    So we see that it’s not possible for the government to provide services that don’t suck.

  • Prenda Law copyright troll John Steele sentenced to five years in prison.
  • “A traffic stop turns up whiskey, a gun and a rattlesnake, police say — and that was before they found the uranium.” The big surprise here is that it’s from Oklahoma rather than Florida… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Tankfest 2019. I visited the Bovington Tank Museum in 2014, and if you’re interested in tanks and in the UK for an extended period of time, I highly recommend it.

  • Tales from the Lunar Module Simulator.
  • Aviation Week and Space technology profile of the SR-71 from 1981.
  • Dwight celebrates the fortieth anniversary of Disco Demolition Night.
  • And speaking of unlikely events of mass hysteria: 300,000 people on Facebook swear to storm Area 51. Great, they’re going to kill off Alex Jones’ entire audience…
  • “Fun New Teen Vogue Quiz Helps Girls Find Out What Kind Of Hooker They Should Be.”
  • LinkSwarm for April 7, 2017

    Friday, April 7th, 2017

    Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm!

    I’m still not wild about President Trump’s decision to strike a Syrian airfield with cruise missiles last night, but the decision makes more sense if you look at it less of a tool to make Bashar Assad mend his ways than as a warning shot across the bows of Ali Khamenei, Kim Jong-Un and Xi Jinping, the latter of whom President Trump just happened to be meeting with while the missiles were hitting Shayrat.

    Now some links:

  • Neil Gorsuch will be confirmed to the Supreme Court today. How’d that Nuclear Option work out for you in the long run, Harry Reid?
  • The Obama/Kerry policy on Syrian chemical disarmament has been such an astounding failure that even Polifact has been forced to admit it.
  • Here’s a really interesting precinct-by-precinct map of the 2016 presidential election, along with analysis of changes from previous maps.

  • Susan Rice has changed her story twice. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Intelligence agencies are stonewalling congressional information requests on unmasking scandal.
  • Even Rolling Stone has noticed Putin derangement syndrome.
  • Russia recognizes West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, while recognizing East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.
  • Russia has banned this image:

  • Jobless claims “are hovering near the lowest level since the early 1970s.” Now the trick is to produce enough sustained growth to get the Obama-discouraged long-term unemployed back into the workforce…
  • Dissecting the mainstream media’s dishonest response to every jihad attack.
  • “Conniving, spineless, duplicitous, misleading, double-crossing—Chuck Schumer is a fitting exemplar for the modern Democratic Party.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Intersectionality is a religion. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Marines test polymers to cut weight.
  • College student who was once in pictures with Bill Clinton busted for prostitution. What are the odds? (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Justified shooting, unjustified indictment.
  • Mike Pence’s rules for not being alone with other women are probably less about preventing adultery than to prevent him from being framed and smeared by feminists.
  • “Ethicist” Pete Singer: Hey, let’s rape the retarded! It’s not like they’re real human beings…
  • The Royal Canadian Mounted Police can intercept your cell phone conversations.
  • Is Google prejudiced against ex-military employees?
  • ESPN is losing money hand-over-fist, but they’re still going shove the liberal culture war down your throat.
  • Oh the huge manatees…are doing just fine.
  • Hope you don’t need to use the stretch of I-35 near San Antonio this weekend: The Texas Department of Transportation is shutting it down for four days.
  • Don Rickles, RIP. With a great segment with him on the Tonight Show with Frank Sinatra.
  • LinkSwarm for February 17, 2016

    Wednesday, February 17th, 2016

    Early voting started in Texas Monday, which means I’m way behind on covering state and local races. Oh well, maybe later this week…

  • Hillary Clinton didn’t do as badly as expected in New Hampshire. She did worse.

    Sanders’s margin of victory — 60 percent to 39 percent — was the largest ever by a Democrat who wasn’t a sitting president. It was a come-from-behind win: Eight months ago, Sanders was at 9 percent and Clinton held a 46-point advantage. And Sanders overperformed the polls. Only 1 of the last 15 polls had him above 60 percent; the Real Clear Politics average in New Hampshire had him at 54.5 percent going into the vote.

    Then there are the crosstabs. The exit polling for Clinton was brutal. Sanders won men by 35 points; he won women by 11. He won voters under the age of 30 by 67 points. People expect that of Sanders and his children’s crusade. Clinton took home senior citizens, 54 percent to 45 percent. People expect that of Clinton’s boomers. But in the big band of middle-aged Democrats, ages 45 to 64 (who made up 42 percent of the electorate), Sanders beat Clinton 54 percent to 45 percent. He beat her among Democrats with a high school diploma or less; he beat her among Democrats with postgraduate degrees. Among people who’d voted in a Democratic primary before, Sanders won by 16 points; among first-time voters, he won by 57. He won self-identified “moderate” voters by 20 points.

    Clinton made gun control a substantial part of her pitch in New Hampshire. Sanders won voters who own guns by 40 points. But he won voters who don’t own guns by 14. He even won voters who said that terrorism was their number one concern.

    The biggest problem for Clinton, however, came in the candidate-perception categories. The second-most important quality voters said they wanted in a candidate was someone who “cares.” Sanders won these voters by 65 points. The most important quality people said they wanted was “honesty.” Sanders took those people home 92 to 6. Look at that again. When asked “Is Clinton honest and trustworthy?” 53 percent of all voters — not just Sanders voters, but everyone casting a Democratic ballot — said “no.”

  • Bernie Sanders has more than ten times the number of staffers on the ground in South Carolina than Clinton does.
  • Lefty at The Nation: “Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote.”
  • The topic is the Clintons, so it’s time for another glimpse of Good Maureen Dowd: “It turned out that female voters seem to be looking at Hillary as a candidate rather than as a historical imperative. And she’s coming up drastically short on trustworthiness.”
  • Ted Cruz is very electable. “Cruz is electable because he’s the real thing.” (Hat tip: Conservatives 4 Ted Cruz.)
  • People who were actually paying attention during the Gang of 8 fight scoff at Marco Rubio’s assertion Cruz favored amnesty. (Hat tip: Conservatives 4 Ted Cruz.)
  • Only top Obama Administration officials with high security clearances knew about Hillary’s secret email server. And LinkedIn.
  • The NRA is saying gun-indifferent Sanders beat hoplophobe Hillary. Hmmm…
  • Remember how the Obama Administration swore up and down ObamaCare wouldn’t go to illegal aliens? Guess what?
  • I think this is quite an effective Donald Trump ad, targeting how black Americans have been hurt by illegal alien crime. Rick Perry did quite well with an ad highlighting an illegal alien who murdered a Houston police officer in his race against Bill White in 2010. Too bad too many gutless Republicans have been hesitant about running such ads for fear of being branded racists, xenophobes, etc. by the media.
  • Muslim immigrants are killing Sweden.
  • Germany to take in a half million more Islamic “refugees” in 2016. It’s like Merkel wants to destroy her own party… (Hat tip: JihadWatch.)
  • Police in the UK arrest man for criticizing Syrian “refugees” in a Facebook post. (Hat tip: JihadWatch.)
  • Boom! Headshot! (Hat tip: Moe Lane.)
  • Current law prohibits transferring prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to the U.S., and the military won’t do so until the law is changed, no matter what Obama may want.
  • “Scalia was not only finest writer ever to sit on the Court, he was one of the best rhetoricians in history.”
  • Dear naive young voters: socialism sucks in real life.
  • Behold the ideal government worker under socialism! Every bureaucrat his own Wally….
  • A look at China’s new stealth fighters.
  • China is also deploying missiles on a disputed island in the South China Sea.
  • Huge explosion at a military barracks in Turkey. Just occurred before I posted this, so details are scant.
  • The ACLU continues its long retreat from defending free speech. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Talk like Reagan.
  • Venezuela’s socialist government appears to have authorized the military to form an oil company.
  • Notes on the collapse of a tech startup. More than a grain of truth here. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • The Coen Brothers aren’t fans of cramming diversity for the sake of diversity into individual movies. “Not in the least!” Ethan answered. “It’s important to tell the story you’re telling in the right way, which might involve black people or people of whatever heritage or ethnicity—or it might not.”
  • Science fiction writer has book rejected by Harper Voyager because robot characters dared to voice non-PC thoughts.
  • Because driving I-35 just didn’t suck enough already, enjoy being attacked by thrown rocks.