Posts Tagged ‘Montana’

LinkSwarm for May 28, 2021

Friday, May 28th, 2021

Like inflation and unemployment, crime rates are rising again. Biden is really the 1970s gift that keeps giving!

  • Democrats are weaker than they appear:

    Vulnerable red- and purple-state Democrats need some bipartisan cover if they’re going to vote for another massive spending bill. And Biden would prefer to have a unified Democratic Party blaming Republicans for the inability to come to a consensus than to have a divided Democratic Party with one side of the Senate caucus blaming the other side of the Senate caucus for the inability to come to a consensus.

    Chuck Schumer is largely bluffing when he says the Senate will pass an infrastructure bill in July, with or without Republicans. Democrats can go down this path, but it’s a risk that at least a handful of their senators don’t want to take, and when the Senate is split 50–50, the Democrats can’t afford to lose anyone. Those with long memories can remember when Democrats were convinced all the legislation they passed in 2009 and 2010 would protect them in the midterms.

  • Speaking of Democrats in trouble, rising violent crime rates are another thing that might doom them in midterm elections:

    A rise in violent crime is endangering slim Democratic congressional majorities more than a year out from the midterm elections and threatening to revive “law and order” as a major campaign issue for Republicans for the first time since the 1990s.

    Homicides in cities increased by up to 40% over the previous year, the biggest single-year increase since 1960, a trend that has not abated so far in 2021. Sixty-three of the 66 largest police jurisdictions saw a rise in at least one category of violent crime, ranging from homicide and rape to robbery and assault, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association. Homicides and shootings have gone up for three straight years in Washington, D.C., and at least a dozen mass shootings were reported nationwide over the weekend.

    Democrats’ flirtations with defunding the police — a handful of lawmakers on the Left nearly scuttled a $1.9 billion Capitol security bill in the House — may make them ill-equipped to handle the reemergence of crime as a top issue for voters.

  • Speaking of rising crime rates, having Soros-backed Democratic District Attorney Larry Krasner overseeing Philadelphia has helped create the largest open-air heroin market on the East Coast:

    Mirrors are useful. A hooker walking down the street can easily fix their makeup. They can lean on them when they nod out too. In addition, when a heroin addict has no more veins left to inject in their arms, that mirror can help them find one in their neck.

    It’s kind of hard to inject a needle in your neck otherwise. Think about it.

    You’ll eventually get a sideview mirror ripped off your vehicle sooner or later. It generally happens as they nod out or “dip out” when the drugs kick in. When they slump towards the ground, they generally just take the mirror with them.

    You also become way to comfortable with people “dipping out”. It’s the local dance craze around here. As heroin takes effect, it’s almost like they fall asleep on their feet — slowly getting ever so close to the ground. Miraculously, they rarely hit the pavement. Many yoga masters couldn’t duplicate their prowess.

    Dippers are everywhere. It’s so common, YouTube has endless clips up and down Kensington Avenue; many have hundreds of thousands of views. A YouTuber named “HoodTime” has over 5 million views on a walk he captured through Kensington March of this year. Many others are following suit.

    Just walking through Kensington and filming gets you instant material. There’s always something to see here. It’s sometimes hard to tell if you’re in America or a third-world nation at points. But money hides in trash and addiction.

    As Mike Newall explains in his article for the Philadelphia Inquirer, some of the drug corners near where I work pull in over $20 million a year. He also quotes Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro as saying Kensington’s drug trade is close to a billion dollar a year enterprise.

    (Hat tip: Dwight.) There are ways to decriminalize drugs that don’t give a pass to widespread “quality of life” offenses. merely ceasing to prosecute people for open criminality doesn’t make the problems that open criminality engenders go away.

  • Even Ezra Klein says that rising crime rates are a threat to Democrats. Gee, I must have missed him expressing such concerns when antifa and #BlackLivesMatter were burning down large swathes of American cities last year…
  • In news of the Biden recession, both both inflation and unemployment picked up in April. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday that he opposes teaching critical race theory in the state’s public schools, calling the ideas pushed by its advocates as ‘based on false history’ and ‘teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other.'” Good.
  • Kurt Schlichter: Bring on the ‘Asperger’s Republicans’:

    Far too many Republicans, for far too long, have found themselves distracted and/or enslaved by the elite consensus, restrained by norms and conventions that the liberal elite demands we observe, but that it itself flaunts when those rules limit its options. These Fredocons care what people who care nothing about them think, and they find themselves responding to the outside stimuli of the garbage mainstream media instead of focusing intently on conservative change while disregarding the slings and arrows of the haters. When it comes to fighting the establishment, political Asperger’s is indicative of awesomeness.

    And our next generation of Republicans needs to embrace their place on the Spectrum – the more inappropriate the liberal elite finds their reactions to its cues and signals, the better. No more tame, pliable sissies like Mitt (R-ish – Miracle Whip). No more of Nikki! Haley’s sucking up to the establishment while trying to grift the base by leveraging hack conserva-cliché’s from 2005 to present to us as hardcore instead of Jeb! in a dress. No more Kristi!s and Asa!s fronting as all tuff about men pretending to be girls to win races then folding the second the establishment disapproves. Instead, we need GOP politicians who are utterly immune to the siren song of a media and an establishment that seek to draw them in and crash them upon the rocks. Our pols need to ignore MSNBCNN and its hysterical horsehockey. They need to stop reading the NYT and WaPo and being scared that a bad write-up will get them uninvited to all the cool parties. They need to lock onto their target and take it out like an Israeli missile flattens a Hamas/AP frat house.

    Look at Ron DeSantis – he just doesn’t care what the bad guys say. Not at all. They scream that he won’t enforce face-diapering, that he’s too hard on election fraud, that’s he’s declared open season on those Antifa/BLM nimrods who trap normal citizens in their cars on public roads, and then DeSantis just goes ahead and does what he wants anyway. And it works – he’s super popular.

  • Also weighing in against Critical Race Theory: Austin Knudsen, Montana’s Attorney General.
  • How Democratic foreign policy “experts” are projecting their own failures on Jared Kushner:

    For the past four years, there was no greater laughingstock in the American foreign policy cognoscenti than Jared Kushner. A full-on consensus reigned that cast the previous administration’s Middle East policies as hopelessly ignorant and one-sided, a view that went unchallenged in the smart set’s Op-Ed pages. There was no easier laugh to be had, no quicker way to pull a nodding agreement, than to mock the intelligence and good will of the former president’s son-in-law, charged with crafting an American peace plan, and obviously in way over his head.

    But the Young Pretender in charge of the Mideast portfolio is gone, and the mommies and daddies are back in charge, their think tanks falling over each other producing glossy full-color booklets promoting policies that would bring to bear the priorities of people who actually understood a thing or two about Israelis, Palestinians, international law, justice, and most importantly, American strategic interests.

    And four months into the methodical implementation of all the bright ideas reflecting off those glossy booklets, the situation on the ground in Israel and the Palestinian Territories has taken a dramatic turn for the worst.

    Though Kushner is long gone, this latest conflagration has been laid at his feet. His name trended on Twitter for days as hostilities between Israel and Hamas escalated. “They really put Jared Kushner, the slumlord millionaire who couldn’t properly fill out security clearance forms, in charge of Peace in the Middle East. Failure was inevitable,” read one viral tweet. “Kushner’s Absurd Peace Plan Has Failed” blared the headline to Michelle Goldberg’s New York Times column.

    This is not just wrong; it’s complete projection. Kushner-era policies—on Jerusalem, UNRWA, and regional diplomacy—were promised again and again to lead to an “explosion,” but didn’t. The return of the experts was supposed to improve lives and prospects for Israelis and Palestinians alike, but hasn’t. In fact, it was the foreign policy intelligentsia’s values and vision that have led to disaster.

    Back in March, mere weeks into the new Biden administration, a leaked internal State Department memo outlined the contours of a new direction on American policy toward the Palestinian issue. The document called for renewed diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Authority, restoring aid that had been cut, renewing American contributions to UNRWA, putting pressure on Israel for moves in Jerusalem that would make a new Palestinian Authority election possible, and pursuing a two-state arrangement based roughly on the pre-1967 lines.

    These were all priorities of the smart set miffed by a previous administration that was too close to Israel for their tastes. But they were also terrible ideas. Take the renewal of UNRWA funding. UNRWA is the U.N. agency dedicated to perpetuating, rather than solving, the Palestinian refugee problem. By cultivating the myth of a non-existent “right of return” rather than rehabilitating displaced persons and their descendants, UNRWA ensures that a negotiated two-state deal cannot be reached.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Drew Holden takes us on a trip down memory lane of various MSM talking heads declaring that the Wuhan coronavirus lab leak hypothesis was a “conspiracy theory,” including all the usual suspects (New York Times, CNN, etc.).
  • “Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine (D) filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon Tuesday, alleging that the e-commerce giant has unfairly raised prices and hurt innovation.”
  • Glenn Greenwald: “A federal appellate court on Thursday invalidated the racial and gender preferences in President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act as unconstitutional. The Cincinnati-based Sixth Circuit of Appeals ruled that provisions of that law, designed to grant preferences to minority-owned small-restaurant owners for COVID relief, violate the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.”
  • “Moms Demand Action [AKA another branch of the Brady Bunch Hydra] member-turned-congresswoman in hot water over bribe.” Allegedly newly-elected Illinois Rep. Marie Newman bribed opponent Lymen Chehade to drop out of the race, then reneged on the cushy congressional job.

  • “Support for Black Lives Matter Movement Collapses Among Whites and Hispanics, Drops For Blacks.” The only question is why it took so damn long, when it’s been obvious for a long time that it is radical marxist garbage.
  • Christian teacher suspended after opposing the district’s transgender doctrine. “The teacher, Byron “Tanner” Cross, made the defiant declaration at a Loudon County school board meeting on Tuesday, according to the nonprofit group, Parents Against Critical Race Theory.”
  • Ted Cruz gets Biden ATF director nominee David Chipman to admit under oath that he wants to ban the AR-15. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Speaking of Ted Cruz: Israel has a right to defend itself.
  • “Hunter Biden’s Ukraine salary was cut two months after Joe Biden left office.” What a curious coincidence!
  • China Warns Australia’s Military Is “Weak“, Will Be “First Hit” In Any War With Western Alliance.” Knowing Australia, this is far more likely to piss them off than make them cower. Maybe Australia should develop it’s own nuclear arsenal…
  • CNN hits new lows. I suppose I should clarify that’s new ratings lows… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Screwed up even by the standards of Baltimore.
  • Politifact tries to fact check The Babylon Bee yet again. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • IDF stats:

  • Interesting: Higher reasoning functions wake up first from anesthesia. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Enjoy the original video for David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”.” A very different sound mix as well.
  • If you’d told me 10 years ago that one day Windows would run Linux apps, I’d give you a funny look. But that appears to be happening. “New Windows 10 test build adds first preview of Linux GUI apps on WSL.” That’s “Windows Subsystem for Linux.”
  • Now you’ll finally get a chance to read John Steinbeck’s werewolf novel.
  • “Public School Teachers Issue Students Their Summer Book-Burning Lists.”
  • “Newsom Announces Sweepstakes Where 5 Lucky Winners Get To Move Out Of California.”
  • A vicious pack pulls down its pray:

  • Morning After 2018 Election Update

    Wednesday, November 7th, 2018

    A few quick updates:

  • Republicans are on-track to pickup five senate seats, including Arizona and Montana, but Republican Dean Heller lost in Nevada. (Update: Democrat Jon Tester back in the Montana Senate race lead narrowly.)
  • Democrats pick up 27 House seats (with some races still outstanding), enough to take control of the chamber and put Nancy Pelosi back in the speaker’s chair.
  • Democrats picked up seven Governor’s mansions, including booting Scott Walker in Wisconsin.
  • No blue wave. A bit of a blue ripple, but Democrats underperformed midterm averages, as the party in the White House usually loses senate seats.

    Republicans both taking a senate seat and holding the governor’s mansion in Florida without recounts in such a mixed midterm is a big of a surprise.

    Twitter really thinks Democrats are dumb:

    More later. Maybe tomorrow.

    Your Obligatory “Day Before the Election” Horserace Post

    Monday, November 5th, 2018

    Election day is tomorrow! So here’s a brief roundup of the state of play:

  • Here’s the way Real Clear Politics breaks down Senate races:

    They show North Dakota Democrat incumbent Heidi Heitkamp as gone, which already brings Republicans up to 50 seats with victories in Tennessee (likely) and Texas (even more likely).

    The races they have as tossups are:

    • Arizona: The late John McCain’s seat. I expect former fighter pilot and Republican Martha McSally to beat Kyrsten “Meth Lab of Democracy” Sinema based on the latter’s baggage and blunders, and the importance of border control to Arizona residents.
    • Florida: Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson is in a very tough fight with Republican Governor Rick Scott, but Republican turnout seems to be surging. Keep in mind that in 2014, Scott beat the odious Charlie Crist by only 64,000 votes. It being Florida, it may not be decided until the recount.
    • Indiana: Democratic incumbent Joe Donnelly (D), the last of the Stupak Block Flipper still in office, has been in a virtual tie with Republican challenger Mike Braun. Trump walloped Hillary by 19 points in 2016, while Donnelly managed to eek out 50.04% of the vote in the very Democrat-friendly year of 2012. I think he’s toast and Braun wins.
    • Missouri: Republican challenger Josh Hawley has lead polls against incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill ever since the Kavanaugh vote in a state Trump won by 18 points in 2016. Stick a fork in her.
    • Montana: Incumbent Democrat Jon Tester should be in deep trouble in a state Trump won by 21 points, but polls show him with a small but sustained lead over challenger Matt Rosendale. Chalk this up as the toss-up Senate race Republicans are most likely to see slip away.
    • Nevada: Polls show Republican incumbent Dean Heller slightly behind challenger Jacky Rosen. See the mention of big crowds at Trump rallies further down in a state Hillary won by just over two points. Heller eked out a two point win in face of Obama’s big 2012, and I think he survives by the skin of his teeth this year as well.
    • West Virginia: You would think that Democratic incumbent Joe Manchin would be in deep trouble in a state where Trump walloped Hillary by 42 points, but he’s maintained a small but persistent lead over challenger Patrick Morrisey. The Last Blue Dog may survive 2018, but I suspect this one will go down to the wire.

    Any “Likely Democrat” races Republicans can pull an upset off in? Maybe New Jersey where, despite substantial leads, Democrats have been pouring last minute funds in to save indicted sleazebag Robert Menendez. But that’s a pretty high mountain for Republican challenger Bob Hugin to climb.

  • Vegas oddsmaker Wayne Allyn Root, who correctly predicted Trump’s upset win two years ago, similarly sees another GOP win in the offing:

    Don’t look now, but it’s all happening again. Nate Silver says Democrats have a 80%+ chance of winning the House. Cook Report says Democrats will win the House by 40 seats. All the experts say it’s over- Democrats will win. I’ll go out on a limb and disagree again.

    I see Florida Democrat Governor candidate Andrew Gillum holding a rally with Bernie Sanders and the whole place is empty.

    Barack Obama could not fill a high school gym in Milwaukee.

    I witnessed firsthand Joe Biden and Obama at separate events here in Las Vegas playing to small crowds.

    Meanwhile I was opening speaker for President Trump’s event in Las Vegas last month- with 10,000 waiting in line for hours in a place where no one cares much about politics. This is a phenomenon.

    Does that sound like the GOP is losing 40 seats? Dream on delusional Democrats.

  • National Review‘s Jim Geraghty sees Democrats pulling off an extremely narrow win to take the House.
  • One of the seats he see’s flipping is the Texas 32nd Congressional District, currently held by Republican Pete Sessions. The district went very narrowly (1.9%) for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but went for Romney by over 15 points in 2012. I tend to think Sessions barely wins reelection, based on a strong economy, the long-time Republican nature of the district, and incumbency.
  • My prediction: Republicans keep the Senate, and we won’t actually know if they keep the House until most of the recounts are done.

    LinkSwarm for May 26, 2017

    Friday, May 26th, 2017

    Happy Memorial Day Weekend! A time to remember the fallen and enjoy a three day weekend. It’s also an Energy Star Sales Tax Holiday here in Texas, which could mean big savings on such varied items as refrigerators, water conservation or water efficient products, and various gardening products, including soil and mulch.

    Now on to the LinkSwarm!

  • Hey Democrats: How’s that “All Trump Derangement Syndrome, All the Time” working out for you? “A new Gallup Poll indicates that the rating for Democrats has slipped five points since November, while the low rating for the Republican Party remained about the same.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • What ObamaCare wrought: “The average individual purchaser of health insurance across the United States saw their premiums increase from $232 per month in 2013 to $476 per month in 2017, a ‘modest’ increase of over 100% in just a few years. To put that into perspective, that’s nearly $3,000 per year and roughly 9% of what the median American earns each year.”
  • More on Obama’s widespread, unconstitutional domestic surveillance:

    The National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall, according to once top-secret documents that chronicle some of the most serious constitutional abuses to date by the U.S. intelligence community.

    More than 5 percent, or one out of every 20 searches seeking upstream Internet data on Americans inside the NSA’s so-called Section 702 database violated the safeguards Obama and his intelligence chiefs vowed to follow in 2011, according to one classified internal report reviewed by Circa.

    The Obama administration self-disclosed the problems at a closed-door hearing Oct. 26 before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that set off alarm. Trump was elected less than two weeks later.

    The normally supportive court censured administration officials, saying the failure to disclose the extent of the violations earlier amounted to an “institutional lack of candor” and that the improper searches constituted a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue,” according to a recently unsealed court document dated April 26, 2017.

  • Kurt Schlichter: Trump succeeds at his most important job:

    Looking at it objectively, as a guy who opposed Trump until he dispatched Ted Cruz, I have to consider all the facts and ponder the evidence carefully before awarding Donald Trump the grade of A+. He has done an incredible job of doing exactly what I had hoped he would do in the off chance he defeated that naggy harridan and her corps of gender indeterminate hipsters, coastal snobs, race hustlers, aspiring libfascists, media scum, and wussy pseudo-conservatives terrified that a Hillary loss would mean people might expect them to do more than wear bow ties and go on NPR to prattle about Burke in their high-pitched, nasal voices.

    There can be no serious debate. Donald Trump has done a truly outstanding job of not being Hillary Clinton.

    His not being Hillary Clinton was and remains my sole expectation of Donald Trump’s presidency. Nothing else matters in the end; it is enough that Trump foiled Felonia von Pantsuit’s creepy scheme to subjugate forever the deplorable mass of normal people she despises. The Obamacare repeal, tax reform, plus appointees of the quality of Gorsuch, Mattis and McMaster, and his lower court appointments – the inexplicable and damn-well-better-be-corrected-if-Trump-doesn’t-want-a conservative-rebellion omission of Justice Don Willett not withstanding – are merely icing on the red velvet cake of Trump’s not-being-Hillaryhood.

  • Mark Steyn weighs in on the Manchester attack, and, as usual, the difficulty is finding what not to quote:

    A few weeks ago the BBC reported that “approximately 850 people” from the United Kingdom have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight for Isis and the like. That’s more volunteers than the IRA were able to recruit in thirty years of the “Troubles”, when MI5 estimated that they never had more than a hundred active terrorists out in the field. This time maybe it’s the exotic appeal of foreign travel, as opposed to a month holed up in a barn in Newry.

    Carrying on in Germany, Angela Merkel pronounced the attack “incomprehensible”. But she can’t be that uncomprehending, can she? Our declared enemies are perfectly straightforward in their stated goals, and their actions are consistent with their words. They select their targets with some care. For a while, it was Europe’s Jews, at a Brussels museum and a Toulouse school and a Copenhagen synagogue and a Paris kosher supermarket. But Continentals are, except for political photo-ops on Holocaust Memorial Day, relatively heartless about dead Jews, and wrote off such incidents as something to do with “Israeli settlements” and “occupation” and of no broader significance.

    So they moved on to slaughter 49 gays in a nightclub in Orlando – the biggest mound of gay corpses ever piled up in American history and the worst terror attack on American soil since 9/11. But all the usual noisy LGBTQWERTY activists fell suddenly silent, as if they’d all gone back in the closet and curled up in the fetal position. And those Democrats who felt obliged to weigh in thought it was something to do with the need for gun control…

    So they targeted provocative expressions of the infidel’s abominable false religion, decapitating a French priest at Mass and mowing down pedestrians at a Berlin Christmas market. But post-Christian Europe takes Christianity less seriously than its enemies do, and so that too merited little more than a shrug and a pledge to carry on.

    So they selected symbols of nationhood, like France’s Bastille Day, Canada’s Cenotaph, and the Mother of Parliaments in London. But taking seriously assaults on your own nation’s symbols would require you to take your nation seriously, and most western citizens are disinclined to do so. As the great universal talismanic anthem of the age has it, “Imagine there’s no countries/It’s easy if you try…”

    So the new Caliphate’s believers figured out that what their enemy really likes is consumerism and pop music. Hence the attacks on the Champs-Élysées and the flagship Åhléns department store in Stockholm, and the bloodbath at the Eagles of Death Metal concert in Paris and now at Ariana Grande’s “Dangerous Woman” tour.

    Snip.

    But the arithmetic is not difficult: Poland and Hungary and Slovakia do not have Islamic terrorism because they have very little Islam. France and Germany and Belgium admit more and more Islam, and thus more and more terrorism. Yet the subject of immigration has been all but entirely absent from the current UK election campaign. Thirty years ago, in the interests of stopping IRA terrorism, the British state was not above preventing the internal movement within its borders of unconvicted, uncharged, unarrested Republican sympathizers seeking to take a ferry from Belfast to Liverpool. Today it declares it can do nothing to prevent the movement of large numbers of the Muslim world from thousands of miles away to the heart of the United Kingdom. It’s just a fact of life – like being blown up when you go to a pop concert.

    Read the whole thing.

  • 20 Coptic Christians slain in Egypt today. Update: Death toll now up to 28.
  • The threat of jihad is real. The threat of “Islamophobia” is not.
  • Obama Administration knowingly allowed MS-13 and Sureno 18 gang members to enter the country. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Denver city council decriminalizes wife-beating to keep illegal aliens from being deported:

    The Denver City Council agreed Monday to change to local sentencing guidelines in order to shield legal immigrants convicted of domestic violence from deportation proceedings.

    In a unanimous 12-0 vote, council members revised criminal penalties for several “low-level” crimes, reducing the maximum sentence to less than 365 days in jail. Under federal law, a criminal conviction that results in a sentence of a year or more is grounds for deporting any alien, including U.S. visa holders and legal permanent residents.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Speaking of border control, there were over 700,000 visa overstays in 2016 alone. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “The Islamic State chops off children’s hands for refusing to execute prisoners.”
  • Allegedly body-slamming a reporter did not prevent Republican Greg Gianforte from handily beating singing socialist Rob Quist in a special election for Montana’s at-large congressional seat. Hey, remember when progressives were busy telling us it was OK to punch Nazis? Good times, good time…
  • Indeed, Gianforte raised over $100,000 right after news of the alleged assault spread. One need not condone violence to suggest that the Trump Derangement Syndrome-riddled press just might have an image problem with the American people… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Estonia Expels Two Russian Diplomats; Moscow Warns This “Unfriendly Action Will Not Go Unanswered.'”
  • A game a lot of newly-minted college graduates will be playing:

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • A tweet:

  • Does Trump have a short attention span, or just the ability to quickly grasp the most important details? Scott Adams says the latter.
  • Adams also says its time to end presidential press briefings.
  • In the Middle East, Trump clears the very low bar of sucking less than Obama:

    The success – so far – of the president’s Middle East trip stands on the ashes of Obama’s failures. It’s easy to forget that for all Obama’s alleged expertise, his foray into the Middle East foundered on his arrogance and naiveté. In his 2009 Cairo speech, he unspooled clichés as wisdom, thinking that his name alone would put points on the board. He bought into the idea that the road to stability and peace in the Middle East went through Jerusalem.

    As Obama learned on the job, he came to believe that the road to peace went through Tehran, crafting an Iranian deal that alienated both our democratic ally Israel and our strategic Sunni allies, chief among them Saudi Arabia. In pursuit of his fantasy, he turned a blind eye to Iran’s crushing of the Green Revolution and dithered to the point of complicity in the Syrian abattoir. Meanwhile, Iran remains as implacably hostile and as determined to be a regional hegemon as ever.

    That is the context of Trump’s fawning reception. “Welcome, President Not Obama!”

  • Know who else funds President Trump a big step up from Obama? historically black colleges.
  • Mom’s advice to her son: Don’t marry a feminist. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • China has a huge debt problem. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Social Justice Warriors hound Portland burrito company out of business for “cultural appropriation.” This is why you can’t have nice things… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Sea level guages show the oceans rising…but much more slowly than global warming alarmists predict.
  • Manchester bombing proves one of the most important element of preparedness is learning first aid skills.
  • Latest academic hoax: “the conceptual penis.”
  • He may not be President, but Ted Cruz is still the hero we need. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Robber, robber, pants on fire!
  • Enjoy your weekend!

    LinkSwarm for May 19, 2017

    Friday, May 19th, 2017

    Another eventful week, and not just for the special-prosecutor and impeachment talk freakout Democrats are having. (Looks like they failed to learn the lesson of “Fitzmas.”)

    Now the LinkSwarm:

  • “Almost every promise made eight years ago about Obamacare turned out to be a falsehood.”

    No, you couldn’t keep your insurance plan, doctor or provider in many cases. No, it didn’t save $2,500 per family (more like cost $2,500 more per family). No, it didn’t lead to expanded patient choice. And yes, the tax increases and insurance mandates damaged the economy and cost jobs. We are now left with insurance markets that have entered a death spiral. The entire health insurance market will financially implode unless it’s changed.

  • “Several raids by federal and local authorities across Los Angeles on Wednesday led to the arrests of 44 MS-13 gang members, including murderers, CNN reported. The series of 50 raids occurred before dawn and were led by ATF agents and 1,000 other officers who have been working on the case for around three years. More than half of the 44 gang members arrested were undocumented immigrants, while three members are currently on the run.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Boston prosecutors go out of their way not to deport a foreign national for bank robbery. Result? Two American citizens murdered.
  • More proof that the Obama Administration used national security intelligence gathering to spy on domestic political opponents.
  • Anthony Weiner pleads guilty. “Prosecutors said they would ask for 21 months to 27 months in prison for Weiner once his plea is entered. He will also be required to register as a sex offender.” That would put him safely past the 2018 midterm elections, but not the 2020 election…
  • The peoples of the bubbles:

    “Call it the zeroth bubble.

    In it are the self-proclaimed elites of government and media. The residents of the zeroth bubble reside in coastal enclaves and surrounded by elaborate systems that protect them from those who live in the first, second and third bubbles.

    The residents of the zeroth bubble often secure permanent employment in the form of government sinecure or job-hopping between government, media, academia, lobbying, and public relations.

    Their personal security is assured by heavily-armed forces that offer many of them around-the-clock protection.

    There is little crossover from the zeroth bubble to the first. And certainly less still between the zeroth and the second.

    It’s also safe to say that the device has yet to be invented that can measure the empathy that the elites feel for the residents of the third bubble.

    Which helps explain why illegal immigration — from human- and drug-smuggling to MS-13 — is of no concern to the Chamber of Commerce, or your typical Senator, or Thomas Friedman of The New York Times.

    The zeroth bubble people wouldn’t ever see the results of the open borders policies they espouse and support, nor can they even countenance them.

    In fact, they’re sufficiently disconnected from the residents of the first bubble that they missed the entire Trump phenomenon.

  • Scott Adams looks at positives (the economy, jobs) and negatives (“Unproven allegations of Russian collusion with Trump campaign”) of the Trump era. “All the important stuff is trending positive.”
  • President Trump rolls back another Obama Administration power grab:

    President Donald Trump reversed another eleventh-hour Obama administration regulation, rolling back Democrats’ effort to push private sector workers into state government retirement plans.

    Trump signed House Resolution 66 on Wednesday, undoing a regulation adopted by the Department of Labor on October 31, 2016. The department’s rule would have allowed state and local governments to create IRA accounts for private sector workers and automatically deduct contributions from their paychecks without the protections savers enjoy under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Draining the swamp: Half of EPA advisory board dismissed. Also: “The Interior Department has also frozen the work of more than 200 advisory boards, committees and subcommittees last week.” Just think of all the damage they won’t be able to do to the American economy for a while…
  • Democratic congressional leaders: Ixnay on the mpeachmentinay alktay! (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • In Montana, Democrats have recruited a signing socialist in favor of gun control for their candidate.
  • “Routine arrest of arguing Muslims leads Minneapolis police to huge weapons cache and bomb-making devices.” (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Former Social Justice Warrior on why she quit the cult:

    I see increasing numbers of so-called liberals cheering censorship and defending violence as a response to speech. I see seemingly reasonable people wishing death on others and laughing at escalating suicide and addiction rates of the white working class. I see liberal think pieces written in opposition to expressing empathy or civility in interactions with those with whom we disagree. I see 63 million Trump voters written off as “nazis” who are okay to target with physical violence. I see concepts like equality and justice being used as a mask for resentful, murderous rage.

    The most pernicious aspect of this evolution of the left, is how it seems to be changing people, and how rapidly since the election. I have been dwelling on this Nietzsche quote for almost six months now, “He who fights with monsters, should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.” How easy is it for ordinary humans to commit atrocious acts? History teaches us it’s pretty damn easy when you are blinded to your own hypocrisy. When you believe you are morally superior, when you have dehumanized those you disagree with, you can justify almost anything. In a particularly vocal part of the left, justification for dehumanizing and committing violence against those on the right has already begun.

    (Hat tip: PJMedia via Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Signs of cognitive dissonance that show you’re winning the debate: “If you have been well-behaved in a debate, and you trigger an oversized personal attack, it means you won.”
  • #NeverTrump was (mostly) wrong.
  • The challenges of treating children who are born psychopaths:

    One bitter December day in 2011, Jen was driving the children along a winding road near their home. Samantha had just turned 6. Suddenly Jen heard screaming from the back seat, and when she looked in the mirror, she saw Samantha with her hands around the throat of her 2-year-old sister, who was trapped in her car seat. Jen separated them, and once they were home, she pulled Samantha aside.

    “What were you doing?,” Jen asked.

    “I was trying to choke her,” Samantha said.

    “You realize that would have killed her? She would not have been able to breathe. She would have died.”

    “I know.”

    “What about the rest of us?”

    “I want to kill all of you.”

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • “Rear Adm. Robert Gilbeau, the first admiral ever convicted of a federal crime while on active duty, was sentenced on Wednesday to 18 months in prison for lying to investigators about his involvement in a bribery scandal that has ensnared numerous Navy officers.” That would be for the Fat Leonard scandal. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Senate Conservative Fund-backed Ralph Norman wins primary for South Carolina’s Fifth Congressional seat by 203 votes.
  • “After a drug search, a cop brushes some residue off his shirt and within minutes falls to the floor overdosing.” Carfentanyl, which is 10,000 times more potent than morphine, sounds less like a drug and more like a chemical warfare agent…
  • UK election watch: Why Labour is about to get wiped out in Wales:

    it becomes clear that what you’re seeing is the strange death of Labour Wales – one that goes back further and deeper than June 2016.

    In its heartlands, Labour was always a working-class party, and what’s changed is that the working class has been smashed up. The physical traces of that are evident all over south Wales. The mines are now museum pieces. The Sony factory in Bridgend has long since gone, while the town’s Ford plant is reportedly preparing to shed over half its workers. What’s replaced those careers? A scan of the windows of the recruitment agencies tells you: fork-lift drivers, warehouse staff, “recycling operatives”. All at around minimum wage, and hardly any full-time.

    For decades, Labour took this area and its other heartlands for granted – while it flirted with Mondeo Man and Worcester Woman. It parachuted in its plastic professional politicians – just think of the way Tristram Hunt was airlifted into Stoke – and ignored the need to nurture local talent. Now in Wales and elsewhere, it is paying the price of decades of ingrained arrogance.

    (Hat tip: The Political Hat.)

  • “German Chancellor Angela Merkel has threatened the British government with ‘consequences’ if it were to restrict immigration from the EU member states after the country formally breaks away from the union.” This brings up a number of questions, foremost among them why does she care? First, why should the leader of one country care how another country sets its immigration policy? Second, this suggests that Frau Merkel thinks she’s President of the EU rather than Germany (to be fair, so does most of the world). Third, why would the EU fight to make it easier for their own citizens to leave the EU? Why it’s almost as if Merkel is more loyal to the interests of open borders elites than the German people. Or else the EU wants to dump more Islamic “refugees” on the UK…
  • Texas House Speaker Joe Straus seems to have finally met his match in Lt. Governor Dan Patrick:

    Joe Straus looked like a speaker unquestionably in charge. Then things started falling apart.

    The problems for the speaker have been caused by a small group of Republican legislators known as the Freedom Caucus. The core group is nine lawmakers out of the 150-member House, and sometimes they can get their vote up to nineteen. Even some conservative Republicans complain that the Freedom Caucus is not truly Republican, but rather a group of libertarians more bent on causing chaos in the House than anything else. Some of the most prominent members are Matt Schaefer of Tyler, Jeff Leach of Plano, and Matt Rinaldi of Irving. Their titular leader is Bedford Representative Jonathan Stickland, who uses parliamentary rules to kill other members’ bills and then strongly objects when his own legislation suffers a similar fate. The Freedom Caucus opposes Straus but have generally been an ineffective annoyance.

    That changed on April 27, when the House endured sixteen hours of debate on an anti-immigration bill to address so-called sanctuary cities. In the course of the debate, Schaefer offered an amendment to prevent police chiefs from restricting their officers from asking people who have been detained about their immigration status. In a moment of conciliation, Schaefer offered to pull down his amendment if Democrats would stop offering their own amendments designed to make Republicans look heartless and cruel. Some Democrats wanted to take the deal, but Representatives Armando Walle of Houston, Cesar Blanco of El Paso and Roland Gutierrez of San Antonio argued against it. By refusing to compromise, the three guaranteed that the so-called “show me your papers” amendment would become part of the bill that Abbott eventually signed into law.

    But undeniably, Straus had an opportunity to affect the outcome of that bill. He could have kept it bottled up as he was doing with the bathroom bill, though he had allowed a similar sanctuary cities bill to go through the House in 2011. Straus also could have demanded discipline out of his chairs to vote against Schaefer. The amendment went on the bill by a vote of 81-64, with fourteen of Straus’s committee chairs voting for the Schaefer amendment, while three other members of his leadership team were away at a conference committee on the budget. Straus needed to switch only a dozen votes to keep the most controversial language out of the bill.

    The Freedom Caucus was empowered, at least in perception.

    In the days that followed, caucus members got an amendment on a foster care bill to prevent the vaccination of children who have been removed from their homes until a court ordered the child’s permanent removal. And last week they used maneuvers to slow down the House calendar so that a “safety net” bill failed to pass to keep agencies subject to the sunset review process alive even if their reauthorization legislation failed. And finally, they won passage of an amendment to a State Bar of Texas bill to make it an affirmative defense for a lawyer under disciplinary review to claim he or she acted because of a sincerely held religious belief—an amendment that Democrats viewed as giving lawyers the ability to discriminate against the LGBT community.

    After the religious beliefs amendment passed on a vote of 85-59, Representative Rafael Anchia of Dallas blurted out, “Last session these guys couldn’t pass gas. Now they’re running the floor.”

    Several senior Republican members of the Straus leadership team have told me they don’t feel like anyone is in charge in the House. One called it a rudderless ship. None said they are ready to abandon Straus or revolt against him, though the frustration is rising.

    With the Freedom Caucus suddenly finding some success in the House, Patrick no doubt saw an opportunity to reassert control of the session. The death of the House version of the “safety net” bill was important. It’s called a safety net bill because it allows agencies under sunset review to continue operating. It has to pass. With the demise of the House’s bill, the only option left is the Senate’s version. And Patrick made clear he intends to hold that bill hostage.

    In his press conference Wednesday, flanked by the flags of Texas and the United States, Patrick noted that he had control of the Senate version of the safety net bill. Then he demanded the House surrender on using the state’s rainy day fund to pay for a revenue shortfall in the budget; that the House accept both a private school voucher program in a substantially reduced school funding plan, and a controversial property tax reform for cities and counties; and that some form of his bathroom bill receive House approval. Otherwise, Patrick would force a special session to get what he wants.

    Ignore the analysis of the Freedom Caucus. What’s really going on here is that Patrick has emboldened House Republicans who previously lived in fear of Straus’ vengeance to actually start acting like Republicans again.

  • The Germans are coming…to lower your grocery bill.
  • Turns out that female college graduates are now making more than their male counterparts. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Roger Ailes, RIP.
  • Deal reached on Dallas pension crisis? (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • “Saudis to Make $6 Billion Deal for Lockheed’s Littoral Ships.” This is evidently just one component of a $110 billion arms deal negotiated by both the Trump and Obama Administrations. Though most famous for aircraft, Lockheed has built combat ships off and on for decades and, especially after their merger with Martin Marietta in 1995, has a lot of fingers in a lot of defense contracting pies. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Austin’s Brackenridge Hospital closes.
  • Good things for a track coach: Burning speed. Bad things for a track coach: burning his own home.
  • “How ‘social justice warriors’ are like McCarthyites and the Ku Klux Klan.”
  • Ta-Nehisi Coates’ social justice warrior Marvel comic Black Panther & The Crew cancelled after two issues due to low sales. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Slowdive just released their first new album in two decades. It’s excellent and you should buy it.
  • Election Update for June 7, 2016

    Tuesday, June 7th, 2016

    Here we are, the final day of the primary season, when Democrats in California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota go to the polls to (theoretically) put Hillary Clinton over the top.

  • Will EmailGate finally do Hillary in?
  • Why did Hillary want to hide her communications from the public so badly? “The most frightening explanation is that she sold foreign policy favors to the highest bidders to the Clinton Foundation and/or her husband. Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, argues that we can’t understand the “server” story unless we look carefully at the Clinton Foundation. In his opinion, some of Hillary’s policy decisions were linked to contributions to the Clinton Foundation.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “The Tea Parties were not a white identity-politics movement. But liberal elites treated it as such and now we’ve got the beginnings of one.”
  • “Hillary Clinton has to go to jail.”
  • “Trump is taking for granted—because he is not blind—that ethnic Democratic judges will rule in the interests of their party and of their ethnic bloc. That’s what they’re supposed to do. The MSM and the overall narrative say this is just fine. It’s only bad when someone like Trump points it out in a negative way.”
  • Any Hillary Clinton appointments to the Supreme Court would be disasterous for the rule of law. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • The Debate between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump is on no off, no on, no off no…let me get back to you.
  • Inside David French’s non-run for President. Which is indeed off, if you hadn’t heard.
  • “Hillary Clinton wore $12,495 Armani jacket during speech on inequality.” Of course, the amazing thing about Hillary is her ability to pick a $12,495 Armani jacket that still makes her look like a frumpy restaurant cashier… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • AP says screw lowly voters, we’re declaring Hillary the Democratic nominee.
  • Big networks cancel exit polling for remaining primaries. Maybe they don’t want to know just how much voters hate Hillary…
  • Let No One Else’s Work Evade Your Eyes!

    Thursday, July 24th, 2014

    So it turns out that current (appointed) Democratic Senator from Montana John Walsh plagiarized his master’s thesis for the United States Army War College

    Now the New York Times has gone through and marked up Walsh’s thesis, and it turns out Walsh isn’t just a plagiarist, he’s a shameless, ham-fisted, damn-dirty plagiarist.

    (And is it just me, or is 14 pages plus footnotes incredibly thin for a Master’s Thesis? In college I did a piece on Sandinista human rights violations that was about that length (with, granted, about half as many footnotes) in 24 hours on an electric typewriter…)

    And you’ll love his excuse: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

    Hey, PTSD is a real thing, and I can imagine it make you jump at loud noises, lose sleep, drink too much, and snap at your friends and family over seemingly trivial items.

    But if it can make you steal someone else’s work and claim it as your own, then it’s an all-purpose “Get Out Of Any Crime Free” card.

    And did I mention that Walsh is up for reelection?

    Not only is he dishonest, he’s criminally stupid for thinking he can get away with it in a 21st century world where text searching tools are so powerful and easy to use.

    So what do I have to add to the story?

    Lobachevsky:

    (Hat tip: Moe Lane.)

    Vetting the “Pro-Gun” Democrats: Senator Max Baucus of Montana

    Wednesday, February 27th, 2013

    With hearings beginning as proponents of civilian disarmament gear up for their best chance since the Clinton years to erode America’s Second Amendment rights, now’s a good time to look a good, long look at some of those supposedly “Pro-Gun” Democrats. Let’s start with the Senate, where the anti-gun Washington Post has provided a handy chart of ratings for each Senator from both the NRA and Gun Owners of America.

    Ranking highest among all Democrats is Senator Max Baucus of Montana. Baucus has been in the Senate since 1978 (disco was still alive, and LeBron James hadn’t been born) and is up for reelection in 2014. Baucus got an A from the NRA (just short of their top A+ rating), but gets a D- from Gun Owners of America. But the NRA A rating listed by the Post is out-of-date, since the NRA is now running attack ads against Baucus.

    GOA seems to have based their ratings on a number of actual votes where Baucus voted against the interests of gun owners. Baucus has a record that seems to indicate support of gun-owner rights…except when it matters. In truth we already know that Baucus is willing to break his promises and betray gun owners, because he’s done it before. Back in 1993, “Baucus broke his promises and broke trust with the people of Montana by voting for both the Brady waiting period and the Feinstein semi-auto ban.”

    Yet more proof that when push comes to shove, there’s no such thing as a pro-gun Democrat at the national level. Max Baucus is even less “pro gun” than Bart Stupak was “pro life.”

    Is Baucus vulnerable in 2014? A late 2011 poll found that he was “one of the least popular Senators in the country with only 37% of voters approving of him to 51% who disapprove.” Sounds like a great Republican pickup target for me, especially given what a deep red state Montana is. Baucus is also one of Capitol Hill’s most notorious pork barons, writing reams of crony giveaways into law as part of the “fiscal cliff” deal. Interestingly, he’s also suffered an exodus of high profile staffers.

    Montana gun owners should contact Baucus to let them know that any sellout of gun owner’s rights is unacceptable.

    Here’s his contact web page.

    The Twitter account for @MaxBaucus.

    His Facebook page.

    His campaign contact page.

    Here’s his DC contact info:

    United States Senate
    511 Hart Senate Office Building
    Washington, D.C. 20510-2602
    DC Phone: 202-224-2651
    DC Fax: 202-224-9412

    Here are some of his staffers:

    Chief of Staff: Paul Wilkins
    Scheduler: Brenda Carney
    Legislative Director: Heather O’Loughlin
    Communications Director: Jennifer Donohue

    And here is the contact information on his regional offices:

    Billings
    222 N 32nd St Ste 100
    Billings, MT 59101
    (406) 657-6790

    Bozeman
    220 W Lamme Ste 1D
    Bozeman, MT 59715
    (406) 586-6104

    Butte
    245 E Park St LL E
    Butte, MT 59701
    (406) 782-8700

    Glendive
    122 W Towne St
    Glendive, MT 59330
    (406) 365-7002

    Great Falls
    113 3rd St N
    Great Falls, MT 59401
    (406) 761-1574

    Helena
    30 W 14th St Ste 206
    Helena, MT 59601
    (406) 449-5480

    Kalispell
    8 3rd St E
    Kalispell, MT 59901
    (406) 756-1150

    Missoula
    280 E Front St Ste 100
    Missoula, MT 59802
    (406) 329-3123