Posts Tagged ‘Nicolas Maduro’

LinkSwarm for July 3, 2020

Friday, July 3rd, 2020

Job numbers boom! Ghislaine Maxwell captured! CHOP chopped! It’s your Friday before Independence Day LinkSwarm!

  • 4.8 million jobs added in June, blowing away all estimates. This is what keeps Democratic strategists up at night: Between lockdowns and riots, they’ve done everything they can to kill the Trump economy, and the Trump economy refuses to die.
  • FBI arrests Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell. The memes are already coming fast and furious:

  • “FBI Hires Top-Rated Italian Bodyguard Hiluigi Clintonelli To Protect Ghislaine Maxwell.”
  • Was General Flynn attacked because he was getting ready to audit the intelligence community?
  • Speaking of the intelligence community, here’s why that Russian bounty story was crap. And all your liberal Facebook friends shared it because they don’t care whether a story is true or not, as long as it hurts Trump. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Reason will not save you:

    It is not transcendentally stupid for the alleged anti-racism rioters to destroy a Lincoln statue, though, to normal people, it looks like the act of drooling morons. Now, a good number of these cesspeople are drooling morons, but that does not change the fact that trashing POTUS #16’s statuary is brilliant.

    They have confused their targets – us – by casting off the constraints of coherence.

    Oh wait, you thought that these folks were trying to make a point about racism being bad. And you thought, because that’s how those of us who weren’t raised on Instatwitbook, soy, and critical race theory, that if you point out that something is unreasonable then that will cause the person you were instructing to rethink it. After all, trashing some Honest Abe totem in order to illustrate how racism is double-plus-ungood is about a “12” on the 1-10 scale of unreasonability. And yet, you can point that out all day and they don’t care.

    In fact, they laugh at you for doing so.

    It’s not about making sense. It never was. It’s about making you kneel.

    If you look at everything that is going on, the one common denominator is that every action the woke insurgents take is designed to strip you of your ability to defend your interests, or property, or rights, or life. The idea is to leave you utterly vulnerable, totally exposed, at which point they can do with you as they see fit. The nicer ones will merely reeducate you then demand humiliating submission and tribute. History (and their social media feed) teach that others will happily murder you. Doubt me? Just ask your local kulak.

    Stripping you of defenses takes many forms. One form is defunding and abolishing the police. Oh, someone will be wielding force in society. It just won’t be people accountable to or inclined to protect you. Another form is literally stripping you of your defenses. Why is gun control such a fetish for these creeps? Because you with a gun have the ability to not just say “no” but to exact a price from those who wish to compel a “yes.” So, of course, they want to eliminate your ability to have weapons, but they also want to eliminate, as a practical matter, your ability to use them to protect yourself.

    Look at what happened when the pink polo shirt gun guy quite reasonably grabbed his AR-15 as the savages descended on his property and the cops were AWOL. St. Louis’s Soros-bought DA – who last month released all the arrested rioters – threatened to prosecute him. The media is slandering him too. A pack of jackals threatened his property, his family, and even his dog, and he’s the bad guy for not showing his belly? You see the same fake furor every time some citizen has his car surrounded by a feeding frenzy of scumbags and plows through them to escape. Ignore that the slime are now shooting people they try to trap. The idea is to make you give up instead of fight back because if you fight back, the law comes down on you instead of the criminals.

    Soros really is a shrewd investor.

    The law – and the law generally says you can reasonably defend your life and property (please consult your local laws for specifics and get proper training) – means nothing if corrupt Democrats ignore the crimes of leftists and prosecute normals who dare resist the Blue Terror, which is kind of the point. You thought you could rely on the law and on the government to protect you. Nope. And now you can’t protect yourself either.

    And then there’s reason. That’s a defense too. You can use reason, make arguments, present evidence, and convince people. Not if making sense is beside the point.

    You cannot reason with these people. Forget trying to convince them. You are not going to talk them out of their quest for power over you by deploying bourgeois conceits like “facts” and “evidence.” Yet so many of us see what’s happening and still take to Twitter or (increasingly) Parler to point out the sheer ridiculousness of the enemy’s latest antics. But these actions are not ridiculous. They are tactically genius. Instead of confronting an impenetrable defense, they just scuttle around it and attack into our rear.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Let’s do a double-shot of Kurt: “America’s Problem Is Systemic Liberalism“:

    Forget the bizarre and evil concept of national original sin that is the malignant idea that America is built upon “systemic racism.” America’s true systemic flaw, arising at the time of those miserable progressives of yesteryear and continuing up through the miserable progressives of this rotten year, is what we now call “liberalism.”

    Oh, it’s not classical liberalism, with its concern for expanding economic and personal rights – you know, individual liberty. The current inverted mutation of liberalism is all about constricting economic and personal rights and forcing individuals into collective boxes where their individuality is subsumed into an easily exploited and manipulated conformist whole. Want to test out this hypothesis? Look through the endless woke tweets of your favorite hack journalist, pinko pol, or Hollywood half-wit, or even go up to some self-described liberal in your own life, and see if you can find one iota of deviation from any of the approved liberal dogma. Good luck. You won’t find a smidgeon of nonconformity. You won’t detect a molecule of dissent. These people are the Borg, if the Borg worked in a giant space coffee house, had Bernie stickers on their spaceships, and could not do a push-up. You can’t reason with them – appealing to reason is futile.

    Systemic liberalism is the real poison in America’s veins, not the fanciful notion pushed by bigots, charlatans, and demagogues, that the American enterprise is dedicated to invidious discrimination on the basis of race.

    It’s all a lie and a scam.

  • Our cities burned so race-hustling poverty pimps could rake off the graft:

    Left-wing activist and former Bernie Sanders surrogate Shaun King is among the most visible faces of the Black Lives Matter movement. The former Daily Kos blogger is also one of its prominent fundraisers: In 2017, King founded a political action committee—the Real Justice PAC—with an eye toward driving criminal-justice reform across the country using the same mass mobilization techniques employed by the Sanders campaign.

    But over the past 15 months, the Real Justice PAC, staffed by a number of left-wing activists, has funneled a quarter of the money it has brought in back to companies linked to PAC leaders.

    Since January of 2019, the PAC has cut dozens of checks totaling more than $460,000 to three political consultancy firms linked to PAC employees. The PAC’s data strategist, Jin Ding, and its treasurer, Becky Bond, manage two of them: Social Practice LLC and Bernal Alto LLC. The third—Middle Seat Consulting—was cofounded by one of the PAC’s original leaders, Hector Sigala.

    “There are legal and ethical ways to have people in leadership positions at an organization also serve as vendors to the same organization,” Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, a money-in-politics watchdog, told the Washington Free Beacon. “But these relationships properly raise questions, especially for a group whose leaders include someone like Shaun King, who has repeatedly been accused of enriching himself improperly.”

    “For 501(c)(3) charities, the IRS actually prohibits what’s called ‘private inurement’ or excessive benefit to an individual from the organization’s coffers,” Walter said. “Real Justice PAC isn’t a nonprofit overseen by the IRS but a PAC overseen by the Federal Election Commission, which so far as I know doesn’t have such a strict regulation. Still, groups like Real Justice that routinely criticize their opponents for things like ‘dark money’ influence—should be prepared to defend practices that let leaders write checks to their own for-profit consultancies.”

    Ding, the PAC’s technology strategist, is registered as the manager for the California-based Social Practice LLC and Bernal Alto LLC in the firms’ state filings. Social Practice received nearly $250,000 from Real Justice PAC this cycle for campaign consulting and digital services. Bernal Alto, which dissolved earlier this year, was paid $20,000 for consulting and organizing services. Bond, a cofounder of the PAC and former senior adviser to Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign, is also listed as a manager for both companies. Progressive digital firm Middle Seat Consulting, which was cofounded by Sigala, received $193,000 from the PAC for advertising services.

  • Seattle’s lawless CHAZ/CHOP zone finally demolished not due to all the murders, but because the scumbag protestors approached the mayor’s house. We can’t have the rabble bothering the more equal pigs!
  • “Left-Wing CHOP Zone Responsible For 525% Spike In Seattle Crime.”
  • CHAZ as socialism’s test case:

    “If you can’t make it work for four square blocks, how can you make it work nationwide?”

  • Democrats evidently believe people people surrounded by rioters should slow down so those same rioters can kill them:

  • Slowly but surely, all the Social Justice rioters are being brought to actual justice: 44 scumbags arrested in Scottsdale.
  • The antifa ringleader of the attempt to pull over the Andrew jackson statue was also arrested. “Jason Charter was arrested at his home by the FBI and U.S. Park Police on Thursday morning and charged with destruction of federal property.”
  • The Social Justice/#DefundThePolice madness is driving cops out of the profession.
  • The lockdowns were a mistake.
  • Consider this your periodic reminder to not freak out over polls.
  • Also, don’t fall for operation demoralize. “It happens every national election. This time it’s early, only June.”
  • Founder of leftist think tank wants to murder people lawfully defending their homes. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Gee, threatening to stab someone for disagree with Social Justice pities can negatively impact your job prospects. Who knew?
  • UMass Nursing Dean Fired For Saying “Everyone’s Life Matters.” I smell a lawsuit.
  • Our ruling class: “Peter Newell was the former co-ordinator of the Association for the Protection of All Children charity. The 77-year-old from Wood Green, north London, was sentenced last month at Blackfriars Crown Court. He admitted five indecent and serious sexual assaults on a child under 16.”
  • British to court to dictator Nicolas Maduro: No, you can’t have Venezuela’s gold. Not yours.
  • Speaking of gold, were there 83 tons of fake gold used as loan collateral in China? It’s smoke and mirrors all the way down.
  • Former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon sentenced to five years in prison for fake job scam.
  • India bans Tik-Tok and other Chinese apps.
  • And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of Chinese contracts Indian companies are canceling.
  • China’s reckless border war has pushed India into America’s arms.

    Wary of closer Indo-American ties, the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece Global Times news outlet published editorials cautioning India from involving itself in U.S.-China tensions and serving as an American pawn against China. Picking up on this notion, Brookings scholar Tanvi Madan believes closer India-U.S. ties triggered the border standoff, with Beijing intending to show India its rightful place.

    Instead, China’s deadly actions might have achieved exactly the opposite—cementing New Delhi’s strategic tilt towards Washington.

  • Speaking of Tik-Tok, on iOS (and probably everywhere) it’s data-stealing malware.

  • And it’s not just Tik-Tok! “Other news apps caught red-handed: ABC News, Al Jazeera English, CBC News, CBS News, CNBC, Fox News, News Break, NPR, ntv Nachrichten, Reuters, Russia Today, Stern Nachrichten, The Economist, and Vice News.”
  • Follow-up: Remember problems with the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program? The first four built are all being decommissioned March 31, 2021.
  • “China Never Reported Existence of Coronavirus to World Health Organization.” China lied, people died.
  • “Coronavirus traces found in March 2019 sewage sample, Spanish study shows.” Absent other corroborative samples from that timeframe, I would guess it’s a case of sample contamination or a false positive. Still: a data point.
  • “Austin Hospital Withheld Treatment from Disabled Man Who Contracted Coronavirus.” Enjoy your death panels, comrade.
  • To the Democratic Party, Mount Rushmore = White Supremacy. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at instapundit.)
  • “Devin Nunes: 2016 Taught Democrats that ‘It’s Not Enough to Just Have 90% of the Media on Your Side.'”
  • “Richest Liberal Arts School In US Slashes Tuition By 15%, Cancels Athletics Program.” That’s Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
  • Wisconsin enlists school children to wage social justice.
  • Today cancel culture seeks to root out the insidious racism of (checks notes) “kindness yoga.”
  • Club for Growth offers a takedown of The Lincoln Project:

    Grifters gonna grift. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Marx was a racist. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Ice iced, baby. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • “Redskins Change Name To ‘Lizard People’ To Better Represent Population Of Washington, D.C.”
  • Laughing fox:

  • Have a happy July 4th weekend, everyone!

    Venezuela: Scenes From A Revolution

    Wednesday, May 1st, 2019

    What better celebration of Victims of Communism Day than open revolt against an oppressive socialist government?

    Interim President Juan Guaido has called for a military revolt against socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro, supported by the United States and numerous other non-scumbag nations. Naturally, the scumbag nations are supporting Maduro. “According to Secretary Pompeo, Maduro was preparing to flee to Cuba until the Russians persuaded him to stay put.”

    Showing the usual restraint of socialist dictators, Venezuelan troops loyal to Maduro have been running over protestors with armored vehicles:

    Unfortunately, the military does not seem to have joined Guaido in mass. But Manuel Figuera, the head of the secret police (and extremely powerful position in dictatorships) has joined the rebellion, and many Venezuelans who fled are looking to join.

    But there’s good economic news for Venezuela! Their inflation rate fell to a mere 1.62 million percent in March, down from 2.30 million percent!

    Related: Dwight just gave this to me as a birthday gift:

    All the better to tell just when that hyperinflated 1 Billion Bolivar note was printed…

    LinkSwarm for April 19, 2019

    Friday, April 19th, 2019

    Happy Good Friday! Yesterday was a very good Thursday for President Donald Trump, and a very bad one for the media outlets that lied about the Russian Collusion fantasy for two years.

  • After the Mueller Report release, Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says that impeaching President Donald Trump is not worth pursuing. Take that, hard left base and Democratic House freshmen! (Hat tip: Sean Davis.)
  • Orange Man Bad!

    For approximately 3 million people, nothing in the Mueller report could exonerate President Trump of “Russian collusion,” obstruction of justice, and various other high crimes and misdemeanors of which they are certain he is guilty. For those 3 million people (a number reflecting the combined average weekday primetime audience of CNN and MSNBC) Trump’s guilt is an indisputable fact, his presidency an ongoing crime against humanity, his 2016 election a fraud. In a nation of 325 million people, of course, 3 million is less than a single percentage point. However, that hard-core audience of obsessive Trump-haters includes every Democrat in Washington and the vast majority of our nation’s journalists, university faculty, and other such members of the intelligentsia. Therefore, their deranged idĂ©e fixehas enormous influence, calling into existence a sort of anti-Trump industry that manufactures a constant output of rage-inducing propaganda. The CNN/MSNBC bubble is the cable-TV equivalent of a cult compound, where dissent from their political religion is forbidden. For the past two years, the fanatics have been told every night by Rachel Maddow, Don Lemon, et al. that the final destruction of Trump was at hand — “the walls are closing in!” — and the left-wing faithful awaited their deliverance from the evil man in the White House.

    “Orange Man Bad” — that’s a shorthand label for the anti-Trump mentality, coined by an anonymous contributor on a Reddit forum in 2017, mocking the robotic mindlessness of the president’s enemies. No fact that might contradict their Trump-hating beliefs has any validity to them, because Orange Man Bad. By obverse principle, anything done to harm Trump or his supporters, including libel and violent assault, is considered legitimate, because Orange Man Bad. Living inside a media-generated echo chamber where everyone shares their simplistic worldview, the Trump-haters tune in nightly to their MSNBC/CNN religious revival and are catechized, so to speak, with the latest reiteration of the Orange Man Bad gospel.

    What else can explain what happened Thursday, after Mueller finally delivered his 448-page “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election.” The delivery of the special counsel’s report was preceded by a press conference at which Attorney General William Barr summarized the result of the investigation. Barr “made clear that, after two years of investigation, thousands of subpoenas, and endless media speculation, the ‘Russian collusion’ story was, as some of us had noted all along, a story about nothing,” as Professor Glenn Reynolds observed. “No member of Trump’s campaign — and in fact, no American anywhere — colluded with the Russians to influence the campaign.” Contrary to what MSNBC and CNN viewers had been told night after night for month after month, Trump is not a Kremlin stooge and yet: “Orange Man Bad!”

    Proven wrong on the matter of “Russian collusion,” the anti-Trump media sifted through the Mueller report in search of evidence of other wrongdoing by the president, who of course must be guilty of something. The Twitter feeds of media types filled up with excerpts of the report proving
 what? Well, Trump was very angry about being falsely accused of “collusion,” and he didn’t enjoy watching his former associates being investigated and prosecuted as part of what he considered a partisan witch hunt, inspired in large measure by the phony Steele dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign. But we already knew that. Trump’s animus toward the Mueller investigation was certainly no secret, but being angry is not a crime and, however angry he was, nothing Trump did amounted to obstruction of justice. Because there was no “collusion,” and thus no crime to conceal, it would be hard to figure out how or why justice could be obstructed in such a case. The innocent don’t fear justice, and if Trump was innocent of “collusion” (as Mueller concluded) why should he engage in obstruction? Never mind basic logic, cried the Trump-haters, because Orange Man Bad!

    “Their minds are made up, and mere facts cannot penetrate their ironclad certainty about Trump’s maliciousness.”

  • Watch Democrats move the Mueller goalposts.
  • Editorial in the New York Times: “Barr Is Right About Everything. Admit You Were Wrong.”

    The American political and media elites that spent the first two years of the Trump administration promoting the Russian collusion hoax have some explaining to do. And not merely explaining: They owe the president an apology.

    As Attorney General William Barr said on Thursday before releasing the Mueller report, “After nearly two years of investigation, thousands of subpoenas, and hundreds of warrants and witness interviews, the special counsel confirmed that the Russian government sponsored efforts to illegally interfere with the 2016 presidential election but did not find that the Trump campaign or other Americans colluded in those schemes.”

    And yet nearly the entire complex of elite media was actively complicit in promoting the biggest political conspiracy theory in American history: that Hillary Clinton lost the election because Donald Trump conspired with Vladimir Putin to — well, that was always a moving target — but to somehow deprive Mrs. Clinton of victory. What we now know definitively is that Robert Mueller, the special counsel, and a team of very accomplished, mostly Clinton-supporting, prosecutors were unable to find evidence of a conspiracy that had been taken as an article of faith by Trump haters.

    Journalists don’t like being called “fake news,” but too many of them uncritically accepted the Trump-Russia narrative, probably because of their strong distaste for Mr. Trump himself. But that lack of objectivity represents a major professional failure, and it’s Exhibit A in why Mr. Trump’s taunt resonates with so many Americans. Gallup polling shows that for 69 percent of Americans, trust in the media has fallen over the last decade. Among Republicans, it’s 94 percent; for independents, it’s 75 percent and for moderates it’s 66. Only among self-identified liberals and progressives does a majority continue to trust the media. They like what they hear.

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • “CNN Ratings Continue To Plummet To All-Year Low.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • CNN: God Allowed The Mueller Report To Test Our Unshakable Faith In Collusion.
  • Related:

  • “Prosecutors Ask To Present Evidence That NXIVM Sex Cult Leaders Illegally Bundled Money For Hillary Clinton Campaign.” Good points: Juicy! Bad points: The use of “sex cult” and “Hillary Clinton” in the same sentence. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Details on a Democratic dark money network under Arabella Advisors founded by Clinton Democrat Eric Kessler.
  • Leftists express respectful disagreement with Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw over his criticism of Ilhan Omar. Ha, just kidding! They mocked him as “captain shithead, “Nazi,” and “eyeless fuck.”
  • What happens when the government turns your apartment building into public housing. “The SWAT team, the overdose, the complaints of pot smoke in the air and feces in the stairwell — it would be hard to pinpoint a moment when things took a turn for the worse at Sedgwick Gardens, a stately apartment building in Northwest Washington.” Bonus: they’re handing out vouchers for up to $2,648 a month, which is more than my mortgage payment. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • “The Trump administration on Wednesday imposed new sanctions and other punitive measures on Cuba and Venezuela, seeking to ratchet up U.S. pressure on Havana to end its support for Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicolas Maduro.” Good.
  • Journalist shot to death in Northern Ireland, in an incident police are blaming on the New IRA.
  • Six MS-13 members charged in two murders.
  • Four truths that will get you banned from a college campus in 2019. Including: “To pretend that a man is a woman if he believes he is a woman
[is] objectively untrue.”
  • Shocker: University head doesn’t cave in to Social justice Warrior pressure, refuses to fire Camille Paglia.
  • Change your gut flora, change your thoughts. (Hat tip: Jordan Petersen’s Twitter feed.)
  • Black immigrant MAGA hat wearer beaten by thugs. Washington Post: “Meh. Somebody did something to somebody.”
  • Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot says he will no longer prosecute theft cases under $750. Governor Greg Abbott is mighty pissed.
  • Related:

  • CDC: “Hey, our guidelines didn’t mean ‘Screw you, pain sufferers.'”
  • Apple, Qualcomm settle their patent dispute. Immediately after that was announced, Intel announced they were exiting the 5G modem business. Apple continues to be something of a monopsony in the space.
  • “Federal Judge Tosses Defamation Lawsuit by Teachers’ Union Leader Against Project Verita.”
  • Don’t California my Texas:

  • The Postal Service took away the doughboy’s gun.
  • Only in New York: Hermit gets $17 million to move out of his tiny dilapidated hotel room. (Hat tip: Baseballcrank.)
  • Gene Wolfe, RIP.
  • Ouch! (Consider yourself warned.)
  • LinkSwarm for February 22, 2019

    Friday, February 22nd, 2019

    Enjoy a 2/22 LinkSwarm!

  • Trump Is On Solid Legal Ground In Declaring A Border Emergency To Build A Wall.”

    A review of existing federal laws makes clear that President Donald Trump has clear statutory authority to build a border wall pursuant to a declaration of a national emergency. Arguments to the contrary either mischaracterize or completely ignore existing federal emergency declarations and appropriations laws that delegate to the president temporary and limited authority to reprogram already appropriated funding toward the creation of a border wall between the United States and Mexico.

  • When lawmakers want to talk to President Donald Trump, they just pick up the phone. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • Andy Ngo helpfully provides an extensive list of fake hate crimes in the Trump era.
  • “Covington teen Nick Sandmann sues The Washington Post for $250M.”
  • Shocker: Washington Post tells the truth about guns:

    Gun homicides have dropped substantially over the past 25 years — but most Americans believe the opposite to be true. Why? Perhaps in part because of the media focus on multiple-victim shooting incidents in recent years. Perhaps, too, because of the number and deadliness of those incidents. We’ve noted before that the number of fatalities in major mass-shooting incidents has increased dramatically in recent years; it’s possible that people are conflating increases in frequency and deadliness of mass shootings with the United States getting more dangerous generally.

  • New York Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez adapts quickly to the ways of Washington, puts her boyfriend on her congressional payroll. But that’s not all! She also featherbedded him on her campaign payroll by laundering the funds through a third party.
  • The fight between Second Amendment activists and Michael Bloomberg’s money:

    The time for division is not now. We need a strong NRA. If you quit NRA over bump stocks or red flag laws, you aren’t helping. I’m not saying we can’t have disagreement, but we all need to be rowing in the same direction and understanding what’s important. Miguel notes that activists in Florida are concentrating on Open Carry. I would advise concentrating on stopping the ballot measure Bloomberg is going to foist on you in 2020. NRA has to have money to fight that. We cannot write off the third most populous state. We will never be able to outspend Bloomberg, but we sure as hell can out-organize him. We have a blueprint, and last I heard the dude who pulled off defeating the Massachusetts handgun ban is still alive. The odds were stacked against him too.

    Forget about the fucking bump stocks. It’s not where the fight is. That’s over. The fight is preserving the right to own semi-automatic firearms. That’s ultimately what they want, because they are well aware no state’s gun culture has ever come back from an assault weapons ban. Gun bans are a death blow to the culture. If you want to get the hard-core activists worked up over saving an impractical range toy, or in some misguided effort to (badly) get around the machine gun restrictions, you’re not paying attention to where the actual fight is.

  • “Government report reveals CBO was scandalously off in Obamacare estimates.”
  • The Supreme Court unanimously rules that there are limits to civil asset forfeiture under the Eighth Amendment. Good. Now congress should tackle such abuse legislatively.
  • Note the obvious truth that the media is overwhelmingly liberal? Expect to be attacked.
  • Nicolas Maduro would rather let his own people continue to starve rather than let foreign food aid reach them. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • His army evidently relies on Cuban military personnel. Too bad for him that Cuba’s military intervention in Angola showed the world that Cuban troops sucked. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • “Even the UN IPCC says we’re not headed for climate disaster.”
  • The boy who inflated the concept of wolf:

    Suppose that instead of one shepherd boy, there are a few dozen. They are tired of the villagers dismissing their complaints about less threatening creatures like stray dogs and coyotes. One of them proposes a plan: they will start using the word “wolf” to refer to all menacing animals. They agree and the new usage catches on. For a while, the villagers are indeed more responsive to their complaints. The plan backfires, however, when a real wolf arrives and cries of “Wolf!” fail to trigger the alarm they once did.

    What the boys in the story do with the word “wolf,” modern intellectuals do with words like “violence.” When ordinary people think of violence, they think of things like bombs exploding, gunfire, and brawls. Most dictionary definitions of “violence” mention physical harm or force. Academics, ignoring common usage, speak of “administrative violence,” “data violence,” “epistemic violence” and other heretofore unknown forms of violence.

    Ditto “Gas-lighting.” (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • Pro-top: Try not to steal guns from the SHOT show.
  • The English-language narrator of Islamic State execution videos has been captured.
  • Gay magazine takes the Mullah’s side to own Trump:

  • Former women’s tennis champion and out lesbian Martina Navratilova vilified for daring to point out that men shouldn’t be competing in women’s sports.
  • “Medical examiner barred from Travis County courtrooms amid Rangers investigation.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Stafford: the Texas city without property taxes.
  • B-1s to be retired before B-52s.
  • Followup: But they’re buying more F-15s. (Hat tip: The Political Hat.)
  • Philadelphia’s stupid soda tax has not reduced consumption, brought in less revenue than expected, and has cost Philadelphia over 200 jobs. Also, corrupt union officials helped push it through as a “screw you” to the Teamsters. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Lt. Governor Dan Patrick bitchslaps some shoddy journalism from the Houston Chronicle so hard they had to retract the story. (Hat tip: Cahnman’s Musings, though the Scribed link is broken.)
  • Giant “nightmare bee” previously thought to be extinct found alive. Pleasant dreams:

  • A new football league, the Alliance of American Football, just debuted. Their main bread and butter isn’t ticket sales or broadcast rights, its refining technology to help boost sports gambling.
  • Trump-supporting comedian Terrance K. Williams recovering from a car accident:

  • Speaking of Williams:

  • Instant classic:

  • “Atheist Requiring Evidence To Believe Anything Knows For Certain Trump Colluded With Russia.”
  • La zzzzOOOOOMMMMMMMzzzz Le schzzzzzzcchh-Mmmmmmmmmwaaaaaaahh!
  • Venezuela: “It’s About Food”

    Wednesday, January 30th, 2019

    For those deluded leftists who think the Venezuela crises is about a “right wing coup,” take a look at this on-the-scene report from Trump-hostile CNN:

  • “It’s about food. It’s about the startling mismanagment and corruption of the Nicolas Maduro government, and how that’s left people unable to get the daily things you and I take for granted. Water. Dinner. Breakfast.”
  • Car queue three days for gas.
  • “There’s a queue for everything, everywhere.”
  • “We beg for a piece of chicken skin to take home.”
  • “In a socialist utopia that now leaves nearly every stomach empty.”
  • “What they really need is for the military to switch sides.”
  • “We’re beggers now. It isn’t political. It’s survival.”
  • Watch the whole thing.

    In other Venezuela news, the Trump Administration has handed control of Venezuela’s bank accounts in the United States to Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido and slapped sanctions on Venezuela’s state owned oil company, including three U.S. Citgo refineries.

    “Nicolas Maduro must go.”

    Wednesday, January 23rd, 2019

    Well, this is a shame:

    Venezuela plunged deeper into turmoil Monday as security forces put down a pre-dawn uprising by national guardsmen that triggered violent street protests, and the Supreme Court moved to undercut the opposition-controlled congress’ defiant new leadership.

    Socialist party chief Diosdado Cabello said 27 guardsmen were arrested and more could be detained as the investigation unfolds.

    The mutiny struck at a time when opposition leaders have regained momentum in their efforts to oust President Nicolas Maduro. They have called for a nationwide demonstration Wednesday, urging Venezuelans — especially members of the armed forces — to abandon Maduro.

    The uprising triggered protests in a poor neighborhood just a few miles (kilometers) from Venezuela’s presidential palace. It was dispersed with tear gas as residents set fire to a barricade of trash and chanted demands that Maduro leave power.

    The military said in a statement said that it had recovered all the weapons and captured those involved in what it described as “treasonous” acts motivated by “obscure interests tied to the far right.”

    I guess “the far right” includes “people who want to be able to feed their children.” Plus those who want to avoid being tortured for alleged disloyalty to the regime.

    Meanwhile, the Venezuelan opposition is planning a mass protest.

    More context:

    Venezuela is officially a dictatorship. The Organization of American States does not recognize Nicolas Maduro as its president. Nor does nearly all of Latin America, with the exception of maybe three governments: Cuba, Bolivia, and Nicaragua….Everyone except those three aforementioned countries now recognize National Assembly president Juan GuaidĂł as the democratically elected leader of the country. He has been leading rallies nationwide in an effort to galvanize public support to oust PSUV from power.

    Keep in mind that, thanks to The Magic Power of Socialismℱ, inflation in Venezuela hit 80,000% last year.

    What needs to happen is for the Venezuelan military to finally abandon Maduro’s illegitimate government en masse, but so far that’s not happening, even though “more than 4,000 low-ranking officers deserted last year.”

    Vice President Mike Pence penned an editorial in The Wall Street Journal nicely summing up the situation:

    The Venezuelan people will march Wednesday for freedom and democracy. They will do so at the urging of the National Assembly—Venezuela’s legitimate legislature—and its courageous president, Juan Guaidó. As I told Mr. Guaidó last week, President Trump and the U.S. stand resolutely with the Venezuelan people as they seek to regain their liberty from dictator Nicolás Maduro.

    The National Assembly has rightly called Mr. Maduro’s rule illegitimate, following a sham election last May. It has called for protests on Jan. 23 because on that date in 1958 the Venezuelan people toppled their country’s military dictatorship.

    As I have heard many times from Venezuelans over the past 2 years, Mr. Maduro has exacerbated the country’s corruption and socialist policies, accelerating its descent from one of the richest countries in the Western Hemisphere to one of the poorest and most despotic. He promised prosperity, but his actions have caused Venezuela’s economy to shrink by nearly 50%. He promised safety and security, but cities and streets are now overrun with murderous gangs, kidnappers and thieves. He promised to respect democracy, but instead followed the advice and example of his communist mentors in Cuba, imprisoning opponents, banning major parties, and undermining fair elections.

    Snip.

    Venezuela’s crisis will worsen until democracy is restored. That is why under President Trump, the U.S. strongly supports the National Assembly and Mr. Guaidó. Nicolás Maduro has no legitimate claim to power. Nicolás Maduro must go.

    Venezuela Socialist President Nicolas Maduro Target of Drone Attack

    Sunday, August 5th, 2018

    The only thing surprising about this story is that it didn’t happen two years ago.

    Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez said in a live broadcast Saturday that several dronelike devices armed with explosives detonated near Maduro during his appearance at a military event, according to AP.

    It quoted Rodriguez as saying Maduro was safe and unharmed. According to Reuters, seven National Guard soldiers were hurt.

    Just think how much better off Venezuela might be if someone had taken out Maduro before he admitted socialism was a failure, or even before people started eating their dogs and children started dying because his socialist paradise can’t afford antibiotics?

    Here’s footage of the attack. You can’t see the drone attack itself, but you can see reactions to it and people running from it.

    It’s actually surprising we haven’t seen more drone assassination attempts. The technology is mature and the strike can be carried out from several blocks away, even out of line-of-sight with an onboard video camera. Get a medium-sized quadcopter, pack it full of Semtex and roofing nails, and detonate a few feet from your target.

    Not only have we been using Predator drones since 1994, the Predator has actually been retired in favor of the much larger and faster MQ-9A Reaper…

    LinkSwarm for August 3, 2018

    Friday, August 3rd, 2018

    I’m hoping that this week is Peak Busy for me. Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:

  • Rasmussen: “Today’s [President Donald Trump] approval ratings among black voters: 29% This time last year: 15%.” Overall Trump approval rating at 50%.
  • Related: “President Donald Trump was lauded by inner-city pastors, including one who said he may go down as the ‘most pro-black president’ in recent history, during a White House roundtable on Wednesday that was focused on efforts to reform the prison system.” (Hat tip: Da Tech Guy via The Other McCain.)
  • ObamaCare is now optional:

    At long last, the Trump administration has created a “freedom option” for people suffering under Obamacare. A final rulemaking issued Wednesday reverses an Obama-era regulation that exposed the sick to medical underwriting. The new rule will expand consumer protections for the sick, cover up to two million uninsured people, reduce premiums for millions more, protect conscience rights, and make Obamacare’s costs more transparent. And unlike President Barack Obama’s implementation of his signature healthcare legislation, it works within the confines of the law.

    Federal law exempts “short-term, limited duration” health insurance from having to carry the unwanted coverage and hidden taxes Obamacare requires. Many consumers have understandably taken refuge from soaring Obamacare premiums in short-term plans.

    Hoping to force those consumers into Obamacare plans, the Obama administration sabotaged short-term plans by stripping them of crucial consumer protections. It cut the maximum plan term from 12 months to three months, and forbade issuers from offering “renewal guarantees” that allow the sick to continue purchasing short-term policies at healthy-person rates. State insurance regulators protested that these restrictions literally stripped sick patients of their coverage.

    Wednesday’s rule reinstates and even expands the consumer protections Obama curtailed. It allows short-term plans to last 12 months, and allows insurers to offer them with renewal guarantees.

    You read that right. Democrats curtailed consumer protections; Republicans are expanding them.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Yesterday’s controversy de jour: “Sarah Jeong: NY Times stands by racist tweets reporter.”
  • Andrew Sullivan on the same topic:

    Is the newest member of the New York Times editorial board, Sarah Jeong, a racist?

    From one perspective — that commonly held by people outside the confines of the political left — she obviously is. A series of tweets from 2013 to 2015 reveal a vicious hatred of an entire group of people based only on their skin color. If that sounds harsh, let’s review a few, shall we? “White men are bullshit,” is one. A succinct vent, at least. But notice she’s not in any way attacking specific white men for some particular failing, just all white men for, well, existing. Or this series of ruminations: “have you ever tried to figure out all the things that white people are allowed to do that aren’t cultural appropriation. there’s literally nothing. like skiing, maybe, and also golf. white people aren’t even allowed to have polo. did you know that. like don’t you just feel bad? why can’t we give white people a break. lacrosse isn’t for white people either. it must be so boring to be white.” Or this: “basically i’m just imagining waking up white every morning with a terrible existential dread that i have no culture.” I can’t say I’m offended by this — it’s even mildly amusing, if a little bonkers. (Has she read, say, any Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson?) But it does reveal a worldview in which white people — all of them — are cultural parasites and contemptibly dull.

    A little more disturbing is what you might call “eliminationist” rhetoric — language that wishes an entire race could be wiped off the face of the earth: “#cancelwhitepeople.” Or: “White people have stopped breeding. you’ll all go extinct soon. that was my plan all along.” One simple rule I have about describing groups of human beings is that I try not to use a term that equates them with animals. Jeong apparently has no problem doing so. Speaking of animals, here’s another gem: “Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.” Or you could describe an entire race as subhuman: “Are white people genetically disposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.” And then there’s this simple expression of the pleasure that comes with hatred: “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.” I love that completely meretricious “old” to demean them still further. And that actual feeling: joy at cruelty!

    Another indicator that these statements might be racist comes from replacing the word “white” with any other racial group. #cancelblackpeople probably wouldn’t fly at the New York Times, would it? Or imagine someone tweeting that Jews were only “fit to live underground like groveling goblins” or that she enjoyed “being cruel to old Latina women,” and then being welcomed and celebrated by a liberal newsroom. Not exactly in the cards.

  • Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolas Maduro admits that socialism doesn’t work. Just think how much pain could be avoided if he had admitted this before people had to eat their dogs…
  • California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein had a Chinese spy on her staff for nearly 20 years. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Mistaken police call for an active shooter at a McAllen mall turns out to be an illegal alien robbery gang. Result? Seven illegal alien criminal suspects arrested.
  • Fort Myers, Florida: “Police Officer Dies After Being Shot By Illegal Alien.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “Noncitizens across U.S. find it easy to register to vote, cast ballots.” And some have even had other people do it for them without their knowledge… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Sheldon Silver Sentenced: Seven in Sing Sing. (Actually, it’s not clear the former New York Assembly speaker will be serving his sentence in Sing Sing, but we can only hope, for the sake of the alliteration…)
  • Maryland forces 90-year old woman to tear down wheelchair ramp she built for he own home.
  • Kane bodyslams Democratic opponent in Mayor of Knox County race.
  • Tommy Robinson freed in the UK.
  • Related tweet:

  • Woman rams car for having a Trump bumper sticker.
  • China cracks down on illegal coffins. Which is to say, any coffins, since cremation is now mandated. Including seizing and destroying coffins old people have spent their entire lives saving for.
  • He Made the Most Beautiful Films of All Time and They Put Him in Prison For It.” He being Sergei Parajanov and they being the Soviet Union. (Hat tip: Don Webb on Facebook.)
  • Liberal NYC lawyer who worked under both Bloomberg and De Blasio talks about just how bad De Blasio sucks:

    When Bill de Blasio became mayor of New York in 2014, things changed drastically. I started to hear rumblings early on. My former colleagues who were dedicated public servants were concerned by a large-scale rollback of Bloomberg’s strategic initiatives. These seemed to be based on partisan politics and black-and-white thinking as opposed to critical analysis. It was very disappointing for me since I had also voted for de Blasio.

    Although I was still working in the same social-services agency where I had remained at the end of Bloomberg’s term, my job changed radically. I had no contact with the new commissioner who appeared to be disengaged from substantive discussions about social-services programs for an extremely vulnerable population. In fact, she was much more preoccupied with renovating her office — I heard her new desk alone cost thousands of dollars. She even requested that a private bathroom be built for her. She had the attitude of an oligarch and was disturbed that she had to vet invitations to galas through legal and City Hall. She wanted carte blanche to attend expensive events.

    She also refused to meet with the lawyers in her department and she kept the door to her office closed and didn’t know the names of the people who worked in her agency.

    Under my commissioner, there were no benchmarks, no goals and she did not hold regular meetings with her general counsel. Under her tenure, the legal unit was gutted. And there were no consequences for failing to meet performance goals because there were no performance goals.

  • Comics video blogger Jeremy Hambly attacked at GenCon. “The Quartering also provided another update claiming five eyewitness have identified the attacker as Matt Loter, the owner of Elm City Games.” GenCon promptly expelled Loter. Ha! Just kidding!

  • Liberal Chicago Sun-Times reporter: “Donald Trump is going to be re-elected in 2020. The Democrats don’t have anyone who can touch him. Bank on it.”
  • “Millennial Drops Support For Socialism After Learning How Hard It Is To Get Avocado Toast In Venezuela.” The Babylon Bee has just been tearing it up recently. I probably need to add them to the blog roll.
  • Venezuela: Lynching, Riots, General Collapse

    Monday, June 19th, 2017

    Time for an update on everyone’s favorite socialist paradise, where the collapse of the economy (and civil society) continues apace:

  • Things have degenerated enough that lynching has made a comeback:

    The public-safety infrastructure in Venezuela has been degraded to such a degree that citizens now take justice into their own hands. Agence France Presse reported that lynchings have risen sharply over the last year and a half as political and economic instability in the crumbling socialist republic has worsened. Witnesses who spoke to AFP said a 22-year-old man who was set on fire at an anti-government demonstration in May was actually lynched after being accused of stealing by the crowd – not because he was a government sympathizer, as President Nicolas Maduro had suggested at the time.

  • Protestors set fire to the Venezuela Supreme Court. “The incident comes after the Supreme Court voted to reject a motion blocking Maduro from rewriting the country’s constitution, despite recent polls showing that up to 85 percent of Venezuelans oppose the reforms.”
  • Tearing down a statue of Hugo Chavez doesn’t get you sent before a civilian judge, it lands you before a military tribunal:

    Maduro is following the playbook of other tyrants facing the collapse of socialism page by page. The anger in the streets against his failed regime is so intense that protesters might not be convicted in a jury trial handled through the regular order of civilian law enforcement. So instead, the troublemakers are being rounded up and taken off to face a court martial in an environment which the government can closely control.

  • Brazil has suspended tear gas sales to Venezuela.
  • Venezuela’s collapsing oil industry is also screwing over Cuba.
  • Venezuela in 20 pictures. Including a really sad one of a starving elephant. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Are the government’s Twitter accounts suspended?
  • There’s also a Washington Post piece that asks if Civil War is imminent I’m not linking to because the words “starvation” and “hyperinflation” are conspicuously absent. As the Hot Air piece on military tribunals states, “the citizens are effectively in a state of war with their own government” already…

    Venezuela Boils

    Tuesday, May 9th, 2017

    The problem with reporting on the slow-motion trainwreck that is Venezuela is the “slow-motion” part. Things fall apart, children die, people starve, but it’s hard to gauge the rate at which the ship of state is slipping under the iceberg of reality due that giant gash of socialism in its side.

    The crisis has now reached the “regular riots and soldiers shooting protesters in the street” phase:

    An economy in shambles, lethal street crime, dungeons packed with political prisoners, and South America’s worst refugee crisis — it’s hard to find a misery that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government hasn’t visited on his compatriots in his four years in office. But by calling for a new constitution (Venezuela has had 26) as he did this week, Latin America’s ranking strongman may well have trumped his own dismal record.

    On May 1, with the streets of Caracas and other major cities teeming with anti-government protests, Maduro announced a plan to convoke a constituent assembly to write a new constitution. As anti-climactic as that sounds, this was an autocratic milestone even for the country that has turned political and economic fiat into a science. In a single flourish, the Venezuelan leader proposed not just to bend the rules, as he has done repeatedly since coming to power in 2013, but also to junk the latest constitution — which his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, fashioned into a tyrant’s toolbox — and cherry-pick a Bolivarian dream team to deliver what will presumably be an even more authoritarian one.

    If the proposal stands, as virtually all of Maduro’s decrees have stood to now, the new law in turn would bury the cherished trope among contemporary Latin American strongmen that their word, no matter how arbitrary, is still anchored in democratic process. “Maduro’s proposal was not just flagrantly unconstitutional. It was the most radical move in more than 17 years of Chavismo,” said Diego Moya-Ocampos, chief political risk analyst at IHS Markit, a London-based business consultancy.

    Brazilian foreign minister Aloysio Nunes went further, labelling Maduro’s proposal a “coup” and a breach of democratic civility. “Maduro chose to radicalize,” Nunes told me in an interview. “This proposal is incompatible with the democratic process, slams the door on dialogue, and is a slap in the face to the Pope’s appeal for a negotiated solution.”

    Even the Secretary General of the Organization of American States has recognized that Venezuela no longer even pretends to be a democracy:

    There are elements of dictatorships that are unmistakable. Today I must refer to one more in Venezuela: the passing of civilians to military justice.

    VenezuelaÂŽs civic-military regime represents the worst of every dictatorship. That includes tyrannical control over political freedoms and the basic guarantees of the people, the elimination of the powers of the branches of government of popular representation, political prisoners and torture, starting with the armed collectives, a kind of fascist blackshirts, with orders to attack civilians during protests.

    The accusations of military prosecutors to civilians is absolute nonsense in juridical terms.

    In Venezuela, the rule of law does not exist even in appearance.

    The accusations of crimes of vilification and instigation to rebellion, as well as other categories of a similar nature, are part of a reactionary discourse devoid of legal grounds applied against demonstrators. The reality is that they simply serve the purpose of depriving peaceful protesters of their freedom.

    When a government considers that its people are a threat to its continuity it is because it is a government whose strategy is to continue without the people and on the basis of the use of force.

    This constitutes a new violation of the Constitution, which in its article 261 says clearly that:

    “The commission of common crimes, human rights violations and crimes against humanity shall be judged by the courts of the ordinary jurisdiction. Military courts jurisdiction is limited to offenses of a military nature.”

    More scenes from the disintegration of Venezuelan society over the last few months:

  • More classic commie moves: arrest opposition leaders and charge them with plotting a coup, in this case Gilber Caro.
  • They also banned opposition leader Henrique Capriles from holding political office for 15 years.
  • Another opposition leader, Leopoldo Lopez, has just disappeared in prison. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Though his wife Lilian Tintori has evidently seen him, and says that he wants the opposition to continue protesting. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Last year, the average Venezuelan living in extreme poverty lost 19 pounds amid mass food shortages largely created and then exacerbated by government price controls—60 percent of Venezuelans said they had to skip at least one meal a day. Maduro joked that the ‘Maduro diet,’ as the government-induced starvation has been called, was leading to better sex, to the applause of government workers and party loyalists but few others. There have been shortages of food as well as goods like toilet paper, deodorants, condoms, and even beer.”
  • “Venezuela military trafficking food as country goes hungry.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “Facing a bread shortage that is spawning massive lines and souring the national mood, the Venezuelan government is responding this week by detaining bakers and seizing establishments.”
  • Eight Venezuelans were actually electrocuted trying to loot a bakery.
  • Venezuelans are fleeing to Brazil for medical care…A spiraling economic crisis and hyperinflation have cleaned Venezuelan hospitals of needles, bandages and medicine. Desperate for care and often undocumented, patients are overwhelming Brazilian emergency rooms as they turn up by the thousands.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • “Consumer prices in Venezuela soared by 741% year-over-year in February 2017.”
  • That hyperinflation was so bad that Venezuela outlawed their own currency. “In mid-December, the Venezuelan government surprised its citizens by withdrawing from circulation the 100-bolĂ­var note, its largest and most used bill, with only 72 hours’ warning.” (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Statue of Hugo Chavez torn down by protesters.
  • “The Venezuelan government is investigating alleged corruption in a $1.3 billion contract between the state oil company and a private contractor co-founded by a Saudi prince, according to law-enforcement officials and related documents.” Usual WSJ hoops apply.
  • In Venezuela, the prisoners are literally running the prisons. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Why is it that reporters keep scratching their heads about Venezuela’s descent into extreme poverty and chaos? The cause is simple. Socialism. End it and you will end the misery.”
  • Chavista Socialism Has Destroyed 570,000 Businesses in Venezuela.”
  • Fracking means Venezuela will run out of money sooner rather than later. “A country like Venezuela, which was on the edge even before prices fell from $100 a barrel, well they’re running out of foreign exchange reserves, they’ve fallen from $66 to about $15 billion. And they’re collapsing and they’re running out of the ability to import food and other materials, and so there you’re dealing with almost societal instability, and order is being maintained by folks with guns.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Venezuela’s oil tankers are too dirty to be allowed to dock in foreign ports.
  • The regime’s useful idiots among the American left remain strangely silent as the country they once held up as a shining example of the success of socialism collapses: