Superman gets tired of Iran’s catspaws tugging on his cape, the Biden Recession has both inflation and budget deficits soaring, another polar vortex barrels down on Texas, and the crazy-eyed girlfriend of a corrupt Democrat shows up on the Epstein list. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen just had to keep fucking around, so now they’ve found out.
The U.S. and Britain launched air strikes in Yemen on Thursday in response to the Iran-backed Houthis’ recent attacks against vessels in the Red Sea.
The strikes came hours after White House national-security spokesman John Kirby called on the Houthis to “stop these attacks” and warned that the group would “bear the consequences for any failure to do so.”
The militants have launched 27 attacks on vessels in the Red Sea since November 19, the U.S. military said earlier on Thursday. The group says the attacks are in protest of the Israel–Hamas war.
The retaliatory strikes targeted a source of the group’s attacks, Bloomberg News reported, noting that heavy explosions were seen in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa and the port city of Al Hudaydah. The attacks were carried out with support from Australia, the Netherlands, Bahrain, and Canada, while the U.K. contributed aircraft.
President Biden confirmed the strikes in a statement on Thursday evening, explaining that the action was “in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea — including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history.”
“These attacks have endangered U.S. personnel, civilian mariners, and our partners, jeopardized trade, and threatened freedom of navigation,” he said, noting that more than 50 countries had been impacted by the attacks on commercial shipping, while crews from more than 20 countries have been threatened or taken hostage in acts of piracy.
“More than 2,000 ships have been forced to divert thousands of miles to avoid the Red Sea — which can cause weeks of delays in product shipping times. And on January 9, Houthis launched their largest attack to date — directly targeting American ships,” Biden said.
Suchomimus has taken a break from his Ukraine war work to do a video on the strike:
Plus another one on the locations hit:
Is there a Habitual Linecrosser video for this strike? Yes, yes there is:
The Biden Recession bites even deeper, with higher inflation and record food prices. And those are just the official numbers. Food inflation seems a hell of a lot higher than official numbers are letting on…
Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis appointed a former romantic partner to lead the prosecution against the former president and his associates, a former Trump campaign official and co-defendant alleged in a court filing late Monday.
“The district attorney and the special prosecutor have been seen in private together in and about the Atlanta area and believed to have co-habited in some form or fashion at a location owned by neither of them,” the court document submitted by Michael Roman’s legal representatives argues. Roman served briefly as a special assistant and researcher to President Trump.
The submission does not offer any explicit proof of the DA’s connection to special prosecutor Nathan Wade, but instead claims “sources close to both the special prosecutor and the district attorney have confirmed they had an ongoing, personal relationship.” Wade was paid over half a million dollars throughout his involvement in the Trump election-interference case, which Willis has overseen and authorized.
How long until the radical left argues that it’s perfectly normal with elected black female Democrats like Fani Willis and Kamala Harris to commit adultery with other Democrats to further their career, and it’s just those right-wing troglodytes who are hung up over it?
It’s a problem in the western world that is rarely discussed in the media beyond puff-piece articles and glancing polls that avoid connecting the dots. The precipitous decline of dating, committed relationships and marriage along with a flatline in population in the past couple decades in the US is treated as a novelty issue rather than the threat to the stability of civilization that it actually is. History shows that without the traditional family structure, numerous ugly societal consequences follow.
One could argue, though, that the situation is far worse than that. We may be heading into a future where families become a novelty, and many argue that the root cause is feminism and the hyperinflated delusions of progressive women.
In order to understand the problem we have to look at the stats.
More than 50% of American women are still childless by age 30. By age 35 fertility goes into steep decline with women having a 15% chance of becoming pregnant, and a less than 5% chance of motherhood at age 40. Meaning, the best window of opportunity for women to find a compatible partner and build a family is in their 20s.
Feminists argue, though, that this is the time in a woman’s life when they should be building a career and having fun. Family life, they say, is an artificial prison “created by the patriarchy” in order to oppress the fairer sex. Corporate media and Hollywood entertainment often reinforce this narrative and encourage unrealistic life goals.
The propaganda has generated what many refer to as the “Female Happiness Paradox.” Surveys show that increased power, job access and responsibility for women in society since the 1970s has also led to a diametrically opposed decline in overall happiness for those same women. The correlation suggests the exact opposite of what feminism originally promised and that the ideology has been a net negative.
Though some will argue that a general decline in economic conditions is the real cause, surveys show that women have suffered a far more pronounced drop in happiness compared to men. Meaning, men were already acclimated to the struggles of the workaday world and their roles as providers and protectors. Women were happy until they joined men in the trenches.
For men, the reaction has been to back away from the dating scene and the double standards involved. Over 63% of men under the age of 30 are now single; that’s up from 51% in 2019. The majority of single men say this is by choice and that they are seeking to avoid relationships altogether. Why? The consensus appears to be that modern western women cost too much money and cause too much trouble.
Fear of failed marriage is one aspect that has the younger generation of men on edge, with family courts still largely in favor of women in divorce settlements and child custody. This is one reason why marriage rates have declined by 60% since the 1970s. However, the obstacles go well beyond divorce and into a new culture of female entitlement.
The word on the street is “Hoeflation”: The dramatic increase in cost for men today to maintain a relationship with a woman while the quality of women continues to go down. That is to say, it is an increase in female expectations vs what they bring to the table in a relationship.
In other words, women of the past used to have something to offer beyond sexual companionship, from greater femininity, greater potential for motherhood, less combativeness and narcissism, as well as a superior ability to raise children and maintain a home. Such traits are highly attractive to men even after 60 years of widespread feminism, but are seen as non-existent among women under 30 in 2023.
It should be noted that “Hoeflation” seems to be directly linked to progressive influences, and not all women fall into this category. Unfortunately, around 71% of young women identify with progressive beliefs, as opposed to young men who are only 53% progressive. It should also be noted that progressive today means something a lot different from what it meant in the 1990s (progressive now means woke, or extreme leftist cultism).
Terrified journalists being forced to kneel in a TV studio by gunmen pointing high-powered weapons at their heads as the cameras rolled, police officers pleading for their lives after being kidnapped on duty.
The scenes which have unfolded in Ecuador show the extent to which this once peaceful haven in Latin America has descended into violence.
Snip.
Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, has ordered the armed forces to restore order in the country after days of unrest which saw two gang leaders escape from jail, prison guards held hostage, and explosive devices set off in a number of cities across the country.
In the most dramatic attack, a group of armed men forced their way into the studios of TC Television in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, and tried to force one of the presenters to read out a message live on air.
The gunmen were eventually overpowered by soldiers and have been arrested but the live footage of the stand-off between the hooded men and the armed forces while TC staff cowered on the floor has terrified Ecuadoreans.
“Ohio House Votes to Override DeWine’s Veto of Bill Banning Child Gender Medicalization.” An Ohio senate vote on overriding the veto is scheduled for January 24.
Second Amendment victory: ” In Stunning About-Face, 9th Circuit Prohibits California from Banning Concealed Carry in Public Places.”
From the court’s Order Granting Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction:
California will not allow concealed carry permitholders to effectively practice what the Second Amendment promises. [The new law’s] coverage is sweeping, repugnant to the Second Amendment, and openly defiant of the Supreme Court. The law designates twenty-six categories of places, such as hospitals, public transportation, places that sell liquor for on-site consumption, playgrounds, parks, casinos, stadiums, libraries, amusement parks, zoos, places of worship, and banks, as “sensitive places” where concealed carry permitholders cannot carry their handguns. SB2 turns nearly every public place in California into a “sensitive place,” effectively abolishing the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding and exceptionally qualified citizens to be armed and to defend themselves in public.
Slowly but surely, Bruen is stopping the gun grabbers dead in their tracks.
“Director of ‘Bronx Rises Against Gun Violence,’ Caught With Illegal Guns, Sentenced To Prison…Michael Rodriguez, 49, the now-former director of “Bronx Rises Against Gun Violence” was sentenced to ten years in state prison following his arrest last summer on drug and gun charges.”
Nearly 59,000 registered Pennsylvania Democrats left the party in 2023; that makes more voters than fans needed to fill the capacity of the Franklin Field Football Stadium at the University of Pennsylvania.
Of those nearly 59,000 who left the Democratic Party, 36,950 switched to the Republican party, and 21,644 switched their party affiliation to “other,” the category the Pennsylvania Department of State uses in its data to cover parties such as Green and Libertarian.
“As the Democrat Party tilts further to the progressive left, more historically traditional, working-class families are moving to the Republican Party, both in terms of how they vote and how they’re registered,” conservative political strategist Charlie Gerow told the Epoch Times.
Scary traffic controller incompetence via Instapundit:
Holy smokes this is terrifying. Female Air traffic controller argues with a pilot who’s been flying for 15 years about a landing and says she “googled it” so she’s right and knows best.
DTO is the airport for Denton, Texas, a college town northwest of Fort Worth.
“Georgia Tech researchers claim they have created ‘the world’s first functional semiconductor made from graphene.’ Importantly, the research team’s epitaxial graphene is claimed to be compatible with conventional microelectronics processing methods and is thus a realistic silicon alternative. Moreover, this refined material achieves a desirable band gap for electronics applications and has latent potential for future quantum computing devices.” Higher band gap is necessary for switching a circuit from on to off; it’s what puts the “semi” in “semiconductors.”
Billions of insects are predicted to burst out of the ground in the United States during late spring, in an event which hasn’t happened for more than 200 years.
The red-eyed, winged insects called periodical cicadas, emerge in 13 to 17-year cycles and are completely harmless.
In 2024, two of these groups – called Brood XIII (meaning 13) and Brood XIX (19) – are predicted to burst from the ground together for the first time since 1803.
The US states of Wisconsin and Illinois will be mainly affected as billions of the bugs making a loud clicking noise will fill the air, cover branches, sign posts and pavements for about a month later this year.
Interesting how the BBC feels it has to explain what Roman numerals mean…
“Three Austin Police Department (APD) SWAT officers have been cleared by a Travis County grand jury following a deadly shooting last year.” As well they should be. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Another day, another machete wielding lunatic keeping Austin weird. Steve Adler may be out of office, but his legacy lives on…
The Texans host a playoff game tomorrow after winning three games each in the previous two seasons. But ESPN hates rookie quarterback phenom C. J. Stroud giving all the glory to God.
Nick Saban retires. That’s a lot of turnover among legendary winners in one week…
Echo: “When it comes to casting roles like this, you usually have to choose between fighters who can’t act, or actors who can’t fight. But unfortunately, Alaqua Cox can’t seem to do either…Because she can’t speak, she really needs to sell the performance with her body language and facial expressions. The problem is, she doesn’t seem to have any.”
Well, I’ve had better weeks. In addition to my job ending, my dog had to get $1,700 worth of veterinary work done (removing and testing a lump on his chest, and while he was getting that I got his teeth cleaned). So feel free to hit the donation jar at the bottom of the post.
A prosecutor overseeing the Hunter Biden tax probe likely intervened to protect President Biden from Department of Justice scrutiny, Eileen O’Connor, former assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Tax Division, testified at the first House Oversight impeachment hearing Thursday.
The impeachment inquiry, which was formally opened earlier this month without a full House vote, builds on the committee’s months-long probe into Biden’s alleged foreign influence peddling.
U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware David Weiss led the investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes, which began in 2018, and was assisted by assistant U.S. attorney Lesley Wolf.
IRS whistleblowers who worked on the probe, and have since provided a trove of information to the committee, identified many deviations from standard procedure, which they claim were driven by Weiss and his staff as well as officials at main Justice in an attempt to slow walk or otherwise obstruct the probe.
The whistleblowers highlighted the fact that attorneys from the DOJ’s tax division suggested the removal of Hunter’s name from documents, including subpoenas, and pointed out that prosecutors at the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware prohibited IRS and FBI investigators from asking about or referring to “the big guy” or “dad” in witness interviews.
Wolf also ordered investigators not to escalate the tax probe into a campaign-finance probe, according to a document the GOP committee obtained from the whistleblowers. Specifically, she told them not to pursue the possibility that a hefty sum Hunter received from a major Democratic donor to pay his back taxes may have constituted an illegal campaign-finance contribution.
Why, it’s almost as if there’s a different rule for powerful Democrats than for other Americans…
“Adam Schiff Funneled Millions To Defense Contractors After Taking Donations.” Of course he did. “This financial maneuvering coincided with Schiff receiving $8,500 in contributions from PMA Group PAC and two family members of Paul Magliocchetti, founder and owner of the lobbying firm retained by both defense companies. In 2011, Paul Magliocchetti was sentenced to 27 months in prison for making illegal campaign contributions.”
Target closes nine stores in Portland, San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle and New York City, citing losses from crime.
States are fighting back against ESG companies trying to destroy their oil and gas industries.
“Oklahoma is a natural gas and oil industry state,” [Oklahoma State Auditor Cindy Byrd] said. “These things are very important to us, and we’ve seen that shut down over the last few years, which is really hurting Oklahoma.”
Increasingly, the environmental social and governance (ESG) industry is coordinating efforts among banks, insurance companies, and asset managers to cut America’s production of fossil fuels. It coordinates these efforts through a coalition of net-zero associations under the umbrella of the U.N.-affiliated Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ).
The net-zero clubs that are part of GFANZ encompass virtually all elements of global finance, including the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), the Net Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA), the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative (NZAMi), the Net Zero Asset Owners Alliance (NZAOA) and the Net Zero Financial Service Providers Alliance (NZFSPA). Members of these alliances pledge to work together to achieve UN goals of net zero CO2 emissions by 2050 or sooner.
We thought about investments, getting good returns, trying to make money with your money, and that was the prominent thought when I first got in office,” said Kentucky State Treasurer Allison Ball. “I remember when I first started coming to events, I began to hear about an initiative called ESG, and I thought at the time that this was academic; I didn’t really take it very seriously.
“In the course of the last couple of years, it began to become very aggressively pushed,” she told The Epoch Times. “There’s been an effort to really make it the only game in town, to really shift that mentality from investing to make money, making sure you’re getting good returns, to using investments as leverage to push certain mostly political ideas.
“Coal and oil and gas industries, those are signature industries in Kentucky,” Ms. Ball said. “And they’ve been targeted very strongly by the E part of ESG, so I began to see real impacts on the economy of Kentucky, my home area.”
The felony convictions of four former Navy officers in one of the worst bribery cases in the maritime branch’s history were vacated Wednesday due to questions about prosecutorial misconduct, the latest setback to the government’s years-long efforts in going after dozens of military officials tied to Leonard Francis, a defense contractor nicknamed “Fat Leonard.”
U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino called the misconduct “outrageous” and agreed to allow the four men to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and pay a $100 fine each.
California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein dead at 90.
“A group of five Harris County residents filed a petition in state district court on Friday seeking to remove Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo from office, arguing that she has abandoned her duties and responsibilities as the elected chief executive of the state’s most populous county….petitioning to remove Hidalgo under Texas Local Government code allowing for removal of an unfit or incompetent elected official.” She’s been on “mental health leave” since July.
“Prosper ISD Taxpayers Debate Priciest High School Stadium in Texas.” As in $94.8 million pricey. And that’s after they already built one for $53 million, the fifth priciest in the state, that opened in 2019. And they’ve already built two high schools that cost $200 million each, presumably with gold-plated microscopes and Tito Puente as the music teacher…
My Hunter Biden corruption evidence, a Democratic Senator catches federal corruption charges, more blue cities suffering from Biden’s open border policies, California goes looking for cops in Texas, and a new Bill Burr movie looms. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The person who paid as much as six figures for “artwork” by an untrained painter also received a prestigious government appointment from the artist’s father, President Joe Biden.
Now congressional investigators want to know if Biden’s decision to name Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali to the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad was in any way related to her purchase of artwork by Hunter Biden, a middle-aged man who paints as a hobby.
House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY) is now asking Naftali and White House Counsel Stuart Delery to answer questions as to whether the Biden family is using Hunter’s “art” as a means of selling White House access.
The White House has previously claimed the identity of Hunter Biden art purchasers would be concealed to prevent any undue influence, but nothing prevents the purchaser from identifying themselves to Joe Biden when seeking an appointment, and now at least one purchaser has been identified as someone who sought White House access.
Senator Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was indicted on corruption charges by federal prosecutors on Friday morning in a Manhattan court in an influence-peddling scheme involving Egypt.
The unsealed indictment revealed that Menendez’s wife, Nadine, New Jersey real estate mogul Fred Daibes, and two other business associates are being charged along side the lawmaker.
Led by Southern District of New York attorney Damian Williams, in June 2022, investigators conducted a search of Menendez’s residence in New Jersey and found $100,000 worth of gold bars, nearly half a million dollars in cash, “much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe,” and a brand new Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible.
“Menedez and Nadine Menedez agreed to and did accept hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes in exchange for using Menedez’s power and influence as a Senator to seek to protect and enrich” his allies “and to benefit the Arab Republic of Egypt,” the indictment reads. “Among other actions, Menendez provided sensitive U.S. government information and took other steps that secretly aided the Government of Egypt,” the filing notes.
New York City will cut overtime pay for its police officers and three other agencies to help reduce costs driven by the city’s unprecedented migrant crisis, City Hall announced Monday.
Jacques Jiha, the budget director for Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, told the city’s police, fire, corrections, and sanitations departments in a Saturday memo to each submit an overtime pay reduction plan “to reduce year-to-year OT spending.”
He also wrote the four departments must submit monthly reports “to track overtime spending and their progress in meeting the reduction target” once Adams issues the order.
Jiha also noted the current assistance provided by President Joe Biden and New York governor Kathy Hochul is not enough, prompting City Hall’s decision to cut overtime pay among other financial measures.
“The amount of aid we have received from the federal government and the state has been grossly inadequate and there has been no progress on a statewide or national decompression strategy,” Jhia wrote in the memo, first reported by Politico. “The city can no longer continue to shoulder these skyrocketing costs and balance the budget without making very difficult choices.”
Crime has risen in New York in recent months as more than 100,000 illegal immigrants have poured into the city.
The leader of a police union said the overtime pay cuts will lead to fewer cops patrolling the streets, resulting in more staffing shortages.
“It is going to be impossible for the NYPD to significantly reduce overtime unless it fixes its staffing crisis,” Patrick Hendry, head of the Police Benevolent Association, told the New York Post. “We are still thousands of cops short, and we’re struggling to drive crime back to pre-2020 levels without adequate personnel.”
“If City Hall wants to save money without jeopardizing public safety, it needs to invest in keeping experienced cops on the job,” he said.
The Homeless Illegal Alien Industrial Complex pays very, very well in Chicago:
BREAKING: NBC 5 reports that private shelter employees that house illegal immigrants make from $135 per hour up to $200 per hour.
A manager of a migrant facility made $14,000 in one week and a nurse earned $20,000 in a week. pic.twitter.com/6P0a7Ae67F
“The Biden admin cut the razor wire Gov. Greg Abbott put along the Rio Grande, so Abbott immediately sent the Texas National Guard to put up even more.”
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson switches to the Republican Party. “While Dallas has thrived, elsewhere Democratic policies have exacerbated crime and homelessness.”
“I have been mayor of Dallas for more than four years. During that time, my priority has been to make the city safer, stronger and more vibrant,” Johnson wrote in his article.
“That meant saying no to those who wanted to defund the police. It meant fighting for lower taxes and a friendlier business climate. And it meant investing in family friendly infrastructure such as better parks and trails.”
Johnson said he does not plan to alter his “approach” to being mayor but is switching his party affiliation.
“When my career in elected office ends in 2027 on the inauguration of my successor as mayor, I will leave office as a Republican,” Johnson said.
The mayor was a leading opponent of calls to decrease funding for the Dallas Police Department after the 2020 demonstrations against police violence. Johnson proposed cutting salaries at city hall instead.
In his announcement, he also touted Dallas’ decreasing crime rate and the Dallas City Council’s reduction of the property tax rate.
While city mayors are nonpartisan officeholders in Texas, Johnson was a Democrat during his nearly five terms in the Texas House of Representatives.
This is both unexpected and big news. Lots of Hispanic politicians in Texas have switched to the GOP, but this is the first case I can remember of a high profile black Texas Democratic politician switching to the GOP.
A 35-year-old Renton man was sentenced on Sept. 13 in U.S. District Court to 40 months in prison for his role in a plot to burn the Seattle Police Officers Guild building in downtown Seattle during the September 2020 protests.
The defendant, Justin Christopher Moore, pleaded guilty in September 2022.
At the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Lauren King said, “What you did showed a complete disregard for human life. Our ability to peacefully assemble is a fundamental right to our society. Your acts of violence can deter people from exercising that fundamental right.”
According to records filed in the case, Moore made and carried a box of 12 Molotov cocktails in a protest march to the Seattle Police Officers Guild building on Sept. 7, 2020. Ultimately the marchers were moved away from the building in downtown Seattle. Police smelled gasoline and grew concerned about the intentions of protesters. The box containing the 12 gasoline devices was found in the parking lot next to the Seattle Police Officers Guild building.
Using video from that day and from other protests, as well as information from the electronic devices of other co-conspirators, Moore was confirmed as the person seen carrying the box of destructive devices.
In June 2021, law enforcement executed a search warrant at Moore’s residence. They seized clothing that is consistent with the images of what Moore was wearing when he carried the Molotov cocktails. From the basement storage area, they also recovered numerous items that are consistent with manufacturing explosive devices. Law enforcement recovered a notebook in which Moore had made entries related to the manufacturing of destructive devices and the ingredients necessary.
University of North Texas tries to cancel musicology professor. Professor wins in court. Again.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has handed down another defeat to the University of North Texas and a victory to Allen Harris in a lawsuit defending the First Amendment rights of Professor Timothy Jackson, after UNT shut down his journal, The Journal of Schenkerian Studies. The decision can be located here.
In January of last year, Allen Harris had already prevailed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. The District Court Judge Amos Mazzant rejected UNT’s motion to dismiss the complaint of Professor Timothy Jackson in a strong decision available here.
Ordinarily, the case would then proceed to discovery and eventually to trial. But UNT invoked its right to a special appeal (called an interlocutory appeal) that is allowed only to the state under the doctrine of sovereign immunity. At first, Texas was expected to make an argument defending UNT’s right to do whatever it wanted with Timothy Jackson’s journal.
The Journal of Schenkerian Studies is dedicated to a late 19th/early 20th-century Austrian-Jewish music theorist, Heinrich Schenker, and his systematic, graphic methods of music analysis. In July 2020, Timothy Jackson defended Schenker in the pages of the Journal from an attack by Hunter College Professor Philip Ewell. Professor Ewell labeled Schenker a “racist” and, indeed, the entire tradition of Western classical music as “systemically racist.” This dispute would have remained a typical academic tempest in a teapot, but the University of North Texas swiftly condemned Jackson’s defense of Schenker and classical music. At UNT, defending classical music and its theory against charges of “racism” is a “thought crime.”
Graduate students quickly condemned Professor Jackson for “racist actions” and various other derelictions that they claimed hurt their feelings. Calls for Professor Jackson to be fired quickly escalated, and the vast majority of Jackson’s fellow faculty members jumped on the bandwagon. Sixteen of them signed a graduate student petition calling for his ouster and for censorship of the Journal. Discovery revealed that at least one did so without even reading or understanding what the petition said.
The most important thing at the University of North Texas was to demonstrate pious commitment to “anti-Racism,” no matter how irrational or lacking in substance–or contrary to evidence. As the Dean of the College of Music admitted in open court, the Journal was “put on ice.”
In July 2020, Professor Jackson stood alone against this tide. Had the case been allowed to proceed after Mazzant’s strong decision on the motion to dismiss, the Journal would likely be back in publication by now. Yet censorship is so important at the University of North Texas that the state exercised its right to a special appeal in order to halt discovery in its tracks.
Some technical legal analysis omitted.
The ruling is a clear warning to do-nothing boards of trustees and boards of regents that they have an affirmative duty to ensure that public universities uphold constitutional rights in education. From now on, they will also enjoy a no qualified immunity from personal suit, at least in the Fifth Circuit. UNT’s Board of Regents had direct governing authority over all UNT officials. They too can therefore be held accountable under the Ex Parte Young for sitting idly by while career university bureaucrats trampled Professor Jackson’s free speech.
Unfortunately, the federal government continues its misguided attempts to control an industry regulators know little to nothing about. But today’s attempts tend to focus more on something they understand even less than trucking: technology.
The electronic logging device (ELD) has been around since the late 1980s. The devices were first adopted by large nationwide fleets to simplify managing their plethora of drivers, and eventually became a way to lower insurance costs. Manufacturers and employers claimed the devices prevented drivers from driving longer than legally allowed, therefore reducing the number of tractor-trailer-related crashes. It was under the latter premise that the DOT mandated that all trucks be equipped with ELDs no later than the end of 2017. Unfortunately, fatal accidents involving tractor-trailers have seen a recent increase following a sharp decline. This correlation suggests that mandating ELDs has not had the promised or intended safety improvements.
More recently, environmental regulations requiring manufacturers to reduce emissions gave us the diesel particulate filter (DPF), an exhaust treatment system that replaces a standard muffler. While there is no current federal mandate requiring a DPF, the filters are required by the 2008 California Statewide Truck and Bus Rule, which has incentivized many nationwide fleets to adopt them. The problem with DPFs is the filter system clogs. A lot.
When DPFs go down, trucks roll to a stop. Truckers report having to have a DPF serviced as often as every 5,000 miles, which means lots of lost productivity and stranded cargo. I’ve had four breakdowns over the past two years, and three were due to my DPF. A tow truck driver I spoke to on one of those occasions told me half of his business comes from malfunctioning DPFs. Repairs are a specialized affair, and replacements can cost up to $2,000. When my truck isn’t moving, I’m not earning. And these regulators have required that my truck stand still far too often.
Next up on the government’s list of ways to make truckers’ lives miserable are proposed speed limiters. Pete Buttigieg, the Secretary of Transportation, wants to limit all tractor-trailers to the same speed. Imagine being stuck behind a pair of tractor trailers side by side, who can’t speed up to pass each other. It’s relatively rare right now, but it will become the norm. Every single interstate nationwide will be populated by moving roadblocks, inspiring road rage and blocking critical services. What happens when the fire truck or ambulance is stuck behind these unbreakable pairs?
Also in the California “Hall of Ls,” after ruing its own police department through defunding, San Francisco is trying to hire cops in Texas.
San Francisco slashed its police department’s budget by $120 million in 2020. Almost immediately, crime rose in the city. Crime has gotten so bad in San Francisco, that residents are reportedly leaving their car doors unlocked, so crooks won’t smash their windows.
Mayor London Breed promised to reverse her “defund” policy by restoring and increasing the police budget. However, the city is struggling to recruit qualified officers. Recently, the San Francisco Deputy Sheriff’s Association accused the mayor of continuing to make cuts to the sheriff’s department.
Despite this, the city went to four universities in Texas to recruit police officers. This appears to be the first time San Francisco looked for candidates outside of California.
Those four universities are Texas Southern University, Sam Houston State University, Prairie View A&M University, and Texas A&M University.
Murder suspect who broke into a Georgia home find out that gun beats knife. “Once he is released from the hospital, he will be confronted with charges including burglary, home invasion, and theft by receiving in Georgia, as well as murder charges in Ohio.”
Bill Burr has a new film called Old Dads coming to Netflix next month. Looks promising. “Just go on Twitter and share the story where you’re the hero.” Knowing Burr, there will be something here to offend everyone…
Another debate down (like the ratings), Buttigieg brings all the swells to the crystal wine bar, Bloomberg carpet bombs the airwaves with money, and Tom Steyer is the Cats of candidates. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!
Polls
I’m betting polling will be sparse Christmas week:
Iowa State University (Iowa): Buttigieg 24, Sanders 21, Warren 18, Biden 15, Klobuchar 4, Yang 3, Booker 3, Gabbard 3, Steyer 2, Castro 1. Sample size of 632.
Emerson: Biden 32, Sanders 25, Warren 12, Buttigieg 8, Yang 6, Gabbard 4, Bloomberg 3, Klobuchar 2, Booker 2, Steyer 2, Delaney 1. “Warren appears to be losing to Sanders with younger voters, and losing to Biden with older voters, making it difficult for her to secure a base. With less than 50 days until the Iowa caucus, this strategy of waiting for Sanders or Biden to fall is looking shaky.” But sample size of only 525.
There’s something of a spotlight paradox happening in the Democratic primary this year. The candidates who have spent time under the bright lights have wilted, while those sitting in its shadow have risen.
Why is this? Democrats don’t suddenly dislike the candidates who have undergone the scrutiny that comes with front runner status. What they do dislike, however, is vulnerability. For many Democratic voters, President Trump is an existential threat. As with any existential threat, the most important question is who/what can beat it. In 2019, a candidate’s ideology isn’t as important as his or her ability to take a punch. And be able to punch back.
Biden started the race as the guy best suited to do just that. He started the race as the affable frontrunner, who had a long history with the party and a solid relationship with the country’s first African-American president. What he lacked in energy, he made up for in electability. Who better to win back those Rust Belt states than good old “Scranton Joe.”
But, once in the spotlight, or more specifically, under the debate stage lights, Biden looked anything but invincible. His performances in the first two debates were shaky and uneven. He spent most of the summer on his heels, defending (or changing) past policy positions and struggling to raise money.
From May to November, Biden’s share of the Democratic vote dropped 10 points in Monmouth polls. In Quinnipiac surveys, he dropped nine points from June to October.
As Biden slipped, Sen. Elizabeth Warren started to rise. She was attracting big crowds in Iowa, raising lots of money online and getting a second look from voters and pundits who had written her off earlier in the year as she struggled to explain her decision to take a DNA test to prove her Native American ancestry. By early October, the RealClearPolitics average showed Warren narrowly overtaking Biden, 26.6 to 26.4 percent. But, as she struggled to adequately explain how her plan for a Medicare for All system would work, voters started to get worried. Could the woman with the “plan” for everything, really be this unprepared to answer questions about a central issue in the campaign? And, if so, wouldn’t Trump exploit this?
Since reaching that high on October 8, Warren has begun a steady downward trajectory. The most recent RCP average pegs her vote share at 12 percent —13 points behind Biden.
As Warren slipped, anxious Democrats began to cast about for a candidate who would be steadier and less flawed than Biden or Warren had proven to be. And, right on cue, comes South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. He has been aggressive in the debates, steady on the stump and has surged into a big lead in Iowa. Since mid-October, Buttigieg has risen eight points in the RealClearPolitics average. The big ole spotlight is now trained directly on him and on his biggest weaknesses, namely his inability to attract voters of color.
As Buttigieg undergoes his ‘stress test,’ there’s another candidate just outside of the spotlight who is well-positioned to take advantage of this moment: Sen. Bernie Sanders. While we were all focused on Warren’s crashing, and Buttigieg’s rise, Sanders has been slowing moving up in the polls. The RealClearPolitics average puts him in second place nationally, and just slightly behind Buttigieg in Iowa and New Hampshire. He’s also holding a good position in Nevada. This, despite the fact that he spent much of the fall recuperating from a heart attack.
In order to qualify for the next debate, candidates will need to reach one of two polling thresholds as well as a fundraising requirement. The White House hopefuls will have to hit at least 5 percent in four DNC-approved national or early-voting state (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina) polls – or reach at least 7 percent in two early-voting state surveys.
The fundraising criteria for the upcoming debate – which will be hosted by CNN and the Des Moines Register – requires campaign contributions from at least 225,000 individual donors as well as a minimum of 1,000 unique donors in at least 20 states.
Candidates have until the end of Jan. 10 to reach the thresholds, and the window for qualifying polling started on Nov. 14.
Megan McArdle offers up some horserace analysis. It’s pretty much consensus opinion stuff, though Yang over Bloomberg for sixth is a result no one would have expected when the campaign began.
Newmark Knight Frank CEO Barry Gosin and GFP Real Estate chairman Jeffrey Gural — bucking the trend of real estate gurus staunchly backing President Trump — are throwing a $2,800-a-ticket soiree for Biden at 6:15 p.m. Jan. 6. Then top Skadden partner Mark N. Kaplan and a host of other luminaries, including art collector and financier Asher Edelman, are hosting a breakfast for Biden in Midtown the following morning.
Bloomberg has committed $160 million from his coffers to fund vaping prohibition efforts, despite e-cigarettes being 95 percent safer than combustible cigarettes according to prestigious international health bodies such as Public Health England. The billionaire also gives generously to left-leaning organizations that advocate for carbon taxation and greater “green” regulation, including the League of Conservation Voters and America’s Pledge.
Yet, Bloomberg believes that with enough of an investment, a message of higher prices at the pump and less reduced-risk options for smokers will somehow translate to electoral success. He clearly hasn’t learned from the losses of his affluent forerunners and will surely have a lot of explaining to do to millions of moderate Democratic voters not sold on radical, costly progressive ideas such as the Green New Deal or his “Beyond Carbon” doppelganger.
The more interesting but barely reported aspect of the litigation is that it has been encouraged and even secretly funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg.
State attorneys general offices are busy places. They generally don’t generally have time for frivolous litigation, so Bloomberg stepped up to fund law schools, like the one at New York University, to do the climate litigation staff work for the various state attorneys general involved in the litigation, according to emails obtained via public records requests by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Bloomberg has essentially discovered a way for a (wealthy) private citizen to buy a state attorney general and use the state’s powers and resources to pursue his private political agenda. Although there is no specific provision in any law prohibiting such conduct, that is only the case because no one ever imagined that anyone would have the effrontery to do it.
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. He released a list of campaign bundlers. “Among the high-profile donors who have raised at least $50,000 for Booker’s presidential bid are musician Jon Bon Jovi, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D).”
At a Palo Alto, California, fundraiser on Monday, cohosts included Netflix CEO Reed Hastings; the Google cofounder Sergey Brin’s wife, Nicole Shanahan; the former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s wife, Wendy Schmidt; and Michelle Sandberg, the sister of Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, a campaign document obtained by Recode’s Teddy Schleifer indicates. These hosts’ families combined have an estimated net worth of $80 billion, according to Recode.
After that cozy, down-home little gathering, Buttigieg jetted off to lecture people on income inequality. His fellow candidates may have torn into him for it, but the Wine Cave soiree is perfectly emblematic of the Democratic Party’s massive institutional hypocrisy, and of the disconnect between what it demands ordinary people (the ones it keeps claiming to represent) must give up in order to fight the existential crisis that is “climate change,” and the good life enjoyed by the anointed party elite, who make clear they are absolutely unwilling to give up jack squat, refusing to even to forgo their ostentatious displays of wealth.
Ordinary people are supposed to give up cars, toilets that flush and lightbulbs that work. Ordinary people are told to give up meat, eat bugs and recycle, while the party elite who look down on their backward ways continue dining in crystal-bedecked wine caves. Sacrifices, like laws against insider trading and foreign influence, are for the little people. What rankles is the unmitigated gall of railing against “the 1%” while insisting on their own right to live the same lifestyle, and expecting ordinary people to ignore the rank hypocrisy.
Remember, peasants: It’s not your place to question the privileges of your betters. And if that just wasn’t enough hypocrisy all on its own, Buttigieg is the son of a Marxist academic who specialized in the work of Italian communist Antonio Gramsci. Makes you wonder how much of Buttigieg’s moderate persona is a sham from a red diaper baby…
Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Probably not? She thinks the election will be close.
Former Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. “John Delaney Would Like You to Know He’s Still Running for President.” Writer calls up to ask his campaign why and get offered an interview. Delaney says he’s all in on Iowa and wants to bring the country together. I think the country has already united behind not voting for John Delaney.
Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. She voted “present” on impeachment. “My vote today is a vote for much needed reconciliation and hope that together we can heal our country.” I guess that desire for reconciliation is why Saturday Night Live keeps casting her as the villain in their debate sketches: If you’re not a hyper-left partisan, you’re the enemy. President Donald Trump, chaos magician that he is, said he respected Gabbard for voting present, which is sure to sure to drive the TDS crowd even further around the bend (it’s a very big bend).
Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a PBS interview. The headline says “Old allies come out to help Deval Patrick in N.H.” but the only allies actually mentioned are the Massachusetts couple running his campaign. But he is topping the order list for candidates in Massachusetts itself for the March 3rd primary. Is he planning on picking up enough home state delegates to be a kingmaker and wrangle a VP slot? If so, it’s a pretty longshot strategy, but at least it is a strategy, which is more than his stillborn campaign has evidenced thus far.
Nobody forced Bernie Sanders’s campaign to endorse Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. By the time the Sanders camp’s national organizing director, Clair Sandberg, announced that the Vermont senator’s team stood in solidarity with the far-left British candidate, it was already apparent that Corbyn’s party was likely to lose and lose badly. And that’s precisely what happened.
On Thursday, British voters delivered Labour its worst defeat in 85 years. The thrashing it endured was less attributable to the lingering debate over the U.K.’s withdrawal from the European Union than to Labour’s uniquely repulsive leader. When 100,000 British respondents were asked what they feared most about the prospect of a Labour government, all but the staunchest Labourites and Remainers indicated that the prospect of Corbyn’s ascension to 10 Downing Street was an unacceptable risk.
Corbyn rendered his party toxic. His penchant for standing in solidarity with terrorists and anti-Semites opened a seal out of which a cascade of anti-Jewish sentiments poured, engulfing his party in scandal. His brand of radical socialism was insufferably hidebound. His expressions of sympathy for history’s greatest criminals were thoughtlessly dogmatic. The Labour Party under Corbyn drifted so far toward overt Jew-hatred that Britain’s chief rabbi denounced the institution. The Archbishop of Canterbury agreed with that assessment, as did 85 percent of the country’s Jews. There was no ambiguity here.
So there were many obvious risks and few upsides associated with the Sanders endorsement. And yet, his campaign did it anyway. We can only conclude that this was not an act of political shrewdness but a genuine display of affection.
Bernie Sanders has thus far evaded scrutiny over the values he and his campaign share with the Labour Party’s discredited leader, but that lack of curiosity is indefensible. As of this writing, Sanders is firmly in second place in the average of national Democratic primary polls. He’s in second and gaining in Iowa, too, and is leading in New Hampshire. Sanders is a contender, and it’s time for the press to act like it. But taking that job seriously would entail an examination of the senator’s conspicuously Corbyn-esque instincts, to say nothing of the bigots with whom he has surrounded himself.
Don’t take my word for it; take that of Sanders’s own surrogates. Rep. Ilhan Omar, one of Sanders’s most visible endorsers with whom the senator frequently shares the stage, has apologized for some of what she’s admitted were anti-Semitic remarks. Or, if that’s not good enough, take the Democratic Party’s verdict. Those anti-Jewish slights for which Omar declined to show remorse had been targeted by her fellow caucus members for censure before a revolt of the party’s progressives and Black Caucus Members scuttled the initiative.
For one thing, as Trotsky correctly indicated, socialism tends to corrode all other religious and cultural affiliations. Secular Jewish progressive groups posing as faith-based organizations, for example, have long worked to conflate their ideological positions with Judaism by reimagining the latter to make it indistinguishable from the former. It’s one of the great tragedies of the American Jewish community that they are succeeding.
More bluntly, remember that Sanders honeymooned in Moscow, not Jerusalem, for a good reason. “Let’s take the strengths of both systems,” Sanders insisted even as the reprehensible Soviet system was on the verge of collapse. “Let’s learn from each other,” Sanders said even when over 100 Jewish refuseniks were still being denied permission to leave the Communist regime after enduring decades of anti-Semitic oppression under rhetoric of “anti-Zionism.” As far as I can tell, Sanders never said a word in their defense to his hosts.
Oppressed Russian Jews weren’t his people. Jeremy Corbyn is Bernie’s people. As Rothman notes, no one forced Sanders to compare his movement to Corbynism. Britain’s chief rabbi may have found Corbyn an “existential” threat to his flock, but Sanders never once thought it concerning enough to mention during any of his praise for the British leader.
Bernie’s 2016 press secretary Symone Sanders (who this piece suggests is totally known by insiders) is now backing Biden. Celebrities supporting Sanders: Tim Robbins, Danny DeVito, Willow Smith, Jeff Ross, and somebody by the name of “Anderson .Paak,” which is evidently a rapper rather than a new data compression protocol.
Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. The Atlanticinterviews Steyer in the Nixon Library, so it’s all tedious impeachment blather. (Of course, we are talking Steyer, and tedious is his default setting. Historians will look back and wonder how the other billionaire in the race lost a charisma contest to Michael Bloomberg, something scientists previously thought impossible. Steyer is the Cats of the Democratic primary: spending tons of money only to completely horrify people.) He’s campaigning on climate change. Because that worked so well for Jay Inslee.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Obama talks up Warren behind closed doors to wealthy donors.” But! “The former president has stopped short of an endorsement of Warren in these conversations and has emphasized that he is not endorsing in the Democratic primary race.” She attacks Buttigieg in a new ad, for that exciting third place vs. fourth place action. Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus blasts Warren for bashing the rich. Ooopsie!
Warren released a list of endorsements from Obama aides and on the list is Edward B.P. Buck, which is indeed the same Ed Buck who is responsible for the deaths of several black men via drug overdose.
Yang, a candidate who is known for challenging the party consensus, slammed Democrats for their “obsession” with the president and impeachment during Thursday night’s Democratic presidential debate.
“The media networks didn’t do us any favors by missing the reason why Donald Trump became our president in the first place,” Yang told the PBS Newshour moderators. “The more we act like Donald Trump is a cause of our problems, the more Americans lose trust that we can actually see what’s going on it our communities and solve those problems.”
“What we have to do is we have to stop being obsessed over impeachment,” he stated.
During his 2016 race, Sanders amassed a grassroots following with ideas like Medicare for All and tuition-free public college, two policies that initially had little mainstream support. That was the first year a majority of Americans backed Medicare for All, and their support has remained steady ever since, according to figures from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Also since 2016, support for free public college has grown from 47 to 63 percent.
Sanders, of course, didn’t win the Democratic nomination. But his campaign did inspire hundreds of down-ballot progressive candidates across the country to embrace his platform: In the 2018 midterm elections, more than half of all Democratic candidates for the House backed Medicare for All, including his former campaign organizer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Now, with Sanders on his second campaign, his trademark proposals have dominated the 2020 primary race: Seven of the remaining 15 Democratic candidates have embraced some version of Medicare for All, and multiple debates have featured a sustained discussion about the proposal. Similarly, almost every candidate has promised to eliminate tuition for two-year community colleges, with several, in addition to Sanders, vowing to make all public four-year colleges free.
Sanders, in other words, has served as a transformational figure on the left—someone who was able to fundamentally shift the Democratic political conversation toward these ambitious policy goals. Whether or not Yang earns his party’s nomination, he, too, could be an influential figure. His policy proposals have already moved the primary’s Overton window, even as many American voters are only just starting to tune in to the race. Before his campaign, UBI wasn’t an often-discussed proposal in the United States outside the lefty-think-tank world, though a few cities have run pilot programs to varying degrees of success. Public support for the proposal increased by 6 percent from February to September of this year, according to the latest Hill and HarrisX polling. Among Democrats in particular, support for UBI ticked up 12 percent in the same period.
As Yang’s campaign has captured more attention, his competitors have been forced to take a position on UBI. Several—including Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts; former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro; Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii; and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg—expressed openness to the policy in the months after Yang’s candidacy began to gain traction. “I think that it’s worth taking seriously,” Buttigieg said in an interview this spring on the liberal podcast Pod Save America.
In debates, Yang has hammered home his warnings about automation, and during the October contest, the CNN moderator Erin Burnett asked a question seemingly inspired by that message. She wanted to know how candidates would prevent job losses due to automation, leading to an argument between Yang and the primary front-runners about whether implementing UBI would be more effective than raising the minimum wage or instituting a federal-jobs guarantee.
“It’s likely,” Dave Wasserman, the House editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, told me, “that candidates will only be talking more about automation and its impact and its role in inequality in future years—whether they want to address it with some kind of enhanced safety net and a guaranteed income or not.” Already, Wasserman added, Yang’s ideas are speaking to “anxieties that a number of younger voters have about the future of the economy.”
This once again raises the question of why Yang is so concerned about automation taking American jobs in the future, but not illegal aliens taking American jobs right now. He wants to decriminalize whores, but not johns.
Out of the Running
These are people who were formerly in the roundup who have announced they’re not running, for which I’ve seen no recent signs they’re running, or who declared then dropped out:
Beto O'Rourke on his way to his concession speech after wasting $70 million dollars and losing to Ted Cruz for Senate in Texas. pic.twitter.com/K9d08dFAYD
Stacey Abrams (D) losing big early, but only 2% in.
Braun still up 16 points with 27% in.
Nancy Pelosi on PBS. Looks like she’s had another round of Botox.
Republican Greg Pence, older brother of VP Mike pence, has reportedly been elected to Indiana’s 6th congressional district. (via Twitter)
Florida Sen: Scott (R) 50.5%, Nelson (D) 49.5%, 4% in, via RCP.
Indiana: Braun 58% to Donnelly’s 38% with 10% in (via PBS)
No, delusional PBS host, O’Rourke did NOT run a negative-free campaign.
5:50 PM: First results from Indiana via Real Clear Politics: “Donnelly 34.7, Braun 61.3, Brenton 4.0” with 2% reporting (presumably some early voting results).
Just a placeholder for now, but I expect to start liveblogging/livetweeting the 2018 election starting at 7 PM CST.
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.
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.
Welcome to the season where ugly monsters in lurid costumes go running around shrieking at the sheer delight at scaring other people. And those are just the Democratic protestors on Capitol Hill!
The Brett Kavanaugh cloture vote today, and the Supreme Court confirmation vote is Saturday. And Kavanaugh links dominate the top of this LinkSwarm:
Republicans are fired up after the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, and the Democratic edge for the 2018 midterms has disappeared. Or so says that notorious Republican shill organization, NPR.
Let’s say you’re Joe Manchin in West Virginia. What you needed was for this nomination to be uncontroversial, and a sure thing for confirmation. A party-line contested vote the whole country is watching is a nightmare. Why? Because in a red state like the one Manchin represents, the majority will favor confirmation and find it to be a decisive issue in their vote — so Manchin voting against Kavanaugh will set him up to reap the wrath of the voters in a state which went 65 percent for Trump in 2016.
But it’s worse than that for Manchin, because he doesn’t have a good escape from the Kavanaugh confirmation. You’d say his easy way out is to vote yes, except what the Left has done is to so whip up their voters with the Ford allegations and the copycats who followed that Manchin will lose votes from his own side if he votes to confirm the judge.
This isn’t a theory, by the way. It’s what the polls show.
A new poll finds that 58 percent of voters in West Virginia think Brett Kavanaugh should be confirmed to the Supreme Court following his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
The Public Opinion strategies poll commissioned by the Judicial Crisis Network found an overwhelming majority of West Virginians (59 percent) thought Kavanaugh’s testimony was more believable than Christine Blasey Ford, who accused the federal judge of sexually assaulting her more than 35 years ago at a drunken high school party. Those who believe Kavanaugh include 81 percent of Republicans, 43 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of Independent voters.
Manchin is locked in a dead-heat race against Patrick Morrissey, West Virginia’s Attorney General, and his vote is now going to be the defining issue in that race either way.
Manchin’s conundrum isn’t unique. Claire McCaskill in Missouri is already a committed no on Kavanaugh, and her troubles have begun as well…
A new poll released by The Missouri Scout on Saturday shows that Republican challenger Josh Hawley has taken a two-point lead over Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) in the Missouri Senate race just days after she announced she will be voting against the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Hawley leads McCaskill by a margin of 48 percent to 46 percent in the poll conducted by Missouri Scout over two days, from Wednesday, September 26 to Thursday, September 27.
McCaskill announced her opposition to Kavanaugh on September 19. The second day of the poll was conducted on the same day Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused him of attempting to sexually assault her 36 years ago at a time and place she cannot recall and with no corroborating witnesses or evidence, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The Missouri Scout poll had worse news for the incumbent Democrat — in that what’s driving down her numbers is unquestionably the Kavanaugh vote…
Significantly, the poll found that 49 percent of likely voters said the Supreme Court confirmation process for Brett Kavanaugh has made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while only 42 percent said it made them more likely to vote for her.…
Among female respondents, 47 percent said the confirmation process made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while 42 percent said it made them more likely.
Among male respondents, 50 percent said the confirmation process made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while 41 percent said it made them more likely.
Among Non-Partisan respondents, 46 percent said the confirmation process made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while 39 percent said it made them more likely.
Among Republican respondents, 85 percent said the confirmation process made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while 8 percent said it made them more likely.
Among Democrat respondents, 82 percent said the confirmation process made them more likely to vote for McCaskill, while 8 percent said it made them less likely.
Also, a new poll commissioned by NBC North Dakota News showed the race between Democrat incumbent Heidi Heitkamp and Republican challenger Kevin Cramer has the latter with a commanding 51-41 lead. That poll has the Kavanaugh nomination as the most important (with 21 percent) of nine named issues in the race, with 60 percent of North Dakota voters polled saying they support the judge’s confirmation against only 27 percent opposed. Heitkamp has publicly called herself a “no” vote, which amounts to more or less a surrender in the race. Without North Dakota, there is only a minuscule chance of the Democrats winning control of the Senate.
Of all the cohorts measured by the poll (including Independent men and women), Democratic women are the only group to display less enthusiasm for the midterms this week than they did in July. Meanwhile, Republican women seem invigorated. In July, 81 percent of Democratic women said the November elections were very important, compared to 71 percent of Republican women. Now, Republican women are 4 percentage points likelier to view the midterms that way (83 percent to 79 percent). That’s a 14-point swing in female voters’ interest in the midterms—after the hearings, and in Republicans’ favor.
“Accused doxxer of GOP senators allegedly threatened to publish lawmakers’ children’s health info.” I just can’t imagine why Republicans are so upset with Democrats in congress…
UPDATED: He also worked or interned with the office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as well as with at least one other unnamed lawmaker. https://t.co/k5QXv4RvYN
There is no circumstance where everyone involved with those norm-breaking steps suddenly wakes up, has a crisis of conscience, and realizes that they were morally wrong. The only way they decide not to take similar steps in the future is if they conclude that those steps are not effective.
If these sorts of tactics work, we will get more of them. Right now, Kavanaugh could be a squish who wimps out on Roe vs. Wade and I’d still want him on that court, because this isn’t really about him anymore. This is about what kind of proof is needed before you believe a man is a monster. This is about whether decades of respected public and private life can be wiped away by an allegation without supporting witnesses. This is about whether anyone who ever knew you at any chapter of your life can suddenly come forward and paint you as a malevolent deviant of every kind . . . or whether people who never knew you at any chapter of your life can suddenly come forward and paint you as a malevolent deviant of every kind.
Social justice presumes the guilt of certain people because of their politics, their positions, their races and their genders. It creates different rules for different classes of people with some entitled to an absolute presumption of innocence, even in the face of indisputable guilt, and others forced into an equally absolute presumption of guilt, even in the absence of any indisputable proof of their guilt.
America cannot operate under two systems of guilt and innocence, one public and one private. If the majority of Americans are to be judged by a system that presumes their guilt, that attitude will inevitably go on to permeate the courtroom. By eroding the presumption of innocence in public life, the left is eroding it as a legal right. Lynch mobs and kangaroo courts can’t be expected to stop at the courthouse door when they are celebrated and operate freely throughout the rest of the land.
Kavanaugh’s case is about more than the malicious exploitation of the #MeToo movement to destroy a political opponent. It’s the latest assault on the social presumption of innocence by shadowy forces whose ‘scoops’ dominate the media through cut-outs while their sources remain silently invisible.
If kangaroo courts and media lynch mobs succeed in overturning a Supreme Court appointment, they will have proven that their war on the presumption of innocence extends even to the highest court in the land. If a Supreme Court justice can’t be presumed innocent, what hope do the rest of us have?
In order to believe that Ford is not lying, we have to believe that Ford's ex boyfriend, Ford's friend, two other witnesses, along with Kavanaugh are all lying. Only a partisan would make that assumption. The rational conclusion is obvious: Ford is a liar.
China used it’s supply chain to implant a spy chip in many of America’s top companies, including Apple and Amazon. This is why outsourcing so much of your technological infrastructure is a national security issue.
Apple and Amazon issue strenuous denials. I’m not sure they could do otherwise, even if the allegation is true, especially since Amazon currently derives the lion’s share of its profits from AWS. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
President Donald Trump’s approval rating hits 50%.
Worse than Remain? Well, yes. May’s Brexit proposals — now known as “Chequers,” after the PM’s country house, where they were imposed on a surprised cabinet days after May had personally assured the secretary of state for exiting the EU that she had no such intentions — would effectively keep Britain inside the EU’s single market (i.e., by accepting its current and future regulations) and its customs union, and keep it subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice while forfeiting its votes in all EU institutions.
Not enough for you? Then ponder this: The London Times has reported that the government is now prepared to cut a deal with the EU that would prevent a post-Brexit U.K. from reaching free-trade deals with other countries such as Australia, Canada, and . . . the United States. Such a deal would breach the reddest of red lines laid down by Theresa May and the Tory party since the 2016 referendum. Yet no one thinks the report is mistaken. And May has continued to say in interviews that final agreement with the EU will require concessions from both sides. But what has May left to concede?
Last night mother nature dumped a bunch of snow on Austin…very little of which stayed on the ground through this morning. Which is just fine for those of us who have jobs.
I’ll still sorting out the latest DOJ/FBI revelations to have them all filed in the next Clinton Corruption update, which should be ginormous.
Wisconsin’s infamous John Doe investigation was more sinister and politically driven than originally reported.
A Wisconsin Attorney General report on the year-long investigation into leaks of sealed John Doe court documents to a liberal British publication in September 2016 finds a rogue agency of partisan bureaucrats bent on a mission “to bring down the (Gov. Scott) Walker campaign and the Governor himself.”
The AG report, released Wednesday, details an expanded John Doe probe into a “broad range of Wisconsin Republicans,” a “John Doe III,” according to Attorney General Brad Schimel, that widened the scope of the so-called John Doe II investigation into dozens of right-of-center groups and scores of conservatives. Republican lawmakers, conservative talk show hosts, a former employee from the MacIver Institute, average citizens, even churches, were secretly monitored by the dark John Doe.
State Department of Justice investigators found hundreds of thousands of John Doe documents in the possession of the GAB long after they were ordered to be turned over to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
The Government Accountability Board, the state’s former “nonpartisan” speech cop, proved to be more partisan than originally suspected, the state Department of Justice report found. For reasons that “perhaps may never be fully explained,” GAB held onto thousands of private emails from Wisconsin conservatives in several folders on their servers marked “Opposition Research.” The report’s findings validate what conservatives have long contended was nothing more than a witch-hunt into limited government groups and the governor who was turning conservative ideas into public policy.
“Moreover, DOJ is deeply concerned by what appears to have been the weaponization of GAB by partisans in furtherance of political goals, which permitted the vast collection of highly personal information from dozens of Wisconsin Republicans without even taking modest steps to secure this information,” the report states.
Snip.
The Department of Justice, however, recommends the John Doe judge initiate contempt proceedings against former GAB officials and the John Doe probe’s special prosecutor for “grossly” mishandling secret evidence. Schimel also recommends that Shane Falk, who served as lead staff attorney in the John Doe probes, be referred for discipline to the Wisconsin Court System’s Office of Lawyer Regulation. Falk took a job with a private law firm in August 2014, just as allegations of investigative abuse began to surround the political investigation.
Another sexual harassment followup on Democratic Rep. Ruben Kihuen: “Hey, Nancy Pelosi knew all about my sexual harassment charges last year, and threw money at me anyway. So why’s she getting her knickers in a knot now?”
“You know who doesn’t have a refugee problem? Japan.” This year Japan has taken in three refugees. Last year it was 28.
Hmmmm: “A federal judge in Argentina indicted former President Cristina Fernandez for treason and asked for her arrest for allegedly covering up Iran’s possible role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center that killed 85 people, a court ruling said.”
Last Sunday premiered the newly formed Islamic anti-terrorism coalition, putting together leaders from Sunni Arab nations to denounce and combat fundamentalist terrorism throughout the Middle East and the world. It was another bold initiative towards the West of the young and energetic Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, coming on the heels of other bold moves that have looked to consolidate political and religious power in the Kingdom.
Together, all of these initiatives couldn’t be more transparent. They represent a movement of the most economically powerful nation in OPEC towards social, cultural and economic change, the realization of the Saudi “Vision 2030”. It is a top-down Arab Spring movement that likely has a better chance of success than the populist movements that resulted in more chaos than change in 2010.
However, the ultimate success for Vision 2030 will rely upon achieving the main economic goal of this revolution – the divestiture of Saudi Arabia from the singularity of oil revenues. Because we know that ultimately money – and lots of it – will be needed to drive the engines for change, we get a far better picture of just how important these latest production extensions agreed to in Vienna were for the young Prince.
And here we’re brought back to the upcoming IPO of Saudi Aramco, still on tap for 2018.
Even the planned 5 percent offering of the Saudi state oil assets could yield an instantaneous $100 billion dollars, if the $2 trillion-dollar valuation of Saudi Aramco is accurate. That’s a lot of capital to start the process of rebuilding a Saudi economy from one that is now virtually completely reliant upon the State. 75 percent of the Saudi public is under 35 years old, and they are starving for a new economic infrastructure that will bring job opportunities, cultural diversity, music, education – global access of all kinds – the kind of freedoms that the 2010 Arab Spring uprisings were supposed to deliver. Only this time, the push for change is coming from the top down, not as a populist movement from the people upwards.
In a rare moment of sanity for Sports Illustrated, they named J. J. Watt and the Houston Astro’s Jose Altuve as co-sportsmen of the year. Next week I’m sure they’ll get back to their usual Social Justicing…
Texas writer Bill Crider enters hospice care. Bill’s not particularly political, but he is a friend of mine, and I have frequently stolen some of the lighter LinkSwarm items from his blog. He’s a prince among men and he will be missed…
It would be swell if I could stop leading the LinkSwarm off with hurricane-related news, but Irma is now a class five hurricane headed straight at Florida. If you’re in any evacuation zones, heed authorities, as this does not look like a storm you want to ride out in place unless you have to. Hsoi’s preparedness checklist is also a good thing to go over earlier rather than later.
“¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Obama lawyer who worked on DACA admits it’s probably unconstitutional.” And yes, the ASCII Shrugging Emoji is actually in the headline, so it just wouldn’t have felt honest to leave it out…
One of my stores, we had 300 employees; 140 of them were displaced by the flooding. So how do you put your store back together quickly? We asked for volunteers in the rest of the company. We brought over 2,000 partners from Austin, San Antonio, the Rio Grande Valley. They hopped into cars and they just drove to Houston. They said, we’re here to help. It’s shitty work. For 18 hours a day, they’re going to help us restock and then they’ll go sleep on the couch at somebody’s house.
The bribery trial for New jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez gets under way.
Speaking of Iran, they’re amassing new weaponry. “While all eyes are on North Korea, Iran is advancing its weapons technology. The country recently tested and announced the success of their new Bavar 373 long range, mobile, anti-missile defense system. Everything in the system is manufactured in Iran; it requires no support from outside sources.” However, since Iran has (to my knowledge) no wafer fabrication plants to produce integrated circuits, this statement is almost certainly false, at least as far as electronics goes. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“Bulgaria is projected to have the fastest-shrinking population in the world.” I suspect this is a combination of communism (and its aftermath) sucking, of it wrecking disproportionately more damage on backward, mostly rural countries, and of the general trend in Europe toward a modern, unchurched, welfare state society, with its attendant population decline.
The American Railway union was founded on segregation. “George Pullman famously hired African Americans to work for him. Eugene Debs infamously did not allow African Americans to join his union striking against Pullman’s company.”
