Posts Tagged ‘Scott Walker’

LinkSwarm for July 12, 2019

Friday, July 12th, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Interviews with over a dozen girls and witnesses were ignored.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Here, let me help.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Snip.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Tales from the Lunar Module Simulator.
  • Aviation Week and Space technology profile of the SR-71 from 1981.
  • Dwight celebrates the fortieth anniversary of Disco Demolition Night.
  • And speaking of unlikely events of mass hysteria: 300,000 people on Facebook swear to storm Area 51. Great, they’re going to kill off Alex Jones’ entire audience…
  • “Fun New Teen Vogue Quiz Helps Girls Find Out What Kind Of Hooker They Should Be.”
  • Morning After 2018 Election Update

    Wednesday, November 7th, 2018

    A few quick updates:

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

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

    Twitter really thinks Democrats are dumb:

    More later. Maybe tomorrow.

    Liveblogging the 2018 Election

    Tuesday, November 6th, 2018

    AZ, NV and MT Senate races all too close to call, but Republicans are leading in all three right now.

    I’m out of gas and heading to bed. Analysis tomorrow.



    Wisconsin Gov still too close to call.


    Takeaways seems to be:

  • Republicans tighten grip on senate
  • Democrats take the House.
  • Dumptrucks full of outside money and a good candidate can almost make Texas competitive.
  • Claire McCaskill concedes.


    Dems pick up Iowa 1.
    John Carter still up.


    Democrats pick up OK5.

    PBS praising Bloomberg for airdropping outside money into races.


    Scott Walker’s Gov race too close to call.

    Culberson looking like he’s going to lose.


    Never mind the election, Vincent Price is on the Carol Burnet Show on MeTV!


    Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick wins by six points, AG Ken Paxton by 4 points.


    McCaskill goes down, Heitkamp went down. “Just like the old Gypsy woman said!”



    Ted Cruz victory speech. He sounds really horse. Compliments O’Rourke on a hard-run race.

    “All the money in Hollywood couldn’t beat the good people of Texas!”


    Charlie Baker (R) reelected Governor of Massachusetts.




    Culberson behind in TX07.


    Nate Silver’s algorithm has evidently gone rogue. He’s now having to pull glowing memory sticks out of HAL.




    My state Rep. Tony Dale, currently behind John Bucy. Williamson County has gotten a lot more purple, alas.


    All republicans winning Texas statewide races, but more narrowly than expected. That Bobby Francis money is having a real effect.


    McMaster (R) wins SC Gov.


    Dems have picked up most of the PA redistricted competitive seats, but Republicans just got one.


    ABC projects Ted Cruz to win Texas!


    Texas Governor Greg Abbott speaking. Victory speech.


    NBC thinks Dems take the House.


    McSally up over MethLab in AZ.


    My congressmen, John Carter (R) up, but only by 2 points.


    Incumbent Democrats Sherrod Brown (OH) and Bob Casey (PA) projected as winners.


    Bob Sleazoid (D) declared winner in NJ Sen.


    Cruz now up 10,000 votes.


    Cruz 6,000 votes behind O’Rourke, 73% in.


    Cruz/O’Rourke virtually tied with 72% of vote in, with Midland/Odessa still out.


    O’Rourke up with 70% of the vote in. It would obviously be a huge upset if it holds. But I’m not sure 70% of thevote is actully in.


    Lindsey Graham (R-Like A Boss) on NBC.



    CBS calling WV for Manchin.


    Bob Schiffer says “The Senate is moving not only in Republican’s direction, but Trump’s direction.”


    Marsha Blackburn (R) called the winner in Tennessee.


    Cruz up by only 3% over O’Rourke. Hmmm.
    Braun declared winner over Donnelly. The last Stupak Bloc Flipper goes DOWN.


    They thawed out Tom Brokow.



    Election watching Rich: “I haven’t been this excited since Hillary Clinton won the White House.”


    Manchin (D) holding on in WV.


    “For the first time in Georgia, we have a progressive Democrat running in Georgia.” And she’s getting WHOMPED.


    They called KY for Barr (R) over McGarth (D), the candidate the MSM kept lauding. Suggests Dems won’t take house.

    Dave Brat still up by 1 pioint, 86% in.


    Stacey Abrams still getting walloped in Georgia,


    Hugin up by 4 point over Sleazeball (NJ). 6% in.


    DeSantis (R) up narrowly in Florida.


    Hugin (R) winning narrowly over Sleazebag (D) in New Jersey, 1% in.
    Hawley walloping Planetoid Claire, but only 1% in there as well.

    PBS: “No blue wave.”


    Frum Brooks has arms crossed on PBS. Not looking happy.


    Wow:

    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.

    LinkSwarm for December 8, 2017

    Friday, December 8th, 2017

    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.

  • California is on fire.
  • “Traffic through central Mordor is slow but steady.”

  • The Wisconsin Witch Hunt was even worse than even conservatives feared:

    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.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Perspective: Nancy Pelosi seems to think the GOP tax bill is worse than the Fugitive Slave Act
  • 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?”
  • “Eye Doctor Tied to Bob Menendez Case Convicted in $100 Million Fraud Scheme.” And Democrat Menendez is still, as of this writing, a Senator.
  • Months after the Las Vegas shooting, and there are still dozens of unanswered questions about what actually happened.
  • 92 percent of illegal aliens arrested this year had ‘criminal convictions, pending criminal charges, were an immigration fugitive, or were an illegal reentrant.'” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Man Deported 20 Times Sentenced to 35 Years for Sexual Assault.” So when is San Francisco throwing him his parade?
  • “Swedish Government to Ban Websites that List Ethnic Origin of Criminal Suspects.”
  • Related: “Swedish lawyer Elisabeth Fritz claims that in the majority of rape cases she has had to work on the suspects have been individuals from migrant backgrounds.”
  • “Swedish Chief Prosecutor: No-Go Zone Rinkeby Is Like a ‘War Zone.'”
  • “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.”
  • Arizona Republican Rep. Trent Franks to resign over asking staffers to consider being a surrogate mother for him and his wife? Franks, unlike Al Franken, has actually resigned, not merely promised to resign at some unspecified date in the future.
  • More on how Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman plans to revitalize the kingdom:

    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.

  • “Tesla – which lost $619 million in Q3 – delivered only 3,590 vehicles in November in the US, down 18% from a year ago.”
  • 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…
  • You’ve got to admire the designers of http://www.theworldsworstwebsiteever.com for having the courage of their convictions.
  • “Opossum breaks into liquor store and gets drunk as a skunk.”
  • Hell to the no
  • A tweet that tells you all you need to know to evaluate forthcoming legislation:

  • A shot of yuletide Archer cheer:

  • LinkSwarm for December 23, 2016

    Friday, December 23rd, 2016

    I hope everyone has plans for the Christmas weekend, even if they’re only “eat as much food and watch as much football as humanly possible.”

    Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:

  • Suspect in Berlin jihad truck attack shot dead. I was going to do one of my increasingly irregular jihad updates, but Stuff and Things got in the way.
  • One possible benefit of a Trump presidency: a restoration of federalism:

    America owes President Barack Obama an enormous debt of gratitude for showing how truly dangerous the federal government can be when our Constitution’s checks and balances start failing. With the active collusion of congressional Democrats, President Obama’s presidency has been one long series of body blows to the separation of powers that has protected our democracy since the Founding.

    The results have been stark. Never has a president trampled so much on the prerogatives of Congress. Obama’s executive orders, suspending parts of our immigration laws and even his own prized Obamacare, have been sheer usurpations, going far beyond even the breathtaking delegations of legislative authority granted by the brief Democratic supermajority in Congress in 2009–10.

    Sad to say, Obama’s trampling on the prerogatives of state governments has been even more unprecedented, and potentially far more damaging. His agencies’ “Dear Colleague” letters, addressing such sensitive issues as local school districts’ bathroom policies and the standards by which institutions of higher education review claims of sexual assault, have wrested away the core functions of state leaders, local boards, and even administrators.

    The separation of state and federal authority is one of the most essential principles of our Constitution. It explains the Constitution’s structural allocation of powers as much as the division between legislative, executive, and judicial functions. If we lose the separate and independent existence of state governments, we will lose our Constitution.

    And Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is walking point on the issue.

  • Trump’s election marks the overthrow of the media: “This election didn’t merely expose the failure of six months of campaigning by the Democratic Party. This election exposed the failure of SIX DECADES of leftist propaganda to have any cumulative effect at all.”
  • Ten ways Obama broke the American system. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Outside California, Trump outdistanced Hillary by 1.41 million votes, 47.8% to 46.6%. As I have noted before, Hillary’s support was so geographically narrow that she won a popular vote majority in only 13 states (plus DC), the fewest of any major-party candidate since Bob Dole.”
  • Remember how Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison looked like a shoe-in for DNC head after Howard Dean withdraw from the race? Yeah, not so much. Although some of the dirt (like his ties to Louis Farrakhan) are decades old, there’s enough of it that lots of Democrats are getting cold feet about his candidacy:

    Despite the support of the first couple of populist progressivism — Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders — the controversy has emboldened the opposition: Last week, Labor Secretary Tom Perez, a buddy of President Barack Obama (who called him “wicked smart” last week), jumped into the race. The effort to boost Perez, paradoxically and to Ellison’s irritation, is led by operatives allied with the country’s first black president, who view the Minnesotan as too tied to the identity politics they think cost Hillary Clinton the election.

    “We like Keith,” one longtime Obama political ally, who was pushing Perez, told me in November. “But is he really the guy we need right now when we are trying to get all of those disaffected white working-class people to rally around our message of economic equality?”

  • Texas officially removes Planned Parenthood from Medicaid.
  • “Feminism Is a Synonym for ‘Shut Up.’

    A major goal of feminism is to silence opposition. Because their ideology cannot withstand informed and articulate criticism, feminists therefore requires a dishonest vocabulary of jargon that functions to disqualify and discredit their opponents. A man expressing disagreement with a feminist will invariably be accused of “sexism” or “misogyny,” and if he persists in his criticism, he will be accused of “harassment.” What these terms actually mean — other than as pejorative labels, deployed to smear the movement’s enemies — is seldom examined. It is quite often the case that men who ostensibly support feminism engage in abusive behavior toward women (e.g., Jian Ghomeshi), whereas men who oppose the movement are branded “misogynists” for no other reason than their willingness to state their criticism honestly and openly.

  • “New York State Employee Demands Death For Trump Supporters, Still Employed.” Bonus: Openly calling for Republican women to be raped and cheering the death of American soldiers. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • 5 Arrested After Egyptian Police Bust Staged Photo Shoot Of “Wounded Aleppo Children”.
  • Funny how “hate crime” hoaxes are the fake news the media wants to keep reporting:

    n all four cases, there were reasons for the media to doubt the stories. In all four cases, the narrative of white and/or conservative and/or Trump-supporting and/or bigoted “people of privilege” persecuted and/or harassed and/or discriminated against some variation of minority. In all four cases, the hoax was reported before confirmed and later it was revealed by law enforcement or conservative media that we had all been duped.

    Here’s the core of the problem. Mainstream media has a narrative agenda that has failed miserably. They did everything they could to hand the White House and Senate to the Democrats. In the past, that’s all that needed to happen; if the media united behind a cause, they could bend the will of the people. In the case of the 2016 election, their agenda backfired, so they now have two choices. They could learn their lessons and return to a bygone day when reporters actually reported and commentators made absolutely certain their perspectives would not be confused with news.

    Predictably, mainstream media has chosen option two. They’re doubling down. The lesson they think they learned from their mistake is that they can’t allow a sliver of doubt to creep in. They actually think they were too easy on Donald Trump. They think they didn’t push enough of their narrative on Senate races. They think they now need to promote their agenda in full force, working overtime if necessary.

  • The media lies again.
  • Baby Boomers increasingly having their Social Security garnished to cover their student loans.
  • Snow falls in the Saraha.
  • Scott Adams on cognatize blindspots and worst-case-scenarios on global warming.
  • Obama to world: (10,000 word speech all about him.) World: (Ignores him). President Elect Trump: “Hey! Don’t do that! World: “Yes, Mr. Trump.” (Hat Tip: Chuck DeVore on Twitter.)
  • Of course, the entire issue is a final attempt for Obama to stick it to Benjamin Netanyahu out of personal vindictiveness, never mind how badly it might affect U.S. and Israel foreign policy. Because Obama is a spiteful, petty little creep.
  • Know who Obama doesn’t hate? Cocaine dealers. “President Barack Obama has commuted the sentences of 657 cocaine dealers since Aug. 3, a Daily Caller analysis reveals. That represents nearly 80 percent of the commutations the president has given since August.” I’m a “legalize it, regulate it, tax it” sort of guy, but the fact that admitted cocaine user Barack Obama would commute more cocaine dealers over mere mere marijuana users or dealers is more than a little odd. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Snopes Co-Founder Accused Of Embezzling Company Money, Spending It On Prostitutes.” And as Fark would say, “the rest he just wasted.” Bonus: Alleged prostitute is now allegedly a Snopes staffer. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Navy decision to use PC titles reversed. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • F4-J retired from flying. From aerial target to ground target. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • This is the sort of story headline writers live for: “Pensioner pleases neighbours with his massive flashing cock.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Cthuloid horror devours the Pope.
  • Merry Christmas, everyone!

    How Wisconsin Went Red

    Wednesday, December 21st, 2016

    There’s a nice piece in the Washington Examiner by Salena Zito on how Wisconsin went from a Democratic to a Republican state:

    Eight years ago, Wisconsin Democrats were in the catbird seat; they held the Governor’s office, the majority in both chambers of the state legislature, two U.S. Senate seats, five of the state’s eight congressional seats and handed Barack Obama a rousing victory in the presidential election.

    So it’s no wonder that Wisconsin’s winning election night results for Republican president-elect Trump and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson were a bit of a jolt to most pundits’ sensibilities; for years they have believed that Wisconsin was a deeply blue state, powered by the public sector unions, that traditionally supports Democrat candidates in a big way.

    It isn’t.

    For the past seven years, beginning with Reince Priebus taking over Wisconsin’s Republican Party in 2009, the state has been anything but trending blue.

    A quick tally shows Republican Gov. Scott Walker has won his seat three times (there was a recall election in between his two outright wins) and Republicans have twice taken the state attorney general’s office, won control of both state legislative chambers (and retained them twice) and won a bruising state Supreme Court race.

    Snip.

    While some experts have chalked up Trump’s win as part of the populist movement that has swept across the country in this cycle, that is only partly true. There is also a deep grassroots conservative movement located in this state. One with a solid infrastructure that has been slowly winning over blue-collar Democrats and independent voters who are at odds with the rigid, radicalized progressives who run the Democratic Party in Wisconsin.

    If you were following this blog back when I was covering the Wisconsin recall, you may recall how I noted that the Wisconsin left’s infantile tantrum tactics were turning off more voters than they attracted, and 2016 saw working class voters defecting to Republicans in droves across the entire Midwest.

    Read the whole thing.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

    Scott Walker Endorses Ted Cruz

    Tuesday, March 29th, 2016

    This won’t hurt Ted Cruz’s chances:

    Washington (CNN)Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker formally endorsed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday, saying he is “a strong new leader” and “constitutional conservative.”

    “After all these years of the Obama-Clinton failures, it’s time we elect a strong new leader and I’ve chosen to endorse Ted Cruz,” Walker told conservative radio host Charlie Sykes on Newsradio 620 WTMJ Tuesday.

    If you asked me in 2015 who I think had the best chance of winning the Republican nomination, I would have said it was Walker, given how how handily he beat the unions in the Wisconsin recall. Shows you how much I know…

    LinkSwarm for September 22, 2015

    Tuesday, September 22nd, 2015

    My contract technical writing position ended, so I’ve been busy looking for a new job (if you know of one, drop me a line). As such, this LinkSwarm is a bit out of band. I’ve been busy.

  • Ted Cruz is sitting pretty. And that piece came before Scott Walker’s exit from the race…
  • Gun Owners of America endorses Cruz.
  • Scott Walker’s implosion. Namely Trump and burn rate.
  • All glory is fleeing. Especially when it comes to polls this time of the year.
  • Man pushing RICO lawsuit against global warming skeptics has raked in more than $5.6 million in taxpayer money for himself and his wife since 2001.
  • Free of the pension costs and union contracts that weighed down its previous owners, Hostess has nurtured retail sales of its products nearly back to their pre-liquidation level of more than $1.3 billion in 2012, with a fraction of the workers. The old Hostess—which included other brands—employed some 19,000 people. The Twinkies purveyor these days has just 1,100.”
  • While Europeans wring their hands over Muslim illegal aliens, Egypt floods Gaza smuggling tunnels.
  • “From the 1970s to the present day, organised pedophilia has been a recurring problem for the supposedly progressive movement.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • When do leftists object to a gay pride parade? When it marches through Muslim areas.
  • Moody’s downgrades France.
  • The fences are going up all over Europe, we shall not see them torn down again in our life-time.”
  • Documented case of Islamic State fighters trying to enter Europe as refugees.
  • More than 100 girls poisoned in Afghanistan for daring to go to school, but details seem scanty.
  • Robert Spencer has a new book out: The Complete Infidel’s Guide to ISIS.
  • America’s Unbanked.
  • Larry Correia fisks that idiot Lorraine D. Wilke piece about how writers shouldn’t write fast, where Correia discusses greedy desire that his children wear shoes.
  • Heh: “Extension Cord On Stage Steals Spotlight From Jeb Bush During Campaign Rally.”
  • Congressman John Carter getting a primary challenger?
  • Brain, brain, what is brain?
  • Scott Walker Drops Out Of Presidential Race

    Monday, September 21st, 2015

    Just more proof that, when it comes to 2016 presidential race, Nobody Knows Nothing: Scott Walker dropped out of the Presidential race tonight.

    If you had asked me six months ago who would get the nomination, I’d have guessed Scott Walker had the best chance as a candidate acceptable to both movement conservatives and the GOP Establishment. I couldn’t imagine the possibility that Walker would be polling less than John Kasich. Such is the wild, woolly nature of the 2016 race, partially due to Donald Trump widely surpassing expectations of early popularity, and partially due to signs that voters on both sides are Tired Of The Same Old Bullshit.

    Who benefits most from Walker dropping out? Maybe Ted Cruz. With Walker out, Cruz has a bigger claim on being the race’s true conservative candidate, one who (unlike Marco Rubio) hasn’t stumbled on the hot button illegal alien amnesty issue. It also looks like Cruz’s decision to jump in early was much sounder than Walker’s decision to jump in late.

    But a crazy race just got even crazier…

    Edited to Add: Well, that was quick. The Cruz campaign is already poaching some of Scott Walker’s people.

    Camille Paglia Interview Part 3: Addressing the 2016 Field

    Monday, August 3rd, 2015

    And here’s the third part of that Camille Paglia interview. Here she takes on the 2016 Presidential field. As you might expect from someone who voted for the Green Party in 2012 and who profeses herself a fan of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, her critiques of the Democratic side are a lot more interesting than those of the GOP.

    Democrats

    There are plenty of women Democratic politicians who are too scared to put themselves forward as candidates because of the Clinton machine. There’s something seriously wrong here with Democratic thinking…Given the problems facing the nation, this passive waiting for your turn is simply unacceptable. The Democrats have plenty of solid, capable women politicians who are just too timid to challenge the party establishment. Well, excuse me, that proves they don’t deserve to be president! You sure won’t be able to deal with ISIS if you can’t deal with Debbie Wasserman Schultz!

    More on Hillary:

    Hillary has accomplished nothing substantial in her life. She’s been pushed along, coasting on her husband’s coattails, and every job she’s been given fizzled out into time-serving or overt disaster. Hillary constantly strikes attitudes and claims she’s “passionate” about this or that, but there’s never any sustained follow-through. She’s just a classic, corporate exec or bureaucrat type who would prefer to be at her desk behind closed doors, imposing her power schemes on the proletariat. She has no discernible political skills of any kind, which is why she needs a big, shifting army of consultants, advisors, and toadies to whisper in her ear and write her policy statements.

    Republicans

    She’s not a fan of Ted Cruz: “Ted Cruz–oh, lord! Cruz gives me the willies. The guy is a fanatic! He’s very smart, clever and strategic, and he has a fine education from Princeton, so people have to watch out for him. But I think he is self-absorbed and narcissistic to a maniacal degree.” Paglia also says that “In the primary debates, Cruz will benefit from having a tall and commanding physique.” Commanding presence, yes, but Cruz is around my height (5’10”-ish), which is not generally considered tall for a Presidential contender.

    She’s high on Scott Walker:

    I think that liberals are dangerously complacent about Scott Walker. They’ve tried to portray him as a madman, an uneducated rube, a tool of the Koch brothers. Right now, Walker seems to be the true GOP frontrunner, but I also feel he lacks gravitas. He’s not ready for his close-up. What is this oddity about so many of the GOP candidates–their excessive boyishness, as if their maturation stalled? But Walker is a very talented and combative politician, with far more substance than liberals are allowing for.

    The union issue is huge–because as governor of Wisconsin, Walker went to war with unions and won. Liberals are caught in the past right now in their rosy view of unions, which were heroically established during the progressive era that reformed the abuses of the industrial revolution. But the union battle in Wisconsin had nothing to do with exploited working-class miners or factory workers. In his push to balance the state budget, Walker took action against the middle-class public sector unions, whose negotiations with municipal and state governments outside the arena of private competition have become an enormous drain on local budgets as the economy has worsened. There has been a history of rampant corruption in the public sector unions, coming from their cozy quid pro quo relationships with politicians. Liberals need to wake up about this! All they have to do is read the obituaries of the smaller newspapers in metropolitan New York to see how the early retirement and lavish pensions of the public sector unions have grotesquely drained taxpayer dollars. Obituary after obituary–so-and-so, aged 75, worked for fifteen or twenty years as a policeman or city sanitation worker, retired in his late 40s, and spent the rest of his life on the taxpayer’s dime, pursuing his hobbies of fishing, boating, and golfing. Great work if you can get it!

    And then the teachers’ unions! What a colossal tactical error American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten (a longtime Clinton friend and donor) made several weeks ago in unilaterally declaring her union’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton right in the middle of the Bernie Sanders surge. Probably for the first time ever, American liberals woke up to the corrupt practices that have become way too common in the political maneuverings of the big unions. The point here is that Scott Walker, in his defeat of the public sector unions, drew the roadmap for struggling municipal and state governments everywhere to balance their budgets, as he did in Wisconsin. Because who ends up suffering the most? It’s the kids. All that money outrageously pouring into inflated pension plans has been gutting public education and community arts programs.

    Good to see at least one liberal wake up to the destructive nature of bloated public sector unions. But it’s rather naive of Paglia to express surprise over part of the corrupt wing of the Democratic Party (unions) endorsing the designated candidate of that wing (Hillary) over the candidate of the Party’s insane wing (Bernie Sanders).

    “I thought that Mitt Romney was an excellent choice by the GOP four years ago.” Can’t really say we in the GOP are happy with the way that turned out…