Posts Tagged ‘Seth Williams’

LinkSwarm for February 2, 2018

Friday, February 2nd, 2018

Happy Groundhog Day! To celebrate, just imagine that I’ve already posted this same LinkSwarm nine times already.

Supposedly the Nunes FISA abuse memo drops today. After that happens, I’ll no doubt have some thoughts…

  • Democratic Party freakouts over the memo seem to be reaching epic proportions.
  • “The Democratic party’s strategy for 2018 seems to revolve around reminding people how happy they are that Democrats aren’t in charge.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Recent rulings from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals are a major contributing factor in the sharp rise in the number of family units and unaccompanied minors that have made the trek from Central America to the United States’ southwest border in the last few months, according to Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas Homan.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Republican Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina is retiring.
  • As is Pennsylvania Democrat Robert Brady. Few people outside the state realize that Brady is the Democratic Party’s iron-fisted Philadelphia machine boss. I asked a Philly friend how corrupt Brady is: “Not as corrupt as Frank Rizzo, but pretty corrupt.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.
  • And even though that PhillyMag piece is from last year, it’s worth calling out this tidbit about Pennsylvania Democrats on its own:

    Since 2000, law enforcement officials have investigated no fewer than 32 Philadelphia Democrats. The allegations seem to get more debasing — more Robin Hood-in-reverse — every year. Seth Williams, the sitting district attorney, was indicted in March for allegedly stealing from his own mother and seeking thousands of dollars’ worth of bribes in exchange for making people’s legal problems go away. Chaka Fattah, the former 11-term Congressman, was sentenced in December to a decade in prison for using cash from taxpayers and a charity to pay back an illegal campaign loan. Leslie Acosta, the ex-state rep, pleaded guilty in 2016 to conspiring to commit money laundering.

    Those are only the biggest and baddest examples of graft in the past year. The city’s traffic court was abolished altogether after nine judges were charged with ticket fixing in 2013. (Seven were later convicted on various charges.) In 2014, five state lawmakers — nearly a quarter of Philadelphia’s Harrisburg delegation — were accused of taking petty bribes; four have been convicted, some of lesser charges. The avalanche of indictments has left Philadelphians wondering whether their elected officials run for office to help anyone other than themselves.

  • Ace nails the SJW problem:

    It is the common practice of Social Justice Warriors to infiltrate organizations and hobbies in which they have little to no interest — videogames, comic books, sports, science-fiction awards organizations, all academic fields, etc. — for the sole purpose of seizing “key nodes and critical infrastructure,” as Diversity and Comics notes (echoing US military doctrine), in order to turn non-political pastimes into never-ending propaganda echo chambers — or destroy them outright, if they cannot be made to serve the regressive left’s propaganda mission.

    They’re deadly parasites for any organization that allows them to crawl inside their bodies.

    But these organizations let them in — hell, they actively seek them out — just so that social justice blogs and websites like The Mary Sue or Buzzfeed will give them the Social Justice Warrior Stamp of Approval.

    Trouble is, as Marvel Comics is finding out, Social Justice Warriors are not consumers of any of these products, and will not buy them even if they have been converted into full Social Justice Warrior propaganda outfits.

    These organizations are being infiltrated by Social Justice Warriors not because Social Justice Warriors like them or the cultural products they produce, but because Social Justice Warriors know that non- Social Justice Warriors enjoy these products, and thus these cultural artifacts must be seized and repurposed to serve leftist indoctrination ends or simply destroyed.

    If they cannot be remade to be useful indoctrination centers, then they must be destroyed, so that, at least, non-Social Justice Warriors will have one less enjoyable thing in their lives, and may be forced to seek Social Justice Warrior-controlled entertainments as an alternative.

  • What did the 2018 Women’s March produce? Trash. Lots and lots of trash.
  • “Chelsea” Manning is ineligible to run for office.
  • The MSM grapples with the truth about Sweden. (Hat tip: DirectorBlue.)
  • Republicans get more ObamaCare taxes delayed.
  • Sun Tzu predicted how President Trump would kick Democrats’ asses 2,500 years ago.
  • Obama paled around with Louis Farrakhan in 2005 and the media covered it up, because Democrat. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Fidel Castro’s eldest son commits suicide.
  • “Reclusive Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss — one of the Democrats’ biggest and most secretive donors — is currently under investigation for a 2011 sexual assault, as originally reported in a handwritten complaint by his former employee Jacqueline Long.”
  • Seattle lesbian awakes from woke:

    Herzog has awakened from “woke,” as it were, because she found herself attacked by her progressive comrades for Thoughtcrime. She has disagreed with transgender activists and defended Aziz Ansari, among other examples of her political incorrectness. Independent thinking by members of official victim groups — women, racial minorities, homosexuals — is dangerous to the Left because dissent undermines the identity-politics illusion of solidarity against the white heterosexual males who allegedly oppress everyone else. In the 21st century, belief in the pervasive evil of heterosexual white men has become the organizing principle of the Democrat Party, its raison d’être. To suggest to a Democrat in 2018 that perhaps this fathomless contempt for white males is misguided, or that not every member of an official victim group is suffering from oppression, is to commit a sort of political heresy, like denying the existence of witchcraft in 17th-century Salem.

    Democrats have become vendors of ethnic outrage, gender resentment and economic envy, with no other commodity to provide voters in the political marketplace. Because everyone inside the cult of social justice is fanatically devoted to this zero-sum-game mentality, there is a constant competition among Democrats to strike a “more progressive than thou” posture and, as Professor Reynolds says, “when sanctimony is your only coin, people will try to accumulate it.” Sooner or later, however, intelligent people wise up to the hustle. After the defeat of Hillary Clinton, many who had cast their lot with the party of victimhood may realize how badly they have been hoodwinked and bamboozled.

    Is it bad that I read the word “Seattle lesbian” and, even before I saw the picture, instantly thought “flannel”?

  • David Brooks wants new Americans because Original Recipe Americans, with our disgusting epidemic of improperly creased trousers, disappoint him so.
  • “Federal judge grants Texas request to block Obama-era restrictions on criminal background checks in hiring.”
  • Hitting your target at 1000 yards.
  • A SOTU tweet:

  • Another:

  • Bad hiring decisions:

  • Happy Groundhog Day! To celebrate, just imagine that I’ve already posted this same LinkSwarm nine times already.

    LinkSwarm for June 30, 2017

    Friday, June 30th, 2017

    The year is half over! Donald Trump has been the 45th President of the United States of America for over five months, and liberals still haven’t stopped freaking out about it.

  • It’s Obamacare that’s killing people, and just two classes of states are showing any immunity. Deaths from opiate overdoses are on the rise across the country, except in states that either legalized marijuana or declined Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.”
  • President Trump this morning: Repeal ObamaCare now, replace it later. Which is pretty much what Republicans have been campaigning on for the last six years
  • Ted Cruz may kill the ObamaCare mandate.
  • Lying with numbers: CBO estimates 18 million people will be covered by ObamaCare in 2017. Actual number enrolled at the end of 2016: 9.1 million. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Maxine Waters Says 700 Billion People Are About to Lose Their Healthcare.”
  • “Anthem Inc.’s decision to quit offering Obamacare plans in much of Nevada will leave large parts of the state without options on the health law’s exchanges.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • The House Democrats IT scandal just keeps getting weirder:

    Multiple members of Congress hired as their information technology (IT) administrator an individual whose most recent job experience was being fired from McDonald’s, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has learned.

    Spokesmen for the members won’t say what their bosses knew at the time, but the hiring decisions highlight the role — witting or unwitting — the representatives played in what turned out to be an alleged multi-million-dollar IT scam in Congress with serious implications for national security.

    Soon after Imran Awan joined the staff of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz in 2005, his brothers Abid and Jamal, his wife Hina, and his brother’s wife Natalia all appeared on other members’ payrolls, supposedly as IT administrators. His best friend Rao Abbas landed on the payroll too. Most of them made salaries ordinarily only chiefs of staff earn, but they were rarely seen or heard from in Hill IT circles.

    The crew is now the target of a U.S. Capitol Police criminal information security probe with assistance from other law enforcement agencies as needed. Politico reported the “House staffers are accused of stealing equipment from members’ offices without their knowledge and committing serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network.”

    By my count, the unqualified members of Imran Awan’s circle (who frequently failed to even show up for work) could read the emails of the 31 different House Democrats…

  • Postscript on the Georgia 6th Congressional District special election: Jon Ossoff actually got fewer votes than the ghost candidate that ran in 2016:

    One good reason why Tom Price beat his last opponent by 23 points was that his last opponent was functionally indistinguishable from a corpse or a bag of lettuce. [Democratic candidate Rodney] Stooksbury spent precisely $0 on his campaign and has never been seen in public. Jon Ossoff had the entire national Democratic Party pulling out the stops for him, and flooded Atlanta television with ten million dollars in advertising. Drastically improving on the Stooksbury numbers should be no dazzling feat. (Although, somewhat hilariously, Stooksbury actually got more total votes than Ossoff, 124,917 to Ossoff’s 124,893. Granted, special elections have lower turnout, but good grief.)

    Ghost workers in the House, ghost candidates on the ballot. Your modern Democratic Party, ladies and gentlemen… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Speaking of the modern Democratic Party: Members of the all-Democratic City Council in White Plains, New York selected party chairwoman Elizabeth Shollenberger for a plum six-figure judicial seat. Tiny problem: She’s too morbidly obese to perform her duties. If ever there was a metaphor for Democratic-run government…
  • Democrat Seth Williams, former Philadelphia District Attorney, has resigned as part of a bribery plea deal. “In addition to accepting that he could face a maximum five-year term when he is sentenced, Williams agreed to forfeit $64,878.22.” Part of the plea deal was pleading guilty to one count of bribery so he could skate on the other 28…
  • Democrats and the national media sure put the Scalise shooting behind them quickly so they could get back to saying Republicans want to kill you:

    Less than 48 hours after a multiple assassination attempt on members of Congress, there were no media vans or cameras at the Alexandria baseball field where it occurred. Just for perspective, when Republican staffer Elizabeth Lauten committed the offense of writing something critical of President Obama’s daughters on her private Facebook page, news cameras were camped on her parents’ lawn staking her out for the better part of a week.

  • The Islamic State is close to defeat in Mosul and being driven out of Iraq:

    Col. Ryan Dillon, the Baghdad-based spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition battling Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, said that Iraqi forces on Thursday cut a wedge in the middle of the area held by Islamic State, seizing the Nouri mosque and cornering the few hundred remaining fighters in half of Mosul’s Old City on one side, and an area around a hospital that has been a stronghold for the group on the other side.

    Col. Dillon predicted that the fighting would be over in a matter of days and that it would then take time to fully clear the areas the Islamic State holdouts.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Also, all Islamic State escape routes from Raqqa are now blocked off. (Hat tip: Prairie Pundit.)
  • “Since Donald Trump was elected I have seen a spate of local news stories about companies building, expanding, or investing in manufacturing plants within a 50 mile radius of Chattanooga.”
  • Based on the evidence, everything the experts know seems to be wrong, at least if those “experts” are in the news media.
  • Third Project Veritas CNN video drops. Jimmy Carr, Associate Producer for CNN’s New Day, calls American voters “stupid as shit.”
  • Have those CNN videos finally gotten the MSM to give up on their Russia fantasy?
  • House passes two border control bills. “One is known as Kate’s Law that increases penalties for illegal immigrants who keep trying to re-enter the United States, especially those who have criminal records. The second denies federal grants to sanctuary cities.”
  • Three gay Jews asked leave the “2017 Dyke March Chicago” because their Jewish pride flag bore the Star of David. “If the Star of David makes you feel unsafe, there’s a word for that …”
  • More on the same theme:

    Intersectionality functions as kind of caste system, in which people are judged according to how much their particular caste has suffered throughout history. Victimhood, in the intersectional way of seeing the world, is akin to sainthood; power and privilege are profane.

    By that hierarchy, you might imagine that the Jewish people — enduring yet another wave of anti-Semitism here and abroad — should be registered as victims. Not quite.

    Why? Largely because of Israel, the Jewish state, which today’s progressives see only as a vehicle for oppression of the Palestinians — no matter that Israel has repeatedly sought to meet Palestinian claims with peaceful compromise, and no matter that progressives hold no other country to the same standard. China may brutalize Buddhists in Tibet and Muslims in Xinjiang, while denying basic rights to the rest of its 1.3 billion citizens, but “woke” activists pushing intersectionality keep mum on all that.

    One of the women who was asked to leave the Dyke March, an Iranian Jew named Eleanor Shoshany-Anderson, couldn’t understand why she was kicked out of an event that billed itself as intersectional. “The Dyke March is supposed to be intersectional,” she said. “I don’t know why my identity is excluded from that. I felt that, as a Jew, I am not welcome here.”

    She isn’t. Because though intersectionality cloaks itself in the garb of humanism, it takes a Manichaean view of life in which there can only be oppressors and oppressed. To be a Jewish dyke, let alone one who deigns to support Israel, is a categorical impossibility, oppressor and oppressed in the same person.

  • Progressive urban policies make life harder for the working class. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • President Trump nominates former Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison as the next NATO ambassador. Not my favorite Texas Republican Senator by a long shot, but I fail to see how she would be unqualified for this role.
  • 100-year-old crime boss beats the odds, is released from prison.”
  • Lawyer who committed $600 million in Social Security fraud has evidently skipped the country, claims to be broke. Sure, sport…
  • Label drops Austin band Dream Machine for WrongThink. Including a legal immigrant who was critical of illegal aliens:

    Doris Melton, who came to the United States from Bosnia told the website she was “glad they’re finally starting to work on deporting criminal illegal aliens too. It took ages for me to get my green card here legally and because there’s so many illegals coming in they make it hard for the people who do want to become part of American society the right way. They’re handing out free money to people who come here illegally, but when you want to work hard to become an American citizen to start a family they make it so hard on you, and expensive!”

    Later in the interview, Doris Melton was asked to name something that bothers her about the music industry. She responded by saying “girls have mostly become lazy jellyfish and are starting these horrible feminist bands just to try and ‘show men what they got’.”

    She went on to say, “The safe space mentality has made them weak. They don’t even know how to play their instruments! They’ll make songs about being ‘sexually assaulted’ or about how ’empowering’ abortions are or some (expletive) and it’s (expletive) retarded, they’re embarrassing themselves. If men did that they would be crucified! You see the longing for a gender supremacy under the guise of ‘equal rights.’ What happened to the incredible female singers from back in the day with real talent, singing about finding true love and wanting to be a good woman?”

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Sarah Palin sues the New York Times for defamation over their claim that she “incited Jared Loughner” to murder people.
  • New York Times staffers rebel against cutbacks. Hey, when you alienate half of your potential audience, a Mexican billionaire’s largess only goes so far…
  • “Wrestling’s new villain named himself ‘Progressive Liberal.'” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • I have no idea how this happened:

    I don’t recall getting into a Twitter tiff with John Cusack, and I’ve liked most of the Cusack films I’ve seen (Being John Malkovich, Grosse Pointe Blank, High Fidelity). I even had mostly kind things to say about him in 1408. I assume he must be using one of those autoblockbot things to avoid running into #WrongThink…

  • You know you suck when Phil Donahue tells you to stop being such a pussy.
  • Methhead with nine prior felony convictions given life for evidence tampering. Previous convictions include manslaughter of an Arizona State Trooper and engaging in a “deviant sex act involving a squash.” And then there’s the creepy stuff…
  • “A BBC investigation found fecal bacteria in iced drinks from Starbucks and 2 other chains.” Is this a Starbucks problem, or a UK water quality problem? (Hat tip: Todd Kincannon’s Gab feed.)
  • LinkSwarm for March 24, 2017

    Friday, March 24th, 2017

    This week I started a new job and started working on my taxes, so expect scattered patches of Light Blogging for the next few weeks…

  • Everyone in Washington hates Donald Trump’s new budget. So it must have something going for it. This is a budget plan that will surgically remove trillions of dollars of wasteful spending from the obese $3.9 trillion federal budget. Many agencies will have to live with cuts of 5, 10 and 30 percent, while other outdated, duplicative or unproductive programs will go to the graveyard.”
  • Neil Gorsuch appears to be headed toward confirmation to the Supreme Court.
  • The Obama Administrations was carrying out surveillance of the Trump transition team:

    “First, I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions, the intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition. Second, details about U.S. persons associated with the incoming administration, details with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value, were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting. Third, I have confirmed that additional names of Trump transition team members were unmasked. Fourth and finally, I want to be clear, none of this surveillance was related to Russia or the investigation of Russian activities or of the Trump team.”

    One wonders if his data collection was as “incidentally” as the IRS auditing conservatives…

  • Borepatch has a handy summary of the global warming controversy, with just enough technical details to provide a nice overview.
  • London: “You are entering a Sharia controlled zone. Islamic rules enforced.” Also this: “According to the Association of Chief Police Officers, every year 17,000 Muslim women in Britain become victims of forced marriages, are raped by their husbands or subjected to female genital mutilation.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Italians used to look to Europe as a kind of savior: the Italian state was corrupt and inept, but Brussels would set a higher standard, and by loyal support for the EU, Italy could rise above its own problems. These days, the EU looks more like an anchor than a lifejacket.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Philadelphia’s Democratic District Attorney Seth Williams indicted on corruption and bribery charges. Oh, he also allegedly stole more than $20,000 from his own mother’s Social Security and pension funds. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Barack Obama violated the Constitution when he appointed a general counsel to the NLRB after the Senate refused to confirm him.” Notable: 6-2 Supreme Court decision. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “I would argue that Pakistan’s history teaches at least three lessons. The first: Elections alone do not produce democracy. The second: Majority rule without minority rights leads to egregious illiberalism. Third: A state committed to the pursuit of religious ‘purity’ will always find some of its subjects in need of ‘cleansing.’ Down that path despotism lies.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Denmark doesn’t want to become Sweden.
  • The shape of battles to come.
  • Kurt Schlichter imagines how a second Korean War would unfold. Not so hot for the norks…
  • He came to America illegally with a dream…of raping a two year old. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • I’m still not tired of all the winning.
  • “Molecule kills elderly cells, reduces signs of aging in mice.” Faster please.
  • Texas to eliminate legal bribery in Brown County.
  • Karl Rehn on beyond the 1%. “93% of the 3.2 million adult gun owners in Texas likely do not train. 4% of them take the mandatory new permit course, at best 3% of them take some kind of NRA course, and only 1%, less than 30K, take any kind of post-CHL level course or shoot any kind of match, including all kinds of pistol, NRA high power, and all the shotgun sports.”
  • Dwight blogged about a case where a convenience store robber was found not guilty of aggravated assault because he was using an Airsoft pellet gun in the robbery. Evidently the reason for the verdict was the DA’s decision not to seek a lesser charge. It seems that the possibility of convicting on lesser charges is subject to instructions from the judge. The question that occurs to me: Is a criminal jury empowered to find a defendant guilty of one or more lesser charges if they were given no instructions regarding lesser charges from the judge?
  • London jihad-attack tweet:

  • Scott Adams describes how Bloomberg assembled a hit piece on him by taking things out of context, all because he was predicting a Trump victory in 2016. Remember: Every MSM hit piece on a conservative you see is constructed and slanted in similar ways.
  • Exit fat Barbie.
  • Statistical analysis of writer’s work. Elmore Leonard hates exclamation points, but James Joyce loves them…