Posts Tagged ‘Sharyl Attkisson’

Southwest CEO Talking Out Of Both Sides Of His Face

Wednesday, October 13th, 2021

What are we to make of Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly?

In an interview with ABC News, he said that no employees would be fired over the Flu Manchu vaccine mandate:

During an interview with ABC News Tuesday, Gary Kelly, the CEO of Southwest Airlines, stated that no employees would be fired over the company’s vaccine mandate. However, the airline announced on October 4 that all 56,000 U.S. Southwest employees needed to get vaccinated against COVID-19 by November 24, or face termination.

Yet the very same day, we hear that Southwest is going to comply with Biden’s (still unissued) order:

Dallas-based Southwest Airlines will ignore a Texas Executive Order prohibiting any entity from imposing Covid-19 vaccine mandates on employees or customers.

Instead, the beleaguered airline will comply with a yet-to-be issued Biden federal mandate which requires that government employees and contractors get vaccinated, according to CEO Gary Kelly in a Tuesday interview with CNBC.

“I’ve never been in favor of corporations imposing that kind of a mandate. I’m not in favor that. Never have been,” Kelly told “Squawk on the Street,” adding “But the executive order from President Biden mandates that all federal employees and then all federal contractors, which covers all the major airlines, have to have a [vaccine] mandate … in place by December the 8th, so we’re working through that.”

How do you reconcile the difference between these two positions? They’re going to enforce the mandate but not fire people who don’t meet the mandate requirements? How? Keeping them on with unpaid leave until they quit?

Kelly still hasn’t come clean about the reasons behind the cancelled flights. He needs to do that, and to clarify Southwest’s positions on imposing vaccine mandates on their employees, at a bare minimum.

In related news, that non-existent mandate is now closer to existing because draft language has finally been submitted.

Election Fraud Update for November 16, 2020

Monday, November 16th, 2020

Evidence continues to pile up that Democrats stole four states through brazen election fraud in a small number of urban counties. Here’s my attempt to wrangle this fire hose of information into some coherent form:

  • Rudy Giuliani says that 650,000 Votes Were Counted Unlawfully In Philadelphia And Pittsburgh:

    A few days earlier, Giuliani said that the Trump campaign may have sufficient evidence to change the election results in the state of Pennsylvania.

    He told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday that lawsuits being filed by Trump’s reelection campaign might show that as many as 900,000 invalid ballots were cast in the battleground state.

    According to an unofficial vote count from the Pennsylvania Department of State, Biden has received 3.35 million votes to Trump’s 3.31 million votes. Percentage-wise, Biden has 49.7 percent, compared to Trump’s 49.1 percent.

    “I think we have enough to change Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania election was a disaster,” Giuliani said, responding to a question from the host about whether the evidence is enough to change the fate of the presidential election.

    “We have people that observed people being pushed out of the polling place. We have people who were suggested to vote the other way and shown how to do it. I’m giving you the big picture,” he said.

    While mail-in ballots were being counted, GOP Pittsburgh observers were “kept out of the room or kept away from the room” for a period of 24 hours, Giuliani alleged.

    “Even though we went to court and we were allowed to move six feet closer, the Democrat machine people moved the counting place six feet further away. This is documented on videotape. There are upwards of 50 witnesses,” he continued.

  • Analysis of Pennsylvania data shows clear evidence of election fraud:

    You’ll notice that after the 11/4/20 23:00Z cutoff time, only swings of Biden votes (in multiples of 6,000 at a time) seem to have been received.

    Statistically, these changes make no sense. They’re not just improbable, they appear to be impossible.

    It looks to me like bundles of around 6,000 votes were used to slowly overcome any Trump lead. The correlation is uncanny.

  • More on the same theme.
  • Chuck DeVore says that irregularities justify recounts:

    “If the local elections officials in the city of Philadelphia are so confident that they have enough valid votes to beat President Donald Trump, and assign the 20 electoral college votes of Pennsylvania to Vice President Joe Biden. If they were that confident, why are they resisting an authorized court order to allow for people to observe the ballot as they’re supposed to legally be able to do?” DeVore responded to a question from correspondent Jan Jekielek.

    Snip.

    “By the way, this is a common thing throughout the entire country, that you’re supposed to have people from both sides observing the physical process of counting the votes to make sure that it’s done honestly and legally,” DeVore added, “it really potentially puts into doubt the results that came out of Philadelphia.”

    DeVore pointed out that only a few months ago, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted a Philadelphia election official on charges of bribery and election tampering.

    “When you have a race or a state like Pennsylvania, where you have this unprecedentedly large number of mail-in ballots that have been requested, then the question becomes what sort of safeguards are we using to ensure that the votes are valid and have been legally cast?” DeVore spoke about the integrity of the mail-in ballots.

    DeVore went on to say that one of the safeguards—the requirement to have a matching signature on the outside of the envelope—was obliterated in Pennsylvania.

  • Judicial Watch in October: “Pennsylvania Counties Admit They Gave Incorrect Voter Roll Information to Federal Government – Disclose Conflicting Numbers of Inactive Voters to Court.”
  • The statistical anomalies of those fraudulent Biden ballots in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Wisconsin.
  • Massive Voter Fraud In Wisconsin?”

    There were 3,684,726 registered voters in Wisconsin going into Election day. The total votes recorded in Wisconsin were 3,240,549. That would give Wisconsin a turnout of 88%. [UPDATE: The current vote total is 3,297,420, which would yield a turnout of over 89%. However, Wisconsin permits same-day registration, so the number of such registrations would bring that percentage down somewhat.] According to Ballotpedia, no American state in the period 2002-2018 has ever achieved a turnout rate of 80% or higher. [UPDATE: These are turnout numbers expressed as percentage of eligible voters, not registered voters, so the percentages are not directly comparable.] For purposes of comparison, in 2016 Wisconsin had a 67 percent turnout rate. [UPDATE: Wisconsin tabulates turnout as a percentage of the estimated voting-age population, so these numbers would be lower than the percentages of registered voters.] If you are credulous, you can believe that 21% more Wisconsinites voted this year, compared with the red-hot election of four years ago, and 248,000 more Wisconsinites turned out to vote for the charismatic Joe Biden this year than voted for Hillary Clinton four years ago. I think those numbers are almost certainly false, the result of ballot manipulation.

  • Michigan Election Fraud: Evidence of Wolverine State Chicanery During America’s 2020 Presidential Election.”

    On Election Night when America went to bed, President Trump had a commanding lead in virtually every swing state, as well as Virginia, which no one expected him to win.

    However, when America woke up the next day, we found that he’d lost these leads, largely on the basis of mail-in ballots found in the middle of the night and out from under the watchful eye of legal election monitors.

    What’s more, these massive caches of votes – almost all of which were for former Vice President Biden – came via large dumps primarily from the five aforementioned cities in states predominantly run by Democratic governors.

    When one looks at the statistical likelihood of the reported turnout, the numbers are so improbable they’re more at home in a one-party state like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or North Korea.

    What’s more, Biden’s victory does not square with the results of the Republican Party nationally: Republicans won 28 of 29 competitive House seats and Democrats were unable to flip a single state legislature. Joe Biden secured a scant three of the so-called “Bellwether Districts” that almost always choose the winner, one of which was in Delaware. Judicial Watch found 353 counties in 29 different states who had higher than 100 percent turnout.

    Anecdotally, swing states tend to follow Florida in terms of swinging left or right. This is particularly true in Michigan, which has voted in lockstep with Florida since 1968. Nearly three dozen states had counting machines connected to the Internet during the election, which is inherently insecure. Joe Biden’s lead among mail-in ballots was massive in two states — Michigan and Pennsylvania — while it was in the single digits in most states.

    Snip.

    Michigan might take the dubious honor of having the most corrupt elections in America in 2020. As of November 9, the FBI has opened up two investigations into voter fraud in the state. Affidavits have been filed alleging a scheme to backdate mail-in ballots. It is the land of massive vote dumps that go 100 percent for Joe Biden (which the controlled media has attempted to retcon as a “glitch” or “clerical error”), of thousands of dead people voting, of United States Postal Service officials coercing postal employees into backdating the postmark on ballots. And, of course, remember that this is the state that was shut down by executive fiat by Gretchen Whitmer, who eventually had her executive overreach invalidated by the state Supreme Court.

    A single computer “glitch” awarded 6,000 votes to Biden and the Democrats that were supposed to go to President Trump and other Republican candidates. With 47 Michigan counties using this software, similar glitches might yield a discrepancy of hundreds of thousands of ballots — or even more. Perhaps this “glitch” was one of the more innocuous ones. Another glitch returned a Republican incumbent to office after he “lost” to his Democratic challenger.

    We use “glitch” in quotes because these types of things seem to be a running pattern in the state and appear to always benefit the Democrat candidate. One other, and far more important, example of this was the “glitch” that awarded 138,000-plus votes to Joe Biden. It was one of these monolithic vote dumps we keep talking about.

    Over 138,000 votes tabulated and not a single one of them went for the President (or, for that matter, Jo Jorgensen or Howie Hawkins or Kanye West), a statistical impossibility. It was later corrected when hordes of Internet denizens found the vote dump and wondered how it was possible, even under the basic laws of statistics.

    This is hardly the only example of “mistakes” benefitting Biden or suspicious reported totals in the State of Michigan. Take, for example, Antrim County, where President Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 30 points in 2016 but had now swung back to Biden by 29 points. County officials vowed to investigate what they called “skewed” results.

    Even prior to the 2020 election back in October, city officials in Muskegon found that there were registration irregularities.

    A suit has been filed in the state of Michigan based on a sworn affidavit from a Michigan poll worker — not an observer. Among other things, this suit alleges that poll workers processed ballots with missing signatures, coached voters on who to vote for (Joe Biden), and were instructed to backdate ballots.

    How deep is the rabbit hole of “computer error” in Michigan? Sidney Powell, counsel for one General Michael Flynn, appeared on Lou Dobbs’ Fox Business News program and explained that she believes that programs like HAMMER or SCORECARD were used to change as much as 3 percent of the result. While this is merely speculation at this point, it is worth noting that Steve Bannon also floated this possibility on his show, War Room.

  • “Administrative policies in Wisconsin election put tens of thousands of votes in question. From allowing clerks to fix spoiled ballots to permitting voters to escape ID rules, Wisconsin election officials have taken actions that were not authorized by legislature.”

    Records reviewed by Just the News show that an executive branch agency called the Wisconsin Elections Commission:

    1. permits local county election clerks to cure spoiled ballots by filling in missing addresses for witnesses even though state law invalidates any ballot without a witness address.
    2. exempted as many as 200,000 citizens from voter ID rules in 2020 by allowing them to claim the COVID-19 pandemic caused them to be “indefinitely confined.”
    3. failed this year to purge 130,000 names from outdated voter rolls as required by law.

    (Hat tip: John Solomon.)

  • “Great Lakes Justice Center Files Election Crimes Lawsuit.”

    The Great Lakes Justice Law Center is filing a new election crimes lawsuit in Wayne County Circuit Court. The Lansing area law firm is representing two Detroit area residents in the action. The suit charges Wayne County elections officials knowingly allowed and supported illegal activities surrounding the Tuesday general election. The suit in Wayne County Circuit Court is asking for an entirely new election to be staged for the county.

    Lead attorney David Kallman says numerous witnesses are filing swarm affidavits under oath supporting the claims in the lawsuit. The suit spells out a number of alleged election crimes. Many of them surround the use of absentee or mail-in ballots.
    They include:

    -Validating ballots the name showing on the ballot did not appear in the official voter database.
    -Election workers were ordered to not verify voters’ signatures on absentee ballots, to backdate absentee ballots, and to process invalid ballots.
    -The suit claims election workers processed ballots that appeared after the election deadline and falsely reported those ballots had been received prior to the election evening deadline.
    -And the suit claims many of the invalid ballots won’t be hard to pinpoint, saying election workers in Wayne County altered already illegal ballots by inserting a birthdate of 1/1/1900.

    Attorney Kallman says the lawsuit asks the Circuit court to immediately void the uncertified election results in Wayne County and order a new and fully monitored election at the earliest possible date. “This type of widespread fraud in the counting and processing of voter ballots cannot be allowed to stand. Michigan citizens are entitled to know that their elections are conducted in a fair and legal manner and that every legal vote is properly counted. Such rampant fraud cannot be undone. We ask the Court to enjoin the certification of this fraudulent election, void the election, and order a new vote in Wayne County.”

    

  • Sharyl Attkisson has more details on the lawsuit:

    Defendants systematically processed and counted ballots from voters whose name failed to appear in either the Qualified Voter File (QVF) or in the supplemental sheets. When a voter’s name could not be found, the election worker assigned the ballot to a random name already in the QVF to a person who had not voted. Defendants instructed election workers to not verify signatures on absentee ballots, to backdate absentee ballots, and to process such ballots regardless of their validity. After election officials announced the last absentee ballots had been received, another batch of unsecured and unsealed ballots, without envelopes, arrived in trays at the TCF Center. There were tens of thousands of these absentee ballots, and apparently every ballot was counted and attributed only to Democratic candidates. Defendants instructed election workers to process ballots that appeared after the election deadline and to falsely report that those ballots had been received prior to November 3, 2020 deadline.

    Defendants systematically used false information to process ballots, such as using incorrect or false birthdays. Many times, the election workers inserted new names into the QVF after the election and recorded these new voters as having a birthdate of 1/1/1900.

    On a daily basis leading up to the election, City of Detroit election workers and employees coached voters to vote for Joe Biden and the Democrat party. These workers and employees encouraged voters to do a straight Democrat ballot. These election workers and employees went over to the voting booths with voters in order to watch them vote and coach them for whom to vote.

    Unsecured ballots arrived at the TCF Center loading garage, not in sealed ballot boxes, without any chain of custody, and without envelopes.

    Defendant election officials and workers refused to record challenges to their processes and removed challengers from the site if they politely voiced a challenge. After poll challengers started discovering the fraud taking place at the TCF Center, Defendant election officials and workers locked credentialed challengers out of the counting room so they could not observe the process, during which time tens of thousands of ballots were processed.

    Defendant election officials and workers allowed ballots to be duplicated by hand without allowing poll challengers to check if the duplication was accurate. In fact, election officials and workers repeatedly obstructed poll challengers from observing. Defendants permitted thousands of ballots to be filled out by hand and duplicated on site without oversight from poll challengers.

  • Unfortunately, Wayne County circuit judge Timothy Kenny refused to issue an injunction. Great Lakes Justice Center is appealing.
  • President Trump’s plans to defeat the cheats:

    Democrats are stealing the election in Michigan and Pennsylvania. This bothered the heck out of many people because it seems as if nothing can be done to stop them. In Michigan, people born before the Civil War voted. In Philadelphia, Democrats ignored a court order to let Republicans observe the voting. Those are just two of the many irregularities.

    Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, told NBC his state’s Supreme Court “went rogue and decided to violate the U.S. Constitution, ignore Pennsylvania law, and just rewrite the law themselves.

    “In Pennsylvania, unfortunately, it’s been a little bit complicated by a Pennsylvania Supreme Court that went rogue and decided to violate the U.S. constitution, ignore Pennsylvania law, and just rewrite the law themselves.

    “They have no authority to do that. And they extended the period of time over which ballots can arrive beyond the deadline. That’s outrageous, frankly.”

    Some people are banking on state legislatures overturning election. Perhaps they can.

    Forget recounts. The same people who counted the votes the first time will count them again.

    Biden declared victory on Saturday night.

    Big mistake.

    Democrats took the bait. Now President Trump can go to the Supreme Court and have the elections in Michigan and Pennsylvania declared invalid. Without those Electoral College votes, Biden fails to reach 270 and the election gets thrown into the House.

    Other states also may be invalidated. The Supreme Court will decide, and I believe President Trump has 5 votes and Chief Justice John McCain Roberts has only 4.

    Ignoring a federal judge’s order is never a good idea when you are stealing an election.

  • Georgia:

    

  • “Why Does Biden Have So Many More Votes Than Democrat Senators In Swing States?”

    In Michigan, for example, there was a difference of just 7,131 votes between Trump and GOP candidate John James, yet the difference between Joe Biden and Democratic candidate Gary Peters was a staggering 69,093.

    In Georgia, there was an 818 vote difference between Trump and the GOP Senator, vs. a 95,000 difference between Biden and the Democratic candidate for Senator.

  • Trump lawyer Sydney Powell says thy’re getting ready to overturn the results in several states. Whether that’s true or lawyerspeak framing I leave up to you to decide.
  • MIT’s Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai conducts an in-depth statistical analysis of election anomalies and

    I haven’t watched all of it yet. Dr. Ayyadurai says that the Secretary of State of Massachusetts got Twitter to kick him off the platform for 21 days until he was able to get a judge to issue an injunction over election fraud allegations.

  • A thread about Dominion and Smartmatic:

  • Haven’t analyzed this statement to see if it’s true, but it wouldn’t shock me:

  • “Woman Who Voted For Trump In Texas Shocked To Find She Also ‘Voted’ Via Mail-In-Ballot In California.”
  • “5 Historical Trends That Show It’s Utterly Shocking If Trump Lost In 2020.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Local Man Wouldn’t Have Believed There Was Election Fraud Except Media, Big Tech Keep Insisting That There Wasn’t“:

    Yeah, I think Trump lost fair and square,” he said last Wednesday. “He just got beat by the Biden campaign — that’s all there is to it.”

    But then something happened that changed his mind: Facebook, Twitter, Google, Fox News, CNN, and more giant corporations keep screaming at him via notifications, messages, and broadcasts that there was no election fraud. Now, he’s starting to think maybe there is something fishy going on.

    “You know what, screw it,” he said as another notification popped up on his Facebook feed telling him how safe and secure the elections are. “I’m all-in on the conspiracy theories. If the shadiest, slimiest people in the world really, really want me to believe the election wasn’t stolen, then I’m going full-on Alex Jones, baby. Woooo!!!”

  • Truth:

  • “Pennsylvania Invites World-Renowned Election Auditor Hilaaniti Clintraja To Count The Votes.”
  • I’m sure there’s lots of election fraud new I missed (there are only so many hours in the day), so feel free to share it in the comments.

    BidenWatch for November 2, 2020

    Monday, November 2nd, 2020

    Welcome to the very last BidenWatch before tomorrow’s election!

    Before BidenWatch was the Clown Car Update, so I’ve been doing this for almost two years. I’m really ready for a vacation…

  • Here’s links to stories about all the things pulled from Hunter Biden’s hard drive.
  • “Joe Biden’s Texts to Hunter Show Ex-VP Had “No Hesitancy” in Helping Son Get $1M From Chinese Communist-Linked Business Partner.”
  • Here’s one with him bitching about reimbursement expenses for Chinese partner CEFC.
  • Has ABC broke the embargo on the Hunter Biden corruption story?

  • “Feds Obtained FISA Warrant Against Hunter Biden’s Chinese Business Associate“:

    Federal investigators obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant against one of Hunter Biden’s Chinese business associates, suggesting that the executive was suspected of acting as a covert agent of a foreign government.

    Prosecutors revealed the existence of at least one FISA warrant against Chi Ping Patrick Ho, known as Patrick Ho, in a Feb. 8, 2018 court filing obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

    Ho was charged on Dec. 18, 2017 with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and money laundering related to CEFC China Energy contracts in Uganda and Chad. Ho had been an executive at the multi-billion dollar Chinese energy company prior to his arrest.

    Hunter Biden was part of a business consortium that sought a partnership with CEFC in May 2017. A Senate report released last month said that an affiliate of CEFC wired $5 million to Biden’s law firm from August 2017 through August 2018.

    In addition to his partnership with CEFC, Hunter Biden also represented Ho during his legal battle.

    According to a report from The New Yorker last year, CEFC’s chairman, Ye Jianming, raised concerns with Biden in summer 2017 about a possible investigation into Ho.

  • “Hunter Biden’s business group shopped Joe Biden’s influence in Colombia in an investment pitch to Chinese energy firm.” Who had Colombia on their Hunter Biden Corruption Index Bingo card?
  • More on that pitch:

    In 2017, Hunter Biden and a group of business partners seeking a $10 million investment deal with a Chinese energy firm touted Joe Biden’s friendly relations with Colombia’s president in their sales proposal, which suggested a series of oil investments in the South American country, according to documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

    Hunter Biden and four other businessmen, including his uncle James Biden, highlighted the former vice president’s positive relationship with Juan Manuel Santos in a May 15, 2017 investment outline for CEFC China Energy, a Chinese energy conglomerate.

    The Biden consortium, which would be called SinoHawk, sought a $10 million seed investment from CEFC China Energy, with a goal of eventually securing billions of dollars in investments in the U.S. and around the world.

    The report is part of a trove of records held by Tony Bobulinski, a California-based businessman who was part of the consortium with Hunter Biden, James Biden, and two other partners.

    (Hat tip: Tom Fitton.)

  • “Joe Biden: Trashing Fossil Fuel in the US While His Family Seeks to Make Money From It in Ukraine and China“:

    Undisputed is the fact that Hunter and other members of the Biden family have been involved in numerous complex, and sometimes controversial, multi-national, multi-million dollar deals involving Ukraine, Russia, China, Luxembourg, and the UK. Numerous observers have stated they believe the Bidens’ main qualification to conduct such business is simply that they are connected to a powerful political figure who has influence over policies and practices that can impact the businesses: Joe Biden.

    Summary of crooked dealings snipped.

    Still, there’s one nagging point that I haven’t seen considered. It’s the nature of the Biden family business ventures juxtaposed against Joe Biden’s position on oil and fossil fuels.

    Biden has repeatedly taken strong positions against fossil fuels— oil, coal and natural gas. He has made it clear he wants to “transition” away from them in the U.S. But as he’s advanced this position, his family members have been making money on deals that expand fossil fuel companies and ventures in foreign countries.

    For example, While Hunter Biden was getting himself a job on the board of Ukraine’s largest energy company, Burisma; Vice President Joe Biden was coincidentally put in charge of Ukraine policy. The same day the White House announced the vice president would handle Ukraine policy and make a visit there the following week, Hunter allegedly wrote to a business partner, “This could be the break we have been waiting for.” They inked a highly-compensated gig with Burisma in Ukraine.

    During Joe Biden’s first visit to the country in his new position just days later, he spoke of how Ukraine could make the right decisions and become “energy independent”— less reliant on other countries and more secure from a national security standpoint. Energy independence in this context implied good things for Ukrainian fossil fuel companies like Burisma to which Hunter was hitched. There was no bigger oil and gas company in Ukraine than Burisma.

    The point is, while Joe Biden has been pushing to end US the oil industry, his family has been cutting billion dollars in deals, profiting off of the oil industry in competing countries such as Ukraine and China. In fact, eliminating fossil fuel in the US while supporting it in other nations could be seen as putting America at a competitive and national security disadvantage.

  • How badly Biden stepped in it at the debate:

    3. Biden, on the other hand, said a bunch of dumb things. He repeated a plagiarized phrase about there being no blue states or red states, only United States—and then went on to urinate on red states anyway. He admitted under his presidency, a long, dark winter was ahead. His best zinger of the night—linking Trump to the Proud Boys (which we already learned was Iranian disinformation from the start)—was utterly muffed when he called them the Poor Boys. This provoked laughter as many Americans googled to figure out what sandwiches had to do with Trump. We could go on an on, but there were a number of stumbles by Biden that showed why Obama never gave him much to do.

    4. Biden said nothing good. Yeah, he had a pretty good riff on a bonehead question about Black Americans being pulled over, but Trump jujitsued that by twisting the question from sounding like “why are Blacks so often mistaken to be criminals” to “here’s what Black Americans have achieved over the last four years.” Everything else was either rehearsed or repeated talking points and a lot of bluster and blather that, at best, sounded like Trump’s vain boasting. And from what we’re reading today, many voters were put off by his blatant fear mongering about everyone dying from COVID.

    So you might be mistaken into thinking that this was the end of it. And for Trump, it pretty much was. He was wrapping up, for the most part, when the moderator (who wasn’t bad, really—she asked a lot uncomfortable questions of both candidates) asked Trump why so many Black Americans were suffering living near oil fields. Instead of taking the bait, Trump said that these Americans were living there because they were working there, under his economy. A nice answer, and Trump knew it. He pretty much started putting his coat on and turning off the lights when Biden was asked to respond.

    And did Biden respond. He announced that he would seek to end the oil industry. Trump wheeled around and asked him to repeat that. Biden did, and announced he would—as president—end America’s use of fossil fuels. Trump was handed gold, and he made sure Americans recognized this as big news, especially folks living in Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Oklahoma.

    Biden had a definite look of panic on his face as Trump named those states. Even he realized he just gave Trump 83 electoral votes, mumbling something about “on public lands” and “subsidies,” but Trump drowned out his babbling by reminding voters in those states what Biden just announced. There would be no walking that back, even with the media’s certain (and ultimately proven) covering for him on Friday. It was said, and at this point, if polls in other states stay where they are, those 83 votes will put Trump over.

    Bear in mind, this doesn’t affect just four states. Shutting down oil and fossil fuels in this country will put nearly one million Americans out of their current jobs, in the form of drilling, mining, trucking, piping, distribution, distillation, manufacture, plasticization, and more. The Depression here will crush world markets that depend on us. Did Biden mean for all this? Probably not, but he reassured America that Biden, after 47 years in government, has literally no understanding of how the economy works.

    (Hat tip: Borepatch.)

  • Want to view Joe Biden’s entire Pennsylvania speech? Me neither, but here it is. Even includes time markers for the bloopers. But it’s weird to hear a guy both yelling and suffering from a case of mush-mouth at the same time.
  • If Biden doesn’t win Pennsylvania, then he becomes an underdog.
  • Speaking of which: “Trump Takes The Lead In Pennsylvania; +3 Per New Poll.” As usual, take all polls with a grain of salt.
  • Speaking of polls and grains of salt, pollsters learned nothing from 2016:

    Early voting shows Republicans are waiting in line to vote. The pollsters say a far higher percentage of Republicans support President Trump than in 2016. If this is true then how can he be behind by 17 points in Wisconsin as ABC claimed its poll said?

    Republican registrations are up.

    People didn’t register in 2020 to vote against President Trump.

    Thomson was right when he wrote, “In 2020, we have the most stable race in decades.”

    Everyone decided months ago whether they will vote for President Trump. This election is a referendum on him, plain and simple.

    The election is about enthusiasm. The election is about getting your people to vote. President Trump has held huge rallies night after night for weeks.

    Biden draws flies to his rare rallies. But they are socially distanced flies. His rallies are short made-for-TV events designed to let TV outlets pretend to be fair. They show the best of his short presentation, then show the worst moment in an hourlong speech by President Trump.

    The Republican Party has an army of 2 million volunteers to get out the vote.

    Democrats have a phone bank.

    The pollsters should have adjusted to the new reality.

    Whether a person wants President Trump or Biden is nice to know.

    But what counts are the actual votes. A 10-point gap in enthusiasm trumps a 7-point lead in the polls. When the enthusiasm gap became obvious this summer, pollsters should have adjusted. They didn’t.

    And really they learned nothing from 2016. They view it as an anomaly, and cling to the false notion that they got the national vote right.

    (Hat tip: Borepatch.)

  • Still more poll warning signs for Biden: 41% in Iowa:

    I’ve been covering American politics for a long time and I can’t remember a number that so dramatically altered the political community’s perception of a presidential campaign as that number did, last night, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

    The source of the number was The Iowa Poll, which has been the gold standard for statewide polling in the United States for decades. The number itself was the percentage of likely voters in Iowa supporting Joe Biden’s candidacy for president.

    President Trump’s number was 48%, which put him ahead in the “horse race” by 7 percentage points. There was nothing really remarkable about that, in context. Mr. Trump won the state in 2016 by (roughly) nine percentage points.

    What was remarkable was Biden’s 41%. What made it doubly disconcerting was the way The Des Moines Register (accurately) described the poll results:

    “Republican President Donald Trump has taken over the lead in Iowa as Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden has faded…”

    Faded! Could there be a more terrible word in the last week of a presidential campaign? Off the record, Democratic elected officials and campaign operatives and financial backers have been saying throughout the campaign that their biggest fear regarding the eventual outcome was Biden himself. They saw him as an especially weak candidate and worried that he wasn’t “a closer;” even if he was ahead going into the last week, victory could slip from his grasp.

    Up until last night, Democratic elected officials and political operatives saw the presidential race standing at somewhere between a narrow Biden win and a “blue wave.” In their “blue wave” scenario, the Democrats would win both the presidency and a Senate majority and the Trump-McConnell nightmare would finally come to an end.

    That was the other piece of bad news in last night’s Iowa Poll release. It showed that Republican Sen. Joni Ernst had pulled ahead of her Democratic challenger, Theresa Greenfield. Her lead (46%-to-42%) was within the margin of error, but it wasn’t Ms. Ernst’s lead that Democrats were focused on. It was the “faded” support for Ms. Greenfield, which almost exactly tracked the “faded” support for Joe Biden.

    For Democrats, last night’s Iowa Poll was the worst possible news at the worst possible moment. It foretold close results in Wisconsin and Minnesota. It undermined the Biden campaign’s momentum and morale. And it fracked Democrats’ self-confidence.

    (Hat tip: Christina Hoff Summers.)

  • “Biden Aides See Warning Signs in Black, Latino Turnout So Far.”

    Senior officials on Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign are increasingly worried about insufficient Black and Latino voter turnout in key states like Florida and Pennsylvania with only four days until the election, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Despite record early-vote turnout around the country, there are warning signs for Biden. In Arizona, two-thirds of Latino registered voters have not yet cast a ballot. In Florida, half of Latino and Black registered voters have not yet voted but more than half of White voters have cast ballots, according to data from Catalist, a Democratic data firm. In Pennsylvania, nearly 75% of registered Black voters have not yet voted, the data shows.

    The firm’s analysis of early vote numbers also show a surge of non-college educated White voters, who largely back President Donald Trump, compared to voters of color, who overwhelmingly support Biden.

    The situation is particularly stark in Florida where Republicans currently have a 9.4% turnout advantage in Miami-Dade County, a place where analysts say Biden will need a significant margin of victory to carry the state.

  • Jim Geraghty on which states to watch and why. Pennsylvania (especially Bucks County), Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina.
  • Twitter, Facebook both admit that there’s no evidence the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation.
  • Our media: “We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably aren’t.”
  • Biden looked normal in the debates. Why does he look senile otherwise?

    Heaven knows Biden has a long history of making gaffes. And maybe some of his bungling can be attributed to him just being a natural-born blooper machine. But all of it? Unlikely. The volume of slip-ups is too much.

    Just as disturbing as the constant misstatements are his appearances in public and on video outside of the debates. He looks to be in a hard decline. His facial expressions are dull and empty. He seems to drift, get lost in his thoughts. Or simply has no thoughts and blanks out. He forgets where he is. Staffers feed him words when he can’t come up with them.

  • Don’t believe the polls: Trump is winning. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Stephen Green wargames the electoral college again. “Trump has more and wider paths to victory than Biden does.”
  • Now we know why Joe got angry.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • People who have raised at least $100,000 for the Biden campaign. Notable names (excluding Democratic senators, reps and governors) include Lisa Blue Baron, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, megalawyer Christopher Boies, Pete Buttigieg, Vanessa Getty, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, and investment guru Andrew Tobias.
  • Instapundit on why a Biden victory wouldn’t return the country to “normal”—or even make Donald Trump go away:

    Trump was big on the national stage long before he was president. Why would he go away after the election is over? He’ll still have tens of millions of (probably angry) followers, deep pockets and a huge megaphone.

    There has already been some talk of Trump starting his own television network to rival Fox News, and/or his own social media platform — the latter made more plausible by the heavy censorious hands of those running Twitter and Facebook — and I suspect that Trump would regard a 2020 loss as a setback, not a defeat. Grover Cleveland came back to win a second term after losing the White House, Trump might reason. Why not me? He’ll probably hold campaign-style rallies around the country starting right after the election.

    And the deep toxicity of national politics, which grew worse after the 2016 election but which has been brewing at least since the turn of the millennium, is not going to go away. In fact, a lot of what we’re hearing from Biden supporters suggests that it will get worse under a Biden administration.

    Democrats are already calling for a Biden administration to pack the Supreme Court by adding new justices until Democrats have a majority, to pack the Senate by admitting Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., as states, and even to establish a “truth and reconciliation commission” in which Republicans will be dragged in front of the public and forced to confess the error of their ways. And, of course, abolishing the Electoral College. None of that is normal.

  • Man attends Trump rally, is shocked to find happy people:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Kylee Zempel tears apart John Piper’s bad Biden-backing theology:

    It is only “baffling” if one first reduces conservatives to pro-life freedom-lovers and then decides human life and freedom are dispensable. Freedom and life, however, are not abstract, and they are not simply a means to accomplish earthly goals or gain temporal wealth. Freedom and life are part of our Imago Dei. They are gifts from God that we are to steward, and we use them in myriad ways to advance God’s kingdom.

    So is it “baffling” that a Christian would think God-given sex distinctions are important? Is it baffling that a believer would want to protect his family against the racially charged attacks of a violent mob? Is it baffling that a Christian would desire that his children learn truth, rather than government-sanctioned doctrine — not walking in the counsel of the ungodly? It is baffling that a Christian would desire for men to keep the hard-earned fruits of their labor, giving charitably to the poor and needy? Is it baffling that a believer would value the biblical family structure over the state? Of course, it’s not.

    Furthermore, if Piper believes this immoral gangrene that spreads throughout our country is a result of one unregenerate man instead of the result of the wickedness in the hearts of every sinful citizen, he is a fool.

    (Hat tip: Mark Tapscott at Instapundit.)

  • Maybe an extended election won’t blow up the country. (Hat tip: Mark Tapscott at Instapundit.)
  • Trump can still win even if the polls are right.

    (Hat tip: Matt Mackowiak.)

  • Biden goes full tranny pander, demanding religions bow to to Democratic Party’s transgender mandates. “Religion should not be used as a license to discriminate.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Biden tells the blatant lie that Trump wants to send Cuban-Americans back to Cuba.
  • “The Kamala Harris Nervous Laugh is What Gamblers Call a ‘Tell’:

    Kamala Harris has a habit of launching into peals of laughter when she is asked questions, even serious ones. It’s likely a nervous tic, and it’s possible that she doesn’t even realize that she does it.

    In the world of gambling, this is called a tell. An unconscious and often uncontrollable behavior that serves as a clue to others that a player is bluffing or lying.

    Harris was interviewed on 60 Minutes this weekend, and when she was asked if her view on certain issues was progressive or socialist, she launched into a laugh.

  • Can Trump pull off an upset in Minnesota?

    In 2016, Trump lost Minnesota by about 45,000 votes. This year, he is clearly making an attempt to close the gap there and pull off a win that would sting Democrats for years to come.

    The left didn’t do itself any favors by burning down Minneapolis this summer, and Trump was also helped by gaining the endorsements of multiple mayors in the state’s ‘Iron Range’ region

    Snip.

    Trump’s campaign has booked more than $1.2 million in TV advertising in Minnesota in the final week of the campaign—more than it spent there in the preceding three weeks combined, according to Advertising Analytics, which tracks campaigns’ ad spending. Vice President Mike Pence held a rally in northern Minnesota on Monday, the latest in a series of visits to the state by Trump and top surrogates. Overall, the Trump campaign has deployed 60 staffers in Minnesota, a level of Republican intensity surpassing that of any race in memory, both parties say.

  • Speaking of which, I think I missed this earlier: “Trump Lands Major Endorsements From Democrat Mayors in Minnesota.”

    “Like many in our region, we have voted for Democrats over many decades. We have watched as our constituents’ jobs left not only the Iron Range, but our country. By putting tariffs on our products and supporting bad trade deals, politicians like Joe Biden did nothing to help the working class. We lost thousands of jobs, and generations of young people have left the Iron Range in order to provide for their families with good-paying jobs elsewhere. Today, we don’t recognize the Democratic Party. It has been moved so far to the left it can no longer claim to be advocates of the working class. The hard-working Minnesotans that built their lives and supported their families here on the Range have been abandoned by radical Democrats. We didn’t choose to leave the Democratic Party, the party left us,” the letter, signed by Virginia Mayor Larry Cuffe, Chisholm Mayor John Champa, Ely Mayor Chuck Novak, Two Harbors Mayor Chris Swanson, Eveleth Mayor Robert Vlaisavljevich and Babbitt Mayor Andrea Zupancich, states.

    

  • Facebook Removes Black Man’s Anti-Biden Ad. Sorry, comrade, you’re not allowed to express opinions contrary to the wishes of the Party… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • More gun-grabbing stupidity:

  • Slow Joe is getting worse:

  • Yep:

  • Boy, Biden and Harris both hate tax cuts:

  • “Ex-husband of Joe Biden’s wife claim two had an affair that split marriage.” He claims both worked on Joe Biden’s campaign in 1972. Really, would it shock anyone to find yet another chapter of Joe Biden’s autobiography was fiction?
  • Black women aren’t sold on Kamala Harris:

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Biden supporters can’t even outnumber Trump supporters within 10 feet of their own bus:

  • “Chelsea Handler Patrols Polling Places To Make Sure No Black People Are Voting For Trump.”
  • Democrats Hand Out Extra Ballots To Trick-Or-Treaters.”
  • “Biden Calls A Lid Until Election Day.”
  • Heh:

  • Like BidenWatch? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    LinkSwarm for January 10, 2020

    Friday, January 10th, 2020

    Iran news, analysis, etc. dominates today’s LinkSwarm!

  • “The targeting of Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force and arguably the second most powerful man in Iran after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is a major blow to the Islamic Republic of Iran. His death will likely result in a devastating chain of suspicion and insecurity in Iran’s nodes of power.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “Reports Ukrainian Airliner Shot Down By Iranian Missile.” A Russian-made one, at that. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Trump’s Iran Policy Isn’t the Problem; Barack Obama’s Was“:

    This week, President Donald Trump launched a global round of teeth gnashing when he ordered the killing of the greatest terrorist leader in the modern Middle East, Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani. Soleimani was unquestionably responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in Iraq and thousands of others throughout the Middle East — mostly Muslim. His global terror network ran from South America to Europe to Africa to Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Soleimani was an unparalleled organizer and a pitiless murderer. His death was richly earned.

    But for many in the media and on the domestic and international left, Trump’s action was precipitously “provocative.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Soleimani’s killing — which came directly after a Soleimani-approved terror assault on America’s embassy in Baghdad and amidst reported further plans for escalated terror against American targets — “disproportionate.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., suggested that Trump, not the Iranians, had “escalated” the situation. Former Vice President Joe Biden said that Trump had “just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox.”

    This reaction has been magnified by the media, many of whom have been speculating about the possibility of all-out war between the United States and Iran. Think pieces have been written about whether the United States will reactivate the draft (spoiler alert: No, we won’t). Musings have filled the newspapers about the supposed conflagration prompted not by Iranian evil but by Trumpian reactivity.

    All of this smacks less of legitimate concern about what comes next than it does of sheer panic that Trump has overturned a decade of American and European appeasement of the Iranian regime. Ben Rhodes, former President Obama’s deputy national security adviser, architect of the Iran deal and an overt liar who told the American public that Iran was on its way to moderation if only the United States would loosen economic restrictions on the terror state, has placed blame for volatility squarely before Trump. Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser during the Iran deal and another overt liar who told the American public that Islamic terror against our Benghazi embassy was rooted in anger over a YouTube video, soberly informed Americans that “Americans would be wise to brace for war.” Biden suggested that in throwing out the Iran deal, Trump had paved the way for war — and, oh, by the way, the Iran deal was “airtight.”

    This is a deliberate misreading of history designed to absolve the Obama administration of its Iran policy debacle. The administration pursued a policy of strengthening Iran economically — and did so while openly acknowledging that Iran would use that newly gained economic strength to pursue terrorism and ballistic missile testing. In speaking of the sanctions relief given to Iran, then-Secretary of State John Kerry explained in January 2016, “I think that some of it will end up in the hands of the IRGC or other entities, some of which are labeled terrorists.”

    Snip.

    Then Trump ordered the killing of Soleimani. Suddenly, we have been informed by dishonest Democrats and their media allies, Iran has gone rogue.

    Nonsense. Iran has been rogue for decades. The Iran deal was simply an attempt to whistle past the graveyard with the terror regime — to pay it off long enough so that President Barack Obama could declare the problem handled. This was, after all, the Obama strategy in Crimea and Syria: Declare a red line; run away from it; pretend that pusillanimous inaction is bravery and deterrence provocation.

  • Did Iran deliberately miss American troops? Seems possible.
  • “Israel Bombs Weapons Depot Run By Iranian Militia.”
  • Extensive statistics on defensive gun use. (Hat tip: Karl Rehn of KR Training.)
  • “Democrats Just Betrayed Working-Class Americans To Appease Environmentalists.” We just can’t have blue collar workers earning six figure incomes in the oil and gas industry, now can we?
  • Reporter Sharyl Attkisson files suit against Rod Rosenstein and four other Obama Administration Justice Department officials over the illegal hacking of her computer.

    Besides Rosenstein, the other defendants named in the complaint are Shawn Henry, Sean Wesley Bridges, Robert Clarke, and Ryan White.

    In 2010, then FBI Director Robert Mueller named Shawn Henry as the executive assistant director (EAD) of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch (CCRSB).

    Henry left the FBI in 2012 and now is president of CrowdStrike Services, the cybersecurity firm hired by Democratic National Committee to examine its computer network in 2016 after it had been hacked. Crowdstrike ultimately determined Russia had hacked the DNC emails.

    Shaun Wesley Bridges served as a Special Agent with the U.S. Secret Service for approximately six years, according to the complaint.

    Between 2012 and 2014, he was assigned to the Baltimore Silk Road Task Force, a multi-agency group investigating illegal activity on the Silk Road, a covert online marketplace for illicit goods, including drugs.

    In 2015 and 2017, Bridges was convicted of corruption related to his government work, and is now serving a prison sentence.

    Defendant Robert Clarke was also a member of the Silk Road Task Force and Ryan White worked as an undercover informant for the DOJ.

    White also worked as a contractor operating out of the Baltimore office under a group supervised by Rosenstein, according to the complaint.

    Lots of interesting information here, especially the Crowstrike connection. Funny how the same names just keep coming up again and again when it comes to Justice Department abuse of power under Obama… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Hey look, it’s another Democratic Party dark money group! “Mind the Gap, the secretive group quietly reshaping big-money politics in Silicon Valley, is aiming to spend as much as $140 million to boost Democrats in the 2020 election.”
  • Waiting for President Donald Trump in Toledo:

    Longer lines than an Apple Store opening!

  • Oh come on!
  • No longer news: Mexicans kill four other Mexican. Why it should be news: In Kansas City.

    Some places in the United States have a long history of Latino settlement, with communities stretching back for generations, even centuries. One is not surprised by the large Mexican-American populations in California, Arizona or Texas, and we’re accustomed to Cubans in Miami, Puerto Ricans in New York, etc. However, on does not think of Kansas City this way, so when the headlines inform us that three guys named Villanueva-Morales, Alatorre and Caballero are charged with killing a combined total of seven people named Meza, Calderon, Anaya, Rodriguez-Gonzalez, Rodriguez and Rodriguez-Santilla in Wyandotte County, Kansas — well, what the heck is going on here? It appears, for example, that two gunmen can open fire in a Kansas City bar without risk that any of their bullets will hit someone who was actually born in America.

    As evidence that our immigration problem is absolutely out of control, this situation in Kansas City is rather conclusive, but notice that this criminal mayhem in Kansas is just “local news.” If some deranged “alt-right” white guy had shot four Mexicans in Kansas City, CNN would be providing around-the-clock updates, but because it’s Mexicans killing Mexicans, nobody at the networks seems to care.

  • Homeless adler murders man in south Austin.
  • “Harris County Releases Illegal Immigrant DWI Suspect Slated for Deportation to Honduras.” On all of $100 bond.
  • Feminists attack Alcoholics Anonymous. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Heh, indeed:

    And of course lefties on Twitter were triggered by it…

  • CNN is very upset that the Babylon Bee is honing in on its fake news business. “The Internet Is Only Big Enough For One Fake News Site.”
  • Ricky Gervais’ 2020 Golden Globes monologue. (Hat tip: Kurt Schlichter via Director Blue.)
  • Mike Resnick, RIP.
  • Leonardo DiCaprio helps save drowning man.
  • Bullitt Mustang goes up for auction today.
  • You have to be a certain age to appreciate this one:

  • Pretty cool.
  • Dog Twitter:

  • LinkSwarm for November 2, 2018

    Friday, November 2nd, 2018

    I already voted and the election is next week, so there is light at the end of the tunnel! And if political bloggers are already sick of this election season, just think how sick of it ordinary voters are. None of which will keep me from live-blogging/live-tweeting it election night…

  • October economic statistics: “250,000 Jobs Added, Wages Increased 3.1%.”
  • How Democrats’ Kavanaugh ambush destroyed their own momentum:

    Six weeks ago, Democrats were expecting a blue wave to rival the Republican victory of 2010, when the GOP picked up 63 House seats. Everything was in their favor. History—the party in power almost always loses seats. Money—Democrats continue to outraise Republicans by staggering amounts. The opposition—some 41 GOP House members retired, most from vulnerable districts where Donald Trump’s favorability is low. Democrats were even positioned to take over the Senate, despite defending 10 Trump-state seats.

    Democrats obliterated their own breaker in the space of two weeks with the ambush of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The left, its protesters and its media allies demonstrated some of the vilest political tactics ever seen in Washington, with no regard for who or what they damaged or destroyed along the way—Christine Blasey Ford, committee rules, civility, Justice Kavanaugh himself, the Constitution. An uncharacteristically disgusted Sen. Lindsey Graham railed: “Boy, y’all want power. God, I hope you never get it!”

    A lot of voters suddenly agreed with that sentiment. The enormous enthusiasm gap closed almost overnight as conservative voters rallied to #JobsNotMobs. Even liberal prognosticators today forecast that Republicans will keep the Senate and Democrats will manage only a narrow majority in the House, if that. It’s always possible the polls are off, or that there is a last-minute bombshell. But it remains the case that the ascendant progressive movement blew an easy victory for Democrats.

  • Antisemetic hate crimes in New York are on the rise, yet “during the past 22 months, not one person caught or identified as the aggressor in an anti-Semitic hate crime has been associated with a far right-wing group.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • More facts about that “refugee caravan“:

    Over 270 individuals along the caravan route have criminal histories, including known gang membership. Those include a number of violent criminals – examples include aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, armed robbery, sexual assault on a child, and assault on a female. Mexican officials have also publicly stated that criminal groups have infiltrated the caravan. We also continue to see individuals from over 20 countries in this flow from countries such as Somalia, India, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh.

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • Georgia’s Democratic Candidate For Governor Calls For Banning AR-15s.” (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
  • Are you ready for the Peak 2018 story? “Bomb Suspect Cesar Sayoc And Stormy Daniels Worked at the Same Strip Club.” I can only assume this is a viral marketing campaign for Florida Man: The TV Show.
  • Daniels, of course, not only had her lawsuit dismissed, but was ordered to pay President Trump’s legal fees. That may detour the Michael Avenatti for President juggernaut…
  • Giant Russian floating dry dock isn’t. It may or may not have damaged Amiral Kuznetsov, Russia’s only aircraft carrier (antiquated though it is) when it went down. Now the Russian Navy is in a world of hurt in the north because no other dry dock north of the Black Sea is capable of hosting either the Kuznetsov or many of Russia’s largest submarines. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • More reminders of just what sort of Administration Lightbringer McLegTingle ran:

  • President Trump slaps sanctions on Venezuela’s gold sector, denouncing the country as part of a “troika of tyranny” along with Cuba and Nicaragua. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Aww, no one wants to campaign with Bill Clinton anymore. “‘Inability to reckon with his sexual indiscretions’? Does the NYT use the phrase ‘sexual indiscretions’ when writing about other celebrities who’ve been accused of rape and sexual harassment?”
  • Workers walk out of Google in protest of their protecting sexual harassment among executives:

    Perhaps no company deserves to be destroyed by feminists, but if any company does, none deserves it more than Google. Having built the world’s most powerful search engine, the company then developed or purchased a series of other innovations — Gmail, YouTube, etc. After obtaining a hegemonic position in the online world, however, Google then inexplicably sold its corporate soul to “social justice” ideologues.

    The extent to which Google has been captured by left-wing totalitarians, and become an active agent of intellectual repression, became apparent last year after the company fired James Damore for writing an internal memo that criticized their “diversity” policies. Damore sued his former emoployer (“Google Lawsuit Exposes Stalinist Climate Protecting Anti-White, Anti-Male Bias,” Jan. 10) and Google was also subsequently sued by a former member of its “technology staffing management team” who said the company implemented illegal hiring quotas. Only female, black or Latino candidates were eligible for hiring at Google, the lawsuit by Arne Wilberg alleges, and recruiters were ordered to “purge entirely any applications by non-diverse employees.”

  • Texts from the Nevada Democratic Party: “F—K Trump. Stupid Republican retard. Trump is the anti-christ. Trump loves misery and hates Mexicans. Trump wants you to die. Trump wants to murder Mexicans.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • What the hell? “North Dakota Democrats Promote Message Telling Hunters They May Lose Their Licenses if They Vote.” (Hat tip: Greg Pollowitz in Twitter.)
  • “Trump declares his first national monument, honoring African-American troops.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • How The Guardian works: “Here are some slanted statistics and biased questions. Now let me know a good interview time so I can ask if you’ve stopped beating your wife yet.”
  • Whitey Bulger whacked.
  • In case it wasn’t clear from Black Mass, he was not a nice man.
  • In the UK, Huddersfield child gang rapists sentenced:

  • Roseanne without Roseanne=Roseanne without ratings.
  • Only one thing can save America: lots of yelling.
  • Game on.
  • LinkSwarm for June 15, 2018

    Friday, June 15th, 2018

    Everyone’s talking about the the Inspector General Report on the Hillary Clinton email probe, which I’ve not only not been able to read, I haven’t even properly skimmed the summaries yet. But I was already planning to do a Clinton Corruption Update next week, so I’ll try to grapple with it then.

  • President Donald Trump to Speaker Paul Ryan: No, I’m not signing your stupid illegal alien amnesty bill. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • 50 Media Mistakes in the Trump Era. Just 50? Here’s a taste: “June 4, 2017: NBC News reported in a Tweet that Russian President Vladimir Putin told TV host Megan Kelly that he had compromising information about Trump. Actually, Putin said the opposite: that he did not have compromising information on Trump.”
  • Samantha Bee: the funniest thing since feeding your arm into a wood chipper:

    Samantha Bee has never to my knowledge said anything that is funny. Her business is the sort of thing that would be of keen interest to those monkeys in the Duke study: the ritual raising and lowering of status — which, as Tyler Cowen and Arnold Kling and others have argued, is what politics is mostly about. The same holds true for media criticism, which is of course only another form of politics. Professor Cowen: “I have a simple hypothesis. No matter what the media tells you their job is, the feature of media that actually draws viewer interest is how media stories either raise or lower particular individuals in status. . . . The status ranking of individuals implied by a particular media source is never the same as yours, and often not even close. . . . Indeed that is why other people enjoy those media sources, because they take pleasure in your status, and the status of your allies, being lowered.”

    Samantha Bee does not sell humor or satire: She sells status adjustment. She got her start on The Daily Show, which of course is nothing more than an extended, tedious, witless exercise in concentrated status-lowering: hence all that chest-pounding excitement every time Jon Stewart destroyed! somebody or another, which is precisely the sort of thing that gets the ol’ chimp juices flowing.

    Calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless c***” on television is a win-win for Bee et al.: One possibility is that Ivanka Trump offers no response, in which case her status is lowered by her being obliged to endure outrageous insults by a relative nobody on TBS; the second possibility is that she responds, in which case her status is lowered by her being obliged to condescend to respond to the outrageous insults of a relative nobody on TBS. The proverb holds that the problem with wrestling a pig is that you both get dirty but only the pig enjoys it. Samantha Bee is that pig.

  • Nancy Pelosi is still dragging down Democrats. The gift that keeps giving!
  • How the great liberal freakout is dooming Democrats:

    Since Trump’s election victory in 2016, the left has lost their goddamn minds. The left has become a national freakout movement and they think that his election legitimizes their complete childish and vulgar meltdown on the national stage. On their side, there is no one telling them that they’ve gone too far- they will simply ramp up the violence all the way to the fall. There’s no one to stop their post-election temper tantrum.

    Let’s be honest, though. This didn’t happen overnight. The left has absolved itself from any cultural responsibility the moment they gave Bill Clinton a pass for raping people. And then used cultural outlets like The Daily Show to mock everyone who isn’t on their side and delegitimize civil discourse.

    Come the mid-term elections, the more crass and racist stunts that they pull (and get away with), the more people are going to drift into the right-of-center Trump camp. The Democrats were already demographically in trouble with 2018, but the further they push the cultural envelope with mean and childish antics (let alone actual political violence) they are going to get a cultural backlash that makes 1968 look like child’s play.

    And what really is bad news for the left is that they’re already at peak jerk levels. What the heck will they do for an encore leading up to November?

  • Why Democrats keep hearing racist “dog whistles” that aren’t there.

    If you had been making predictions based on these different movies, Movie 1, predicted that President Trump would not be popular with Israel, and he wouldn’t take the bold step of moving the American embassy to Jerusalem. But both of those outcomes are compatible with Movie 2.

    Movie 1 would have predicted there is no way President Trump would grant a posthumous pardon of African-American boxer Jack Johnson because it wouldn’t fit the racist dog whistle script. But Movie 2 is compatible with the pardon. Same with the pardon of Alice Johnson.

    Movie 1 would have predicted that President Trump would underplay the fact that black unemployment reached its best level in the history of America. That’s the sort of accomplishment that would make his racist supporters stop hearing the secret racist dog whistle. It doesn’t fit. But President Trump’s frequent highlighting of gains for African-American citizens fits Movie 2 perfectly.

    I realize no one reading this post will change movies because of it. My only point today is that mainstream Trump supporters are not knowingly supporting someone they believe to be a racist. It only looks that way to the folks trapped in Movie 1.

  • Eight members of Oxford child sex gang sentenced.

    Assad Hussain, 37, was handed a life sentence with a minimum term of 12 years for multiple counts of rape and indecent assault.

    Moinul Islam, 42, got 15 years and nine months for rape, indecent assault and supplying class B and class C drugs.

    Haji Khan, 38, got 10 years for conspiracy to rape. Raheem Ahmed, 41, got 12 years for indecent assault and false imprisonment.

    Kamran Khan, 36, got eight years for false imprisonment and indecent assault. Kameer Iqbal, 39, got 12 years for multiple rapes.

    Alladitta Yousaf, 48, got seven and half years for indecent assault. Khalid Hussain, 38, got 12 years for indecent assault and rape.

    Hmm. I wonder what their religious and/or ethnic background was? It’s an insoluble mystery…

  • Australian celebrity paedophile ring revealed.”

    Rozanna and Kate Lilley, the daughters of playwright and poet Dorothy Hewett, say they were forced into sex aged 15 by men including the late Bob Ellis and Martin Sharp, The Australian reports.

    Sharp, Australia’s foremost pop artist, designed record covers and posters for Bob Dylan, Donovan and Eric Clapton and wrote songs for Clapton’s band, Cream.

    Ellis was a political commentator, write and film maker who penned 22 television and screenplays.

    (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)

  • And speaking of statutory rape, here’s the inside story of the night Roman Polanski raped a child. Includes details of just how he set about deliberately seducing a girl he knew went to middle school.
  • Mueller’s indictments not only don’t indicate Russian collusion on part of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, they actually indicate the opposite, says notorious right-wing shills at…The Nation?
  • Liberal billionaire Tom Steyer breaks the law by hiring felons to gather signatures in Arizona.
  • Tanzania outlaws “unregistered” blogging. And of course they’re using “hate speech” as an excuse.
  • AT&T/Time Warner merger approved. Can’t think that this is a good thing, given how much of the local broadband market are government-enforced monopolies…
  • Alan Dershowitz:

    The director of the American Civil Liberties Union has now acknowledged what should have been obvious to everybody over the past several years: The ACLU is no longer a neutral defender of everyone’s civil liberties. It has morphed into a hyper-partisan, hard-left political advocacy group. The final nail in its coffin was the announcement that, for the first time in its history, the ACLU would become involved in partisan electoral politics, supporting candidates, referenda and other agenda-driven political goals.

  • Important safety tip: If you’re a popular band, never play Indonesia. Among the worst incidents: multiple cases of death, and Deep Purple’s manager being dropped down an elevator shaft. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • In Austin news, Interim Police Chief Manly is no longer interim. Dwight thinks it’s a good move.
  • In a shocking development, no one wants to pay $99 a ticket to watch high school basketball players. Reality 99, LaVar Ball 0.
  • Speaking of basketball games no one will be willing to pay $99 a ticket for, Ted Cruz will play Jimmy Kimmel a one-on-one basketball game in Houston Saturday, with the loser coughing up $5,000 to the winner’s non-political charity of choice.
  • Somebody had a really shitty day:

  • Punchy punches Dem chances:

  • Obama Surveillance Scandal Widens

    Tuesday, April 4th, 2017

    This seems to be the way the world works now:

    1. President Trump: Tweets something crazy.
    2. Democrats: Look at that! Trump’s crazy! And also SuperMegaHitler controlled by Putin!
    3. National Review writer: Trump must stop tweeting immediately.
    4. World: Hey look, that totally crazy thing Trump tweeted happens to be the truth! What are the odds?

    The latest example is that Obama National Security advisor Susan Rice ordered surveillance of President Trump’s transition team:

    White House lawyers last month learned that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

    The pattern of Rice’s requests was discovered in a National Security Council review of the government’s policy on “unmasking” the identities of individuals in the U.S. who are not targets of electronic eavesdropping, but whose communications are collected incidentally. Normally those names are redacted from summaries of monitored conversations and appear in reports as something like “U.S. Person One.”

    The National Security Council’s senior director for intelligence, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, was conducting the review, according to two U.S. officials who spoke with Bloomberg View on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. In February Cohen-Watnick discovered Rice’s multiple requests to unmask U.S. persons in intelligence reports that related to Trump transition activities. He brought this to the attention of the White House General Counsel’s office, who reviewed more of Rice’s requests and instructed him to end his own research into the unmasking policy.

    The intelligence reports were summaries of monitored conversations — primarily between foreign officials discussing the Trump transition, but also in some cases direct contact between members of the Trump team and monitored foreign officials. One U.S. official familiar with the reports said they contained valuable political information on the Trump transition such as whom the Trump team was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration.

    That’s from Eli Lake at Bloomberg, but the person who first broke the story was Mike Cernovich at Medium. He was able to break the story because folks working at Bloomberg and the New York Times revealed that both Lake and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times were sitting on the story to protect the Obama administration. “‘Real journalism’ is that Bloomberg had it and the New York Times had it but they wouldn’t run it because they don’t want to run any stories that would make Obama look bad or that will vindicate Trump. They only want to run stories that make Trump look bad so that’s why they sat on it.”

    It seems that Rice ordered preparation of detailed spreadsheets “of legal phone calls involving Donald Trump and his aides when he was running for president”:

    “What was produced by the intelligence community at the request of Ms. Rice were detailed spreadsheets of intercepted phone calls with unmasked Trump associates in perfectly legal conversations with individuals,” [former U.S. Attorney Joseph] diGenova told The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group Monday.

    “The overheard conversations involved no illegal activity by anybody of the Trump associates, or anyone they were speaking with,” diGenova said. “In short, the only apparent illegal activity was the unmasking of the people in the calls.”

    Other official sources with direct knowledge and who requested anonymity confirmed to TheDCNF diGenova’s description of surveillance reports Rice ordered one year before the 2016 presidential election.

    Also on Monday, Fox News and Bloomberg News, citing multiple sources reported that Rice had requested the intelligence information that was produced in a highly organized operation. Fox said the unmasked names of Trump aides were given to officials at the National Security Council (NSC), the Department of Defense, James Clapper, President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, and John Brennan, Obama’s CIA Director.

    Joining Rice in the alleged White House operations was her deputy Ben Rhodes, according to Fox.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit. Also Instapundit at Instapundit. “I’ll leave both up, because it’s that big a story.”)

    So the Obama Administration was using the National Security state to illegally gather information on Trump and his associated a year before the election. A single break-in by Nixon’s bumbling plumbers are pathetically small potatoes by comparison.

    What are the odds that Rice just out of the blue decided to start gathering surveillance information on Trump and his associates rather than being told to by Obama?

    None of this should come as any surprise, since the Obama Administration has been caught conducting illegal domestic surveillance, including targeting Fox News reporter James Rosen, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Associated Press, to say nothing of their hacking Sharyl Attkisson’s computer.

    And add the previously revealed Trump wiretapping as the cherry on top of the “using the national security apparatus to surveil domestic political enemies” cake.

    Given all this, why on earth would President Trump stop tweeting? His hit rate seems higher than the Oracle at Delphi…

    Bombshells Continue to Explode Discredited Rolling Stone UVA Rape Story

    Friday, December 12th, 2014

    Now ABC has joined the Washington Post in debunking still more aspects of the Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s Rolling Stone UVA rape story. ABC got hold of and interviewed “Jackie”‘s friends, all of whom contradict Rolling Stone‘s account of the event in ways both great and small.

    And now we find out that while at the University of Pennsylvania, Sabrina Rubin Erdely was once disciplined for fabulation by Stephen Glass? This has to be the most unbelievable plot twist since the revelation of Shaw’s communist handler in The Manchurian Candidate. “Jackie is the kindest, warmest, bravest, most honest human being I’ve ever known in my life.”

    Now here’s three links to commentary on the story I didn’t have time to link before the Washington Post piece dropped. Though superseded by Facts On The Ground, each still has important points to make:

  • Sharyl Attkisson
  • Margaret Talbot
  • Mollie Hemingway, on unbelievable aspects of Erdely’s previous stories.
  • (Hat tip: Ace of Spades)

    Documents Shows Fast and Furious WAS About Promoting Gun Control

    Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

    Continuing her excellent reporting on the issue, Sharyl Attkisson drops another bombshell: Just like us “paranoid” right wingers thought all along, Fast and Furious was about promoting gun control:

    Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation “Fast and Furious” to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.

    [snip]

    ATF officials didn’t intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called “Demand Letter 3”. That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or “long guns.” Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.

    On July 14, 2010 after ATF headquarters in Washington D.C. received an update on Fast and Furious, ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF’s Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious:

    “Bill – can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks.”

    On Jan. 4, 2011, as ATF prepared a press conference to announce arrests in Fast and Furious, Newell saw it as “(A)nother time to address Multiple Sale on Long Guns issue.” And a day after the press conference, Chait emailed Newell: “Bill–well done yesterday… (I)n light of our request for Demand letter 3, this case could be a strong supporting factor if we can determine how many multiple sales of long guns occurred during the course of this case.”

    Read the whole thing.

    The best, most favorable explanation is that Fast and Furious was instituted for some still-undisclosed purpose, and that some ATF agents saw it as a ghoulish opportunity to promote gun control.

    The worst: The Obama Administration designed and implemented Fast and Furious in a premeditated fashion, breaking the law and helping kill hundreds of Mexican citizens and U.S. border patrol agent Brian Terry, all for the sole, express purpose of promoting gun control.

    They had to kill people with guns in order to save them from getting killed by guns.

    It shows that just because your paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

    Hat tip: Powerline, where John Hinderaker says: “If the Obama administration did arrange for the shipment of arms to Mexican drug gangs, not for any legitimate public purpose but in order to advance a left-wing political agenda, and those guns were used to murder hundreds of Mexicans and at least one American border agent–which they were–then we are looking at a scandal that dwarfs any in modern American history.”

    Indeed.

    Fast and Furious Update for November 10, 2011

    Thursday, November 10th, 2011

    Been a while since I put one of these up, and since I start a new job today, I thought it high time to catch people at least semi-up-to-date on Fast and Furious developments:

  • The complete text of Eric Holder’s testimony before the Senate judiciary committee. Count the red herrings, and notice, as always, the push for more gun control. Because all the old laws were so effective at keeping Holder and the ATF from breaking them in the first place.
  • Once again, CBS’ Sharyl Attkisson is the only MSM member covering Fast and Furious.
  • The family of murdered U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry were not impressed with Holder’s testimony: “I thought he was very evasive. I thought that this was his second time around, and I still didn’t get anything out of it — at all. Seems like all the questions that he was asked, he was evading or throwing someone else underneath the bus.” Also: “We’ve heard five different stories, and every time we hear (a new) one, (it) is different. We never got a straight answer.”
  • Neither was ranking Senator Charles Grassley: “We have his criminal assistant attorney general knowing about it way last year. How could it be that the attorney general didn’t know about it?”
  • “Former Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, who resigned in August, admitted late Tuesday that he leaked a document aimed at smearing Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent John Dodson, an Operation Fast and Furious whistle-blower.”
  • Sipsey Street provides a handy link to Texas Sen. john Cornyn’s graphical timeline of Eric Holder’s strange memory problems.
  • Cornyn also provided an admirable takedown of the MSM “Fast and Furious Was Exactly the Same of Bush’s Wide Receiver” talking point.