Posts Tagged ‘Ted Cruz’

“Inflation Is Our Friend!”

Tuesday, January 4th, 2022

Ted Cruz posted this classic Saturday Night Live skit to his Facebook page, and since I had been looking for an embeddable copy for a while, I’m passing the joy onto you:

For younger viewers: Yes, once upon a time, Saturday Night Live was willing to make fun of Democratic presidents…

Scenes From The Afghan Debacle

Wednesday, August 25th, 2021

I’ve finally had time to sit down and properly sift through all the grim news coming out of Afghanistan to generate this roundup.

And the news is very grim indeed. It’s hard to think of any president who could have botched the Afghan pullout as badly as the rudderless Biden Administration has.

Here is a roundup of news from Biden’s Afghanistan disaster.

  • Did the Taliban take over Afghanistan merely by telling everyone they were already in control?

    I do know enough about the war to know that when the Taliban went toe to toe with American and NATO soldiers, the Taliban got its ass kicked basically every single time. No air force, no navy, and no artillery meant that whenever the Taliban revealed themselves on the battlefield they were guaranteed to be cut to pieces by various pieces of intimidating American hardware like A-10 Warthogs or .50-caliber rifles.

    It appears the Taliban tried something different this time around. Open source reporting shows that rather than rocking up and going toe to toe with the Afghan national army, they appear to have simply called everyone in the entire country, instead, told them they were in control, and began assuming the functions of government as they went.

    Evidently a lot of this communication was done via WhatsApp.

    What I think has not been considered enough is the degree to which WhatsApp DMs were a strategic blind spot for the United States.

    The Fog of War obviously makes it impossible to know what’s happening on the ground, right now, in Afghanistan, even for observers from the military and the D.C. political apparatus who do this for a living. Recalling, however, that the U.S.’ longtime strategy for crippling an opponent begins with decapitation strikes on radar and communications infrastructure, it is fairly obvious to anyone that as far as the Taliban were concerned, this never took place. The Taliban is setting up a government fairly expeditiously. Its propaganda circulates on Twitter in plain view.

    The Taliban are thus free, and have been free for a number of years, to take their fight not to American soldiers (where they always lose) but directly to the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, all using free-to-use American internet infrastructure like Facebook and Twitter (where they have now won).

    WhatsApp is an American product. It can be switched off by its parent, Facebook, Inc, at any time and for any reason. The fact that the Taliban were able to use it at all, quite apart from the fact that they continue to use it to coordinate their activities even now as American citizens’ lives are imperiled by the Taliban advance which is being coordinated on that app, suggests that U.S. military intelligence never bothered to monitor Taliban numbers and never bothered to ask Facebook to ban them.

  • Another reason the Taliban took over so much so quickly: they paid Afghan military commanders to surrender:

    [Hollie] McKay said corruption was largely to blame for the fall of city after city to the Taliban.

    “The level of corruption within the Afghanistan military and the government, that’s how the Taliban won a lot of this, is they would pay the commanders off to surrender a city before,” she explained. “So those who genuinely do want to fight—and there are a lot of men that wanted to genuinely fight—were kept in the dark and ANA [Afghan National Army] commanders were basically paid off in advance to surrender the city and they were left with no choice but ‘you have no choice but to basically run.’”

    “The level of corruption that has enabled the Taliban to come back to power is just mind-blowing,” she explained. “To see that and to see all the weapons that have gone to the Taliban’s hands when the Afghan army runs away—that we paid for.”

  • Biden lied his ass off about Afghanistan:

    President Joe Biden, August 10, 2021: “I’ll insist we continue to keep the commitments we made of providing close air support, making sure that their air force functions and is operable, re- — resupplying their forces with food and equipment, and paying all their salaries. But they’ve got to want to fight. They have outnumbered the Taliban. And I’m getting daily briefings. I think there’s still a possibility — you have a significant new Secretary of Defense — our equivalent of a Secretary of Defense in Afghanistan, Bismillah Khan, who is a serious fighter (emphasis added).”

    The Wall Street Journal, August 14, 2021: “In the wake of President Biden’s withdrawal decision, the U.S. pulled its air support, intelligence and contractors servicing Afghanistan’s planes and helicopters. That meant the Afghan military simply couldn’t operate anymore.”

    President Biden, in his interview with George Stephanopoulos on Wednesday: “The idea that the Taliban would take over was premised on the notion that the — that somehow, the 300,000 troops we had trained and equipped was gonna just collapse, they were gonna give up. I don’t think anybody anticipated that (emphasis added).”

    The Wall Street Journal, today:

    An internal State Department memo last month warned top agency officials of the potential collapse of Kabul soon after the U.S.’s Aug. 31 troop withdrawal deadline in Afghanistan, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the document.

    The classified cable represents the clearest evidence yet that the administration had been warned by its own officials on the ground that the Taliban’s advance was imminent, and Afghanistan’s military may be unable to stop it. The cable, sent via the State Department’s confidential dissent channel, warned of rapid territorial gains by the Taliban and the subsequent collapse of Afghan security forces, and offered recommendations on ways to mitigate the crisis and speed up an evacuation, the two people said.

    Biden to Stephanopoulos on Wednesday: “One of the things we didn’t know is what the Taliban would do in terms of trying to keep people from getting out, what they would do. What are they doing now? They’re cooperating, letting American citizens get out, American personnel get out, embassies get out, et cetera (emphasis added).”

    So far, there are no reports of the Taliban killing an American citizen or impeding an American from getting to the airport. (They are attacking Australians.) But they have accosted and threatened American journalists, fired off shots, attacked crowds, and have made getting to the airport impossible to do safely.

  • Leaked documents show the State Department warned about an imminent collapse of the Afghan government following American troop withdrawal:

    Using a special ‘dissent channel’ within the State Department, the cable – sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and another top State Department official – warned of ‘rapid territorial gains by the Taliban and the subsequent collapse of Afghan security forces,’ and offered suggestions on how to speed up evacuation and mitigate the obvious crisis slated to ensue, two people told the WSJ.

    In total, 23 US Embassy staffers – all Americans, signed the July 13 cable, which was given a rush status ‘given the circumstances on the ground in Kabul.’ In addition to Blinken, it was sent to the Director of Policy Planning, Salman Ahmad.

    Plus a reminder that Antony Blinken sucked so bad that even John McCain called him out for it…

  • Did the Biden Administration pay any attention to these warnings? No.

    Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas told the Washington Examiner the Biden administration ignored the bleak assessments from the Pentagon and the intelligence community, and he critiqued the U.S. Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who had negotiated the February 2020 deal in Doha, Qatar, with the Taliban and had continued to insist wrongly the extremist group was open to a peaceful settlement rather than taking the country by force.

    The IC assessments got grimmer by the briefing,” McCaul told the Washington Examiner when speaking of the time frame following President Joe Biden’s April announcement that all U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. “I have never heard more grim assessment on Afghanistan on these briefings, while at the same time the State Department gave this rosy picture … was giving a more rosy picture of the negotiations that special envoy Zal Khalilzad was entertaining.”

  • The evil that men do often outlives their time in office: “Taliban leader was freed from Guantanamo Bay in 2014 swap by Obama“:

    When President Barack Obama released five Taliban commanders from the Guantanamo Bay prison in exchange for an American deserter in 2014, he assured a wary public that the dangerous enemy combatants would be transferred to Qatar and kept from causing any trouble in Afghanistan.

    In fact, they were left free to engineer Sunday’s sacking of Kabul.

    Soon after gaining their freedom, some of the notorious Taliban Five pledged to return to fight Americans in Afghanistan and made contacts with active Taliban militants there. But the Obama-Biden administration turned a blind eye to the disturbing intelligence reports, and it wasn’t long before the freed detainees used Qatar as a base to form a regime in exile.

    Eventually, they were recognized by Western diplomats as official representatives of the Taliban during recent “peace” talks.

    Earlier this year, one of them, Khairullah Khairkhwa, actually sat across the table from President Biden’s envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, in Moscow, where Khairkhwa was part of the official Taliban delegation that negotiated the final terms of the US withdrawal. The retreat cleared a path for the Taliban to retake power after 20 years.

    Also this: “The mastermind of the regime change is former detainee Khairkhwa, the Taliban mullah whom Obama released from Gitmo even though the Pentagon classified him as too dangerous to release.”

  • More of that SuperGenius leadership from the Biden Administration: “Biden State Dept Moved to Abolish Crisis Response Bureau Months Before Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan. The Biden State Department moved in June to cancel a program overseeing the protection and evacuation of American citizens stationed overseas in the case of an emergency, just as the Taliban was taking over Afghanistan, according to an internal State Department memo.”
  • Biden Administration to Americans looking to flee Afghanistan: “You pay now!

    The Biden administration continued to inform American citizens in Afghanistan as of Thursday evening they could have to pay more than $2,000 to board an evacuation flight out of the country, despite the State Department telling the press hours before that it had no intention of levying any such charges.

    The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan has stated in multiple security advisories since Monday that any U.S. citizen seeking to evacuate the country must complete an online form in order to secure their repatriation flight. “This form is the only way to communicate interest in flight options,” the embassy said in a security advisory Wednesday.

  • And don’t forget all the weapons the Taliban captured:

  • Not to mention all the rifles and night vision goggles.
  • Here’s another video of U.S. weapons captured by the Taliban, with music from a chase scene in a 1980s dystopian SciFi movie scored by Giorgio Moroder:

  • Our clueless media, Afghan division:

  • Biden’s interview with former Clinton staffer George Stephanopoulos shows Biden can’t even think clearly:

    The setup is Stephanopoulos asking about a soldier who served seven combat tours and was shot twice (for accuracy’s sake, some of his tours may have been in Iraq) with that soldier’s assertion being that we didn’t leave Afghanistan with honor. Note that at no point does the soldier in question indicate we should stay in Afghanistan. Rather, his critique is with the strategy of the disastrous withdrawal that is currently playing out.

    Yet, Biden apparently didn’t even comprehend what he was being asked by Stephanopoulos. Instead of speaking to the strategic failures at hand, the president brings up his deceased son Beau and things just go downhill from there.

    For example, the war in Kosovo was already over when Beau got there. He was a lawyer sent to train prosecutors, not a combat soldier. Biden then goes on to not only mistake what branch his son served in and his rank, but also what other country he was deployed to later in his career, mixing up Afghanistan for Iraq.

    As @politicalsock also notes, Biden’s mention of Beau having regrets is nonsensical. We still have troops in Iraq to this day, and there were a lot more of them there when Beau was still alive. So what withdrawal would Biden’s son have felt regrets about at the time? The answer to that question obviously can’t be Afghanistan either.

  • Something is wrong with President Biden, and we are all being asked to pretend we don’t notice.”

    After making no public appearances for four days — during a major foreign crisis — President Biden read a 20-minute speech off a teleprompter on Monday afternoon and took no questions. He immediately returned to Camp David. He had no events on his schedule Tuesday. On Wednesday, he gave another 20-minute speech about vaccine boosters off a teleprompter from Camp David, and again took no questions. Also on Wednesday, the president sat for an on-camera interview with George Stephanopoulos that did not go well. According to the White House public records, Biden has had two phone conversations with foreign leaders in the past ten days — one with Boris Johnson and one with Angela Merkel.

    As of this writing, Biden has no public events on his schedule for today. He is scheduled to receive the president’s daily briefing from the intelligence community and meet with his national-security team. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, he is scheduled to return to his house in Delaware today.

    This is a highly unusual schedule for a president during a foreign-policy crisis. Yes, a president can perform his job anywhere, whether it’s Camp David or his own private residence. But Biden is barely appearing in public, not saying much of anything when he does, not answering any questions outside of his lone scheduled interview, and sounding angry when he did face questions from Stephanopoulos.

  • The UN remains consistent. Consistently incompetent:

  • Statistics show that there’s no way to get all Americans out of Afghanistan before the end of August:

    There are only 4-5 days left to get these people out due to the logistics of the 8/31 deadline, and according to the cable, there are perhaps 20,000+ Americans still stranded throughout Afghanistan. Even if you take the low-end estimate that only 10,000 Americans were originally stuck, that means we are still way behind schedule, and the situation on the ground in regards to getting to the airport is only getting worse. In other words, you will likely see fewer, not more Americans making it to planes over the next few days.

    There’s no magic solution in reserve to fix this situation. The only thing we can do is what Biden should have done almost two weeks ago. He should have told the Taliban to vacate Kabul or we start blowing things up. Instead, we’ve bent the knee over and over and now we have no backup plan. This evacuation is doomed to fail no matter how many misleading tweets Ronald Klain makes. Americans will be left behind. When that happens, what’s the next move? Full-scale war again? Just abandoning our citizens in hopes of paying ransoms down the road?

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Republican Senator Ben Sasse says (correctly) that the fall of Kabul is worse than the fall of Saigon:

    “Our troops promised them that the U.S. would never turn tail and have another cowardly moment like what happened in Saigon. This is worse than what happened in Saigon. What happened at the airport today is a more shameful moment than what happened in Saigon. And Biden comes out of his bunker trying to do a campaign photo-op speech where he attacks the Afghan people for coming to that airport,” he said.

    Sasse charged that the Biden administration bears responsibility for the collapse of the Afghan military. Biden suggested Monday that Afghan soldiers abandoned all hope and surrendered the mission to the Taliban, without providing further context about what prompted the dissolution.

    Some Republican lawmakers, such as Sasse, have rejected Biden’s assertion that the Afghan army simply lost the will to fight its own battles. Some have emphasized that the Biden administration’s move to pull air support from the country rendered the Afghan fighting force inoperative. Compounded with the fact that the U.S. also barred American contractors from staying in the country to service Afghan planes, some Republican legislators have contended that the Afghan military was positioned to fail under Biden’s direction.

  • More Sasse:

    While President Joe Biden cowers at Camp David, the Taliban are humiliating America. The retreat from Afghanistan is our worst foreign-policy disaster in a generation. As the Taliban marches into Kabul, they’re murdering civilians, reimposing their vicious Islamist law, and preparing to turn Afghanistan back into a bandit regime. The U.S. embassy has told Americans to shelter in place. Refugees are fleeing to the airport, begging to escape the coming bloodbath. None of this had to happen.

    America is the world’s greatest superpower. We ought to act like it. But President Biden and his national-security team have failed to protect even the American embassy in Kabul. They have broken America’s promises to the men and women who long for freedom — especially those thousands of Afghans who served alongside our military and intelligence services. They are turning their backs on the women and children who are desperate for space on the remaining flights out of hell.

    Gross incompetence has given the Taliban a terrible opportunity to slaughter our allies. Eighty-eight thousand of our Afghan allies have applied for visas to get out of the country, but this administration has approved just 1,200 so far. I’ve been among a bipartisan group of senators that has pushed Biden to expedite this process, but to no avail. At this point, it’s not clear how many we’ll be able to get out. Every translator and ally who stood by us is now at risk.

    This bloodshed wasn’t just predictable, it was predicted. For months, Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee have warned the Biden administration that this would happen. Now the administration is acting like this is a surprise. It’s shameful, dishonest spin.

  • Mike Pence goes nuclear:

    The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country [of Afghanistan] is highly unlikely,” President Biden confidently proclaimed in July. “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy.”

    One month later, the scenario Mr. Biden deemed impossible has become a horrifying reality. In recent days, the world has watched panicked civilians cling to U.S. military aircraft in a desperate attempt to escape the chaos unleashed by Mr. Biden’s reckless retreat. American diplomats had to beg our enemies not to storm our embassy in Kabul. Taliban fighters have seized scores of American military vehicles, rifles, artillery, aircraft, helicopters and drones.

    The Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan is a foreign-policy humiliation unlike anything our country has endured since the Iran hostage crisis.

  • Ted Cruz points out that the debacle is the Biden Administration’s fault. “What we have seen is an incredibly, poorly executed exit from the theater.”
  • Ouch!

    “This is a ‘Never Again’ moment in the making!” “Those people are still alive! We should be doing everything [to hold a beachhead] and get those people out no matter what it takes!”

  • Our allies are furious:

    Biden asserted that America’s reputation on the world stage has not been damaged amid the foreign-policy snafu, despite outraged reactions from major political figures suggesting the contrary. He also falsely claimed that al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization that orchestrated the attacks on September 11, 2001, has totally disappeared from Afghanistan. And despite accounts proving otherwise, Biden rejected the notion that American nationals have been struggling to make it to the tarmac at the Kabul airport.

    “I have seen no questioning of our credibility from our allies around the world,” Biden asserted. “In fact I’ve seen the exact opposite.”

    The president’s statement comes after a number of members of the British Parliament condemned the United States’ haphazard departure from the country as “catastrophic” and “shameful,” with members uniting to “dishonor” the foreign-policy fiasco, the Telegraph reported.

    Sir Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrat party in Parliament, said, “The American decision to withdraw was not just a mistake — it was an avoidable mistake, from President Trump’s flawed deal with the Taliban to President Biden’s decision to proceed, and to proceed in such a disastrous way.”

  • The reaction? “US general tells British special forces: Stop rescuing people in Kabul, you’re making us look bad.”

    I understand that the commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division has told the commander of the British special forces at the Kabul airport to cease operations beyond the airport perimeter.

    Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue has told his British Army counterpart, a high-ranking field-grade officer of the British army’s 22nd Special Air Service Regiment, that British operations were embarrassing the United States military in the absence of similar U.S. military operations. I understand that the British officer firmly rejected the request.

  • Roger Kimball:

    These days, when the Americans decamp from Afghanistan they leave behind tons — literally tons — of lights, not to mention munitions of various sizes and lethality, roads, buildings, communication devices of all sorts — you name it. A few days ago, we were told that the Afghan government might fall within 90 days to the newly resurgent Taliban. Over the weekend, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby assured the world that ‘Kabul does not face an imminent threat from the Taliban’. Whew. That gave the team at our Kabul embassy time to shred or otherwise render inoperative all the sensitive information they were sitting on — that stash of Pride flags, for example, which the new masters will not have much use for, unless it is to drape over the shoulders of the gays they execute by pushing them off roofs.

    Well, it turns out the embassy workers did not have quite enough time. If we still used ink, the bit used to record Kirby’s words would not have been dry before his words were replaced by headlines that Kabul had fallen to the Taliban, who now occupied the presidential palace, the president himself having fled the country, and that the country as whole was in a state of crisis.

    President Biden — or, as I like to denominate him these days, due to the deference shown him by all those eager-beaver members of the press, President Ice Cream — was hors de combat when this important news came over what counts as the wire these days. He had left the White House for Camp David. Monday, I think, is when Ben and Jerry’s makes its deliveries, and all we could glean was that he would be addressing the nation ‘in a few days’.

  • You can tell that Democrats are back in charge:

    This always happens when Democrats hold the key positions of power in the White House and in Congress — the world begins to rock, the foundations begin to shake, the stability and peace and comparative calm of better days begin to wither and disappear. But my, do the taxpayer dollars begin to flow.

    It happened under Jimmy Carter, with his double-digit inflation and gas lines and government cheese programs.

    It happened under Barack Obama with his red-line foreign policy that ultimately handed Russia big wins with Syria — not to mention with a watching, mocking, anti-America world.

    It’s happening now under Biden.

    “Jen Psaki ‘out of the office’ as Biden remains silent on Taliban takeover of Afghanistan,” one Fox News headline ran.

    “Joe Biden faces calls to make public address on Afghanistan,” another headline from The Guardian stated.

    “Biden’s botched Afghan exit is a disaster at home and abroad long in the making,” yet another headline from CNN read.

    Where was Joe while all this chaos was cracking?

    You’d have better luck finding Waldo.

    Honestly, this White House shows more aggression against Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida over face mask mandates than against Taliban members who now seek to enforce Shariah Law on the poor Afghan people America promised to protect.

  • The incompetence is onogoing:

  • “Team Organizing Private Flights Out Of Afghanistan Says The Biden Administration Has Been An ‘Impediment’ To Their Evacuations.”

    The Biden administration has been an “impediment” to a private effort to get people out of Afghanistan, Robert Stryk, who is arranging privately chartered flights to get Americans and vulnerable Afghans out of the country, exclusively told the Daily Caller News Foundation Monday.

    “The Brits and South Africans have been fucking awesome and heroic in getting people through the Mil Gate,” Stryk told the DCNF.

    Stryk, whose Washington-based lobbying firm was in 2017 paid by the government of Afghanistan for “US Government affairs and commercial sector advice. Executive Branch and Legislative Branch Engagement; Defense consultation; strategic advice pertaining to extremism/terrorism; and promotion of democracy and foreign direct investment,” said he had reached out to the administration “dozens and dozens” of times and had yet to hear back.

    After reaching out to the White House, Stryk said he received a response acknowledging the request but got no follow up. Stryk said he started reaching out to the administration on Aug. 14.

    “What I am witnessing everyday is the very best and the very worst of America,” Stryk explained. “I have seen the humanity of private citizens who are contacting me and pledging their time, monies, and in some cases their lives to bring our citizens and these Afghan patriots out of harm’s way, while at the time personally experiencing the Biden administration’s abject failure to protect its citizens and those Afghans that fought and worked alongside of us.”

    “It’s morally reprehensible,” Stryk said. “It’s been the U.S. private sector who has stepped in to save the blood and treasure the Biden administration is leaving behind.”

  • “Our State Department just called on the Taliban to form an ‘inclusive’ government ‘with the full and meaningful representation of women.’ This is not the Babylon Bee!” I’m sure that will happen right after Hitler’s Bar Mitzvah…
  • Indeed, instead of giving women “full and meaningful representation,” the Taliban is banning co-education, calling it “the root of all evil.”
  • They also found an executed a “TikTok Comedian.”

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • While the American mission in Afghanistan was collapsing, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul was looking to hire a “Public Engagement Assistant.”
  • “American In Taliban Prison Starting To Worry How This Will Affect Biden’s Poll Numbers.”
  • This are just the links and news stories I caught in passing, as I could probably have put up ten times as many links covering this colossal screw-up.

    Anyone remember back when the Democratic Media Complex was confidently predicting that President Trump allowing Turkey to establish a security zone in Syria would result in genocide against the Kurds? Now that the Taliban are launching an actual slaughter and Biden apologists are wailing that nobody could possibly foresee the rapid collapse in Afghanistan.

    As I mentioned before, if America’s political and military leadership wasn’t willing to do what it took to win in Afghanistan, then we needed to make an orderly retreat. Biden’s retreat has been anything but orderly. It’s been an absolute debacle and thousands, probably tens of thousands of lives, American and otherwise, will be lost thanks to his administration’s astounding incompetence.

    LinkSwarm for August 20, 2021

    Friday, August 20th, 2021

    Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! I sort of want to put all the horrible news out of Afghanistan in one blog post, but it will probably have to wait until next week.

  • Democrat voting fraud straight outa Compton. ”[Compton city councilman] Isaac Galvan, 34, was one of six people charged Friday with conspiracy to commit election fraud, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.”
  • One in ten Democrats regret voting for Biden over Trump.
  • Related:

  • Just as in Austin, the homeless drug addicts Democratic politicians love in Seattle are killing innocent, law-abiding Americans:

  • Mathias Dopfner, CEO of German Axel Springer, flies Israeli flag for a week after antisemitic attacks. Leftwing employees: “Triggered!” Dopfner: “Then quit.” Bonus: He might buy Politico. (Hat tip: Mark Tapscott at Instapundit.)
  • Kennedy bashes Cuomo (not the one he was married to):

  • Instapundit: “Mask bullies don’t want to persuade you — but to humiliate and rule you….This sort of thing isn’t aimed at convincing those who disagree, but rather at garnering high-fives from people who agree and, ultimately, creating an ideological veneer for unquestioned elite rule.”
  • Honolulu Immediately Folds in Face of Gun-Rights Lawsuit…Federal District Judge J. Michael Seabright, a Bush appointee, ruled the state’s requirement that pistol purchasers present their guns to police for inspection and its 10-day expiration for purchase permits were unconstitutional.”
  • Thanks to Travis County DA Jose Garza, two accused child murderers are out on bail.

    APD says that officers responded to a urgent check welfare call on March 7 just after 8 p.m. at the First Choice Emergency Room Center on E. Riverside Drive. The caller had reported to 911 that someone had brought an unresponsive child to the ER and that they were getting mixed information as to why the child was unresponsive. CPR was in progress.

    ATCEMS then transported the child, identified as six-year-old Stavian Driver, to the emergency room at Dell Children’s Medical Center. Stavian succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead just before 9 p.m.

    APD says that over the next several days, homicide detectives interviewed Stavian’s mother, 27-year-old Staleigh Coleman and her boyfriend, 27-year-old Blake Jones, who were both at their home on Cromwell Circle when the incident occurred. A search warrant was also executed at the home.

    Pictured are the mugshots of Staleigh B. Coleman (left) and Blake Howard Jones (right). (Austin Police Department)

    Due to serious inconsistencies as to how Stavian received scalding burns over 40% of his upper body, arrest warrants were issued for both Coleman and Jones for injury to a child by omission, says APD. Their bonds were set at $100,000 dollars.

    Coleman and Jones were arrested on March 10 and were transported and booked into the Travis County Jail. APD says both are currently out of jail on bond.

  • Ted Cruz saved America at 3:30 AM on Wednesday morning.” By objecting to passage of the $3.5 trillion Democratic Party wish list budget.
  • Air Force cadets forced to watch #BlackLivesMatter videos.
  • Critical Race Theory has even spread to Oklahoma: “‘Only white people can be racist’: Union officials call for purge of teacher workforce.”
  • Also forced to take Critical Race Theory classes: Bank of America. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Madison Ave is 39% empty; Manhattan landlords, can you lower the prices now?” Also this: “$1,000 a square foot is not sustainable!” And more on the problems engendered by mortgage-backed securities.
  • A rerun: “California Legislature Unveils Plan To Raise Taxes On Wildfires Until They Move Out Of State.”
  • “Dominion Voting Machine Really Starting To Regret Its 50,000 Votes For Biden.”
  • My books wanted list. If you have a lot of rare science fiction first editions just lying around, I could be persuaded to take those off your hands…
  • A feelgood dog link to brighten up your day.
  • A number of deadlines conspired to converge on this week. I’m hoping next week will be less insanely busy…

    LinkSwarm for May 28, 2021

    Friday, May 28th, 2021

    Like inflation and unemployment, crime rates are rising again. Biden is really the 1970s gift that keeps giving!

  • Democrats are weaker than they appear:

    Vulnerable red- and purple-state Democrats need some bipartisan cover if they’re going to vote for another massive spending bill. And Biden would prefer to have a unified Democratic Party blaming Republicans for the inability to come to a consensus than to have a divided Democratic Party with one side of the Senate caucus blaming the other side of the Senate caucus for the inability to come to a consensus.

    Chuck Schumer is largely bluffing when he says the Senate will pass an infrastructure bill in July, with or without Republicans. Democrats can go down this path, but it’s a risk that at least a handful of their senators don’t want to take, and when the Senate is split 50–50, the Democrats can’t afford to lose anyone. Those with long memories can remember when Democrats were convinced all the legislation they passed in 2009 and 2010 would protect them in the midterms.

  • Speaking of Democrats in trouble, rising violent crime rates are another thing that might doom them in midterm elections:

    A rise in violent crime is endangering slim Democratic congressional majorities more than a year out from the midterm elections and threatening to revive “law and order” as a major campaign issue for Republicans for the first time since the 1990s.

    Homicides in cities increased by up to 40% over the previous year, the biggest single-year increase since 1960, a trend that has not abated so far in 2021. Sixty-three of the 66 largest police jurisdictions saw a rise in at least one category of violent crime, ranging from homicide and rape to robbery and assault, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association. Homicides and shootings have gone up for three straight years in Washington, D.C., and at least a dozen mass shootings were reported nationwide over the weekend.

    Democrats’ flirtations with defunding the police — a handful of lawmakers on the Left nearly scuttled a $1.9 billion Capitol security bill in the House — may make them ill-equipped to handle the reemergence of crime as a top issue for voters.

  • Speaking of rising crime rates, having Soros-backed Democratic District Attorney Larry Krasner overseeing Philadelphia has helped create the largest open-air heroin market on the East Coast:

    Mirrors are useful. A hooker walking down the street can easily fix their makeup. They can lean on them when they nod out too. In addition, when a heroin addict has no more veins left to inject in their arms, that mirror can help them find one in their neck.

    It’s kind of hard to inject a needle in your neck otherwise. Think about it.

    You’ll eventually get a sideview mirror ripped off your vehicle sooner or later. It generally happens as they nod out or “dip out” when the drugs kick in. When they slump towards the ground, they generally just take the mirror with them.

    You also become way to comfortable with people “dipping out”. It’s the local dance craze around here. As heroin takes effect, it’s almost like they fall asleep on their feet — slowly getting ever so close to the ground. Miraculously, they rarely hit the pavement. Many yoga masters couldn’t duplicate their prowess.

    Dippers are everywhere. It’s so common, YouTube has endless clips up and down Kensington Avenue; many have hundreds of thousands of views. A YouTuber named “HoodTime” has over 5 million views on a walk he captured through Kensington March of this year. Many others are following suit.

    Just walking through Kensington and filming gets you instant material. There’s always something to see here. It’s sometimes hard to tell if you’re in America or a third-world nation at points. But money hides in trash and addiction.

    As Mike Newall explains in his article for the Philadelphia Inquirer, some of the drug corners near where I work pull in over $20 million a year. He also quotes Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro as saying Kensington’s drug trade is close to a billion dollar a year enterprise.

    (Hat tip: Dwight.) There are ways to decriminalize drugs that don’t give a pass to widespread “quality of life” offenses. merely ceasing to prosecute people for open criminality doesn’t make the problems that open criminality engenders go away.

  • Even Ezra Klein says that rising crime rates are a threat to Democrats. Gee, I must have missed him expressing such concerns when antifa and #BlackLivesMatter were burning down large swathes of American cities last year…
  • In news of the Biden recession, both both inflation and unemployment picked up in April. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday that he opposes teaching critical race theory in the state’s public schools, calling the ideas pushed by its advocates as ‘based on false history’ and ‘teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other.'” Good.
  • Kurt Schlichter: Bring on the ‘Asperger’s Republicans’:

    Far too many Republicans, for far too long, have found themselves distracted and/or enslaved by the elite consensus, restrained by norms and conventions that the liberal elite demands we observe, but that it itself flaunts when those rules limit its options. These Fredocons care what people who care nothing about them think, and they find themselves responding to the outside stimuli of the garbage mainstream media instead of focusing intently on conservative change while disregarding the slings and arrows of the haters. When it comes to fighting the establishment, political Asperger’s is indicative of awesomeness.

    And our next generation of Republicans needs to embrace their place on the Spectrum – the more inappropriate the liberal elite finds their reactions to its cues and signals, the better. No more tame, pliable sissies like Mitt (R-ish – Miracle Whip). No more of Nikki! Haley’s sucking up to the establishment while trying to grift the base by leveraging hack conserva-cliché’s from 2005 to present to us as hardcore instead of Jeb! in a dress. No more Kristi!s and Asa!s fronting as all tuff about men pretending to be girls to win races then folding the second the establishment disapproves. Instead, we need GOP politicians who are utterly immune to the siren song of a media and an establishment that seek to draw them in and crash them upon the rocks. Our pols need to ignore MSNBCNN and its hysterical horsehockey. They need to stop reading the NYT and WaPo and being scared that a bad write-up will get them uninvited to all the cool parties. They need to lock onto their target and take it out like an Israeli missile flattens a Hamas/AP frat house.

    Look at Ron DeSantis – he just doesn’t care what the bad guys say. Not at all. They scream that he won’t enforce face-diapering, that he’s too hard on election fraud, that’s he’s declared open season on those Antifa/BLM nimrods who trap normal citizens in their cars on public roads, and then DeSantis just goes ahead and does what he wants anyway. And it works – he’s super popular.

  • Also weighing in against Critical Race Theory: Austin Knudsen, Montana’s Attorney General.
  • How Democratic foreign policy “experts” are projecting their own failures on Jared Kushner:

    For the past four years, there was no greater laughingstock in the American foreign policy cognoscenti than Jared Kushner. A full-on consensus reigned that cast the previous administration’s Middle East policies as hopelessly ignorant and one-sided, a view that went unchallenged in the smart set’s Op-Ed pages. There was no easier laugh to be had, no quicker way to pull a nodding agreement, than to mock the intelligence and good will of the former president’s son-in-law, charged with crafting an American peace plan, and obviously in way over his head.

    But the Young Pretender in charge of the Mideast portfolio is gone, and the mommies and daddies are back in charge, their think tanks falling over each other producing glossy full-color booklets promoting policies that would bring to bear the priorities of people who actually understood a thing or two about Israelis, Palestinians, international law, justice, and most importantly, American strategic interests.

    And four months into the methodical implementation of all the bright ideas reflecting off those glossy booklets, the situation on the ground in Israel and the Palestinian Territories has taken a dramatic turn for the worst.

    Though Kushner is long gone, this latest conflagration has been laid at his feet. His name trended on Twitter for days as hostilities between Israel and Hamas escalated. “They really put Jared Kushner, the slumlord millionaire who couldn’t properly fill out security clearance forms, in charge of Peace in the Middle East. Failure was inevitable,” read one viral tweet. “Kushner’s Absurd Peace Plan Has Failed” blared the headline to Michelle Goldberg’s New York Times column.

    This is not just wrong; it’s complete projection. Kushner-era policies—on Jerusalem, UNRWA, and regional diplomacy—were promised again and again to lead to an “explosion,” but didn’t. The return of the experts was supposed to improve lives and prospects for Israelis and Palestinians alike, but hasn’t. In fact, it was the foreign policy intelligentsia’s values and vision that have led to disaster.

    Back in March, mere weeks into the new Biden administration, a leaked internal State Department memo outlined the contours of a new direction on American policy toward the Palestinian issue. The document called for renewed diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Authority, restoring aid that had been cut, renewing American contributions to UNRWA, putting pressure on Israel for moves in Jerusalem that would make a new Palestinian Authority election possible, and pursuing a two-state arrangement based roughly on the pre-1967 lines.

    These were all priorities of the smart set miffed by a previous administration that was too close to Israel for their tastes. But they were also terrible ideas. Take the renewal of UNRWA funding. UNRWA is the U.N. agency dedicated to perpetuating, rather than solving, the Palestinian refugee problem. By cultivating the myth of a non-existent “right of return” rather than rehabilitating displaced persons and their descendants, UNRWA ensures that a negotiated two-state deal cannot be reached.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Drew Holden takes us on a trip down memory lane of various MSM talking heads declaring that the Wuhan coronavirus lab leak hypothesis was a “conspiracy theory,” including all the usual suspects (New York Times, CNN, etc.).
  • “Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine (D) filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon Tuesday, alleging that the e-commerce giant has unfairly raised prices and hurt innovation.”
  • Glenn Greenwald: “A federal appellate court on Thursday invalidated the racial and gender preferences in President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act as unconstitutional. The Cincinnati-based Sixth Circuit of Appeals ruled that provisions of that law, designed to grant preferences to minority-owned small-restaurant owners for COVID relief, violate the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.”
  • “Moms Demand Action [AKA another branch of the Brady Bunch Hydra] member-turned-congresswoman in hot water over bribe.” Allegedly newly-elected Illinois Rep. Marie Newman bribed opponent Lymen Chehade to drop out of the race, then reneged on the cushy congressional job.

  • “Support for Black Lives Matter Movement Collapses Among Whites and Hispanics, Drops For Blacks.” The only question is why it took so damn long, when it’s been obvious for a long time that it is radical marxist garbage.
  • Christian teacher suspended after opposing the district’s transgender doctrine. “The teacher, Byron “Tanner” Cross, made the defiant declaration at a Loudon County school board meeting on Tuesday, according to the nonprofit group, Parents Against Critical Race Theory.”
  • Ted Cruz gets Biden ATF director nominee David Chipman to admit under oath that he wants to ban the AR-15. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Speaking of Ted Cruz: Israel has a right to defend itself.
  • “Hunter Biden’s Ukraine salary was cut two months after Joe Biden left office.” What a curious coincidence!
  • China Warns Australia’s Military Is “Weak“, Will Be “First Hit” In Any War With Western Alliance.” Knowing Australia, this is far more likely to piss them off than make them cower. Maybe Australia should develop it’s own nuclear arsenal…
  • CNN hits new lows. I suppose I should clarify that’s new ratings lows… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Screwed up even by the standards of Baltimore.
  • Politifact tries to fact check The Babylon Bee yet again. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • IDF stats:

  • Interesting: Higher reasoning functions wake up first from anesthesia. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Enjoy the original video for David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”.” A very different sound mix as well.
  • If you’d told me 10 years ago that one day Windows would run Linux apps, I’d give you a funny look. But that appears to be happening. “New Windows 10 test build adds first preview of Linux GUI apps on WSL.” That’s “Windows Subsystem for Linux.”
  • Now you’ll finally get a chance to read John Steinbeck’s werewolf novel.
  • “Public School Teachers Issue Students Their Summer Book-Burning Lists.”
  • “Newsom Announces Sweepstakes Where 5 Lucky Winners Get To Move Out Of California.”
  • A vicious pack pulls down its pray:

  • LinkSwarm for February 12, 2021

    Friday, February 12th, 2021

    Greetings, and welcome to a Friday LinkSwarm! Bad weather and bad driving are themes, as the ice storm mentioned yesterday already slammed Texas hard. I was without power for over 10 hours last night and this morning, and every tree is heavy with frost.

    

  • Hit black ice at 95/They said I’m lucky to be alive…

  • Seriously, try to avoid driving on ice if it’s even remotely possible:

  • Bad news for law-abiding Austinites: Police Chief Brian Manley is retiring after 30 years on the force. I’m sure the City Council is eager to replace him with some social justice warrior approved tool. On the other hand, if he wants to run for mayor…
  • How crazy leftwing do you have to be for the French to call you lunatics?

    The threat is said to be existential. It fuels secessionism. Gnaws at national unity. Abets Islamism. Attacks France’s intellectual and cultural heritage.

    The threat? “Certain social science theories entirely imported from the United States,’’ said President Emmanuel Macron.

    French politicians, high-profile intellectuals and journalists are warning that progressive American ideas — specifically on race, gender, post-colonialism — are undermining their society. “There’s a battle to wage against an intellectual matrix from American universities,’’ warned Mr. Macron’s education minister.

    Emboldened by these comments, prominent intellectuals have banded together against what they regard as contamination by the out-of-control woke leftism of American campuses and its attendant cancel culture.

    You can ding France (and French intellectuals) for a lot of sins, but “insufficient appreciation of western civilization and culture” is not one of them.

  • The bloom was off the Andrew Cuomo rose for anyone who had eyes to see last year, but now even the Democratic Media Complex is is being forced to admit what a giant pile of manure he is:

    America’s worst governor probably never thought he would miss America’s most obnoxious president.

    But that is the situation that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo likely finds himself in now that Donald Trump is no longer around to take all the heat for mismanaging the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, now that the man who commanded nearly every minute of the media’s attention has shuffled off to Florida following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Cuomo is at long last experiencing widespread criticism and scrutiny in the press for his grossly incompetent handling of the COVID-19 outbreak in the Empire State.

    The New York Times, for example, took the governor to task after he announced that indoor dining in the state can resume as soon as Feb. 14, arguing that the flip-flop makes no sense based on the available data and his past diktats. “Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York said on Friday that New York City could reopen indoor dining on Feb. 14,” the newspaper notes. “But by nearly every measure, the coronavirus outbreak in the city is worse than it was when he announced a ban on indoor dining in December.”

    The New York Times adds, “As the governor spoke on Friday, citing the ‘current trajectory’ of cases as his reasoning for reopening, average per-capita case counts in New York City were 64% higher than when he announced the ban in December.” The paper even published an article titled “N.Y.C.’s Covid Metrics Are Dire. Cuomo Is Reopening Restaurants Anyway,” laying into the governor for his about-face on indoor dining.

    Elsewhere, Cuomo is weathering blistering criticism over news reports that his administration dramatically undercounted the number of deaths connected to his order last year forcing infectious coronavirus patients into long-term care facilities. Criticism so bad, in fact, that the governor actually declined an invitation to appear on CNN, which has done more than any news network to boost his image amid the pandemic.

    The bad press, by the way, appears to be having an adverse effect on the governor, whose increasingly frenetic decrees suggest a man who is spiraling. Recall that Cuomo claimed recently that the effort to vaccinate restaurant workers was a “cheap, insincere discussion.” Now, he has expanded vaccine eligibility in New York to include — you guessed it — restaurant workers. It’s almost as if he has no idea what he is doing.

    Then, there is the sudden bout of unflattering news reports regarding the growing number of high-level resignations by New York health officials, including nine top state executives who have stepped down since last summer. Cuomo is also suffering embarrassing news coverage for his recent statement in response to the reports that his administration undercounted nursing home deaths: “But who cares? … Died in a hospital. Died in a nursing home. They died.” Add to it all the fact that the governor is catching heat for saying that he doesn’t trust health experts, and it seems clear we are witnessing the end of the love affair between the news media and the man who won an Emmy recently for his supposedly savvy COVID-19 management.

    It is good that the news industry as a whole is finally scrutinizing the Cuomo administration for its ineptitude, but where was this critical look last year? It’s not as if Cuomo flipped a switch. He didn’t become an incompetent, callous, flailing bureaucrat overnight. This is who he is. This is how he has behaved for the entirety of the pandemic. Many newsrooms either did not notice or did not care. After all, there was a bad man in the White House.

    The Cuomo who is getting badly beaten up today in the press is the same Cuomo who in April 2020 said glibly of out-of-work, anti-lockdown protesters that if they want to provide for themselves and their families, they should “take a job as an essential worker.”

    This is the same man who targeted the state’s Jewish communities over social distancing violations, all while giving a free pass to the thousands of anti-police demonstrators and other political activists who clogged New York’s streets last year, gathering cheek to cheek in both protest and celebration. At a press conference in October of last year, Cuomo even dredged up a 14-year-old photo showing Jewish mourners gathered to mark the death of Rabbi Moses Teitelbaum, claiming falsely that it was proof of those people’s refusal to follow his COVID-19 restrictions.

    This is the same man whose administration flip-flopped constantly on the timeline for when COVID-19-positive front-line workers should return to work.

    This is the same man who, during a press conference in September, attempted to absolve himself of responsibility for his state’s deadly mismanagement of the coronavirus by claiming, “Donald Trump caused the COVID outbreak in New York. That is a fact. It’s a fact that he admitted and the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] admitted and [Dr. Anthony Fauci] admitted.” No one “admitted” any such thing.

    Cuomo actually wrote an entire book praising his response to the pandemic. He even hawked a stupid poster boasting of New York’s alleged victory over the outbreak. The poster, which bears more captions than a Herblock cartoon, is careful to highlight infection increases in Arizona, Texas, and Florida. Because nothing says responsible, caring leadership quite like cheering case increases in fellow states, which, by the way, likely got the virus from New York.

    Yet, amid all of these missteps, many in the press claimed last year that New York’s governor led one of the best, if not the best, coronavirus responses in the country. The way certain journalists and commentators told it, Cuomo’s wisdom and steady hand safely guided the state through one of the most dangerous and deadly episodes in its history.

  • “Cuomo aide admits they hid nursing home data so feds wouldn’t find out.” I strongly suspect that falsifying data reported to the federal government for federal grant programs is a felony…
  • Speaking of coronavirus, previous timelines had pegged “Patient Zero” as being infected in November of 2019, but new evidence suggests the first cases showed up October 2019. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Let them have their Impeachment 2: Electric Boogaloo. It won’t result in a conviction. It won’t affect Donald Trump’s standing with his supporters or his detractors. But it will delay the Senate from action on Joe Xiden’s initial legislative goals and confirmation of His Fraudulency’s nominees.”
  • More on the same subject:

    Democrats may end up paying a higher political price than they anticipate. The trial won’t only delay Mr. Biden’s program. It will tarnish his image as a “unifier” eager to work across party lines. That identity will be much harder to sustain after Democratic senators vote in lockstep to convict Mr. Trump and push through a mammoth Covid relief bill without any Republican votes.

    I see they misspelled “trillions in pork graft for politically connected cronies” as “Covid relief.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “14 State Attorney Generals Tell Biden They’re Reviewing Legal Options Regarding Keystone XL.”
  • Texas intermediate crude is now up above pre-coronavirus drop levels.
  • The Social Justice Warrior Thunderdome at The New York Times has reached the point where you get fired for using the N-word in the process of talking about the N-word.
  • Related: “New York Times Has Used the N-Word 6,481 Times.”
  • Teen Vogue publisher Conde Nast can’t pay its rent. Oh no! Where else will teenage girls be encouraged to try anal sex?
  • More on the great ammo shortage:

    During a media presentation at Virtual SHOT Show 2021, Winchester said that if they stopped taking orders for .22 LR right now, it would take 2 years to fill all the back-orders. In December, the Vista family of companies, which comprises Federal, CCI, Speer, and Remington, announced they had a $1 billion backlog in orders. In the first 3 months of the COVID-19 lockdown, Winchester experienced a 17-percent surge in orders, which hasn’t tapered off.

  • Superbowl ratings show it was the leas watched since 2006. How is that wokeness working out for you, NFL? (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • How painfully ignorant of literature do you have to be to not recognize the tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow soliloquy from Macbeth? Evidently Andrea Mitchell ignorant…
  • Rancher believes Biden wants to hurt border security to undo President Trump’s legacy. True, but incomplete. The entire Democratic Party sees every illegal alien as a potential Democrat voter.
  • Heh:

  • Most shocking update:

    Got to admit, 140 MPH is hauling ass. One problem with Most Shocking is that they would intone “…with speeds hitting 90 miles and hour!” and I wanted to ask “Dude, have you never driven on a Texas highway before? That’s pretty much the prevailing speed…”

  • Bruce Springsteen arrested for DWI. I’m pretty sure he makes enough to hire an Uber. Or a full-time chauffeur.
    

  • This one was is from up in Milwaukee:

  • Just no:

  • Shipping container homes are not all they’re cracked up to be.
  • “Today’s Youth Simply Don’t Have The Work Ethic To Build The Gulags Needed For Their Communist Ideals.”
  • Jill Biden Decorates Migrant Cages With Valentine’s Day Message Hearts.”
  • “I’m not a cat.”

  • Dribble:

  • By the way, the current forecast is for it to hit 1°F here on Monday, which would only be 3 degrees above the coldest temperature ever recorded in Austin…

    

    LinkSwarm for February 5, 2020

    Friday, February 5th, 2021

    Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! The Biden Administration is moving full speed ahead hard left:

  • Kurt Schlichter: The Matrix has you:

    There’s nothing more tiresome than hackneyed references to The Matrix, except for the constant propaganda we’re hosed down with by the Establishment and its media lackeys about how everything is groovy in our totally free, free enterprise paradise of freedom and happiness and more freedom. Some of us have been woke for a while, having realized the undeniable truth that the system is rigged for the benefit of a garbage ruling class, whose sole accomplishment is to perpetuate a paradigm in which they maintain power and prestige by controlling institutions they didn’t create or build. Instead, they are cultural trust fund babies, the equivalent of third generation Kennedy brats with substance issues who got into power by getting into the right schools and modeling the right SJW attitudes. These oligarch overseers rely on us to toil in their figurative fields while they sit on their figurative porches, sipping locally-sourced figurative mint juleps.

    I say burn it all down and rebuild America into what it is supposed to be, that is, what they tell us it is when they lie to us.

    I’m not alone. We’re primed for some conservative anarchy. The normals’ resistance cannot be quelled; the revolution will be Telegrammed. Everyone’s gobbling up red pills, the one medication our incompetent Establishment is fully capable of distributing efficiently and effectively. You drop one and you see the Matrix. You see the lie. You see that it’s all rigged.

    Snip.

    I mentioned GameStop and these ladies not only knew what it was, but they cheered the armchair day trader anarchists. And they booed the hedge funders.

    Rich Orange County Republicans booed the hedge funders.

    And they booed Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney, with one exception, Nikki! Haley too. The ones who had heard of the Bulwark booed it as well, so there were like three of those.

    Populists in pearls, fully red pilled and woke as hell. They saw how the Establishment has been lying to them. They realized that they were never really members of the ruling caste despite their sweet rides and bank accounts. They were allowed its material trappings, but they were excluded from the real power, the power to govern themselves.

    They have more in common with the Keystone pipeline worker John Kerry wants to go make solar panels – which seems unrealistic, since his Chi Com collaborators make them all – than with the rich and truly powerful elite.

    People are getting woke – the red pill is socio-political anti-Ambien because it keeps you from falling back asleep and not seeing that everything is rigged.

    They see how the ruling caste allows you this little band of autonomy, and how you are allowed some leeway to improve your material life, but the instant you try to assert power that threatens the status quo, the Matrix kicks in and its immune system reacts to snuff you out.

    That was the revelation of the GameStop Revolution. You’re allowed to put your money into Wall Street and they might let you take some pennies out, but if you try to go big and play at the same level as the anointed, oh no. You don’t get to. The system shuts you down – literally. You can’t buy the hot stock. Does that apply to the hedge fund guys? You think they can’t play after you’ve been sidelined? Come on. It’s blatant market manipulation, but Wall Street owns the Asterisk Administration – Treasury Secretary & Lord High Protector of the Masters of the Universe Janet Yellin took nearly a million bucks to “speak” to the lever-pullers behind the RobinHood app – and the Administration owns the SEC, and do you think it will investigate the hedge funders who changed the rules? No, but look for FBI SWAT teams to be hitting the basements where the Reddit rebels live. That is, right after they bust more conservative meme guys for illegal memes.

    Read the whole thing.

  • Are Democrats trying to infect the military with Social Justice?

    Now, in perhaps the most chilling move yet from the new administration, the newly minted Defense Secretary [Lloyd Austin] plans to direct a military-wide stand down, reportedly to address “extremism” within the ranks.

    Austin wants all military units to take an operational pause to discuss extremism as he works to grasp the full scope of the issue and better address the longstanding problem, John Kirby, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, told reporters Wednesday. The pauses are expected to occur within the next 60 days, but Austin has yet to determine how the stand downs are to be completed, Kirby said.

    “The intent is to reinforce the [Pentagon’s] policies and values with respect to this sort of behavior and to have a dialogue with the men and women of the force and to get their views on what they are seeing at their level,” Kirby said. “He wants commands to take the necessary time to … speak with troops about the scope of this problem. It’s a two-way conversation.”

    Austin spoke frankly with the acting service secretaries and uniformed service chiefs about his concerns about extremism in the military, including white supremacism, said Kirby, who attended the meeting. The new defense secretary, who is the first Black leader of the Defense Department, wants the service leaders to better grasp how pervasive the issue is within their formations and work with leaders to stamp it out, Kirby said.

    We have gone in a few short months from President Donald Trump preventing “critical race theory” dogma from being imposed on federal employees to the possibility that the armed services will have to apologize for their privilege.

  • Will fake moderate Biden get pushback for his hard left turn?

    it seems that Biden is intent on provoking just such a pushback by his record number of early and often radical executive orders — a tactic candidate Biden condemned.

    On almost every issue — open borders, blanket amnesties, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, promoting the Green New Deal, and hard-left appointees — Biden is touting positions that likely do not earn 50 percent public support.

    When Biden made a Faustian bargain with his party’s hard-left wing of Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to win the election, he took on the commitment to absorb some of their agenda and to appoint their ideologues.

    But he also soon became either unwilling or unable to stand up to them.

    Now they — and the country — are in a revolutionary frenzy. The San Francisco Board of Education has voted to rename more than 40 schools honoring the nation’s best — Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln — largely on racist grounds that they are dead, mostly white males.

    Statues continue to fall. Names change.

    The iconic dates, origins and nature of America itself continue to be attacked to meet leftist demands. And still, it is not enough for the new McCarthyites.

    Social media are banning tens of thousands. Silicon Valley and Wall Street monopolies go after smaller upstart opponents.

    A wrong word destroys a lifelong career. Formerly sane pundits now call for curtailing the First Amendment. Thousands of federal troops blanket a now-militarized Washington, D.C.

    If Trump’s pushback tried to return to traditions ignored during the Obama years, Biden’s reset promises to become far more radical than Obama’s entire eight years.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Looking at Slow Joe The Unpopular’s approval rating sure as hell doesn’t look like a mandate for radical change:

    Biden has not been above water a single time in the Approval Index rating. This index is the difference between how many likely voters strongly approve and how many strongly disapprove. Total approval has hit 50% once so far…

    This result is astonishing when you think about it. President Biden has the full weight of nearly every corporate media outlet, tech company, and cultural institution behind him. They have been drooling all over themselves to convince us this is a return to unifying normalcy. After all, his favorite ice cream is chocolate chip, and his two German Shepherds just love their new digs. So normal. So unifying.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declares war on Big Tech:

    While other Republican legislators complain and pontificate about Twitter, Facebook and Google’s interference in our elections and censoring of conservative voices, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared war on the tech giants.

    DeSantis is proposing legislation that asks the Florida state legislature to impose stiff fines – up to $100,000 per day – on tech companies that “deplatform” political candidates running for office in his state. Candidates like, for instance, Donald Trump.

    Calling the tech giants “enforcers of preferred narratives” whose interests are “not in the public interest,” DeSantis, a Republican, wants to “ensure the protection of the people and their rights.” His proposed bill would allow individuals and the Florida attorney general to sue firms that violate newly established safeguards against privacy violations and censorship.

    DeSantis also suggested that other activities, such as colluding to ban people or companies from payment platforms or from cloud services, could also be outlawed.

    Presuming that the popular governor can get his measure passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature, it could become a template for the other 23 GOP-led states. It could, in effect, be the beginning of a revolt against the unacceptable dominance and manipulation of our nation’s discourse by Big Tech.

    It’s a start.

    (Hat tip: Real Clear Politics.)

  • The Trump comeback begins:

    Here’s my game plan for how Trump can make Trump and America great again.

    First, Trump must become the kingmaker of the GOP. The Trump Army is 74 million strong. The Republican Party belongs to Trump. He should remake the party in his image.

    In some ways, his defeat was empowering. As president, Trump couldn’t get rid of RINOS and never-Trumpers, because he needed their votes. But from the outside, he can remake the party, elect allies and end the careers of the GOP traitors who stabbed him in the back. Are you listening, Rep. Liz Cheney?

    Trump should recruit, endorse and campaign for Trump Republicans in each GOP primary where they’re running against RINOS, never-Trumpers and backstabbers. Seventy-four million Trump voters will vote for his chosen candidates in GOP primaries. By 2022, the GOP will be 100% remade in Trump’s image.

    Secondly, Trump should spend the next four years fixing voter fraud at the state level. Trump should recruit his billionaire buddies to put up hundreds of millions to attack this problem. Trump’s goal should be to reform election law in just the handful of states that cost him the election: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona.

    If Trump spends his time, money and focus on reforming election laws in those six states, the GOP will be back in business in 2022 and 2024.

    Thirdly, Trump needs to raise billions from his billionaire backers to build TMN: Trump Media Network. That should include a national cable TV network; a national talk radio network; a new version of Drudge Report (called Trump Report); and conservative versions of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Conservatives will never again have to depend on the mainstream media or Silicon Valley to broadcast their news and opinions.

    Only Trump has the money, brand and fundraising ability to change the media and social media landscape like this. And think of the amazing bonus: Not only will 74 million Trump voters have permanent places to communicate but if we all move away from mainstream media and social media, they will collapse. Trump will cripple his enemies and put many of them out of business.

    However, I’m not a fan of Root and others idea of Trump running for the House.

  • Bryan Proffitt, “the Vice President of North Carolina’s largest teachers’ association is a self-avowed Marxist activist linked to Liberation Road – a ‘revolutionary socialist‘ group that follows the teachings of Karl Marx and Mao Zedong.” Sounds like a good reason to put your children in a private school. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • There’s now a website to fight critical race training in education. You might want to bookmark that site. (Hat tip: Kemberlee Kaye.)
  • The Biden Administration hates private space ventures and pulled permission from Elon Musk’s SpaceX to fly. Punishment for Musk supporting the GameStop squeeze? Either way, it’s blow to American space capabilities and a boon for Chinese domination of space. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Speaking of which: Chicom rocket goes boom.
  • “Joe Biden put me out of business by suspending new oil and gas leases and drilling permits. I am a petroleum geologist and generate drilling prospects in the Rocky Mountains on federal lands. I worked six years to get a prospect ready to drill and Biden just illegally broke the terms of the lease, killing the deal.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Police dismantle world’s ‘most dangerous’ criminal hacking network.”

    International law enforcement agencies said on Wednesday they had dismantled a criminal hacking scheme used to steal billions of dollars from businesses and private citizens worldwide.

    Police in six European countries, as well as Canada and the United States, completed a joint operation to take control of Internet servers used to run and control a malware network known as “Emotet,” authorities said in a statement.

    “Emotet is currently seen as the most dangerous malware globally,” Germany’s BKA federal police agency said in a statement. “The smashing of the Emotet infrastructure is a significant blow against international organised Internet crime.”

  • “Cornyn, Crenshaw, Cruz Lead Fundraising in Final Quarter of 2020.”
  • Blackpool, UK, is preparing to seize land to make into a Chariots of the Gods theme park.

  • “Number of Texans with at least one vaccine dose surpasses number of confirmed COVID-19 cases.” Faster, please. (Hat tip: Texas Governor Greg Abbott.)
  • CEO: “We tried paying everyone the same salary. It failed.”
  • Good news! Gay Patriot blog relaunched. (Hat tip: Instapundit.) Also see this Twitter account, which may look familiar…
  • Once again social justice warriors fail to cancel Chris Pratt.

  • 21st century headlines: “Scientists have now taught spinach to send emails warning of landmines.”

  • “Snopes Rates AOC’s Account Of Capitol Attack As ‘Factually Inaccurate But Morally True.'”

  • “AOC Recalls How She Barely Survived Terrorists Seizing Nakatomi Plaza.”
  • “Hey Strongbear, do you like techno?”
  • What it was like to see Star Wars in 1977.
  • Heh:

  • Funny dog tweet:

  • What Rough Porkulus Shambles Out of Washington?

    Wednesday, December 23rd, 2020

    People asked why Nancy Pelosi delayed passing a Wuhan coronavirus relief bill until now. One obvious reason was to avoid helping President Donald Trump’s reelection chances. Now that both houses of congress have passed this 5,593 page monster of a bill, another reason is evident: To cram as much special interest pork into it as possible.

    How serious is this bill? Not very, but it spends serious money on unserious things. Tom Elliott of Grabien points out a few of the ridiculously beside-the-point items in this bill. They’re gobsmacking.

    Snip.

    Don’t worry. The Kennedy Center is getting yet another bailout. Why, exactly? Are they putting on shows right now? How many bailouts does it take to keep the lights on and the development department still working the phones calling on all those rich lobbyists living in the DMV?

    And — thank God! — the government COVID stimulus package is there to keep teenagers from hooking up — as if there aren’t dozens if not hundreds of other programs doing the same thing. And let us take a moment to say thanks to all the HIV workers in other countries by giving them new cars. Funding for this is in the COVID bill. You? Buy used.

    Other pork in the bill:

    A minimum of $3.3 billion in grants to Israel.

    Also included is $453 million to Ukraine, on top of the $400 million Trump eventually released. No word on how much of that goes to the ‘big guy.’

    $10 million for “gender programs” in Pakistan.

    $1.3 billion to Egypt, and $700 million to Sudan.

    $135 million to Burma, $85.5 million to Cambodia, $1.4 billion for an “Asia Reassurance Initiative Act,” and $130 million to Nepal.

    If we have to pay money to Sudan for it’s peace deal with Israel, then the price is too high.

    There’s so much pork in the bill that President Trump has threatened to veto it:

    He notes that the bill provides stimulus checks for the families of illegal aliens, “far more than the Americans are getting.”

    Alas, President Trump is a late convert to fiscal sanity. The budget deficit was just shy of $1 trillion in FY2019, before coronavirus shutdowns wrecked the economy. Alas, since the Senate passed the bill 92-6 (Ted Cruz, Marsha Blackburn, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, Rand Paul and Rick Scott were the only senators to vote against it), a veto override seems likely.

    As Stephen Kruiser notes:

    All of the media chatter about this has been referring to it as a COVID relief bill. Yes, we’re all aware that this is how these spending bills get done. That’s the problem, though, isn’t it? This little pork dance just gets worse with each new spending bill. Ninety-nine percent of the people who get elected to the House or Senate immediately become afflicted with brain damage that renders them incapable of understanding the meaning of “fiscal responsibility.”

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

    Alas, I would not expect any fiscal process reform from a Biden-Harris Administration…

    Your Obligatory RBG Post

    Saturday, September 19th, 2020

    Liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died at age 87 “from complications related to metastatic pancreatic cancer.” Appointed to the Supreme Court by Bill Clinton in 1993, Ginsburg famously maintained a strong friendship with fellow Justice Antonin Scalia despite fierce ideological differences. She is survived by her daughter Jane Ginsburg, a law professor at Columbia, and James Ginsburg, founder and president of classical music label Cedille Records.

    BattleSwarm Blog sends condolences to her friends and family.

    President Donald Trump issued condolences as well:

    A fighter to the end, Justice Ginsburg defeated cancer and the odds numerous times — all while continuing to serve on the Court. Her commitment to the law and her fearlessness in the face of death inspired countless “RBG” fans, and she continues to serve as a role model to countless women lawyers. Her legacy and contribution to American history will never be forgotten.

    He also ordered flags on federal buildings to be flown at half-staff.

    Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution gives the President authority to nominate Judges of the Supreme Court with the “Advise and Consent” of the Senate. President Trump has announced that Senate Republicans have an “obligation” to fill the vacancy “without delay,” and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has announced that he will hold a floor vote on any nominee.

    “The Senate and the nation mourn the sudden passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the conclusion of her extraordinary American life,” McConnell said in a statement.

    “In the last midterm election before Justice Scalia’s death in 2016, Americans elected a Republican Senate majority because we pledged to check and balance the last days of a lame-duck president’s second term. We kept our promise,” McConnell continued. “Since the 1880s, no Senate has confirmed an opposite-party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year.”

    McConell added that “by contrast, Americans reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary.”

    “Once again, we will keep our promise,” he said. “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”

    Democrats are, of course, screaming that the vacancy should be held over for the next Administration to nominate a replacement. History is not on their side:

    History supports Republicans filling the seat. Doing so would not be in any way inconsistent with Senate Republicans’ holding open the seat vacated by Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016. The reason is simple, and was explained by Mitch McConnell at the time. Historically, throughout American history, when their party controls the Senate, presidents get to fill Supreme Court vacancies at any time — even in a presidential election year, even in a lame-duck session after the election, even after defeat. Historically, when the opposite party controls the Senate, the Senate gets to block Supreme Court nominees sent up in a presidential election year, and hold the seat open for the winner. Both of those precedents are settled by experience as old as the republic. Republicans should not create a brand-new precedent to deviate from them.

    There are two types of rules in Washington: laws that allocate power, and norms that reflect how power has traditionally, historically been used. Laws that allocate power are paramount, and particularly dangerous to violate, but there is no such law at issue here. A president can always make a nomination for a Supreme Court vacancy, no matter how late in his term or how many times he has been turned down; the only thing in his way is the Senate.

    Twenty-nine times in American history there has been an open Supreme Court vacancy in a presidential election year, or in a lame-duck session before the next presidential inauguration. (This counts vacancies created by new seats on the Court, but not vacancies for which there was a nomination already pending when the year began, such as happened in 1835–36 and 1987–88.) The president made a nomination in all twenty-nine cases. George Washington did it three times. John Adams did it. Thomas Jefferson did it. Abraham Lincoln did it. Ulysses S. Grant did it. Franklin D. Roosevelt did it. Dwight Eisenhower did it. Barack Obama, of course, did it. Twenty-two of the 44 men to hold the office faced this situation, and all twenty-two made the decision to send up a nomination, whether or not they had the votes in the Senate.

    Snip.

    So what does history say about this situation, where a president is in his last year in office, his party controls the Senate, and the branches are not in conflict? Once again, historical practice and tradition provides a clear and definitive answer: In the absence of divided government, election-year nominees get confirmed.

    This is a Dan McLaughlin piece, so you get one of his dense, colorful spreadsheet charts:

    Ted Cruz has pointed out how disasterous it might be if there’s a crisis during the 2020 Presidential Election and the court is split 4-4.

    Out in the wilds of Twitter, there were two very different reactions to Ginsburg’s death: Conservatives offered praise for her abilities and extended condolences on her death:

    Meanwhile, liberals threatened to burn everything down if President Trump fulfills his constitutional duty and appoints a successor:

    Conservatives have noted Ginsberg’s ill health many times in the last few years, and were yelled at for “gas-lighting” or “being ghoulish.” And here we are.

    One of the leading contenders to be Trump’s nominee is 48-year old judge Amy Coney Barrett. If Barrett were confirmed to the court and stayed in office until she was Ginsburg’s age, she would be on the court through 2059.

    Texas 23rd Congressional District Runoff Results on Knife’s Edge

    Thursday, July 16th, 2020

    Various Wuhan coronavirus delayed runoffs finally happened in Texas on Tuesday, settling the general election slate for November.

    Well, for all races, that is, except the Texas 23rd U.S. Congressional District, the seat Republican Will Hurd is retiring from, where the Republican runoff between Tony Gonzales and Raul Reyes is still too close to call.

    On Wednesday, with all polling locations reporting, Tony Gonzales had a seven-vote lead over his opponent for the 23rd Congressional District Republican nomination in Texas – not counting late mail-in, military, and overseas ballots.

    Former Navy cryptologist Gonzales trailed retired Air Force Lt. Col. Raul Reyes for most of Tuesday evening and into the early hours of Wednesday, but they flipped later Wednesday morning. According to the Texas secretary of state Wednesday, 12,346 people voted for Gonzales while 12,339 voted for Reyes.

    The Bexar County Elections Department still must count mail-in ballots that it receives Wednesday, as long as those ballots were postmarked by Tuesday, Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen said. Military and overseas ballots can be counted if the department receives them by Monday, so those results will not be available until next week.

    District 23 covers a large swath of Texas, spanning from western San Antonio to just outside of El Paso. The seat is held by Rep. Will Hurd (R-Helotes), who declined to run for reelection.

    And, with the thinnest of justifications, here’s an Emerson, Lake and Palmer prog rock jam from (gulp!) half a century ago: