Posts Tagged ‘Texas Democratic Party’

LinkSwarm for August 28, 2020

Friday, August 28th, 2020

Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! The Republican National Convention finishes up and more news of those “fiery but peaceful” riots.

  • Here’s President Donald Trump’s full nomination acceptance speech from the RNC:

  • The PJ Media crew live-blogged night four of the RNC. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Victor Davis Hanson on what the riots are really about:

    As with most cultural revolutions that wish to start things over at “year zero,” the violence is aimed at America’s past in order to change its present and future.

    The targets are not just the old majority culture but also classical statues and buildings, hallowed institutions, religious icons, the renowned names of streets and plazas, and almost every representation of tradition and authority.

    For the majority of Americans who do not buy into the revolution, it all seems so surreal — and hypocritical.

    Only a despised, dynamic American economy allows millions to divorce from it for a summer of protest.

    A ridiculed U.S. Constitution ensures that looters and arsonists have due process.

    The Bill of Rights guarantees peaceful assembly and electrically amplified profanity rarely protected elsewhere.

    Affirmative action; federally ensured and subsidized college grants and loans; and cheap smartphones, headphones and laptops all give youth choices unimagined in the past.

    No matter — cultural revolutions are incoherent and nihilist.

    Those who signed up for the Jacobin Reign of Terror wanted violence, not a constitutional republic to replace the French monarchy.

    The Bolsheviks were less interested in substituting an elected prime minister for the Russian czar than in grabbling power and murdering millions of their enemies.

    Mao Zedong did not just hate the warlords, landlords, Mandarins and Nationalists. He wished to reinvent 1 billion Chinese in his own narcissistic image by first killing millions.

    There is, of course, reason to oversee the police more effectively.

    Universities are partly culpable for a collective $1.4 trillion in student loan debt.

    Globalization eroded the middle class. Inner-city America is far too violent — and far too neglected.

    But these are not the apparent concerns of those who carry off shoes and phones in U-Hauls, kick the unconscious on the pavement, destroy art and sculpture, or seek to torch public buildings with public servants inside.

    The point of the mob is to wipe out what it cannot create.

    It topples what it can neither match nor even comprehend.

    It would erode the very system that ensures it singular freedom, leisure and historic affluence.

    The brand of the anarchist is not logic but envy-driven power: to take it, to keep it, and to use it against purported enemies — which would otherwise be impossible in times of calm or through the ballot box.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • “There’s little wrong with President Trump that more Trump couldn’t solve.”

    More fundamentally: where do you think the country would be without him? Even if you’re disappointed with less than 200 miles of wall, remember that leading Democrats not only insist that every single new inch is a moral atrocity, they want to tear down sections that already exist.

    Think the trade agenda is progressing too slowly? Well, President Trump already renegotiated two of our worst trade deals. How many new, bad ones do you think a Hillary administration would have signed by now? Trump not tough enough on China for you? A little too much talk about his “good friend” Xi Jinping? I sympathize. But he’s still done more than all the last four presidents combined. More than that, he’s reversed the China policy of the last four presidents combined. Have you heard how Joe Biden kowtows to China?

    And I know that some will insist that, so long as a single American soldier, sailor, airman, or marine is deployed anywhere in the Middle East, then Trump has failed—or worse, betrayed them. But in fact, the president has mostly succeeded at the tasks he promised for that region: defeating ISIS, revitalizing our alliances while requiring more from our allies, and prudently disengaging from existing conflicts while not starting any new ones.

    All of these trends, changes, policies, and initiatives, and many others—however incomplete—would be reversed in the event of a Trump loss. The ruling class would hail the president’s defeat as a historic repudiation of his (allegedly) “racist and xenophobic” vision, etc., as a vindication of every charge and complaint they’ve made against him and his supporters since Day 1. Their goal would be to erase the last four years and the 2016 election as if they never happened. If think-tank conservatives want above all to get into a DeLorean and go back to 1985, the ruling class wants to cram America into a Prius and force us back to 2015. And then resume the trajectory the country had been on back then, i.e., the road to woke managerial tyranny.

  • Password is: “Enthusiasm Gap,” with six times as many CSPAN viewers for the RNC than the DNC. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • President Trump’s poll numbers rise in swing states. Adjust by the usual 3% polls historically favor Democrats over election results, and Trump is tied or ahead in all of them. And that was before the RNC. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Another look at the rioting in Kenosha.
  • Video of Kyle Rittenhouse exercising his right of self-defense:

  • Reporter robbed at gunpoint during riot.
  • Newspeak from CNN: “Fiery but peaceful protests.” At this point, all of us should just start pelting CNN reporters with garbage.
  • CNN’s inadvertent open mic:

  • “CNN Hires This Is Fine Dog To Report On Riots.”
  • Sadly true:

  • This is how cities die: “Shaken by summer looting in affluent neighborhoods, some Chicagoans are moving away.”
  • Jerry Seinfeld tries to refute that New York City is dead piece, but it just amounts to “New York is awesome and we’re tough” yadda yadda, and doesn’t address the insanely high taxes or actually changes in economic justification that used to make living in the city a requirement that isn’t there anymore. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • Powerline has additional thoughts on that New York Times article mentioned yesterday that shows that, amazingly, riots, looting and arson aren’t popular with average Americans.
  • Baltimore Sun slams Maryland Republican congressional candidate Kimberly Klacik for blaming Baltimore’s dysfunction on Democrats. They said that was “ludicrous and overly simple,” which I guess is a synonym for “true.”
  • “The Post Office Conspiracy Is First Class Stupidity“:

    If you believe the mainstream media, Donald Trump is involved in a nefarious scheme to somehow make the USPS into something inefficient and incompetent, which comes close on the heels of his plot to make the sun start setting in the West. If that’s his plan, he already pulled it off decades before he first hit the cover of the New York Post. We conservatives think the president has done a lot of great stuff since humiliating Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit in 2016, but not even the most hardcore Trump Train engineer would go as far as Trump’s frothy pie-holed critics and credit the president with the mastery of time and space.

    The correspondence conspiracy is pretty much liberal Q, except the eccentric Q folks at least like America.

    And here’s a special shout-out to the Democrats pushing this intellectual fentanyl for deciding it is a good idea to choose the competence of the post office as their hill for the crusty crustacean’s campaign to die on. Please, continue pointing to the USPS as an example of what you’ll make the entire government into if we’re dumb enough to elect Gropey J. Good thinking, because if there’s anything that real people outside the MSNBCNN bubble love, it’s the post office. It’s the federal DMV, except with stamps.

    Snip.

    What is clear is that the real goal of this conspiracy theory is to launch a preemptive attempt to find another excuse for a Democrat defeat. Last time it was PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN and this time it’ll be POSTAGE POSTAGE POSTAGE.

    Apparently, his plan is to somehow make it so the post office will be unable to deliver vote by mail ballots in order to prevent Democrats from winning the election that their senile old weirdo nominee is in the process of blowing. It might be interesting to examine the details of this conspiracy theory if there was even a coherent conspiracy theory to examine, but there’s not. It’s mostly “Trump bad!,” then low and undecipherable mumbling, then “And that’s how he will steal the election!”

    The specifics of the alleged plot, to the extent you can identify them, are puzzling and elusive. What exactly is Trump going to do again? Is he going to order the mailmen to toss ballots in the shredder? Seems like it would be hard to pull off that flex with all those crack journalists out there. We are also told that he is rounding-up blue mailboxes from America’s street corners, and that this has been going on for a couple of decades is only further proof of his evil plan, somehow. What is not clear is how this might work in practice – so, the idea is that the Democrat voter comes home, ballot in hand, weeping because there are no blue mailboxes anymore to place his ballot into, and then he walks back inside his house past … his own mailbox? And then he just gives up? He sits at his dinner table, head in hands, sobbing at his inability to figure out how to drop a piece of correspondence into the postal system?

  • “New Jersey Election Invalidated Because of Mail-In Voter Fraud.”
  • Related: “Man Arrested in L.A. for Voting 3 Times as His Dead Mother.
  • Good news! Yaser Abdel Said, the man accused of murdering his own two daughters in an Islamic honor killing, has finally been apprehended after a 12 year manhunt.
  • Texas Democrats sue to keep the Green Party off the ballot in November. Remember: When Democrats say they support equal ballot access, they don’t really mean it.
  • University of Arizona stops a Wuhan coronavirus outbreak before it starts.
  • Interesting data on how UK Labour Party has become markedly unpopular in ever-younger age groups:

  • President Trump to the press:

  • Reporter: Why are the NBA’s ratings down? Expert: Woke politics and China. Reporter: Do you have any idea? Expert: Woke politics and China. Any idea at all? Expert: WOKE POLITICS AND CHINA! Reporter: 😑.
  • Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp has has had enough of Social Justice Warriors in Silicon Valley.
  • Dwight has a four part video series on The Falkland Islands War up.
  • Speaking of Dwight, he might appreciate these annotated lyrics to the C.W. McCall song “Convoy,” since we recently watched the movie of the same name. (Brief review of the movie: Deeply flawed but weirdly compelling.)
  • Captain Kirk brings the fire:

  • “Arkham Board of Health Feedback On Miskatonic University’s Draft Plan for a Safe Campus Reopening.”
  • “Did Democrats Sacrifice Several Goats To Satan At The DNC? Fact Check: FALSE. They Actually Sacrificed Just One Goat.”
  • “Facebook Now Allows Users To Flag Anything They Disagree With As ‘Literally Hitler.”‘
  • Speaking of Facebook, everyone hates their new interface. Me included.
  • Texas Election Results Analysis: The Warning Shot

    Thursday, November 15th, 2018

    This is going to be a “glass half empty” kind of post, so let’s start out enumerating all the positives for Texas Republicans from the 2018 midterms:

  • Ted Cruz, arguably the face of conservatism in Texas, won his race despite a zillion fawning national profiles of an opponent that not only outspent him 2-1, but actually raised more money for a Senate race than any candidate in the history of the United States. All that, and Cruz still won.
  • Every statewide Republican, both executive and judicial, won their races.
  • Despite long being a target in a swing seat, Congressmen Will Hurd won reelection.
  • Republicans still hold majorities in the their U.S. congressional delegation, the Texas House and the Texas Senate.
  • By objective standards, this was a good election for Republicans. But by subjective standards, this was a serious warning shot across the bow of the party. After years of false starts and dead ends, Democrats finally succeeded in turning Texas slightly purple.

    Next let’s list the objectively bad news:

  • Ted Cruz defeated Beto O’Rourke by less than three points, the worst showing of any topline Republican candidate since Republican Clayton Williams lost the Governor’s race to Democratic incumbent Ann Richards in 1990, and the worst senate result for a Texas Republican since Democratic incumbent Lloyd Bentsen beat Republican challenger Beau Boulter in 1988.
  • O’Rourke’s 4,024,777 votes was not only more than Hillary Clinton received in Texas in 2016, but was more than any Democrat has ever received in any statewide Texas race, ever. That’s also more than any Texas statewide candidate has received in a midterm election ever until this year. It’s also almost 2.5 times what 2014 Democratic senatorial candidate David Alameel picked up in 2014.
  • The O’Rourke campaign managed to crack long-held Republican strongholds in Tarrant (Ft. Worth), Williamson, and Hays counties, which had real down-ballot effects, and continue their recent success in Ft. Bend (Sugar Land) and Jefferson (Beaumont) counties.
  • Two Republican congressmen, Pete Sessions and John Culberson, lost to Democratic challengers. Part of that can be put down to sleepwalking incumbents toward the end of a redistricting cycle, but part is due to Betomania having raised the floor for Democrats across the state.
  • Two Republican incumbent state senators, Konni Burton of District 10 and Don Huffines of District 16, lost to Democratic challengers. Both were solid conservatives, and losing them is going to hurt.
  • Democrats picked up 12 seats in the Texas house, including two in Williamson County: John Bucy III beating Tony Dale (my representative) in a rematch of 2016’s race in House District 136, and James Talarico beating Cynthia Flores for Texas House District 52, the one being vacated by the retiring Larry Gonzalez.
  • Democratic State representative Ron Reynolds was reelected despite being in prison, because Republicans didn’t bother to run someone against him. This suggests the state Republican Party has really fallen down on the job when it comes to recruiting candidates.
  • In fact, by my count, that was 1 of 32 state house districts where Democrats faced no Republican challenger.
  • Down-ballot Republican judges were slaughtered in places like Harris and Dallas counties.
  • All of this happened with both the national and Texas economies humming along at the highest levels in recent memory.
  • There are multiple reasons for this, some that other commentators covered, and others they haven’t.

  • For years Republicans have feasted on the incompetence of the Texas Democratic Party and their failure to entice a topline candidate to enter any race since Bob Bullock retired. Instead they’ve run a long string of Victor Moraleses and Tony Sanchezes and seemed content to lose, shrug their shoulders and go “Oh well, it’s Texas!” Even candidates that should have been competative on paper, like Ron Kirk, weren’t. (And even those Democrats who haven’t forgotten about Bob Kreuger, who Ann Richards tapped to replace Democratic Senator Lloyd Bentsen when the latter resigned to become Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, getting creamed 2-1 by Kay Baily Hutchison in the 1993 special election, would sure like to.) Fortunately for Texas Republicans, none of the non-Beto names bandied about (like the Castro brother) seem capable of putting them over the top (but see the “celebrity” caveat below).
  • Likewise, Republicans have benefited greatly from a fundraising advantage that comes from their lock on incumbency. Democrats couldn’t raise money because they weren’t competitive, and weren’t competitive in part because they couldn’t raise money. All that money the likes of Battleground Texas threw in may finally be having an effect.
  • More on how Democrats have built out their organization:

    Under the hood, the damage was significant. There are no urban counties left in the state that support Republicans, thanks to O’Rourke winning there. The down-ballot situation in neighboring Dallas County was an electoral massacre, as was the situation in Harris County.

    “This election was clearly about work and not the wave,” [Democratic donor Amber] Mostyn said. “We have been doing intense work in Harris County for five cycles and you can see the results. Texas is headed in the right direction and Beto outperformed and proved that we are on the right trajectory to flip the state.”

  • “Last night we saw the culmination of several years of concentrated effort by the left — and the impact of over $100 million spent — in their dream to turn Texas blue again. Thankfully, they failed to win a single statewide elected office,” Texas Republican Party chair James Dickey said in a statement. “While we recognize our victories, we know we have much work to do — particularly in the urban and suburban areas of the state.”
  • The idea that Trump has weakened Republican support in the suburbs seems to have some currency, based on the Sessions and Culberson losses.
  • That effect is especially magnified in Williamson and Hayes counties, given that they host bedroom communities for the ever-more-liberal Austin.
  • Rick Perry vs. The World ended a year-long hibernation to pin the closeness of the race on Cruz’s presidential race. He overstates the case, but he has a point. Other observations:

    3. What if Beto had spent his money more wisely? All that money on yard signs and on poorly targeted online ads (Beto spent lots of money on impressions that I saw and it wasn’t all remnant ads) wasn’t cheap. If I recall correctly, Cruz actually spent more on TV in the final weeks, despite Beto raising multiples of Cruz’s money. Odd.

    4. Getting crazy amounts of money from people who dislike Ted Cruz was never going to be the hard part. Getting crazy good coverage from the media who all dislike Ted Cruz was never going to be hard part.

    Getting those things and then not believing your own hype…well if you are effing Beto O’Rourke, then that is the hard part.

    5. Beto is probably the reason that some Dems won their elections. But let’s not forget that this is late in the redistricting cycle where districts are not demographically what they were when they were drawn nearly a decade ago.

  • For all the fawning profiles of O’Rourke, he was nothing special. He was younger than average, theoretically handsomer than average (not a high bar in American politics), and willing to do the hard work of statewide campaigning. He was not a bonafide superstar, the sort of personality like Jesse Ventura, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Donald Trump that can come in from the outside and completely reorder the political system. If one of those ran as a Democrat statewide in Texas, with the backing and resources O’Rourke had, they probably win.
  • A lack of Green Party candidates, due to them failing to meet the 5% vote threshold in 2016, may have also had a small positive effect on Democrat vote totals in the .5% to 1% range.
  • None of the controversies surrounding three statewide Republican candidates (Ken Paxton’s lingering securities indictment, Sid Miller’s BBQ controversy, or George P. Bush’s Alamo controversy) seemed to hurt them much. Paxton’s may have weighed him down the most, since he only won by 3.6%, while George P. Bush won with the second highest margin of victory behind Abbott. Hopefully this doesn’t set up a nightmare O’Rourke vs. Bush Senate race in 2020.
  • Texas Republicans just went through a near-death experience, but managed to survive. Is this level of voting the new norm for Democrats, or an aberration born of Beto-mania? My guess is probably somewhere in-between. It remains to be seen how it all shakes out during the sound and fury of a Presidential year. And the biggest factor is out of the Texas Republican Party’s control: a cyclical recession is inevitable at some point, the only question is when and how deep.

    LinkSwarm for July 20, 2018

    Friday, July 20th, 2018

    Job interviews and book-related work have taken up the majority of my waking hours this week. Also, The Burning Time has fully arrived here in central Texas. It’s supposed to hit 108° on Monday…

  • There are plenty of risks with President Donald Trump’s trade strategy in China, but China faces risks of its own:

    The smartest short-term decision Beijing can make is simply to absorb the next round of blows and hold its punches. For instance, if Washington moves ahead to impose 25% tariffs on $16 billion of Chinese imports, Beijing would withhold fire, in the hope of enticing Washington into a ceasefire, which in turn could create an opportunity to negotiate a face-saving way to avoid further and much more costly escalations.

    The most compelling rationale behind this strategy of quick capitulation is to protect China’s centrality in the global manufacturing supply chain. About 43% of Chinese merchandise trade in 2017 (totaling $4.3 trillion) is, according to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, “processing trade” (which involves importing intermediate goods and assembling the products in China). What China gains from processing trade is the utilization of its low-cost labor force, factories, and some technological spillover. Processing trade generates low value-added and profitability. For example, Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles iPhones in China, had an operating margin of only 5.8% last year.

    One of the greatest risks China faces in a prolonged trade war with the U.S. is the loss of its processing trade. Even a modest increase in American tariffs can make it uneconomical to base processing in China. Should the U.S.-China trade war escalate, many foreign companies manufacturing in China would be forced to relocate their supply chains. China could face the loss of millions of jobs, tens of thousands of shuttered factories, and a key driver of growth.

    However, capitulating to a “trade bully,” as the Chinese media calls Trump, is hard for Xi, a strongman in his own right. Worse still, it is unclear what Trump wants or how China can appease him. The terms his negotiators presented to Beijing in early May were so harsh that it is inconceivable that Xi could accept them without being seen as selling out China.

    Even if the trade war with the U.S. could be de-escalated with Chinese concessions, Beijing faces another painful decision. The trade war in general, and in particular the forced shutdown of the Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE after Washington banned the company from using American-made parts have highlighted China’s strategic vulnerability from its economic interdependence with the U.S. Before the two countries became geopolitical adversaries, economic interdependence was a valuable asset for China. It could take advantage of this relationship to build up its strength while the mutual economic benefits cushioned their geopolitical conflict.

    But with the overall U.S.-China relationship turning adversarial, economic interdependence is not only hard to sustain (as shown by the trade war), but also is rapidly becoming a serious strategic liability. As the economically-weaker party, China is particularly affected. In the technological arena, China now finds itself at the mercy of Washington in terms of access to vital parts (such as semiconductors) and critical technologies (operating systems such as Android and Windows). Should the U.S. decide to cut off Chinese access for whatever reason, a wide swathe of Chinese economy could face disruption.

    China’s somewhat vulnerable on semiconductors, but it’s severely vulnerable on semiconductor equipment.

  • Democratic U.S. House candidate and socialist darling Alexandria Ocasio Cortez: “We need to occupy every airport.” Yeah. I can’t possibly see that backfiring. Sayeth Powerline’s John Hindraker:

    Yes, please! Please go straight to LaGuardia and shut it down. But don’t stop there! “Every airport” needs to be occupied and shut down by Democrats. Between now and the midterm elections, Democrats should do all they can to make air travel inconvenient, and preferably impossible.

    This actually happened not too long ago, in the fall of 2001. Ocasio-Cortez may be too young to remember it clearly, but all of America’s airports were closed for a few days as a result of al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks. Ocasio-Cortez is more ambitious, of course. She doesn’t just want to shut down “every airport” for a few days, she wants to make it long-term. Terrific, I say! Led by Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Party could be as popular as al Qaeda by November.

  • “A California man who allegedly attacked his wife with a chainsaw is an illegal alien who has been deported at least 11 times since 2005, immigration officials confirmed Friday.”
  • Congress breaks record confirming trump picks. Also, check out this from Sen. Dianna Feinstein (D-CA): Oldham’s record “could not be more extreme and overtly political.” Really? Did he order kittens to be slaughtered in his chamber so he could bath in their blood while invoking Satan? No? In that case, I’d say he his a lot of headroom on the “more extreme” front… (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Baltimore is suffering an entirely predictable rise in violent crime:

    The most difficult times I faced during my years with the LAPD were during the years Bernard Parks served as its chief. Parks, in an overreaction to the Rampart scandal (which, though a genuine scandal, was confined to a handful of officers at a single police station), had disbanded the LAPD’s gang units and instituted a disciplinary system that placed a penalty on proactive police work. It was under Chief Parks that I attended a supervisors’ meeting after a week in which my patrol division had seen four murders and a wave of lesser crimes. Despite these grim statistics, not a single word at this meeting touched on the subject of crime. What did we talk about? Citizen complaints. And even at that we didn’t discuss them in terms of the corrosive effect they were having on officer morale. Instead, we talked about the processing of the paperwork and the minutia of formatting the reports. Fighting crime, it seemed, had taken a back seat to dealing with citizen complaints, even the most frivolous of which required hours and hours of a supervisor’s time to investigate and complete the required reports.

    As one might have expected, officers reacted to these disincentives by practicing “drive-and-wave” policing. Yes, they responded to radio calls as ever, but it became all but impossible to coax them out of their cars to investigate suspicious activity when they came upon it. As one might also have expected, the crime numbers reflected this change in police attitudes. Violent crime, which had been falling for seven years, began to increase and continued to increase until Bernard Parks was let go and replaced by William Bratton.

    Which brings us back to Baltimore, where, USA Today informs us, 342 people were murdered in 2017, bringing its murder rate to an all-time high and making it the deadliest large city in America. (Baltimore’s population last year was about 611,000. In Los Angeles, by comparison, with a population of about 3.8 million, there were 293 murders last year.)

    The Baltimore crime wave can be traced, almost to the very day in April 2015, that Freddie Gray, a small-time drug dealer and petty criminal, died in police custody. When Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby made the ill-considered decision to charge six officers in Gray’s death, she sent a clear message to the rest of the city’s police officers: concerns about crime and disorder will be subordinated to the quest for social justice.

    As was the case in Los Angeles years ago, the result was entirely predictable. Officers disengaged from proactive police work, minimizing their risk of being the next cop to be seated in the defendant’s chair in some Marilyn Mosby show trial. The prevailing thought among Baltimore’s cops was something like this: They can make me come to work, they can make me handle my calls and take my reports, but they can’t make me chase the next hoodlum with a gun I come across, because if I chase him I might catch him, and if I catch him I might have to hit him or, heaven forbid, shoot him. And if that happens and Marilyn Mosby comes to the opinion that I transgressed in any way . . . well, forget it. Let the bodies fall where they may, and I’ll be happy to put up the crime-scene tape and wait for the detectives and the coroner to show up.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • More from Borepatch on the same subject.
  • Texas Democrats are having trouble competing because they’ve been out of power so long there’s not a pool of experienced staffers to tap for campaigns, and the few that are around all gravitate to federal races. (Hat tip: Flight93_Militia’s Twitter feed.)
  • 14 people stabbed on German bus. Bet it was those darn Lutherans again…
  • Ninth Circuit Upholds Preliminary Injunction Against Magazine Confiscation in California.” Wait, the Ninth Circuit upholding the Second Amendment? Dogs and cats sleeping together! (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
  • Andrew Cuomo fundraising tidbits. Cuomo has $31.1 million cash on hand and spent more on TV advertising ($1.5 million) than Cynthia Nixon has raised in total. Bonuses: Low-level shenanigans (one guy gave 69 donations totally $77) and Winklevoss twins!
  • The EU fines Google over $5 billion for antitrust violations in locking in Google services on Android devices.
  • UK’s Labour Party looks to oust pro-Brexit MPs Kate Hoey, Frank Field, John Mann and Graham Stringer. (Hat tip: Pat Condell on Gab.)
  • Social Justice Warrior mobs eat their own. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Defeated Republican state representative Jason Villalba calls for President Trump’s impeachment. Thanks for reminding Republican primary voters, yet again, why they dumped you for Lisa Luby Ryan.
  • Williamson County officials behaving badly. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Those abused girls in Rotherham and elsewhere just need to shut their mouths. For the good of diversity.” (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Is Tesla storing cars rather than selling them? Channel stuffing?
  • How Jeff Immelt destroyed GE.
  • Kicking, screaming, biting Kansas councilwoman finally taken down with Taser, arrested.” Bonus 1: She later bite a deputy’s thumb so hard she broke a bone. Bonus 2: She was elected to the Huron (population: 73) city council with a grand total of 2 votes.
  • Gun shop owner punks Borat.
  • There’s hot tortilla chips, and then there’s really hot tortilla chips. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Iowahawk addresses the Allegra Budenmayer menace. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Heh:

  • Heh 2:

    And I just posted a Ted Rall cartoon. And the moon became as blood…

  • More Inside Dirt on Battleground Texas’ Spectacular Failure

    Friday, January 2nd, 2015

    Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Liberal elitists confidently sweep into a new situation, arrogantly tell everyone they’re in charge, refuse to listen to advice, alienate all those around them, and make a gigantic hash of everything, worsening the problem they sought to “solve.”

    That could be a description of, well, just about everything the Obama Administration has done in the last six years, but in this case it’s a description of Battleground Texas’s spectacular failure in the 2014 elections from the left-wing Texas Observer.

    “Battleground was opaque in its dealings, shied from making firm commitments, negotiated with a heavy hand and was coy about its long-term goals.” Hmm, that sounds strangely familiar…

    Like a plane crash or an industrial accident, many things small and large had to go wrong to produce the dismal results on Nov. 4. The Davis campaign’s effort was bungled from the get-go, and it was certainly a bad year for Democrats nationally. But neither of these fully explain the scale of 2014’s loss. The most serious failing of the Democratic coalition this year was its inability to mobilize and turn out voters, a responsibility that fell largely to Battleground.

    As dozens of conversations with individuals associated with the party, local Democratic groups, campaigns and other progressive organizations make clear, Battleground Texas had a major part—though definitely not the only one—in contributing to Democrats’ terrible showing in November. The group, they argue, made critical and avoidable mistakes that cost candidates up and down the ticket.

    Snip.

    The models, the party staffers say, seemed to treat Bill White’s performance in 2010 as a floor, beyond which Davis could improve—failing to recognize that it had taken a lot of money and effort to reach White’s level.

    So in some parts of the state, Battleground volunteers spent time combing white suburban neighborhoods for “crossover” voters—soft Republicans and independents—while neighborhoods rich with potential Democratic votes went underworked.

    Snip.

    Battleground had a peculiarly fraught relationship with many county parties around the state. A huge number of Democratic voters live in the state’s 15 largest counties, so local parties are major footsoldiers of the Democratic effort, representing the permanent party infrastructure in Texas’ largest cities. Forging close cooperative relationships with them should have been a no-brainer, but Battleground wanted to dictate the terms of the relationship.

    Battleground tried to get county parties to sign formal working agreements, according to four individuals familiar with the negotiations, which included policies regarding data and sharing of volunteer resources. The common perception was that Battleground asked for far too much, and didn’t offer enough in return.

    The Travis County Democratic Party signed a contract, which worked more or less acceptably, according to both sides. It’s unknown how many others did. The fact that Travis County had signed such an agreement with Battleground was well known in other parts of the state, according to three local party officials, but Battleground refused to share details of the agreement with other county parties—presumably under the belief that it would weaken their negotiating position. One county party leader describes it as a “divide-and-conquer” approach: another, as an attempt to “annex” local party groups.

    Snip.

    In largely Hispanic Nueces County, home to Corpus Christi, Republicans swept every contested race in an area that should be fertile ground for Democrats. One of the problems, local organizers say, was that the coalition didn’t spend enough time mobilizing Democratic base voters early on.

    The Nueces County Democratic Party struggled to build a relationship with Battleground, which didn’t know how to talk to Hispanic voters and was reluctant to use volunteers to support Democratic lieutenant governor nominee Leticia Van de Putte, says former Corpus Christi state Rep. Solomon “Solly” Ortiz Jr. When Battleground and the state party tried to compensate late in the game by running their own voter canvasses, they ended up unnecessarily duplicating each other’s efforts. “It was just a clusterfuck, man,” Ortiz says.

    Snip.

    Another ongoing dispute involves what may be Battleground’s greatest asset: the 34,000 Texans who have volunteered for the group since its inception. Even critics acknowledge that the scale of Battleground’s volunteer operation was impressive, and could prove helpful to future Democratic campaigns. Many who critique the group emphasize their appreciation and respect for the volunteers.

    But some Texas Democrats were operating under the belief that the list of volunteers would be shared with the party after the election. Their thinking is that the volunteer base should be a sort of communal property. Volunteers are the lifeblood of campaigns: Money can make campaigns viable, and data can inform strategy, but it’s volunteers who go out to walk blocks, make calls and keep people excited.

    Senior staffers with Battleground say that was never in the cards, that it would be virtually unprecedented to give away that kind of asset. The volunteers help give Battleground continued influence in the state—they are the group’s future.

    For all the talk of Hispanics being the key to turning Texas blue, Battleground Texas seemed distinctly uncomfortable reaching out to them.

    All in all, the piece offers a rich buffet of failure, and I’ve only skimmed some of the highlights here.

    So given the obvious and extensive dysfunction evident in 2014’s spectacular flameout, you’d think Battleground Texas’ backers would try something else.

    You’d be wrong.

    In the end, whether the group stays or folds comes down to one factor: money. Battleground’s operation, when in full gear, is extraordinarily expensive to run. The group’s most important financial backer is Steve Mostyn, the Houston lawyer. He has, according to those who know him, a great antipathy toward the Democratic Party itself. After the election, he pledged that he’d stick with Battleground.

    “I’m the guy who’s got the most money in it and I’m the one writing the checks,” Mostyn told the Houston Chronicle, “and I’m telling you I think it’s working.”

    He who calls the piper pays the tune. Presumably Battleground Texas will do precisely what one wealthy trial lawyer wants them to do, no matter what other Texas Democrats think.

    A growing number of Texas Democrats are worried that Battleground is getting ready to use its Texas volunteer base to help Hillary Clinton’s campaign nationally. Top Texas Democrats say Jenn Brown, Battleground’s executive director, has privately admitted that she sees Texas as an “export” state in 2016—meaning that the state’s money and volunteers would be best put to work elsewhere. Attempts to contact Brown through the group were unsuccessful. Sackin, Battleground’s spokesperson, told the Observer that “Battleground Texas was created specifically to keep resources in Texas—so that people didn’t feel like they have to leave Texas to volunteer or donate to make a difference. We’ve been saying that since we were founded, that’s why we were founded, and that hasn’t changed.”

    Bird, the group’s founder, and wealthy Houston attorney Steve Mostyn, the group’s most important financial backer, are prominent members of the leadership team of the Ready for Hillary Super PAC. If Battleground involves itself in a contested Democratic presidential primary, it could arouse indignation here, where not everyone has jumped on the Clinton bandwagon.

    But if Battleground Texas uses its volunteers to support Clinton’s campaign in other states during the general election, lot of Texas Democrats would be downright furious.

    So Battleground Texas is going to treat Texas Democrats the way Democrats treat taxpayers: As a pinata to bash and extract the goodies from.

    I wonder if Texas Democrats have other plans…

    (Hat tip: Push Junction.)

    LinkSwarm for December 19, 2014

    Friday, December 19th, 2014

    I trust everyone reading this has already heard about Sony Picture’s spinelessness in cancelling their release of The Interview, and Paramount’s even more-spineless refusal to allow theaters to show Team America: World Police in its place. This would be good reason to avoid paying for any Sony or Paramount products any time in the near future. And Cuba is a topic for another time. So here’s a quick look at the rest of what’s been happening the week before Christmas:

  • Obama’s taunting political opponents over how impossible it will be to overturn his illegal alien amnesty actually increases the chances it will be overturned.
  • Vermont can’t afford to pay for its socialist health care system.
  • Voters “prefer dysfunction to the alternative scenario of Democrats running both the White House and Congress.”
  • Democrats accept bribes to oppose Voter ID laws. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • It may be too late for investor’s to move money out of Russia in the wake of the ruble’s collapse, mainly because they already have.
  • Here are eight campus rape hoaxes that bear remarkable similarities to the Rolling Stone UVA rape hoax.
  • Was the entire hoax fabricated because one of “Jackie”‘s friends rebuffed her romantic overtures?
  • And the entire sad affair seems to have moved into farce now that it appears “Jackie” actually copied a Dawson’s Creek script for some of her catfishing.
  • The “campus rape epidemic” is “a male demonizing Gothic fantasy nurtured by several decades of hardline feminist theory”:

  • Meanwhile, in the real rape culture, the Islamic State hands out brochures on how jihadists are allowed to rape prepubescent girls.
  • The ex-wife of the Sydney gunman sought refugee in the U.S. right before she was murdered. “He was abusing her, having her wear the hijab, did not want her to talk with anybody.”
  • Executive director out at Texas Democratic Party.” Really? After such a swell job? (Hat tip: Push Junction.)
  • Amongst the Wikipedia editors.

    I am not exaggerating when I say it is the closest thing to Kafka’s The Trial I have ever witnessed, with editors and administrators giving conflicting and confusing advice, complaints getting “boomeranged” onto complainants who then face disciplinary action for complaining, and very little consistency in the standards applied. In my short time there, I repeatedly observed editors lawyering an issue with acronyms, only to turn around and declare “Ignore all rules!” when faced with the same rules used against them.

  • Pro-gun control Austin City Council candidate defeated.
  • Wonder why so many UT insiders went after Wallace Hall when it was obvious Hall was right? Maybe it’s because they’re involved in the scandal up to their eyeballs. (Hat tip: Push Junction.)
  • Science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle has suffered a strike. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.
  • Democratic Failure In Texas: Even Worse Than You Thought

    Wednesday, November 19th, 2014

    I wanted to put up a link to this Wayne Thorburn Politico Piece on the Democratic Party’s 2014 failure in Texas. The piece focuses on the many missteps made by Battleground Texas, such as the decision to send out-of-state Obama activists rather than hire within, the decision to go all-in on Wendy Davis rather than build an organization from the bottom up, and failure to share information with the Texas Democratic Party.

    But the part I found most striking was the description of just how badly Democrats did in lower-level races:

    This lack of a bottom-up strategy was particularly glaring on Dec. 9, 2013, the filing deadline for 2014 candidates. Far from attracting a number of qualified and vigorous candidates to the Democratic banner, Battleground and the party ended up ceding much of the field to the Republicans without even a whimper. In fact, Democrats failed to recruit anyone to run on their ticket for more than 40 percent of all state legislative positions on the ballot. The end result would be almost a two-to-one Republican majority in both the Texas Senate and the House. Even more depressing was the party’s showing at the county level. Democrats could not find anyone willing to run for County Judge (chief elected official in the county) in 165 of Texas’ 254 counties, ceding almost two-thirds of all counties to the Republicans without an election. Thus, by 2015, while the Democrats will retain the county judge in four of the six largest counties, the GOP will hold all 29 suburban county judge positions, 18 of 21 in the other metropolitan counties scattered around the state, and 150 of the 198 small town county courthouses. Of all the major counties in Texas, only Dallas, Bexar, El Paso, Jefferson and Travis, along with the border counties of Webb and Hidalgo, will have a Democratic county judge.

    And even more depressing than that was the fact that not a single Democratic candidate could be found who was willing to run for any county office in 86 counties—more than one-third of the total. These 86 included the heavily populated suburban counties of Denton, Johnson and Parker (outside Dallas-Fort Worth), Montgomery (suburban Houston) and Comal (north of San Antonio) as well as the other urban counties of Bell (Temple), Randall (Amarillo) and Grayson (Sherman). As the saying goes, you can’t win a game if you don’t field a team.

    Ferdinand Frank Fischer III Condemns All Non-White Non-Democrats

    Wednesday, July 2nd, 2014

    So Democratic state representative Trey Martinez-Fischer used his speech at the Texas Democratic convention to say that GOP stands for “gringos y ostros pendejos” (or, roughly, “gringos and other assholes”). In other words, he just insulted every black, Hispanic and Asian Republican in Texas.

    I knew that name sounded familiar, mainly because he was born Ferdinand Frank Fischer III and formerly known as Tracey Fisher, then started going by Trey Martinez-Fischer.

    I’m sure the fact he was running for office as a Democrat in a Hispanic majority district had nothing to do with that decision.

    More and more it seems that racist condescension is the default liberal attitude to those who wander off the Democratic plantation…

    Some Texas Runoff Result Links

    Thursday, May 29th, 2014

    I keep looking for some insightful pieces on the Texas election results, but mostly what I’m finding is the usual MSMN “those extreme extremist Republicans have sure gotten extremely extreme” blather (see just about any Paul Burka piece for an example of the form), but I did find a few links of interest

    Here’s a Texas Tribune piece.

    “‘Some Democrats have said they want me to be the nominee,’ Patrick said during his victory speech. ‘Well, they’ve got me, and I’m coming.'”

    And what does the party that hasn’t won a statewide election this century think of developments?

    “Democratic Party spokesman Emmanuel Garcia added, ‘The days of a pragmatic Texas Republican Party are over.'”

    Why yes, I’m sure we all remember how much Democrats praised George W. Bush and Rick Perry for their “pragmatism.”

    Democrats also might find it hard to win the Agriculture Commissioner’s race with a candidate who refuses to campaign.

    Empower Texas on what the media are calling the “Tea Party Takeover”: “You can’t have a takeover of something that was already dominated by those who are claimed to be taking it over.” The Tea Party is essentially conservative voters who insist that Republicans who run as conservatives actually govern as Republicans. Imagine that.

    “The conservative wing of the Democratic Party has been obliterated.”

    Monday, August 12th, 2013

    Today the Dallas Morning News has an article hand-wringing article on why white males have abandoned the Democratic Party. The title quote is from the middle of the piece, to which one can only reply “Well, duh.”

    The piece makes the usual MSM-required mention of racism, and takes until the third-to-last paragraph to quote a Republican saying “The national Democratic Party moved sharply to the left.”

    Ask yourself: What conservative Democrat of, say, 35 years ago, would back an agenda of trillion dollar deficits, illegal alien amnesty, gay marriage, and taxpayer funded abortions? Pretty much none, especially not in the rural areas Democrats used to dominate. It’s all-but-impossible to envision conservative Democratic stalwarts like Charlie Wilson or Allan Shivers back today’s Democratic Party. Add to the fact that liberals have ruthlessly purged Blue Dog Democrats from the party, and you realize that conservatives didn’t leave the Democratic Party; they were pushed out.

    Satan Calls Press Conference To Disassociate Self From Texas Democratic Party

    Wednesday, July 3rd, 2013

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

    Austin, Texas: Today Satan, the Prince of Darkness and ruler of the infernal underworld, held a press conference on the Capitol steps to disassociate himself from the Texas Democratic Party.

    “Last night, a bunch of pro-abortion supporters at the state capitol chanted ‘Hail Satan’,” said the Prince of Lies. “And, you know, all well and good. Any publicity is good publicity.”

    “But I wanted to make one thing clear,” said the Angel of the Abyss. “In no way, shape or form am I, Hell, its many powers and principalities, or At His Satanic Majesty’s Request Industries Ltd., involved or associated with the Texas Democratic Party.”

    “Sure, there’s a lot to like about the Texas Democratic Party,” said the Great Deceiver. “I’m totally down with the baby killing, I’m big on bankrupting future generations through deficit spending, I love breeding despair though intergenerational welfare dependency, and how could I oppose being soft on crime?”

    “But, c’mon!” said the Son of the Morning Star. “I’m a man of wealth and taste! I’m hardly going to let myself be seen paling around with those pathetic clowns in the Texas Democratic Party!”

    “If I were running the show, don’t you think I’d be able to get at least one Democrat elected statewide since 1994?” asked the Vile Tempter. “They used to own this state, but now these boobs couldn’t find their ass with both hands! I don’t want to be associated with that sort of incompetence.”

    “If I’m going to come to Texas, I’m going to go to San Antonio to hang out with my heavy metal homies, because those dudes know how to party,” said The Great Serpent. “Plus I know a place that serves killer breakfast tacos.”

    When asked if he was associated with the national Democratic Party, the Devil said “Wow, look at the time! I’ve got to wrap this up, I’m late for a beheading in the Sudan. But before I go, I just want to tell the reporters here that we’re always hiring good PR people for Hell, and we pay a lot better rates than MSNBC.”