Posts Tagged ‘Voter Fraud’

LinkSwarm for September 4, 2020

Friday, September 4th, 2020

Greetings, and welcome to the Friday LinkSwarm! President Trump’s approval rises among black people, more antifa behaving badly, and a look at just how badly Lebanon is screwed.

  • President Trump’s approval rating among Black voters jumped by 60% during the Republican National Committee even as Democrats and progressives sought to brand the Republican president as racist. A HarrisX-Hill poll released Friday showed Mr. Trump’s net approval with Black voters from Aug. 22-25, which included the first two days of the RNC, rose to 24%, up from 15% in the pollster’s Aug. 8-11 survey.” If those numbers are accurate, and hold, all by themselves they could put Pennsylvania out of reach for Democrats, since they lost by 50,000 votes in 2016, and have to rack up huge black totals in Philadelphia to balance out their disadvantage in the rest of the state. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Dirtbag dirtnapped: “Michael Forest Reinoehl, 48, died in Lacey, Washington, where federal agents were attempting to take him into custody for the shooting — the same night his interview on the shooting aired on Vice News.”
  • Chicago gangs form a pact to murder any Chicago police officers with a drawn weapon.
  • President Trump orders to begin defunding cities who refuse to control rioters and defund police:

    President Trump is ordering the federal government to begin the process of defunding New York City and three other cities where officials allowed “lawless” protests and cut police budgets amid rising violent crime, The Post can exclusively reveal.

    Trump on Wednesday signed a five-page memo ordering all federal agencies to send reports to the White House Office of Management and Budget that detail funds that can be redirected.

    New York City, Washington, DC, Seattle and Portland are initial targets as Trump makes “law and order” a centerpiece of his re-election campaign after months of unrest and violence following the May killing of George Floyd by Minnesota police.

    “My Administration will not allow Federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones,” Trump says in the memo, which twice mentions New York Mayor Bill de Blasio by name.

    “To ensure that Federal funds are neither unduly wasted nor spent in a manner that directly violates our Government’s promise to protect life, liberty, and property, it is imperative that the Federal Government review the use of Federal funds by jurisdictions that permit anarchy, violence, and destruction in America’s cities.”

    Good.

  • How antifa operates at the street level:

    The course of the nightly action against the PPB followed a fairly predictable pattern: a contingent of notional BLM protesters rendezvoused with a group of antifa black bloc at a public park close to their objective. As they moved towards the police building which was their target, “corkers” -a sort of bicycle-mounted blocking force- closed off side streets and the scouting line -typically on mopeds- moved ahead and on the flanks. Behind them came the main contingent of black bloc. Upon arrival at the PPB the streets were blocked with vehicles and burning dumpsters, with the “corkers” stationed to direct traffic away from the action and the scouts setting up a picket line extending out several blocks, watching for police reinforcements and creating the strong impression of antifa control of territory.

    The black bloc then engaged in an steadily-escalating level of vandalism and property damage directed at their target, including unguarded police vehicles parked nearby. If uninterrupted, this quickly escalated to arson and serious destruction to the facilities.

    By this point the scouting line often detected the flanking lines of riot police and a riot was formally been declared. Blocs armed with shields deployed defensively to allow time for the rest of the rioters to disengage. These “shield walls” provided a tempting target for a police “bull rush”, video of which can then be used for propaganda purposes. Behind the shield wall other bloc members threw commercial fireworks, frozen water bottles, and paint-filled balloons. The paint balloons are often mixed with sand or abrasive material that scratches clear shields and visors when cleaning is attempted damaging expensive riot suppression equipment. Meanwhile the main element of the antifa black bloc continued to retreat into bordering residential areas.

    Antifa chooses the residential areas for specific reasons. As the police deploy flashbangs, tear gas, and assorted non-lethal munitions in order to control the ongoing riot, the disruptive effects are experienced by the local residents. Additionally, as the action moved further into the poorly-lit neighborhoods, small groups of rioters and black bloc would break off to either escape, or engage in vandalism against the original PPB target (if left unguarded) or other nearby targets of opportunity.

    The action concluded at some point in the early morning hours, usually 4-5 hours after the assembly in the designated park. The location was almost always shifted to a different location every night, very rarely going to the same location on successive nights. This means it’s rare for the same location to be targeted more than twice in one week.

    Plus suggested tactics on countering it.

  • “Flamethrower-Packing Antifa ‘Entered Fetal Position And Began Crying’ After Unsuccessful Escape From Cops.” This was in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I can’t believe I didn’t have a “flamethrower” tag until now.

  • Madison City Council approves illegal, racist, quota-driven police oversight board.
  • Goya CEO Bob Unamue, tells Democrats that “the ‘hatred and destruction’ are moving Latinos to Trump.” Plus a comparison to communist enforcement mobs. (Hat tip: @txpoliticjunkie.)
  • In an effort to prove how reasonable Democrats are, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser considers removing the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Former Trump skeptic changes mind, thinks Trump saved the GOP from itself.

    Like a lot of observers at the time, I thought Trump had no real policy agenda to define his campaign beyond a vague pro-America sentiment and a withering disdain for the political establishments of both major parties. I thought his political inexperience was a liability, that his penchant for insulting his opponents would turn voters off, and that the GOP had missed an opportunity to defeat Hillary Clinton by nominating someone else—anyone, really, besides Trump.

    But it turned out Trump was the best candidate to beat Clinton because Clinton embodied nearly everything voters had come to hate about America’s political class: the falsity, the naked hypocrisy, the barely disguised disdain for ordinary people. For all his obvious faults, Trump wasn’t a professional politician, had no record to defend, and was unconstrained by the conventions of ordinary political rhetoric. He was uniquely positioned to call out and exploit Clinton’s faults and shortcomings, and expose the contradictions at the heart of the Democratic Party.

    For Republican voters, Trump offered the promise of something different from the seemingly endless pattern of politicians who promised one thing and did another, especially on immigration and free trade. For decades, incessant Republican boasting about “securing the border” never actually secured the border as mass illegal immigration continued apace. Expressions of sympathy for the American working class never produced policies that might actually help the working class. Trump zeroed in on these things, and his message resonated because it was true (and still is).

  • The lockdowns have been ten times as deadly as the Wuhan coronavirus.
  • Evidently Democrats want to bankrupt any NYC restaurants they haven’t already: “Bill De Blasio Says NYC Indoor Dining May Not Happen Until June 2021.”
  • Joseph P. Kennedy III loses his senate primary to incumbent Ed Markey, who seemed to run to Kennedy’s left.
  • Speaking of members of the Kennedy clan running for office, NJ Democratic congressional candidate Amy Kennedy calls for lifting sanctions on Chinese companies. In one of those amazing coincidences, she also owns substantial amounts of Chinese stock. What are the odds? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • The Media Lynching of Kyle Rittenhouse. A liberal journalism professor not only omits the fact that Rittenhouse was attacked, but also thinks that the Kenosha riots will hurt Trump.
  • The rap sheets of Kyle Rittenhouse’s attackers.
  • Speaking of which, Twitter suspends the account of Rittenhouse’s lawyer, L. Lin Wood.
  • How is it that #BlackLivesMatter always chooses repeat felony offenders as their poster-children?
  • Dozens of “controversial” Joe Rogan episodes missing from Spotify.
  • Here’s a really meaty Art Keller Quillette piece on the fall of Beirut:

    The effects of the explosion of nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in the port of Beirut, Lebanon on August 4th was not restricted to 170+ deaths and 3,000+ injuries. The explosion’s metaphorical shockwaves may prove to be the death knell of Lebanon’s domestic politics and economy. Both were already collapsing from extreme corruption even before COVID struck. Add an explosion that caused billions of dollars of damage to an already bankrupt country, and the result is a failed state in the making.

    Lebanon is failing in no small part because the Shia terror group Hezbollah, which translates as “Army of God,” makes its home there. Hezbollah’s continued residency and effective Lebanese governance seem to be mutually exclusive propositions.

    Except calling Hezbollah merely a terror group is too simplistic, and nothing in Lebanon is ever simple or easy to explain.

    Hezbollah is responsible for countless murders, kidnappings, and terror attacks, including the 1983 suicide bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Marines. But Hezbollah is also a charity operating in refugee camps. It’s a social service provider for Shia Lebanese, operating clinics, hospitals, and schools (which teach wildly anti-Semitic propaganda). It operates a satellite TV channel. It smuggles guns, sells drugs, and launders money. It has a finger in almost every pie in Lebanon, and influence in Syria, Iran, Iraq, the Northern Triangle countries of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador), and Venezuela. (Click to see the Washington Institute’s regularly updated interactive map of Hezbollah’s globe-spanning activities, and the actions taken to counter them.)

    Beyond all that, Hezbollah is also a powerful paramilitary group with 30,000+ fighters, armed with tens of thousands of rockets, as well as precision munitions like guided ballistic missiles. Hezbollah fought Israel’s last incursion in Lebanon in 2006 to a standstill, and Hezbollah is often considered the winner of the clash, despite Israel’s access to the latest weapons tech.

    Yet, like every other organization in Lebanon, Hezbollah is in very deep shit.

    Lebanon’s current chaos is due to decades of previous chaos spawned of ongoing demographic and power shifts in the post-WWII era among Lebanon’s Maronite Christians, Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, and the Druze (a splinter Shia sect). The brutal Lebanese civil war fought by sectarian militias from 1975 to 1990 ended with a peace deal splitting political power along explicit sectarian lines. By law, the Shia nominate the Speaker of the Parliament, the Sunni get the Prime Minister’s Office, and the Christians select the Lebanese President. The sectarian structure of the government mandated by the peace deal effectively embedded political corruption into law. Each sect controls a piece of the Lebanese government and economy, and each has installed a patronage system dispensing favors and money to their upper echelons, with little of the wealth trickling down to the sects’ underclasses.

    Enlightening, and depressing. Read the whole thing.
    

  • “Iowa Judge Voids 50,000 Absentee Ballot Requests.” “The Trump campaign argued the forms should have been blank except for the election date and type, per the Iowa secretary of state’s directions. Local officials in Linn County, which is home to Cedar Rapids, ignored those directions and sent out the applications with more information anyway.”
  • Boom:

  • Ordinary people are getting tired:

  • “Shirtless, spear-wielding man allegedly stabs teen in Times Square.” Later in the piece: “The man appeared to have mental issues.” Ya think?
  • The Brontosaurus is back, babies!
  • No endorsement of smoking, but this is pretty damn cool:

  • “Antifa Unveils New Pumpkin Spice Molotov Cocktails For Fall Protests.”
  • “Proud Mayor Lets His Entire City Burn To The Ground Just To Make Trump Look Bad.”
  • “Politicians Officially Exempted From Lockdown Rules Since Lizard People Can’t Catch COVID.” Well, Pelosi is pretty Icke…
  • “Rioters Beginning To Worry They Can No Longer Loot Safely.”
  • The Babylon Bee provides a handy guide to Wuhan Coronavirus safety:

  • I think he was hungry:

  • Visualize whirled peas:

  • LinkSwarm for May 22, 2020

    Friday, May 22nd, 2020

    The Wuhan coronavirus, and China, and deep state shenanigans, oh my! But first a PSA for Texas shoppers:

  • There’s an an “Energy Star” sales tax holiday in Texas Memorial Day weekend. Products you can buy tax free this weekend include:
    • Air conditioners (priced $6,000 or less)
    • Refrigerators (priced $2,000 or less)
    • Ceiling fans
    • Incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs
    • Washers
    • Dishwashers
    • Dehumidifiers

    Why water heaters, dryers and freezers aren’t eligible I couldn’t tell you, but if you needed to get any covered appliances, this weekend is a good time.

  • When was Michael Flynn unmasked? Wrong question. What if he was never masked in the first place?

    There is no such evidence in the unmasking list that acting national intelligence director Richard Grenell provided to Senators Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R., Wis.). I suspect that’s because General Flynn’s identity was not “masked” in the first place. Instead, his December 29 call with Kislyak was likely intercepted under an intelligence program not subject to the masking rules, probably by the CIA or a friendly foreign spy service acting in a nod-and-wink arrangement with our intelligence community.

    “Unmasking” is a term of art for revealing in classified reports the names of Americans who have been “incidentally” monitored by our intelligence agencies. Presumptively, the names of Americans should be concealed in these reports, which reflect the surveillance of foreign targets, primarily under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Broadly speaking, FISA governs two kinds of intelligence collection.

    The first is “traditional” FISA — the targeted monitoring of a suspected clandestine operative of a foreign power. If the FBI shows the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) probable cause that a person inside the United States is acting as a foreign power’s agent, it may obtain a warrant to surveil that person. If the foreign power’s suspected agent communicates with Americans, the latter are incidentally intercepted even though they are not the targets of the surveillance.

    The second kind of FISA collection occurs under Section 702 of the statute. It brings under FISC jurisdiction various intelligence-collection programs that target categories of non-Americans outside the United States. These foreigners also communicate with Americans, so the latter are incidentally intercepted.

    Under federal law, both kinds of FISA collection are subject to so-called minimization procedures. These aim to safeguard the privacy of Americans who have been incidentally monitored. When raw intelligence is refined into intelligence reports (including transcripts of recorded conversations) that are disseminated to U.S. officials, the identities of these Americans do not appear. Rather, a designation such as “U.S. Person” is substituted — the “mask,” as it were.

    If, upon reviewing intel reports, an official with national-security or foreign-relations responsibilities believes that the reporting is critical, and that the identity of the U.S. person must be known in order for our government to reap the full benefit of the intelligence, then that official may request unmasking. Decisions on such requests are made by specialists assigned to the agency that reported the intelligence in question — usually the FBI or the NSA for intelligence collected, respectively, inside or outside the United States. Our intelligence agencies, led by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), keep records of these requests. This underscores that unmasking — because of its privacy implications, because foreign intelligence must never be a pretext for government spying on Americans — is a big deal that should be done only rarely and carefully.

    With that as background, let’s get back to Flynn.

    For three years, we’ve been led to believe that Flynn’s December 29 conversation with Kislyak was intercepted because the latter was “routinely” monitored. (Kislyak was replaced as ambassador in 2017.) That is, Kislyak was an overt agent of Russia, stationed at its embassy in Washington, so the FBI kept tabs on him. Indeed, the “routine”-surveillance story line was repeated by the New York Times just this week.

    The implication is that Kislyak was probably subjected to traditional FISA surveillance by the FBI; or, since he lived in Russia and traveled to other places when not in America, perhaps he was also a FISA Section 702 target. In either event (or both), Kislyak was interacting with Americans, who were thus incidentally intercepted.

    That, the story goes, is what must have happened to Flynn. Trump’s designated national security advisor was unmasked because, once intelligence agents intercepted the December 29 phone call, they decided it was essential to identify the person with whom the Russian ambassador was discussing sanctions that President Obama had just imposed against Moscow.

    I no longer buy this story. If it were true, there would be a record of Flynn’s unmasking. DNI Grenell has represented that the list he provided to Senators Grassley and Johnson includes all requested unmaskings of Flynn from November 8, 2016 (when Donald Trump was elected president) through the end of January 2017 (when the Trump administration had transitioned into power). Yet, it appears that not a single listed unmasking pertains to the December 29 Kislyak call.

    Timeline details and Strzok-Page comms snipped.

    Well, the possibility that first leaps to mind is: Maybe Flynn was a FISA surveillance target. That is, his interception was not incidental. Rather, the FBI was monitoring him under FISA because he was a suspected agent of a foreign power — the theory based on which the bureau opened their counterintelligence investigation of Flynn in August 2016. But that can’t be right. After an exhaustive investigation of the FBI’s abuse of FISA, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded that there is no evidence the FBI “requested or seriously considered FISA surveillance of . . . Flynn.” (IG Report’s “Executive Summary,” p. vi.)

    It is more likely, then, that the Flynn–Kislyak call was captured by intelligence operations that are not governed by FISA.

    Snip.

    Readers of my book Ball of Collusion know I have argued that the Obama administration’s Trump–Russia probe/political-narrative long predated the FBI’s July 2016 opening of “Crossfire Hurricane.” I believe there were several strands of the Trump–Russia probe, and that they trace back to 2015, around the time of Donald Trump’s entry into the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

    The CIA played a central role. The agency collaborated — I’m tempted to say colluded! — with a variety of friendly foreign intelligence services, especially NATO countries that Trump made a habit of bashing on the campaign trail.

    Read the whole thing.

  • “How Russiagate Began With Obama’s Iran Deal Domestic Spying Campaign“:

    Barack Obama warned his successor against hiring Michael Flynn. It was Nov. 10, 2016, just two days after Donald Trump upset Hillary Clinton to become the 45th president of the United States. Trump told aide Hope Hicks that he was bewildered by the president’s warning. Of all the important things Obama could have discussed with him, the outgoing commander in chief wanted to talk about Michael Flynn.

    The question of why Obama was so focused on Flynn is especially revealing now. The Department of Justice recently filed to withdraw charges against the retired three-star general for making false statements to the FBI in a Jan. 24, 2017, interview regarding a phone call with a Russian diplomat. The circumstances surrounding the call and subsequent FBI interview have given rise to a vast conspiracy theory that was weaponized to imprison a decorated war hero and a strategic thinker whose battlefield innovations saved countless American lives. There is no evidence that Flynn “colluded” with Russia, and the evidence that Flynn did not make false statements to the FBI has been buried by the bureau, including current Director Christopher Wray.

    So if the Obama administration wasn’t alarmed by Flynn’s nonexistent ties to Russia, why was he Obama’s No. 1 target? Why were officials from the previous administration intercepting his phone calls with the Russian ambassador?

    The answer is that Obama saw Flynn as a signal threat to his legacy, which was rooted in his July 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Flynn had said long before he signed on with the Trump campaign that it was a catastrophe to realign American interests with those of a terror state. And now that the candidate he’d advised was the new president-elect, Flynn was in a position to help undo the deal. To stop Flynn, the outgoing White House ran the same offense it used to sell the Iran deal—they smeared Flynn through the press as an agent of a foreign power, spied on him, and leaked classified intercepts of his conversations to reliable echo chamber allies.

    Again, read the whole thing. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Matt Taibbi: “Democrats Have Abandoned Civil Liberties.” I wonder if Taibbi could pinpoint the last time Democrats actually supported civil liberties…
  • “House Dem criticizes her own party for shoving ‘wish list’ stimulus package: ‘It’s not a good look.'”

    Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., criticized her own party’s coronavirus legislation this week as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., pressured the Republican-controlled Senate to adopt what Porter described as a Democratic “wish list.”

    “The HEROES Act is dead on arrival,” Porter said Tuesday, referring to the $3 trillion package the House passed last week as a follow-up to the CARES Act. Her comments during an online meeting hosted by the Tustin [Calif.] Democratic Club were first reported by the Washington Examiner.

    “There was no bipartisan negotiation here and no effort at bipartisan negotiation,

    Snip.

    But tucked into the legislation are provisions that rankled the Republicans, including expanding $1,200 checks to certain undocumented immigrants, restoring the full State and Local Tax Deduction (SALT) that helps individuals in high-taxed blue states, a $25 billion rescue for the U.S. Postal Service, allowing legal marijuana businesses to access banking services and early voting and vote-by-mail provisions.

    “I did find myself, Porter said, “on the House floor thinking [of] my Republican colleagues who said, ‘This bill is a Democratic wish list written by a handful of Democrats, and shoved down the throats of the rest of the Congress.’

    Restoring SALT is a giveaway to blue state billionaires. Sounds like the marijuana banking part should be passed, but there’s no reason to cram it into a coronavirus relief bill. And the early voting and vote-by-mail provisions are designed to help further voting fraud. Speaking of which:

  • A Philadelphia judge has pled guilty to helping Democrats commit voting fraud:

    A former Judge of Elections in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has been charged and pleaded guilty to illegally adding votes for Democrat candidates in judicial races in 2014, 2015, and 2016.

    On Thursday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced charges against former Judge of Elections Domenick DeMuro, 73, for stuffing the ballot box for Democrats in exchange for payment by a paid political consultant.

    The charges, and guilty plea, include conspiracy to deprive Philadelphia voters of their civil rights by fraudulently stuffing the ballot boxes for specific Democrat candidates in the 2014, 2015, and 2016 primary elections and a violation of the Travel Act.

    “The Trump administration’s prosecution of election fraud stands in stark contrast to the total failure of the Obama Justice Department to enforce these laws,” Public Interest Legal Foundation President Christian Adams said in a statement. “Right now, other federal prosecutors are aware of cases of double voting in federal elections as well as noncitizen voting. Attorney General William Barr should prompt those other offices to do their duty and prosecute known election crimes.”

    As Judge of Elections, DeMuro was paid to oversee the election process in the 39th Ward, which encompasses Philadelphia.

    DeMuro’s guilty plea states that he was paid by a political consultant to illegally add votes for particular Democrat candidates in primary judicial races. The political consultant who allegedly paid DeMuro had been hired by those Democrat candidates.

    According to the indictment, the political consultant allegedly solicited payments from Democrat candidates who hired him, classifying them as “consulting fees.” The payments — which ranged from $300 to $5,000 — were then allegedly used to pay Election Board Officials, such as DeMuro, in exchange for those officials illegally adding votes for the consultants’ Democrat candidates.

    (Hat tip: The President of the United States of America.)

  • In addition to certifying fraudulent results to help Democrats, DeMuro also took a hands-on approach to voting fraud: “Demuro fraudulently stuffed the ballot box by literally standing in a voting booth and voting over and over, as fast as he could, while he thought the coast was clear.” (Hat tip: Chuck DeVore.)
  • Several posts here suggested that Sweden’s model of reaching herd immunity might be a better method than what we were doing. Now that the data is in: not so much. “Sweden becomes country with highest coronavirus death rate per capita.”
  • Speaking of data, the way media dashboards count the numbers are skewed high. “At the time of Colorado’s announcement on Friday, the CDC-definition tally, used in CNN’s “dashboard” and all the other media reports, stood at 1,150 statewide. But only 878 of those, more than 23 percent less, are identified as deaths due to COVID-19.”
  • Democrats thinks the Wuhan coronavirus crisis will get worse. Of course they do.
  • “CNN Is Willing To Lie About Wuhan Virus in Texas If That’s What It Takes to Crash the Economy.”

    CNN has staked out a position in its coverage of Wuhan virus that can only be explained in one way. They perceive a drawn-out lock down of America as something that will damage President Trump’s reelection chances and therefore it is something to be preserved. The move by a handful of governors to re-open their states to normal life despite the latest pronouncement from the latest M.D. or Ph.D. who fancies himself as Galactic Commander, threatens to reveal the Wuhan virus’s new clothing, so to speak. Therefore, anything that can be done to discredit the incontrovertible data that shows whatever threat Wuhan virus presented is now largely abated must be discredited.

    More tests are being given, and the positives rate is actually declining.

  • Oregon’s Democratic governor Kate Brown: “No shopping in open counties for those in closed counties!”
  • “Why California Is In Trouble – 340,000 Public Employees With $100,000+ Paychecks Cost Taxpayers $45 Billion.” I believe the word you’re looking for is looting
  • Speaking of California: More suicides than coronavirus deaths? I know that “data” is not the plural of “anecdote,” but maybe somebody should run the numbers…
  • Is Tesla planning a Gigafactory near Austin? There are still big tracks of land available out near 130…
  • Wargaming a war between the U.S. and China in 2030. Don’t be so sure they could knock out our carriers with hypersonic missiles, and our drones and submarines would wreck havoc with their trade.
  • Another day, another college professor arrested for spying for China:

    Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine professor and former Cleveland Clinic employee was arrested Wednesday over his alleged ties to China.

    The Justice Department announced that Qing Wang was arrested at his Shaker Heights, Ohio home as part of a joint operation conducted by the FBI and the Department of Health and Human Service Office of the Inspector-General. Wang was charged with wire fraud related to more than $3.6 million in grant funding that Wang and his research team at the Cleveland Clinic had received from the National Institutes of Health.

    According to the criminal complaint, Wang failed to disclose affiliations with Chinese universities. He also allegedly failed to disclose that he had received grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China for a nearly identical research project. He held the title Dean of the College of Life Sciences and Technology at Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

    Cleveland Special Agent-in-Charge Eric Smith said this wasn’t “a simple case of omission, ” adding that “Wang deliberately failed to disclose his Chinese grants and foreign positions and even engaged in a pervasive pattern of fraud to avoid criminal culpability.”

  • The 40-year old girlfriend of 74-year old former Texas Lt. Governor David Dewhurst cracked two of his ribs. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Magazine publisher Conde Nast lays off about 100 employees. Maybe the entire Teen Vogue Anal Sex department got laid off. Hopefully there are some good Python courses available in their area…
  • Universally respected mystery expert Otto Penzler was let go as editor of the Best American Mystery Stories of the Year so the publisher could pick stories based on “affirmative action” criteria rather than excellence.
  • When the levee breaks there ain’t no place to—

  • “There’s a sale bankruptcy at Penny’s!”
  • Oopsie!


    

  • “Florida Ruled To Be In Violation Of Science For Not Having More People Die.”
  • “Democrat Governors Warn If Lockdowns Are Lifted They Won’t Get Nearly As Much Time In The Spotlight.”
  • “I Forced A Bot to Read 1,000 Jennifer Rubin Columns And Write A Jennifer Rubin Column of Its Own.” One step closer to the robot uprising…
  • “Not this time, cat!”

  • Should save this one for winter:

  • Antidepressant or Tolkien character?
  • LinkSwarm for April 24, 2020

    Friday, April 24th, 2020

    Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! It turns out that the Wuhan coronavirus has more tricks up its sleeve than we thought:

  • We knew about the viral pneumonia, but not about the blood clotting:

    Craig Coopersmith was up early that morning as usual and typed his daily inquiry into his phone. “Good morning, Team Covid,” he wrote, asking for updates from the ICU team leaders working across 10 hospitals in the Emory University health system in Atlanta.

    One doctor replied that one of his patients had a strange blood problem. Despite being put on anticoagulants, the patient was still developing clots. A second said she’d seen something similar. And a third. Soon, every person on the text chat had reported the same thing.

    “That’s when we knew we had a huge problem,” said Coopersmith, a critical-care surgeon. As he checked with his counterparts at other medical centers, he became increasingly alarmed: “It was in as many as 20, 30 or 40 percent of their patients.”

    One month ago when the country went into lockdown to prepare for the first wave of coronavirus cases, many doctors felt confident they knew what they were dealing with. Based on early reports, covid-19 appeared to be a standard variety respiratory virus, albeit a contagious and lethal one with no vaccine and no treatment. They’ve since seen how covid-19 attacks not only the lungs, but also the kidneys, heart, intestines, liver and brain.

    Read the whole thing.

  • A coronavirus map based on self-reported symptoms. I note that Williamson County has only about 0.32%.
  • Over on Borepath, there’s a good discussion of all the known unknowns of the Wuhan Coronavirus, and all the data we don’t have.
  • Quillette writer Jonathan Kay looks at coronavirus “superspreader” events:

    Only 38 of the 58 SSEs that I recorded were documented in a way that permitted me to determine their date with any specificity. (And even in these cases, I sometimes had to make educated estimates because of the vague nature of the reporting.) In the case of multi-day SSEs, such as religious festivals, I picked a day corresponding to the middle of the event. Unfortunately, some of the largest SSEs, such as those at North American meat processing plants, can’t be usefully pinpointed at all because the infections span multiple weeks (or even months), and the employers haven’t released detailed date-tagged data.

    Of the 38 SSEs for which dates could be usefully identified, about 75 percent (29/38) took place in the 26-day span between February 25th and March 21st, roughly corresponding to the period when thousands of infected COVID-19 individuals were already traveling around the world, but before social distancing and event-cancelation policies had been uniformly implemented in many of the affected countries. (A notable early outlier is Steve Walsh, who spread COVID-19 from a Singapore corporate meeting to a French ski resort to his native UK in late January and early February.) No doubt, a vast number of SSEs occurred in January and February without being reported as such, because public-health officials and journalists weren’t alive to the nature or scale of the coming pandemic. But it is reassuring that, so far, April has been almost entirely bereft of publicly reported SSEs.

    I was struck by how few of the SSEs originated in conditions stereotypically associated with the underclass (though a March outbreak at a Qatari migrant workers camp in the industrial area north of Doha offers one such example). Many of the early SSEs, in fact, centered on weddings, birthday parties, and other events that were described in local media as glamorous or populated by “socialites.” Examples here include a March 7th engagement party at a Rio de Janeiro “mansion” that attracted “high society” fly-ins from around the world, and a similarly described birthday party in Westport, CT.

    It is theoretically possible that socioeconomically privileged individuals really do lack some immune-response mechanism that protects individuals who have been exposed to a wider array of infectious pathogens. (A recent report on COVID-19 surveillance testing at a Boston homeless shelter contained the stunning disclosure that 36 percent of 408 screened individuals tested positive for COVID-19. Yet the vast majority were asymptomatic, and even the few who were symptomatic did not diverge statistically from the 64 percent of tested individuals who were COVID-19-negative.) But absent more data, the more obvious explanation is that these early SSEs are linked to the intercontinental travel practices of the guests. (In the case of the Connecticut event, reports the New York Times, “a visitor from Johannesburg—a 43-year-old businessman—fell ill on his flight home.” And the Rio party was attended by guests who’d traveled recently from, or through New York, Belgium and Italy.) Moreover, COVID-19 outbreaks in poor communities are simply less likely to be reported, because the victims have less access to testing, high-end medical care, or media contacts.

    In fact, the truly remarkable trend that jumped off my spreadsheet has nothing to do with the sort of people involved in these SSEs, but rather the extraordinarily narrow range of underlying activities. And I believe it is on this point that a close study of SSEs, even one based on such a biased and incomplete data set as the one I’ve assembled in my lay capacity, can help us:

    • Of the 54 SSEs on my list for which the underlying activities were identified, no fewer than nine were linked to religious services or missionary work. This includes massive gatherings such as February’s weeklong Christian Open Door prayer meeting in Mulhouse, France, which has been linked to an astounding 2,500 cases; and a massive Tablighi Jamaat Islamic event in Lahore that attracted a quarter-million people. But it also includes much smaller-scale religious activities, such as proselytizing in rural Punjabi villages and a religious meeting in a Calgary home.
    • Nineteen of the SSEs—about one-third—involved parties or liquor-fueled mass attendance festivals of one kind or another, including (as with the examples cited above) celebrations of weddings, engagements and birthdays.
    • Five of the SSEs involved funerals.
    • Six of the SSEs involved face-to-face business networking. This includes large-scale events such as Biogen’s notorious Boston leadership meeting in February, as well as one-on-one business meetings—from the unidentified “traveling salesperson” who spread COVID-19 in Maine to Hisham Hamdan, a powerful sovereign-wealth fund official who spread the disease in Malaysia.

    All told, 38 of the 54 SSEs for which activities were known involved one or more of these four activities—about 70 percent. Indeed, the categories sometimes overlap, as with patient A1.1 in Chicago, who attended both a party and a funeral in the space of a few days; or the New Rochelle, NY man who covered the SSE trifecta of Bar Mitzvah party, synagogue services, and local funeral, all the while going to his day job as a lawyer in New York City.

    But even that 70 percent figure underestimates the prevalence of these activities in COVID-19 SSEs, because my database also includes five SSEs involving two warships and three cruise ships—the USS Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle, Diamond Princess, Grand Princess and Ruby Princess—at least three of which (and probably all five) featured onboard parties.

    These parties, funerals, religious meet-ups and business networking sessions all seem to have involved the same type of behaviour: extended, close-range, face-to-face conversation—typically in crowded, socially animated spaces.

    So you probably want to avoid such events for the near future. Snip.

    In the case of religious SSEs, Sikhs, Christians, Jews and Muslims are all represented in the database. The virus makes no distinction according to creed, but does seem to prey on physically intimate congregations that feature some combination of mass participation, folk proselytizing and spontaneous, emotionally charged expressions of devotion. In the case of Islam, it is notable that the same movement, Tablighi Jamaat, has been responsible for massive outbreaks at completely separate events in Lahore (noted above), Delhi and Kuala Lampur. At Mulhouse, the week’s schedule included Christian “choir performances, collective prayer, singing, sermons from preachers, workshops, and testimony from people who said God had cured their illnesses… Many people came day after day, and spent hours there.” And in Punjab, dozens of Sikhs died thanks to the itinerant rural preaching of a single (now deceased) infamous septuagenarian named Baldev Singh.

    Sporting events? Out. Choir performances? Out. Snip.

    It’s worth scanning all the myriad forms of common human activity that aren’t represented among these listed SSEs: watching movies in a theater, being on a train or bus, attending theater, opera, or symphony (these latter activities may seem like rarified examples, but they are important once you take stock of all those wealthy infectees who got sick in March, and consider that New York City is a major COVID-19 hot spot). These are activities where people often find themselves surrounded by strangers in densely packed rooms—as with all those above-described SSEs—but, crucially, where attendees also are expected to sit still and talk in hushed tones.

    Again, read the whole thing.

  • Speaking of things you’re not supposed to do: “Bangladesh: Over 100,000 gather for funeral of Islamic teacher, defying coronavirus lockdown.” What could possibly go wrong? (On the other hand, if this doesn’t turn into a superspreader event, then we have some valuable data about that seemingly invariant infection curve and/or the role of sunlight/warm climates in preventing infection.)
  • Speaking of superspreader events, want to guess who owned that South Dakota meat packing plant with the heavy infection rate? “In September 2013 Smithfield Foods was acquired by China’s biggest meat processor, Shuanghui International Holdings, in the largest acquisition ever of a U.S. company by a Chinese one.”
  • Speaking of China’s perfidy, while they rest of the world was struggling with the Wuhan coronavirus, they thought it was the perfect time to arrest dissidents in Hong Kong:

    Fifteen activists between 24 and 81 years old were rounded up on suspicion of organizing, publicizing or taking part in several unauthorized assemblies between August and October and will face prosecution, the police said on Saturday without disclosing their names, following protocol.

    The arrested democratic heavyweights included the veteran lawyers Martin Lee and Margaret Ng, the media tycoon Jimmy Lai and the former opposition legislators Albert Ho, Lee Cheuk-yan and Leung Kwok-hung, political parties and aides said.

  • Half the residents of a Boston homeless shelter had the Wuhan Coronavirus, but none showed any symptoms.
  • Democrats want a depression:

    If the Malevolent Donkey Party was actively seeking to plunge the country into an economic tailspin, while still maintaining some level of deniability to the credulous suckers out there, exactly what would it be doing differently? It would be pretty much doing exactly what it is doing right now – shilling for the bat-gobbling ChiComs, delaying needed assistance to keep America working, and generally trying to keep us all locked in the dark in perpetuity.

    It’s fair to assume that you intend the expected consequences of the actions you take, and the consequence of the actions the Democrats are taking is economic ruin. The indisputable fact is that they’re totally cool with that if that is what gets them back into power.

    Democrats are never ones to let a good crisis go to waste, and this Wuhan Flu is a very good crisis indeed if your goal is leftist hegemony. The Trump economy was booming after the near-decade of the Obama doldrums, and people were getting a taste of prosperity. But a happy, prosperous America is something the Democrat dudes can’t abide. All the Democrats had to sell were recycled cries of “RACISM!” and “RUSSIA!” and their standard-bearer was that sinewy weirdo Grandpa Badfinger, who was promising to drag us all back into the nightmare of globalist failure. The future looked grim, which means it actually looked bright for the rest of us.

    So, the Chinese coronavirus was a dream come true, a deus ex pangolin that finally, after an endless series of leaks, impeachments, investigations, and media meltdowns, might be the magic bullet that actually takes Trump down.

    Am I saying that the Democrats are exploiting the pandemic for their own cheesy advantage? Well, yeah. Everything they are doing is consistent with that. Everything. No, in the abstract, many of them would probably not prefer that tens of thousands of Americans die (I get enough Twitter death wishes to know, from their own filthy mouths, that some absolutely do want us to die), but their attitude seems to be that if life gives you tens of thousands of dead Americans, make political lemonade.

  • How can Nancy Pelosi worry about your piddling lives when there’s so much ice cream to eat?

  • Democrats delayed emergency aid for ordinary Americans so they could maintain “leverage” to achieve Democratic Party priorities.
  • “Top Elections Lawyer: Vote-By-Mail Is ‘The Most Massive Fraud Scheme In American History.'”
  • “U.S. Intelligence Knew Russia Preferred Hillary to Trump, But John Brennan Hid the Truth, Ex-NSC Chief Says.” This story probably deserves more attention than I can give it right now…
  • Iran: Watch our tiny boats harass the Great Satan! President Trump: I hope you like your gunboats getting destroyed.
  • Masks are for the little people, not a Bill Clinton aide-turned “journalist.”
  • Even Fredo’s brother said that the federal Wuhan coronavirus response was “a ‘phenomenal accomplishment.'”
  • Speaking of Gov. Cuomo, he said that if you’re not an essential worker, sucks to be you. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • In New York, the death panels are already here. If you code, you’re cold…
  • How the CDC screwed up testing kits. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Another reminder: Don’t freak out over polls:

  • Least surprising news ever: “Dysfunction in Baltimore police homicide unit went unaddressed as killings hit historic levels.”
  • “Vindictive Detroit Democrats to Censure Lawmaker for Saying Trump Saved Her Life.” Given that State Rep. Karen Whitsett is black, by Democrat’s own rules, her censure must mean they’re racists. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • A look at Amity Shlaes’ book, Great Society: A New History.
  • Won’t someone please spare a moment to think about how the coronavirus outbreak has derailed the Austin politicians’ plans to spend billions on their toy trains? (Hat tip: Iowahawk.)
  • Speaking of Austin, the coronavirus has closed landmark Austin restaurants Threadgill’s
  • …and Enchiladas Y Mas.
  • Is Apple moving to ARM for Mac? They’re planning to have their own Apple-designed chips fabbed at TSMC on the latter’s 5nm process. Intel, the current supplier for Mac CPUs, isn’t slatted to hit 5nm until 20203, and there’s long been talk that bringing up yield on their existing 10nm process has been in a world of hurt for a while.
  • “Respect my (round) authoritah!”
  • Stop having non-Party approved fun, drone!

  • We’re all in it together:

  • Heh:

  • Heh, BAM!

  • Whippet. Whippet Good!

  • LinkSwarm for March 8, 2019

    Friday, March 8th, 2019

    Turning and turning in a widening gyre…

    You would think a simple condemnation of antisemitism would be an easy thing for House Democrats to do. You’d be wrong. Like the UK’s Labour Party, the Social Justice Warrior rot has crept into the Democrats to the point where they are institutionally hostile to Israel and Jews. The need for Muslim votes outweighs forthright condemnation of one of the world’s oldest (and deadliest) prejudices.

    So enjoy a LinkSwarm while you wait for the blood-red tide of anarchy to be loosed on the world:

  • The Democratic Party Has Normalized Anti-Semitism: “No educated human believes [Democratic Rep. Ilhan] Omar inadvertently accused “Benjamin”-grubbing Rootless Cosmopolitans of hypnotizing the world for their evil. These are long-standing, conspiratorial attacks on the Jewish people, used by anti-Semites on right and left, and popular throughout the Islamic world.” (Hat tip: Sean Davis on Twitter.)
  • And the hits keep coming! New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls for and end to the U.S.-Israel special relationship. I’m sure such a position could never negatively impact reelection chances for a congresswoman representing New York City…
  • “More than 76,000 migrants crossed the southern border illegally last month, the highest number in 12 years. So much for all those media “fact checks” arguing that there’s no emergency to justify President Trump’s wall.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Mexico is helping the Trump Administration enforce border controls. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • “Federal judge temporarily blocks Texas from purging voters in citizenship review. U.S. District Judge Fred Biery called the review “ham-handed” and ordered counties not to remove any voters from the rolls without his approval and “a conclusive showing that the person is ineligible to vote.” I know it will shock you to learn that Biery is a Clinton appointee. Can’t purge those precious illegal alien votes for Democrats off the rolls…
  • “Last week a new pro-illegal alien organization launched in the Lone Star State: Texans for Economic Growth. The group, which appears to contain more chambers of commerce than actual businesses, is directly tied to Partnership for a New American Economy, a “comprehensive immigration reform” (pro-amnesty) organization headed by two billionaires, the anti-gun former Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg and News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch; a host of other media elites; big business CEOs; and mayors.” They oppose ending state subsidies for illegal aliens.
  • UPS stops delivering to Muslim no-go zones in Sweden.
  • India’s “cold start” military doctrine against Pakistan.
  • Is Pakistan finally doing something about terrorism? “Pakistan intensified its crackdown against Islamist militants on Thursday, with the government announcing it had taken control of 182 religious schools and detained more than 100 people as part of its push against banned groups.” Don’t believe it. As sure as the heat is off, expect those same militants to be released and go right back on the ISI payroll…
  • The government is approaching the opiod epidemic all wrong. “‘Today’s non-medical opioid users are not yesterday’s patients.’ Medical users usually do not become addicts.” (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • We have a winner for Stupidest tweet of the Year:

  • It’s ten years since Obama’s Russian reset. “By the time Trump took office, just over two years ago, a greatly emboldened Russia had effectively digested Crimea, was engaged on a rapidly expanding scale in joint military exercises with China, was energetically cultivating such clients in the Western Hemisphere as the USSR’s old comrade Cuba and Putin’s pals in Venezuela, and was militarily entrenched in Syria as a mainstay of the Assad regime.”
  • Speaking of Venezuela, the Magic Power of Socialism™ has reached the point where they can’t even keep the lights on.
  • F-35C declared ready for combat. The “C” designates the aircraft carrier variant, which was first rolled out 10 years ago. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Is Rep. Dan Crenshaw the future of the GOP?

    Crenshaw might be the congressional GOP’s best answer to AOC, but he decidedly doesn’t want to be seen as a Republican version of the 29-year-old New York Democrat, who is “always trying to embrace radicalism,” he told me during a recent interview in his new office on the fourth floor of the Cannon House Office Building. He wants to take his party in a more traditional—not radical—direction. “We have to make conservatism cool and exciting again,” is how he described his mission in politics when I first met him a year ago. “We have to bring back that Reagan optimism.”

    Crenshaw’s combination of traditional conservatism and rising popularity put him in an unusual position in Congress. He describes himself as a “plain old conservative”—he supports free trade, wants to reform Medicare and Social Security, and thinks American troops should stay in Afghanistan (where an IED took one of the veteran’s eyes) as long as they’re needed to prevent another 9/11. That puts him at odds with Trump, whom Crenshaw has been unafraid to criticize, going so far as to call his rhetoric “insane” and “hateful” during the 2016 presidential campaign. But Crenshaw is more “Sometimes Trump” than “Never Trump.” He is not pushing for a 2020 Republican primary challenge and is not trying to write off Trump’s wing of the party—hence, his warm reception at CPAC. In fact, Crenshaw has praised the president for his policies on immigration, even recently voting in support of Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build a border wall, a move many conservatives opposed.

    Ignore the “dares to take on Trump” angle of the article. Crenshaw’s biggest advantage is a temperament almost completely opposite from Trump’s, which voters may look for in 2024.

  • New Jersey city agrees to pay $27M to lease property it sold for $1.” Corruption? In New Jersey? Try to contain your shock…
  • Follow-up: Police officer involved in deadly Houston shooting decides to retire. How convienant. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Guy behind Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize was literally a paid KGB stooge.
  • Former Texas congressman Ralph Hall died at age 95. Hall was a conservative Democrat who endorsed George W. Bush for President in 2000, then switched to the GOP in 2004, one of the last conservative Democratic office holders to leave the party. “Hall had always been a thorn in Democrats’ side even before he changed parties. In 1985, he voted ‘present’ rather than support then-Speaker Thomas ‘Tip’ O’Neill’s, D-Mass., reelection. ”
  • How Buc-ees conquered the world (or at least Texas).
  • Eyeglasses are a ripoff. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Titania McGrath unmasked. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Captain Mary Sue:

    Two years ago, Wonder Woman proved a female-led superhero movie could reach the highest levels of the genre, with Gal Gadot proving robust and redoubtable, yet also charming and feminine. I spent Captain Marvel waiting for Gadot. What I got was Brie Larson: charmless, humorless, a character so without texture that she might as well be made out of aluminum.

    Captain Marvel might be the first blockbuster movie whose animating idea is fear. Every page of the script betrays terror of what people might say about the film on social media. Give Carol Danvers a love interest? Eek! No, women can’t be defined by the men in their lives! Make her vulnerable? OMG, no, that’s crazy. Feminine? What century are you from if you think females should be feminine? Toward the end of the movie, when a villain preparing for an epic confrontation with Carol, the fighter pilot turned Superwoman, chides her that she will fail because she can’t control her emotions, there is no tension whatsoever. We’ve just spent two hours watching her be utterly unfazed by anything. Giving Carol actual emotions would, of course, lead to at least 27 people calling the film misogynist on Twitter, and directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck are petrified of that.

    Just to be completely, unerringly, let’s-bubble-wrap-the-universe safe, Boden and Fleck decided to make Danvers stronger than strong, fiercer than fierce, braver than brave. Larson spends the entire movie being insouciant, kicking butt, delivering her lines in an I-got-this monotone and staring down everything with a Blue Steel gaze of supreme confidence. Superheroes are defined by their limitations — Superman’s Kryptonite, Batman’s mortality — but Captain Marvel is just an invincible bore. The screenplay by Boden, Fleck, and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, with a story by the three of them plus Nicole Perlman and Meg LeFauve, presents us with Brie Larson’s Carol being amazingly strong and resilient at the beginning, middle, and end. This isn’t an arc, it’s a straight line.

  • Jerry Merryman, co-inventor of the pocket calculator, RIP.
  • “Ilhan Omar Withdraws Support From Bill To Save The Earth After Learning That’s Where Israel Is.” “When I made the Green New Deal, I thought weather like storms and earthquakes were all caused by climate change, but now I’ve learned from Representative Omar that lots of that is actually from Jewish-controlled weather machines.”
  • The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity…

    LinkSwarm for March 1, 2019

    Friday, March 1st, 2019

    India and Pakistan seem to be cooling off slightly, and President Donald Trump prefers no deal to a bad deal with North Korea. So enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:

  • “Previously Deported Illegal Alien Convicted of Child Rape After Release by Sanctuary City.”
  • Van Jones: “The conservative movement in this country…is now the leader on this issue of [criminal justice] reform…You are stealing my issue!”
  • “Maryland Democratic delegate Mary Ann Lisanti is apologizing for referring to a predominantly black area of the state as a ‘n***er district.'” I’m required by law to use this image:

  • Did you know that U.S. planes were bombing al Qaeda forces in Somilia?
  • Speaking of planes, Pakistan is swearing up and down that India shoot down an F-16…because the terms of the U.S. sale bar them from being used for offense.
  • The scandal that could bring down Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “Mr Trudeau has been accused of pressuring his former attorney general to cut a deal with a company facing corruption charges – and retaliating when she refused to play ball.” (Hat tip: Ezra Levant on Twitter.)
  • 92% of left-wing activists live with their parents and one in three is unemployed, study of Berlin protesters finds.” Someone needs to do a study like that in Portland. Or Austin. (Hat tip: Kathleen McKinley.)
  • What it’s like when every person at a company is autistic. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • How do you stop drinking when you own a restaurant famous for drinking? (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “Senate Democrats Accuse Republicans Of Trying To Pin Them Down On Complex Issue Of Infanticide.”

    “This is a nuanced discussion,” said Senator Kamala Harris, who voted against the act. “I mean, should we or shouldn’t we murder babies? It’s not really cut and dry for many Americans. What if the baby is inconvenient? What if the mother has already decided it’s a nuisance and might interfere with her school or work? What then?”

  • California’s government has a list of cops convicted of serious crimes. Too bad you’re not allowed to see it. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • True Confessions of Texas Vote Harvesters.” (Previously.)
  • President Trump’s 2020 digital campaign effort is already off and running. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Robert Stacy McCain is at CPAC.
  • Say goodbye to women’s sports. (Hat tip: James Woods on Twitter.)
  • Borepatch co-blogger ASM826 calls a tool company to get a screwdriver tip replaced, ends up talking two hours with the owner who was a marine in the battle of Iwo Jima.
  • You’ve got to be freaking kidding me. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • OK, that is glorious. (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
  • Nightmare fuel for you and your pet. Thanks, Japan.
  • America’s most beloved mayor dies. (Hat tip: NSFW Henry Pongratz on Gab.)
  • LinkSwarm for February 1, 2019

    Friday, February 1st, 2019

    I know many of you don’t want to hear it, but here in Texas we’re enjoying a comparatively mild winter…

  • Why President Donald Trump will win the wall fight:

    Trump has, however, suggested that he may well go the emergency route if Pelosi and Schumer remain intransigent: “We can call a national emergency. I haven’t done it. I may do it.… It’s another way of doing it.” The standard line trotted out by the Democrats and the media when the President alludes to an emergency declaration is that a phalanx of pettifoggers will contrive to tie it up in the courts indefinitely. This has even been repeated by conservative pundits. According to Professor Turley, however, “Courts generally have deferred to the judgments of presidents on the basis for such national emergencies, and dozens of such declarations have been made without serious judicial review.”

    All of which means that there is no practical way for the Democrats to stop Trump from getting his wall. He will make a sound, statesmanlike case for it to the nation during the State of the Union address — just 10 days before the deadline to avoid another shutdown. Nancy Pelosi will be scowling behind him, still smarting from the beating she received in the polls from the last shutdown and the hectoring to which she has no doubt been subjected from vulnerable members whose constituents are tired of, “NO.” Then, failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams will deliver the Dem SOTU response and characterize Trump’s wall using the usual tired clichés about racism.

    In other words, Trump will have been presidential. He will have delivered all manner of good news about the economy, deregulation, health care, foreign policy, and will have laid out a plan for the wall. The Democrats will have offered identity politics, obstruction, investigations, and magical thinking on policy. Pelosi will at length decide it’s smarter to ignore the crazies in her caucus, give Trump something that he can call a “win” on the wall, and move on to something else… anything else. And all the TDS victims and Never Trumpers will demand to know what happened to their bête noire.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • What a fully-funded border protection system looks like.
  • Shot: “Trump has opportunity to flip the 9th Circuit, so why isn’t he?”
  • Chaser: “Trump heard the conservative media outcry, nominates three judges for 9th Circuit.” That’s some swift course-correction…
  • Charlie Martin looks at big media’s very bad week.
  • Newseum closing. “Look on my works, ye mighty…”
  • Old and Busted: “Neither snow nor rain, nor gloom of night, shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” The New Coldness: Mail delivery in Minnesota cancelled due to cold.
  • Related:

    In fact, with all of this year after year of the HOTTEST YEAR EVER, no state has set a highest temperature record is more than 20 years. In fact, most (39 out of 50) state highest temperature records were set quite long ago – over 50 years ago, sometimes as long ago as 1888 (!).

    Stop and think about that – if the science were as settled as people say, wouldn’t there be at least one state that set an all time high record recently? What a strange warming that raises average temperatures but not record high temperatures.

  • Heh:

  • “A shocking report from the Texas Secretary of State last week revealed 95,000 individuals identified in the Texas Department of Public Safety database as non-U.S. citizens have registered to vote in Texas — and 58,000 of those have voted in one or more Texas election since 1996.”
  • Newly seated Texas congressman Chip Roy isn’t backing down.
  • Four Houston police officers shot serving a narcotics warrant in southeast Houston.
  • Houston Police union honcho says that hands up, don’t shoot is to blame. Sounds like there may be a lot of blame to go around, including the possibility of excessive force for a narcotics raid.
  • Cop killer executed after thirty years on death row.
  • Texans may enjoy real property tax reform soon. It’s amazing what can be accomplished when you have a speaker working for conservative goals, rather than against them…
  • “Public documents obtained by a Portland attorney reveal that Portland Public School staff, planned, executed and paid for what the media and the school district branded as a ‘student’ anti-Second Amendment protest last March 14th.” Sounds like they should be charged with embezzlement. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Worth a chuckle:

  • The negative startup economics of Buzzfeed:

    In April 2013, it was reported that BuzzFeed’s investment was $46 million, which means they’ve attracted about $450 million in new capital over the past six years — despite having never shown a profit!

    BuzzFeed has been burning through cash at a rate of $75 million a year and you might think that at some point their investors would become impatient waiting for this operation to show some prospect of making a return on their investment.

  • Heh:

  • “The Navy’s costliest warship, the $13 billion Gerald R. Ford, had 20 failures of its aircraft launch-and-landing systems during operations at sea, according to the Pentagon’s testing office.” There’s a reason they have shakedown cruises, and I think there’s a good chance they’ll work out the bugs and get the electromagnetic catapult systems working properly. But at $13 billion, the cost-benefit analysis of additional aircraft carriers starts to get very tricky vs. say, four cheaper ships capable of launching 1,000 semi-autonomous drones each. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Rand Paul’s attacker finds out that assaulting people over political differences is a money-losing proposition.
  • Did Israeli scientists develop a cure for cancer? Let’s hope so…
  • Was Michael Jackson a child diddler?
  • Three Charged for Working With Serial Swatter.”
  • Robert Stacy McCain talks about Tom Wolfe, Junior Johnson, and the decline of journalism:

    Now, Tom Wolfe was a genuine intellectual — he had a Ph.D. from Princeton, for crying out loud — but he was also a Southerner, a native of Virginia, and unlike so many other journalists who have written about the South, he had sympathy for the people he wrote about. He wasn’t out to write an exposé or to do what is nowadays called “investigative journalism,” but sought to explain the folkways of small-town Appalachia to the urban sophisticates who read Esquire, to make the reader see how wholesome and quintessentially American these people really were.

    If you want to know why nobody gives a damn about magazines like Esquire anymore, it’s because the progressive politics of the 21st century forbid any sympathy for the kind of people who like NASCAR. Everything in big-league journalism now is about left-wing politics, more or less, and because North Carolina rednecks probably aren’t too excited about the Left’s agenda of open borders and transgender rights and all that, there is zero possibility a latter-day Tom Wolfe could get any New York-based magazine to publish an article like “The Last American Hero.”

    The whole thing is basically a celebration of toxic masculinity, as the Gender Studies majors would say. Junior Johnson was not one of these “sensitive” modern guys, but a big muscular fellow who thrived on ferocious competition in one of the most masculine of sports.

    He also quotes part of my favorite passage from Wolfe’s celebrated essay, about courage being one of Appalachia’s exportable commodities:

    In the Korean War, not a very heroic performance by American soldiers generally, there were seventy-eight Medal of Honor winners. Thirty-nine of them were from the South, and practically all of the thirty-nine were from small towns in or near the Appalachians. The New York metropolitan area, which has more people than all these towns put together, had three Medal of Honor winners, and one of them had just moved to New York from the Appalachian region of West Virginia. Three of the Medal of Honor winners came from within fifty miles of Junior Johnson’s side porch.

  • The coming Google+pocalypse.
  • Feminists aren’t just angry, they ignore facts that disagree with their preexisting anger.
  • This guy should make you feel a lot better about your own obscure collecting hobby.
  • LinkSwarm for November 9, 2018

    Friday, November 9th, 2018

    Texas election analysis is coming next week. Meanwhile, Democrats appear to be in the midst of voting fraud in Broward County, Florida.

  • Man who vandalized NYC synagogue was a gay black Democratic activist.
  • Another Obama-era intelligence failure resulted in dozens of deaths China. Thanks, Obama… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Jeff Sessions resigns as Attorney General, replaced on at least an interim basis by his chief of staff Matthew G. Whitaker. Very early on in the Trump Administration, I decided that there were two things I wasn’t going to pay much attention to: 1. Reports of dysfunction or “chaos” among White House staffers, and 2. Trump tweets slamming various people. (See any of my previous posts on Trump persuasion techniques.) I have no particular insight into intra-White House squabbles, and reporting on this issue is so bad or overblown that there’s too much noise for me bother to extract signal from. So go elsewhere for how Sessions fits into the “Deep State vs. Trump” narrative. (Over at Powerline, they put up both anti-Sessions and pro-Sessions pieces.)
  • Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer wants House Democrats to impeach Trump. I’m sure there’s no way that could possibly backfire on them…
  • Nine more Hidalgo County voter fraud arrests:

    Nine individuals were arrested Thursday for their alleged roles in a 2017 voter fraud scheme involving the municipal election in a Texas border town.

    These arrests were part of an ongoing investigation into a coordinated effort by political workers to recruit people who would fraudulently claim residential addresses so they could vote in specific races and influence the results of the Edinburg city election held last year, according to information provided by the Office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

    “Illegal voting, particularly an organized illegal voting scheme orchestrated by political operatives, is an affront to democracy and results in corruption at the highest level,” said Paxton in a prepared statement.

    “Each illegal vote silences the voice of a law-abiding registered voter,” added Paxton. “My office will continue to do everything in its power to uncover illegal voting schemes and bring to justice those who try to manipulate the outcome of elections in Texas.”

    The nine Hidalgo County residents arrested were Guadalupe Sanchez Garza, Jerry Gonzalez, Jr., Araceli Gutierrez, Belinda Rodriguez, Brenda Rodriguez, Felisha Yolanda Rodriguez, Rosendo Rodriguez, Cynthia Tamez, and Ruby Tamez. Online jail records show bond was set at $20,000 for both Garza and Ruby Tamez. A $10,000 bond was set for Gonzalez, Gutierrez, Belinda Rodriguez, Brenda Rodriguez, Rosendo Rodriguez, and Cynthia Tamez. Felisha Yolanda Rodriguez’s bail was set at $1,000.

  • “Number of migrants, refugees from Venezuela reaches 3 million.” Or one out of twelve Venezuelans. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • More harassment of a conservative heretic at Sarah Lawrence College. (Hat tip: Amy Alkon on Twitter.)
  • 85-year old Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg breaks three ribs in a fall.
  • After expressing approval of Antifa attacking Tucker Carlson’s house, Matt Yglesias deleted his entire Twitter timeline. Sadly, he’s started up again.
  • “Leftist Protesters: “If Tucker Carlson Didn’t Want To Get Mobbed In His Own Home, Then Why Did He Disagree With Us?'”
  • Mike Ward journalistic fraud follow-up: “Of the 275 people quoted, 122, or 44 percent, could not be found. Those 122 people appeared in 72 stories.” (Hat tip: Dwight.) (Previously.)
  • Dead pimp wins in Nevada. (Previously.)
  • In Tweet form:

  • Super-genius falls through the ceiling of an Alabama Waffle House, proceeds to fight the patrons on his way out the door. Bonus: He left his pants in the restroom…with his ID. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Hong Kong film pioneer Raymond Chow of Golden Harvest, dead at 91. You may not know his name, but he was instrumental in launching the careers of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and dozens of other Hong Kong film icons.
  • California marijuana delivery man says he was robbed by ninjas.” Old story, but how can you turn down that headline?
  • LinkSwarm for October 26, 2018

    Friday, October 26th, 2018

    Greetings from Austin in October! The skies have finally cleared to deliver some beautiful autumn weather, but we’re still required to boil our water due contamination from the massive rains.

  • The Fort Worth Democratic Party fraud ring we covered Wednesday has widened:

    A former Democratic Party official is accused of funding an organized voter fraud ring busted earlier this month that targeted elderly and incapacitated voters in north Fort Worth.

    In court documents filed Tuesday, state prosecutors allege former Tarrant County Democratic Party executive director Stuart Clegg funneled money to Leticia Sanchez, one of four paid campaign workers arrested and charged with submitting false and forged mail-ballot requests in an organized criminal voter fraud scheme.

    The documents say Sanchez, her co-defendants, Clegg, and others collaborated to cast mail-in votes for down-ballot candidates in the 2016 Democratic primary “without the voter’s knowledge or consent.” The state claims Sanchez used funds from Clegg, now a campaign consultant, to pay her three co-defendants and others for their part in the illegal mail-ballot harvesting scheme.

    Sanchez, her daughter, and two other women are charged with a total of 29 felony voter fraud counts. Sanchez’s charges include one count of illegal voting and 16 counts of providing false information on a ballot application. The court notice filed Tuesday implicates Sanchez in hundreds more crimes for which she hasn’t yet been charged.

  • Cahnman notes how well Republicans are making inroads into Hispanic South Texas:
    • Strong Border Security positions help in November — While Hurd is a sometimes squish, Flores isn’t. That this is happening at the same time as Trump is doing what he’s doing (and the legislature is, however reluctantly, doing what they’re doing) tells you everything you need to know. If the GOP’s immigration position were “toxic,’ they wouldn’t be winning in Southwest Texas.
    • The Democrats are simply too liberal (esp. on Guns and Babies) — We’ve made this observation before, but it remains true.
    • The Failure to address Carlos Uresti has cost Democrats DEARLY — Another observation we’ve made previously. But all they had to do was do the right thing when either the financial or the sexual stuff came out. But they didn’t….
    • Southwest Texas REALLY isn’t into Bobby Francis — These are the same counties that he lost in his primary disaster.
  • Blue wave? Not so much.

    Think about it. You’ve got Hollywood, the media, the Tech giants and big education behind you. You’ve got tends of millions of dollars being spent in races all over the country and you and yours. you’ve got every possible advantage going your way. Add to that you and your allies are completely energized and engaged, literally counting the days until the election so you can defeat Donald Trump…

    …and you STILL lose.

    How will they deal with the realization that their anger, rage and panic over Donald Trump is not shared by the voting public?

  • Voting to confirm Kavanaugh may not be enough for Senator Joe Manchin, who is now two points down to Republican Patrick Morrisey in the state the voted for President Trump by a bigger margin than any other. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Chik-Fil-A more popular than Starbucks among teenagers.
  • “Americans’ support for a ban on semi-automatic guns in the U.S. has dropped eight percentage points from a year ago,” now opposed 57% against to 40% in favor. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • I’m sure you’ll be shocked, shocked to know that Google’s male feminist executive ranks are filled with creepers. Some interesting details:

    Google could have fired Mr. Rubin and paid him little to nothing on the way out. Instead, the company handed him a $90 million exit package, paid in installments of about $2 million a month for four years, said two people with knowledge of the terms. The last payment is scheduled for next month.

    Also this bit of enlightened thinking:

    In a civil suit filed this month by Mr. Rubin’s ex-wife, Rie Rubin, she claimed he had multiple “ownership relationships” with other women during their marriage, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to them. The couple were divorced in August.

    The suit included a screenshot of an August 2015 email Mr. Rubin sent to one woman. “You will be happy being taken care of,” he wrote. “Being owned is kinda like you are my property, and I can loan you to other people.”

    Our “moral superiors” sure seem to have a fetish for slavery…

  • Want to read something super, mega depressing? Here’s the New York times on the Walmart of heroin in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington.

    n the summer of 2017, when I first toured the area with Patrick Trainor, a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, he called Kensington the largest open-air narcotics market for heroin on the East Coast. It’s known for having both the cheapest and purest heroin in the region and is a major supplier for dealers in Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland. For years, the heroin being sold in Kensington was pure enough to snort, but that summer, it was mixed with unpredictable amounts of fentanyl. In Philadelphia, deaths related to fentanyl had increased by 95 percent in the past year.

    Philadelphia County has the highest overdose rate of any of the 10 most populous counties in America. The city’s Department of Health estimates that 75,000 residents are addicted to heroin and other opioids, and each day, many of them commute to Kensington to buy drugs. The neighborhood is part of the largest cluster of overdose deaths in the city. In 2017, 236 people fatally overdosed there.

    Snip.

    In the early 2000s, Dominican gangs started bringing in Colombian heroin that was not only purer but much cheaper than heroin imported from Asia, which historically predominated. Kensington’s decentralized market kept competition high and prices low. Most corners were run by small, unaffiliated groups of dealers, making the area difficult to police; if a dealer was arrested, there was always someone there to replace him. The Philadelphia prison system has become the largest provider of drug treatment in the city. The police have realized that they can’t arrest the problem away, and they spend many of their calls reviving drug addicts with Narcan, an overdose-reversal spray. The D.E.A. focused on the high-level drug traffickers, not the guys working the streets, but the arrests did little to curb the growing demand.

    “They call this the Badlands,” Elvis Campos, 47, said about Kensington. “Good people are held hostage in their homes.” Campos, who moved to the neighborhood 22 years ago, lives on a small, crumbling block next to a demolished crack house. “I didn’t know about the drugs when I came,” he said. “I found the house, and it was cheap.” No one on his block used or sold drugs, he said, and his neighbors worked hard to keep it clean. But dealers were always around their homes trying to sell. “I tell them to leave,” Campos said. “I served in Iraq, and I think that’s why I’m good at telling drug dealers to get off the block.”

    Like Campos, many residents had come to Kensington simply because they couldn’t afford housing anywhere else, and though many expressed empathy for the users, they also wanted them to leave. People cleared needles off their lawns, their front steps and the sidewalks where their children played. Some wouldn’t go anywhere unless they were in a car, but a lot of families were too poor to afford a car. They organized cleanups, lobbied City Council members and state representatives and asked for help from church groups, but the problem seemed insurmountable. The drug market, institutional racism, joblessness and the ravages of the war on drugs in the ’80s left the community struggling. “You see everything here,” one female resident told me. “Overdoses, shootings, killings. We are exposed to trauma every day just living here. It’s constant.”

  • Were the “explosive devices” sent to several Democrats fakes? They may or may not have been hoaxes or false flags, but they are at the least very suspicious. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Chuck Todd’s theory? Russians!
  • “‘Segway Jeremy’ — a central character in the 2011 Wisconsin protests — has been arrested for trying to buy a lethal dose of radioactive material.” He’s a far left anti-police loon who ran against Paul Ryan in the 2014 Republican primary on a legalize weed platform. Via Badger Pundit, this is what he looked like back in 2011:

    And here’s his booking mugshot:

    If you’re trying to make the case that marijuana is a safe recreational drug, you’re not helping…

  • Effective weapons for your planned high school murder spree: Guns, bombs. Ineffective weapons: pizza cutters. Do I even need to name the state? Bonus: Preteen girls who claim to be Satan worshipers. (Hat tip: Daddy Warpig on Twitter.)
  • LinkSwarm for June 29, 2018

    Friday, June 29th, 2018

    Half the year gone! And so far, those of you who declared “Surely Democrats can’t keep up this level of lunacy” are losing your bets…

  • How Democrats’ said lunacy will backfire on them:

    Democrats should also understand that these public tantrums and other slights are simply bad politics. Voters don’t respond well to angry chanting losers harassing people, or to vulgar celebrities, or to threats verging on intimidation and violence. There is nothing inspirational about it, and it makes the targets of the anger look that much more reasonable. If Democrats think this crazed behavior will generate a “blue wave” in November, they are mistaken.

  • Why Democrats are freaking out over Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement:

    How did we get here? Two tracks converged to deliver us this dysfunction. The first is narrowly political. The Democrats, confident that they were on the right side of history, thought there was no harm in accelerating the rush to total victory. For years, Democrats practiced the rule that all is fair in judicial-confirmation battles, starting with the war on Judge Robert Bork in 1987. Then, under the leadership of Barack Obama and then–Senate majority leader Harry Reid, they did away with the filibuster on judicial appointments short of the Supreme Court, opening the door for Republicans to nudge it slightly more wide open.

    The second track is longer. Starting over a century ago, progressives began emphasizing ends over means. If the Supreme Court could deliver wins unattainable at the ballot box and unsupported by the Constitution, so be it. Thus was born the “living Constitution” — the doctrine that holds that the magical parchment should mean whatever progressives need it to mean at any moment. This was how Anthony Kennedy became an (apparently temporary) gay-rights hero. After consulting his feelings, he found a constitutional right no one had found in the text before.

    This idea that the Supreme Court is there to serve as a Praetorian Guard around progressive policies was on full display this week. Prior to Kennedy’s retirement announcement, the court issued a 5–4 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME, which held that public-sector unions can’t compel nonunion members to pay fees for union representation, thus violating the First Amendment.

    Justice Elena Kagan caustically disagreed. For her, the problem with the decision was that “public employee unions will lose a secure source of financial support.”

    “The First Amendment was meant for better things,” Kagan concluded in her dissent. “It was meant not to undermine but to protect democratic governance — including over the role of public-sector unions.”

    In short: The Supreme Court isn’t there to protect the meaning of the First Amendment; the Supreme Court is there to protect a secure source of financial support for public-sector unions. If the First Amendment gets in the way, that’s okay.

    The panic unfolding across the progressive landscape stems from the creeping fear that the Supreme Court might start doing its job — and not the job progressives have assigned it.

  • Hugh Hewett: “Turns out ‘But Gorsuch’ was a good argument after all.”

    What will the #NeverTrump coalition in the Beltway (with an annex in New York) say now?

    For a while, before tax cuts and regulatory reform boosted the economy, before defense spending increased, before Jerusalem was recognized as Israel’s capital, and before a “maximum pressure” campaign led to a detente with North Korea, #NeverTrumpers were fond of mockingly summarizing Trump supporters’ arguments as “But Gorsuch.”

    This bit of childish taunting always struck me as an unknowing admission of ignorance about the role assumed by the Supreme Court in modern American governance. Even when 21 appeals court judges took their seats — orchestrated by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Republican colleagues — still the one-note pundits played on, only louder: President Trump was so awful and evil, and conservatives who supported him had done so for one lousy seat on the Supreme Court.

    The implication from all the noise and a thousands posts was that “Gorsuch” wasn’t worth it. Now, after Justice Neil M. Gorsuch’s first year on the court, it will be impossible to overstate what his confirmation has meant.

  • Anthony Kennedy as moderate conservative pragmatist:

    While Justice Kennedy was usually a moderate conservative, there were areas of the law in which Justice Kennedy was not particularly moderate and others in which he was not particularly conservative. Particularly in areas touching on the freedom of speech and personal liberty, Justice Kennedy would swing for the fences. Justice Kennedy was easily the most speech-protective Justice on what was a quite speech-protective Court. Whether the speech at issue concerned political campaigns or product pricing, “offensive” messages or dishonest claims about military service, Justice Kennedy believed in uncompromising First Amendment protection. By some accounts it was Justice Kennedy who pushed the Court (and a reluctant Chief Justice) to invalidate the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, and this would be entirely consistent with what we saw in his First Amendment opinions.

    Speech was not the only freedom that mattered to Justice Kennedy. He had a deep concern for Due Process, as shown in his embrace of habeas rights for alleged enemy combatants, his concerns about the application of capital punishment to some classes of criminal defendants, and his embrace of constitutional limits on punitive damages. He also, perhaps most famously, believed that due regard for individual liberty barred the government from adopting laws prohibiting or disregarding same-sex relationships, as in Lawrence, Romer, Windsor, and Obergefell. In these areas, there was nothing modest, moderate, or minimalist about Justice Kennedy’s views or the doctrinal rules he would embrace.

    Given the makeup of the Roberts Court, as went Justice Kennedy, so went the Court. Where Kennedy was a moderate conservative favoring a minimalist approach, the Roberts court would tend to adopt a moderate conservative opinion. Where Justice Kennedy favored a more muscular approach, on the other hand, there were almost always at least four votes to go along. (NFIB v. Sebelius being a notable exception.) If Justice Kennedy wanted to recognize same-sex marriage or preclude the use of the death penalty for those convicted of non-lethal crimes, the liberals would agree. If Justice Kennedy wanted to protect campaign-related or commercial speech, the conservatives were there. so the Roberts Court was generally as conservative and as moderate as Justice Kennedy wanted to be.

    (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)

  • Kurt Schlichter on the insanity gripping the Democratic Party:

    There’s no sign of sanity. This week they turned the hate up to “11,” then cranked it to “17.” There are not many places to go once you reach “You are real live Nazis murdering children by not letting aspiring Democrat voters flow into the country at will!” At some point, instead of a few wild-eyed randos with crummy aim trying to off libs’ political/cultural opponents, they are going to start collectively going to go for the throat.

    Our collective throat. Which I do not anticipate us Normals responding to in a huggy, loving kind of way.

    Snip.

    We’re already seeing it play out. The mainstream media quit even pretending to be honest – it’s in full scale fib mode. Look at the Time magazine cover of the little girl whose scumbag mom dragged her across the desert to help her break our laws (apparently without daddy’s permission and not for the first time). That Time cover is a lie, but it’s no surprise. The only surprise is that Time magazine is still a thing.

    In fact, the whole manufactured outrage over Democrat-preferred criminals being treated like every other criminal was a lie. And the media not only doesn’t care but actively and consciously supports lying to you to support its liberal allies. But no one cares anymore. They can lie and lie and lie, and do, and we just smile and buy more guns and ammo.

    So the leftists attempt to intimidate us into submission, showing up at people’s houses and screaming at them in restaurants. Take that, Sarah! The idea is since the leftists can’t convince Normals with the power of their ideas – because leftists’ ideas inevitably involve Normals ceding more of their rights and money to leftists – the left wants to make submission and obedience the price for being able to participate in the culture. But what’s inevitable is that us newly militant Normals, whose power is political rather than cultural, are going to respond pursuant to the New Rules and demand that leftists bake us a cake.

  • The craziness among Democrats can be explained by the behavior of cultists after a prophecy fails: the moderates, the ones who were the biggest brake on untrammeled lunacy, are the ones out the door first.

    The more lukewarm Democrats are either keeping their mouths shut or are disappearing from the Party. The ones who remain are the ones who are more committed (translation: barking mad moonbats) who are the ones we hear talking about impeachment, banishing Trump supporters from the public square, protesting at Republican’s houses, etc.

    It also explains why Democratic Party big wigs are losing primary challenges to candidates of the more barking mad persuasion (e.g. Joe Crowley, one of the biggest of the Democratic House big wigs who lost to someone who can only be described as a commie).

  • Speaking of which, the House’s fourth-ranking Democrat just got knocked off by a woman who wants to abolish ICE. “The objection of the hard Left is not to the current style or kind of immigration enforcement; their objection is to the existence of immigration enforcement.”
  • Mega Turbo Democrat Dumbass: “I’m going to find the Congressman’s kids and kill them. If you’re going to separate kids at the border, I’m going to kill his kids. Don’t try to find me because you won’t.” Yeah, that last bit turned out to not be the case: The FBI arrested him within hours.
  • “Janus Ruling Could Cost Unions Hundreds of Millions.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “In ruling on bullet-stamping law, California Supreme Court says state laws cannot be invalidated on the grounds that complying with them is impossible.” Evidently liberals find this whole “reality” thing too much of a drag…
  • Keep in mind that a majority of Democrats don’t want to abolish ICE. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • In East Texas, more of that voter fraud Democrats claim doesn’t exist.
  • And also in South Texas. Bonus: Hidalgo County fraud, which we’ve previously covered.
  • Bonus: Judges orders redo of Democratic primary runoff due to voting fraud:

    A judge ordered a do-over of a contested Democratic primary runoff race in South Texas after invalidating the runoff results due to voter fraud. The runoff was decided by six votes.

    Ofelia “Ofie” Gutierrez contested the results of the May 22 Democratic primary runoff for Kleberg County Justice of the Peace Precinct 4 after losing to incumbent Esequiel “Cheque” De La Paz by a vote of 318 to 312.

    Gutierrez alleged that more than six illegal votes were counted, cast by people who didn’t reside within Precinct 4 and therefore weren’t eligible to vote in the election.

    On Tuesday, visiting Judge Joel Johnson threw out seven of the 16 ballots Gutierrez challenged in court. All seven were cast by voters related in some way to De La Paz.

  • “Head of prominent charity that campaigns against child abuse is arrested for ‘trying to arrange to rape multiple children as young as two.”
  • 200 Muslim migrants attempt to storm the Croatian border yelling “Allahu Akbar.”
  • Iran reopens uranium plant. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Speaking of Iran, protests there continued for a sixth day following a currency collapse. “On Sunday, the rial plunged 15 percent to IRR 89,000 against the dollar on the black market. Since the U.S. withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal on May 8, the rial has lost more than 40 percent of its value.”
  • The dumbasses at the Austin City Council approved building a soccer stadium. Because subsidizing a popular sport just wasn’t insulting enough to taxpayers…
  • Were Houston police officers dosed with flyers laced with Fentanyl left on patrol car windshields? Followup: Lab tests say no.
  • What it’s like to service an SR-71. “Our last structural integrity review was in 1987, and it declared that the aircraft was about 180 percent stronger than the day it was made. The higher and faster you flew it, the stronger the titanium became.”
  • CNN’s ratings fall below those of the food network. (Hat tip: Ace.)
  • Black man being arrested for shoplifting calls police Nazis. So they charged him with a hate crime. All hate crime laws are stupid, but those that criminalize free speech are an order of magnitude stupider. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • A Tweet with some numbers from the latest Harris poll:

  • A sample from the #WalkAway tag on Twitter:

  • Are eight AT&T buildings (including one in Dallas) hubs for NSA spying?
  • Multiculturalism Watch: Excavating the Aztec’s ceremonial skull rack, which the Spanish conquistadors estimated as holding 130,000 skulls from human sacrifices. “Gomoz Valdas found that about 75% of the skulls examined so far belonged to men, most between the ages of 20 and 35—prime warrior age. But 20% were women, and 5% belonged to children. Most victims seemed to be in relatively good health before they were sacrificed.”
  • Harlan Ellison, RIP.
  • LinkSwarm for May 18, 2018

    Friday, May 18th, 2018

    At some point I will grapple with all the unraveling Clinton/Mueller/Fusion GPS/FISA/Brennan Scandularity…but not today.

  • Democrats, rather than maximizing their chance at a blue wave, have insisted on electing far left-wing candidates over more-electable party moderates. Those national results replicate what the Texas Democratic Party did to themselves: Push moderates out of the party. Result: More Republicans elected. They appear hellbent on replicating those results at the national level…
  • Former New York speaker of the House Sheldon Silver found guilty of a kickback scheme yet again. The first conviction was overturned on appeal over a technicality.
  • “The people who’ve lost their way are the liberals and civil libertarians, blinded by their rage for Trump, who have dropped their principles in a moment of political threat and are taking out their anger on a man who has been their staunchest ally. Maybe the question isn’t what happened to Alan Dershowitz. Maybe it’s what happened to everyone else.” Caveat: Writer suffers from usual “Fox News and Trump are the Devil” derangement. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • President Donald Trump: “Members of the violent MS-13 gang are animals.” MSM: “Trump just said all undocumented immigrants are animals!” Also: “Trump supporters are fleeing the media not because they want cheerleaders, but because they are tired of a secular, coastal, liberal press that not only cannot relate to heartland voters but thinks it is beneath them to even try.”
  • Rep. Lou Barletta wins Pennsylvania Republican Senate primary, to face Bob Casey in the general. Barletta earned a lot of nationwide Republican gratitude for taking out Stupak block flip-flopper Paul Kanjorski in 2010.
  • China, Russia and other scumbag authoritarian countries are lying about their GDP. This is my shocked face. This also why you should take all those “OMG China’s economy will overtake the U.S. in 20XX!” panics with several grains of sand.
  • Seattle thinks that golden goose would taste mighty fine cooked in a white wine reduction.
  • Class-action lawsuit filed against Facebook over revelations that the company logged users’ text and call logs using the Facebook smartphone app on Android phones. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • EU: here’s a statement condemning the U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem. Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania: LOL, no. BLOCKED. (Hat tip: Pat Condell on Gab.)
  • Tom Wolfe, RIP.
  • Another case of illegal alien voter fraud that Democrats swear doesn’t exist.
  • President Trump wrings airline agreement out of gulf states.
  • The mathematician who cracked horse racing. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Joe Straus backed a lot of liberal Republican state candidates in March, to the tune of $1 million, and they all got walloped.
  • More scandal at the University of Texas law school:

    Jason Shoumaker, the law school’s facilities director until November 2017, is the subject of an ongoing probe by the Travis County District Attorney’s Office and the Texas Rangers. Though Shoumaker was taken into custody Thursday over tampering charges, he is at the heart of a major fraud investigation – one that potentially involves “several million dollars of questionable expenses,” a source familiar with the probe said….During multiple pay periods, Shoumaker logged regular 8-hour days with the university while he was actually cavorting out of state, according to the affidavit.

  • George Soros pulls out of Hungary.
  • #BadStockPhotosOfMyJob. But they obviously nailed the one for writers:

  • Death by Snu Snu! (Hat tip: Slone’s Twitter feed.)