Been a while since I did a roundup on gun news, so here’s the latest, including an epic mugshot:
What is that, some incompetent Wolverine/Rocket Raccoon combination cosplay?
Evidently toy guns are something of a thing with him…
(Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
Gun Roundup for July 15, 2014
July 15th, 2014Scenes From The Illegal Alien Flood
July 14th, 2014You’ve got to hand it to the Obama Administration: They’ve taken an issue (a flood of illegal aliens) that was most heavily impacting the border states, and found a way to piss off pretty much the entire nation.
As Senator Jeff Sessions noted: “The crisis on our border is the direct and predictable result of President Obama’s sustained effort to undermine America’s immigration laws. As the president’s previous director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), John Sandweg recently acknowledged: “if you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero.” Enforcement has collapsed.” Sessions further notes that Obama’s $3.7 billion request does not ask for enhanced deportation authority.
The leftist ideologues who form the core of the administration evidently never gave up their love of forced busing, since they seem to want to forcibly bus illegal aliens into every state (or perhaps fly them to Alaska and Hawaii).
They’re certainly pissing off people in Arizona, as well as elsewhere. “Federal officials have been dumping illegal immigrants in places like Arizona, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Illinois without telling state and local officials beforehand and then demanding the states use their limited resources to care for the illegal immigrants.”
Even Obama’s fellow Democrats in Texas are saying he should visit the border. Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke “added that he has been surprised by the anger he has heard toward the immigrants from many of his El Paso constituents, who “feel like we can’t take care of everyone, and these children and their families are gaming the system.’”
And if Hispanic constituents in heavily Democratic El Paso are pissed off, how do you think people in other parts of the country feel about illegal aliens being force bused into their neighborhoods?
And Obama has done absolutely nothing to complete the construction of the already authorized 700 miles of border fence. Despite the fact that where border fences have been completed, illegal alien crossings are down 95%.
But doing that might keep out the illegal alien felons Obama so seems to love. Like the Mexican national who had already been deported four times being charged with molesting a 9-year old. Evidently molesting our children is one of those jobs Americans won’t do…
And Americans know who is to blame for the problem: “Nearly half of U.S. voters believe the Obama administration has prompted the flood of illegal immigrant children at the border, and most want them sent back home right away.”
If this is a scheme to panic Republicans into passing illegal alien amnesty, it seems to have backfired spectacularly.
No wonder Democrats are nervous. 2014 is shaping up an awful lot like 2010, if not worse…
Israel Picks Perfect Time to Kick Hamas’ Ass
July 13th, 2014Just a quick note to compliment Israel on a perfect sense of timing in picking this week to kick Hamas’ incompetent ass (yet again) in Operation Protective Edge:
Hamas has done more harm to the Palestinian movement in the past two decades, than any opponent of the Palestinians could have done. It has sabotaged relations with a sympathetic media through muddled press conferences and moronic bombastic statements about “opening the gates of hell.” It has driven out international supporters, managed to decrease the support it did have among various “free Gaza” committees and “shot its bolt” in its various ill-conceived wars with Israel.
Snip.
It gained a respite with the election of Mohammed Morsi in Egypt in 2012. But like Morsi, it over-reached and overestimated its military chances against Israel. It must have gained hope from Turkey’s Islamist government AK party and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s strong messages of support. But the Gaza flotilla incident of 2010 seems like a high point of Turkish resolve. Hamas’ other erstwhile friends in Iran and Hezbollah; although Shi’ite extremists, seemed like they might bolster the organization. The 2006 Lebanon War, which was roundly seen as a blunder for Israel, was a by-product of Hamas’ own kidnapping of Gilad Schalit that year. But Hezbollah and Iran were drawn into the Syrian quagmire and Hamas was left alone. The overthrow of Morsi by General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi in Egypt put another nail in the blockade around Gaza as Sisi sought to root out terror in Sinai. Pro-Gaza activists from the West were roughed up routinely in Egypt.
Whereas Hamas could once propagate stories about flour or electricity shortages in Gaza, the international media and activists began to shrug their shoulders. Another perennial sewage problem? In June of 2014 Reuters noted, “sewage at the beach, piles of garbage mar Gaza’s summer.” Various alarmist UN statements, such as a 2008 claim that the “blockage [by Israel and Egypt] is putting Gaza at risk of starvation” were met with a yawn. Hamas’ Gaza policy, with its need for international attention, has been marred particularly by the mass atrocities that have been taking place throughout the Middle East. Media outlets like the BBC caught on to the fact that images from Syria are routinely passed off as being from Gaza and there is less international outrage at Israel than in previous years as the European public is inured to suffering in the region.
This latest round of violence is indicative. Al-Jazeera cobbled together various world leaders’ reactions to the conflict. The usual suspects were there – but were markedly tepid in their criticism of Israel.
All that said, I bet we go through the whole thing again another two years from now…
LinkSwarm for July 11, 2014
July 11th, 2014More news from inside the handbasket, including the dust-up in Gaza and the illegal alien surge at the border:
So tragic. So avoidable. RT @verumserum: The surge of unaccompanied minors at the border. pic.twitter.com/xxHzoZCgvI
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) July 10, 2014
In honor of the POTUS being in Austin. #tcot pic.twitter.com/d0iqRs8JUR
— YCT-UT (@YCT_UT) July 10, 2014
Hope You Don’t Need to Drive Anywhere in Austin Today
July 10th, 2014Yes, it’s another Obama is fundraising in Austin day, so traffic will probably be screwed all day.
Plan accordingly…
Bill Powers to Step Down as UT President in June 2015
July 10th, 2014Evidently the Board of Regents accepted Bill Powers counteroffer, as he will stay on as UT President through June 2, 2015. (Previously.)
If you’re still unclear on why Powers should go, here are ten reasons he should step down.
UT Scandal May Pull Down President Bill Powers
July 9th, 2014Evidently the slow-burning University of Texas admissions scandal will finally cost President Bill Powers his job. “UT System Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa has told Powers, 68, to resign before Thursday’s meeting of the Board of Regents or be fired during it.”
I doubt Powers counteroffer to step down in 2015 will be accepted. (I do wonder what makes Houston Chronicle writer Benjamin Wermund proclaim that Powers is “widely supported by students”? Has he seen polls on Powers popularity on students? (Online petitions don’t count) I would think they would be more concerned with lowering tuition costs than support a President resisting calls to lower them.)
Which is not to say that Powers backers are giving up. Instead, they’re lashing out at the board of regents:
The more angry and indignant among the petition signers seem to think some organized debate about UT and its president is going forth, and that their champion is, unfairly, of course, getting the worst of it. It would be an odd thing to think. There isn’t anything like a public debate about Bill Powers going forward. There’s rancor and division — nearly all of it coming from the side that professes to despise rancor and division, the Powers side.
The admissions scandal has been building for some time on Powers’ watch. (Nor is it the only problem under Powers.) Instead of investigating it and fixing the problem, Powers decided the best move was to have his political friends attempt to impeach regent Wallace Hall in order to quash his investigation while Powers’ supporters launched an Astroturf campaign on his behalf that’s included no end of MSM editorials praising Powers while attacking Hall and Governor Perry for daring to hold him accountable.
The university academic complex evidently believe that they’re a special kind of hothouse flower that should be immune to all political pressure, with a right to public funding but not to public accountability. Powers has constantly resisted calls to make college more affordable, and to be more accountable to the Board of Regents who oversee his work and the state government that pays his bills.
It seems that Powers will be the latest official to learn that pride goeth before a fall.
No, The Illegal Alien Surge Is Not Obama’s Katrina
July 8th, 2014USA Today reporter Susan Page wonders why, despite the surge of illegal aliens across our border, Obama would continue to attend lavish fundraisers rather than visit the border, calling the decision “Obama’s Katrina moment.” (Even Democratic Texas congressman Henry Cuellar expressed the same concern.)
This comparison is deeply unfair.
To George W. Bush.
After all, Bush didn’t:
Katrina was a natural disaster. The illegal alien surge is a crisis of Obama’s own making for refusing to enforce existing border control laws and dangling a Dream Act amnesty to lure illegal alien children to cross the border.
Liberal Rage Continues Over Hobby Lobby Decision
July 7th, 2014Despite musical advice from that big hit from The Princess Factory, liberals just can’t Let It Go. They’re still in a rage over the Hobby Lobby decision, or at least pretending to be in order to gin up their shrinking base in order to keep Democrats from being slaughtered in November.
Jeffrey Tobin: “What we are witnessing is a liberal meltdown in which they have come to believe the First Amendment is a technicality that should brushed aside when it comes into conflict with the ‘right’ to free contraception.”
For the political left, the concept of religious liberty has been re-interpreted as to only mean the right to be allowed to pray and not to live one’s faith in the public square. When faith conflicts with policy initiatives such as the free contraception mandate, they assume that religion must always lose. However, the court majority has rightly reminded us that the freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment cannot be trashed simply because a lot of Americans want not only access to contraception but also think their employers ought to be compelled to pay for it.
But to liberals, a decision that reaffirms the primacy of religious freedom is just the latest iteration of a Republican “war on women.” As a political slogan, that meme has been political gold for Democrats who believe its use guarantees their stranglehold on the votes of unmarried women. But as infuriating and wrongheaded the war on women arguments may be, what is really troubling about them is that they reflect a utilitarian approach to the Constitution that regards any of its protections as expendable if they are obstacles to a liberal policy goal.
Clarice Feldman: “No, the sputtering, venomous and hateful hyperbole is attributable to one thing, and one thing only: the Court did not allow the state to bend Hobby Lobby to its will on their behalf. And that is what matters most to them.”
All this rage is especially hypocritical since:
Some 204 outfits favored by Democrats were granted waivers by the president from ObamaCare, which means their employees do not have the right to employer provided birth control. These include upscale restaurant, nightclubs, and hotels in then-Speaker Pelosi’s district; labor union chapters; large corporations, financial firms, and local governments.
Women did not march through the streets to complain on behalf of their downtrodden sisters at Boboquivari in San Francisco which sells porterhouse steaks at $59 a pop and such. Apparently they are up with laws written on Etch-a-Sketch boards which the president can rewrite at whim. And their moral outrage is dependent on whether or not the employer is a Democrat crony.
The whole “War on Women” is “shameless, baseless propaganda:
In other Hobby Lobby-related news, Jonathan Adler debunks the idea that the Hobby lobby ruling was “anti-science.”
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Happy Independence Day!
July 4th, 2014In celebration of America’s birthday, here are some compilations of fireworks gone wrong (some repetition):
There’s a special place in my heart for the 2012 San Diego display where they accidentally fired everything up at once:
And finally: Fireworks factory explosions:
Let’s be careful out there. At least wear some eye protection…