Happy Independence Day weekend! (That’s America’s Independence Day, not the newfangled UK version.) Enjoy a LinkSwarm to tide you over for the weekend:
Kevin Williamson explains why firearms ownership is a civil right. “It is a measure of the corruption of the Democratic party and its ability to inspire corruption in others that John Lewis, once a civil-rights leader, is today leading a movement to strip Americans of their civil rights based on secret lists of subversives compiled by police agencies and the military…The Democrats have lynching in their political DNA, and they seem to be unable to evolve past it.”
This lengthy article in the New York Times talks about how a new Panama Canal expansion designed to handle bigger ships (and which is on the edge of opening) has numerous possible debacles due to radical underbidding by the primary contractor. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Bill de Blasio cronies are being arrested right and left. Or, keeping in mind this is de Blasio we’re talking about, left and left…
“An Arizona Democratic lawmaker was indicted on felony charges for allegedly falsifying her application when applying for food stamps.”
“Gilroy, a former Fort Pierce police officer, said Mateen frequently made homophobic and racial comments. Gilroy said he complained to his employer several times but it did nothing because he was Muslim.”
Omar Mateen – who as we reported earlier was licensed as a security guard and also holds a firearms license – was employed by the US subsidiary of G4S plc, a British multinational security services company, whose US-headquarters are located in Jupiter, Fla, and which also happens to be the world’s largest security company by revenue….
But where it gets more disturbing is that as Judicial Watch reported several days ago, in a post titled, “DHS Quietly Moving, Releasing Vanloads Of Illegal Aliens Away From Border”, border patrol sources said that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was quietly transporting illegal immigrants from the Mexican border to Phoenix and releasing them without proper processing or issuing court appearance documents. As a reminder, the government classifies them as Other Than Mexican (OTM) and this week around 35 were transferred 116 miles north from Tucson to a Phoenix bus station where they went their separate way. Judicial Watch was present when one of the white vans carrying a group of OTMs arrived at the Phoenix Greyhound station on Buckeye Road.
And this is where the Mateen-G4S link emerges: as JW reported previously, a security company contracted by the U.S. government is driving the OTMs from the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector where they were in custody to Phoenix, sources said. The firm is the abovementioned G4S, the world’s leading security solutions group with operations in more than 100 countries and 610,000 employees. G4S has more than 50,000 employees in the U.S. and its domestic headquarters is in Jupiter, Florida.
Mateen’s father, Seddique Mateen, hosted a “shoestring” talk show in which he regularly unleashed anti-U.S. tirades and once praised the Taliban.
The timeline of the shooting shows, at the very least, massive misjudgment on the part of the police. The shooting started at 2:02 AM, but police don’t call in the SWAT team until 3 AM? And it’s another two hours before they storm the club? And all this after the shooter had called 911 to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State?
Reddit’s main news group evidently decided to censor mentions of the shooting once it became known that the shooter was a radical Muslim. They even censored posts providing information on blood donations.
For years, too many Americans – including the lion’s share of our elite media and most of our politicians — have been content to deny the obvious, namely that quite a few Muslims espouse beliefs that are deeply at odds with what the vast majority of Americans believe. Some of those Muslims openly advocate violence and, if they are otherwise maladjusted, the odds they may murder in the name of Islam increase commensurately. We need to have a robust national debate on this important issue. Donald Trump has opened the door to that discussion, in his customary brusque, ham-handed way. More tact is required, but we cannot put off talking about radical Islam and jihadism any longer.
After the Bataclan massacre last autumn, the French government in effect went to war with radical Islam, pledging a “merciless” response to terrorism. This wasn’t just talk. Mass arrests of suspected radicals followed, dealing a serious blow to ISIS networks in the country. Paris meant business, finally.
In the aftermath of our own Bataclan, President Obama has offered his usual platitudes about “hate” and “guns.” This is escapism-as-counterterrorism-policy. Americans must demand better, including a reality-based assessment of our terrorism threat, from our next commander-in-chief. If we cannot name our enemy, we are already halfway to losing the war.
Milo Yiannopoulos weighs in: “The Christian Right may not be totally down with homos, and Trump may say things that hurt our delicate feelings, but they aren’t going to kill us or put us in camps. Only Islam would do that — the same Islam that, bizarrely, now stands at the top of the left’s hierarchy of victimhood.”
Another week, another Texas flood. Try to stay dry and enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:
Paglia on Clinton: “If it were a Republican in the crosshairs, Hillary’s shocking refusal to meet with the Inspector General (who interviewed all four of the other living Secretaries of State of the past two decades) would have been the lead item flagged in screaming headlines from coast to coast. Let’s face it—the genuinely innocent do not do pretzel twists like this to cover their asses.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
New York Magazine massively re-edits article on why Hillary won’t debate because the original wasn’t fawning enough.
Eight reasons Hillary sucks. Including Obama: “she does not seem to want to run on Ben Rhodes’s foreign policy, Jonathan Gruber’s Obamacare, Lois Lerner’s IRS, Lisa Jackson’s EPA, Eric Holder’s Justice Department, or Barack Obama’s racial healing. And yet she needs Obama’s hard-left base. So far she has rejected her 2008 Annie Oakley, Reagan-Democrat schtick, gambling that her Black Lives (alone) Matter and transgenderism pandering can ensure that she will match Obama’s historic share of the minority vote. But so far it seems just as likely that she will lose more voters among the white working class than she can lease from Obama’s core.”
More on the same theme. Alas, this morning I just don’t have time to explicate all the manifest idiocies on display by the Social Justice Warrior Campus Cadets…
Trump steps up attacks on Bill Clinton and Hillary’s enabling same. Naturally the press is miffed; they spent two decades burying news of Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey’s sexual assault allegations against Bill Clinton to protect Democrats, and now Trump is forcing them to mention their names again. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Liberal commentator Van Jones on how in-the-tank DNC head Debbie Wasserman Schultz is for Hillary. “Debbie, who should be the umpire, who should be the marriage counselor, is coming in harder for Hillary Clinton than she is for herself. That is malpractice. I wish [RNC Chair] Reince Priebus was my party chair. He did a better job of handling the Trump situation than I’ve see my party chair handle this situation.”
Democratic strategists who prophesy a Hillary landslide over Trump are blowing smoke. Hillary is a stodgily predictable product of the voluminous briefing books handed to her by a vast palace staff of researchers and pollsters—a staggeringly expensive luxury not enjoyed by her frugal, unmaterialistic opponent, Bernie Sanders (my candidate). Trump, in contrast, is his own publicist, a quick-draw scrapper and go-for-the-jugular brawler. He is a master of the unexpected (as the Egyptian commander Achillas calls Julius Caesar in the Liz Taylor Cleopatra). The massive size of Hillary’s imperialist operation makes her seem slow and heavy. Trump is like a raffish buccaneer, leaping about the rigging like the breezy Douglas Fairbanks or Errol Flynn, while Hillary is the stiff, sequestered admiral of a bullion-laden armada of Spanish galleons, a low-in-the-water easy mark as they creak and sway amid the rolling swells.
Dennis Prager responds to the #NeverTrump crowd: “In the 2016 presidential race, I am not interested in moral purity. I am interested in defeating the left and its party, the Democratic Party. The notion (expressed by virtually every #NeverTrump advocate) that we can live with another four years of a Democratic president is, forgive me, mind-boggling.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
David Limbaugh: “There is almost no chance that Clinton would ever govern otherwise than repugnantly. There is a chance that Trump could govern as a conservative on some issues, even if that’s not his natural instinct.”
Sony Pictures already had enough problems with its dreadful-looking Ghostbusters reboot without Hillary Clinton honing in on the action.
And as long as we’re on the subject, Milo Yiannopoulos weighs in on why it looks so dreadful: “There’s a clichéd cast, clunky dialogue and the outlines of a woefully unimaginative story. The visual effects are Scooby Doo-esque (and not in a good way), and it seems as though — at least from the footage we’ve seen so far — the Ghostbusters reboot will have none of the original’s carefree charm. Even if the cast wasn’t made up of unsexy lesbian janitors, there would be plenty for fans of the franchise to dislike.”
Faced with a choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, a lot of conservatives (myself included) will consider voting for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. Well, isn’t this a pisser? “He’s Not Conservative and Not Even All That Libertarian.”
You know how American leftists claim socialist Denmark is paradise on earth? Yeah, not so much. “Denmark’s suicide rate has averaged 20.8 per 100,000 during the last five decades, with its highest level of 32. The American suicide rate averaged only 11.1 during the last five decades, and has never exceeded 12.7. Danes are deeply deprived, driven by severe narcissism, and so more than 11 percent of adult Danes – the supposed happiest people in the world – are on antidepressants.”
The Arab–Israeli conflict is a bitter and ugly one. My own view of it is that the Palestinian Arabs have some legitimate grievances, and that I stopped caring about them when they started blowing up children in pizza shops. You can thank the courageous heroes of the Battle of Sbarro for that. Israel isn’t my country, but it is my country’s ally, and it is impossible for a liberty-loving American to fail to admire what the Jewish state has done.
And that, of course, is why the Left wants to see the Jewish state exterminated.
Greece approves new “austerity” measures that they’ll no doubt continue to cheat and ignore while spending money they don’t have.
Speaking of Greece, “More than one in five school-aged refugee children in Greece have never been to school, a study has revealed. Child refugees stranded in Greece have been out of school for on average 1.5 years, and many of them ‘cannot even hold a pencil.'”
Why feminists hate sex: “The new feminist puritans see heterosexual sex as confirming and reinforcing outdated gender roles. That men and women not only have sex but enjoy it is a threat to the notion that both gender and sexuality are merely social constructs, to be crafted and rejected as instinct takes us.”
Why did 16 Republican Senators save the agency that’s hell-bent on creating instant public housing slums across America?
More proof that Social Justice Warriors hate everything, no matter how cute.
World’s oldest woman, and last living American born in the 19th century, dies. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Listeria outbreak among frozen fruits and vegetables. “Some of the affected products were sold under brand names such as Earth’s Pride, Panda Express, Signature Kitchens and Trader Joe’s.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Rehab for Internet addiction. “The program costs $25,000 for 45 days at the center.” Obviously I can’t be addicted to the Internet, because there’s no way I could afford the rehab…
There’s some talk among the #NeverTrump about just sitting November out. Pat Condell explains why that’s a mistake: There’s always someone to vote against.
Samples:
“Safe space crybabies, left-wing authoritarians, social justice warriors, progressive utopians—whatever these people want from an election, I want the opposite, in spades, and then some.”
“If you think group identity should trump individual liberty, I vote against you and against any group you identify with.”
“If you think feelings are more important than truth, I vote against your feelings and against your truth. And if you are usually the first person to mention race in a political debate, chances are you’re the racist. I vote against racism, and against you, you racist.”
One of the latest bullshit Social Justice Warrior accusations is “whitewashing” (a subset of the bullshit “cultural appropriation” accusation) in which they condemn white actors for playing roles originated by non-white actors.
So how do Japanese people feel about Scarlet Johansson playing Major Kusanagi in the live-action remake of the Japanese anime Ghost in the Shell?
They’re just fine with it.
In other news, every non-Italian actor and actress who has ever played Romeo or Juliet is a racist…
(Aside: I actually think the plotlines of Ghost in the Shell:Stand Alone Complex series were a lot more compelling than those of the two movies…)
I expected to spend the weekend at the Levitation Music Festival here in Austin, but it got cancelled when it looked like t was going to be rained out. However, I did see a makeup show by Slowdive, which was the biggest reason I was attending anyway.
Scott Adams: “I give Clinton a 50% chance of making it to November with sufficiently good health to be considered a viable president.”
It’s good for the sake of the world that Islamic State fighters are no-talent assclowns. Maybe they should have drilled them more on military tactics than reciting the Koran. See how many basic military squad function mistakes you can count them making in this video.
“More than two decades ago, we heard the ‘misplaced fears’ and predictions of shootouts in the streets of Texas because of the CHL law. It didn’t happen — and it won’t happen because of SB 11, either.”
Rabid Puppies dominate the Hugo nominations again. The science fiction establishment was given the opportunity to address Sad Puppies concerns, but instead they continued to doubled down by backing the Social Justice Warriors at every turn. This has turned Sad Puppy voters into Rabid Puppy voters. The 2015 Hugos: “There are problems, but Vox Day is an odious troll.” The 2016 Hugos: “You know what? Fuck them. They deserve Vox Day.”
As today is a made-up celebration called “Earth Day,” be sure to have beef for dinner…
Reminder: “Officials at VA’s Phoenix hospital manipulated wait-time data to make it appear they were connecting doctors and veterans seeking appointments much faster than they actually were. This was done so VA managers at the Arizona facility could keep getting generous performance bonuses. They got their bonuses but dozens of waiting veterans died.” So how did the VA address the problem? They hired someone accused of doing the exact same thing at another hospital.
Following a congressional subpoena over Benghazi, Hillary’s state department staff hid requested files in another department. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
How Ted Cruz could beat Hillary Clinton. “Clinton is entering the general election with glaring vulnerabilities of her own. Her image is toxic to Republicans and independents, and her popularity among Democrats is now at an all-time low as a presidential candidate, according to Gallup’s polling. It won’t take a top-tier Republican candidate to win.” Also: “Cruz consistently runs far more competitively against Clinton than Trump does.”
“It’s not just Wall Street banks. Most companies and groups that paid Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to speak between 2013 and 2015 have lobbied federal agencies in recent years, and more than one-third are government contractors, an Associated Press review has found. Their interests are sprawling and would follow Clinton to the White House should she win election this fall.”
“Although our panel’s original estimates had Trump finishing with 1,175 pledged delegates, my revised deterministic projections have him at 1,155, and the probabilistic version has him at 1,159.”
“Walden is less a cornerstone work of environmental literature than the original cabin porn: a fantasy about rustic life divorced from the reality of living in the woods, and, especially, a fantasy about escaping the entanglements and responsibilities of living among other people.”
Once again, Pat Condell brings the wood to the logic-defying spectacle of radical feminist apologists for fundamentalist Islam.
Some samples:
If, like me, you want to live in a world where men and women are completely equal, not just in theory but in actual practice, then you’d better get used to being called a racist by women who call themselves feminists. Progressive feminists, to be precise, or third wave feminists, as they’re sometimes known. Personally, I’m happy to be called any number of ugly names if it helps to draw attention in some small way to the glaring fact that progressive feminists are traitors to their gender. It’s entirely thanks to their poisonous influence that when it comes to Islam the words “feminist” and “hypocrite” go together as seamlessly as the words “dickless” and “jihad.”
Snip.
The number one rule of progressive feminism is that you never draw any kind of attention to the plight of women in the Muslim world being abused and persecuted every day by Muslim men. Being forcibly married, being punished for being raped. And whatever you do, don’t mention the thousand women a year in Pakistan who are murdered by members of their own family.
Snip.
The progressive sell-out to Islamic misogyny has been so total, we’re witnessing the death of feminism. There’s now such a complete lack of credibility, nobody takes it seriously any more. Feminism is now seen as merely a playpen for crybabies and bullies. Censorious small-minded safe-space harpies who hate being women, and who want everyone else to compensate them for it. And they’re such incorrigible whores to Islam, especially to Muslim men. They defer to them so eagerly on women’s rights, as if they have an unhealthy desire to be dominated by Muslim men.
