A few days after Syrian “refugees” helped killed 132 people (at last count) in Paris, and suddenly liberals are falling all over themselves to natter on about what a “moral duty” it is for the United States to take more of those same “refugees.”
So where was all this “moral duty,” indignation and outrage when the Islamic State was slaughtering Christians, Kurds and Yezidis?
This is just liberals engaging in a cheap form of moral preening, displaying their “tolerance” like a peacock displays its tail feathers. Muslims rank high on the Victimhood Identity Politics scale, so obviously liberals need to display “tolerance” by welcoming more of them here, never mind how many might be jihadists.
Obama is for resettling “refugees” containing Islamist jihadists, and Republican governors oppose it, so suddenly it’s a High Moral Cause for liberals, another chance for liberals to display how they’re “morally superior” to those ignorant redneck freaks of JesusLand. Also known as “voters,” who want fewer immigrants, not more.
The big story this week has been the Children of the Corn running amok in Missouri. I hope to have a longer piece on that by and by. In the meantime, enjoy your Friday LinkSwarm:
Maryland’s “bullet fingerprint” database cost $5 million to set up and maintain. Number of criminals caught by it? Zero. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
How much money each state is sending to the Presidential race. Texas is number one in SuperPAC money, and number two (behind California) in hard money.
Kafkatrap vs. Honeytrap. “If you are any kind of open-source leader or senior figure who is male, do not be alone with any female, ever, at a technical conference.”
Woman starts making documentary about Men’s Rights Movement. Funny things happens: When she starts making an actual, even-handed documentary, the funders who wanted a feminist hit piece drop her like a hot potato, but Kickstarter backers step up to the plate after a plug from Milo Yiannopoulos.
What’s Obama’s strategy in Iraq and Syria? He doesn’t have one. “Without a clear overarching strategy to resolve the conflict.” Say what you want about Bush, he wanted to win in Iraq. Obama wants to do just enough to not get blamed for losing.
Speaking of Islamic refugees, shotguns (which don’t need a permit) are selling like hotcakes in Austria. Whatever could be the reason?
“The Democratic party is mainly a coalition of interest groups, and the current model of Democratic politics — poor and largely non-white people providing the muscle and rich white liberals calling the shots — is unsustainable…Democrats gleefully predict that demographic changes are going to give their party a permanent majority. The unspoken corollary to that is that white liberals think they’re going to remain in charge of it.”
As expected, all seven Texas constitutional amendments passed easily. The two most heavily promoted amendments, Proposition 1 (homestead property tax relief) and Proposition 7 (dedicating sales tax money to the highway fund), each passed with more than 80% of the vote.
Other Texas voting news:
Houston’s unpopular “tranny bathroom bill” went down in flames. Liberals crying foul that their pet transgender culture war bill was reduced to tranny bathrooms might want to remember that no one forced Houston Mayor Annise Parker (who whispered not a word of it during her own election campaign) to bring it up, and certainly wasn’t forced to sue churches who dared oppose it. Every time an item on the Social Justice Warrior agenda actually gets put before voters, it loses big time.
Austin voters rejected a courthouse bond package derided as a big-spending boondoggle. And keep in mind that Austin voters practically never turn down bond proposals.
But it wasn’t just Texas. Across the nation, conservatives won big in off-year elections:
Republican Matt Bevin won a big upset in the Kentucky governor’s race. The guy who Mitch McConnell crushed by 25 points in a 2014 primary will now become just the second Republican to govern the Bluegrass State in four decades.
Democrats failed to pick up Virginia’s state Senate. It’s a huge blow to Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who went all-in to make it happen. Democrats could have won by capturing just one seat because of the tie-breaking authority of Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam (D). But Republicans held every single seat…
Even in San Francisco, the sheriff who steadfastly defended the city’s “sanctuary city” policy went down. Fox News: “Ross Mirkarimi and his office received heavy criticism after Mexican illegal immigrant Francisco Sanchez allegedly shot and killed 32-year-old Kate Steinle on San Francisco’s waterfront July 1. Sanchez had been released from Mirkarimi’s jail in March even though federal immigration officials had requested that he be detained for possible deportation.” The city also rejected new regulations on Airbnb.
The Kentucky Governor’s race was the one where Fark’s Drew Curtis ran as an independent. He garnered just over 3% of the vote.
Right now Austin is enjoying our traditional “two weeks of flooding following three months of drought” fall. Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:
“In Iraq, Obama took a war that we had won at a considerable expense in lives and treasure, and threw it away for the callowest of political reasons. In Syria and Libya, he involved us in wars of choice without Congressional authorization, and proceeded to hand victories to the Islamists. Obama’s policy here has been a debacle of the first order, and the press wants to talk about Bush as a way of protecting him.”
Paul Ryan elected Speaker of the House. If Ryan decides to govern as an actual Republican, he could be a very effective Speaker…
At the most recent Republican Presidential debate, Sen. Marco Rubio said the H1-B visa program is badly in need of reform. One tiny problem: Sen. Rubio’s own H1-B bill doesn’t implement any of the reforms demanded by Presidential Candidate Rubio. “It does not require recruitment of American workers. It does not require employers to ‘pay more than you would pay someone else’…Rubio’s bill would provide Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his comrades ‘a huge increase in the supply of lower-cost foreign guest workers so they can undercut and replace American workers.'” Indeed, Rubio’s bill “would triple the number of H1-B foreign workers admitted.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
How to fix the Republican debates: “First, cancel the rest of the debates. Instead, announce that the RNC will host the debates and pick the panel of questioners. Allow any news organization that wishes to broadcast it.”
Feminism is “a War Against Human Nature aimed at using the coercive power of government to bring about an androgynous ‘equality’ that ignores the actual differences between men and women. Feminism is a totalitarian movement to destroy civilization as we know it — and feminists say so themselves.”
“The most heartfelt articles written by women are those demanding society rearrange itself so that the writer moves up in the sexual market pecking order.”
“Hmm, let’s run a similar study on the effect knowledge of wealth has on perceived attractiveness women report for men. ‘You’re about to meet Chad and afterwards we’ll ask you for some survey data. Oh, Chad’s a millionaire.'”
“If you look at the article not from the point of view of someone who is trying to honestly find truth and report it, but from the point of view of a progressive tart who wants to tear down our society this article will make more sense to you. ‘Smart’ college women aren’t being deemed unattractive because they are smart. They are being deemed unattractive because they are pretentious bitches. “
Or rather, Milo Yiannopoulos interviews a felt facsimile of social justice warrior/Twitter troll Shanley Kane. Like Shanley’s discourse itself, the interview is NSFW.
Why, yes, I am feeling lazy this Monday. Why do you ask?
When you start grabbing a third pull quote from a piece is when you realize that it needs a post of its own. Such is the case with this Nick Cohen piece on why Jeremy Corbyn’s election has finally forced him to leave the left. Though centered on UK politics, much of it applies to the social justice warrior/victimhood identity politics left in this country as well.
The shift of left-wing thought towards movements it would once have denounced as racist, imperialist and fascistic has been building for years. I come from a left-wing family, marched against Margaret Thatcher and was one of the first journalists to denounce New Labour’s embrace of corporate capitalism — and I don’t regret any of it. But slowly, too slowly I am ashamed to say, I began to notice that left-wing politics had turned rancid.
Snip.
In 2007 I tried to make amends, and published What’s Left. If they were true to their professed principles, my book argued, modern leftists would search out secular forces in the Muslim world — Iranian and Arab feminists, say, Kurdish socialists or Muslim liberals struggling against reactionary clerics here in Britain — and embrace them as comrades. Instead, they preferred to excuse half the anti-western theocrats and dictators on the planet. As, in their quiet way, did many in the liberal mainstream. Throughout that period, I never heard the BBC demanding of ‘progressives’ how they could call themselves left-wing when they had not a word of comfort for the Iraqi and Afghan liberals al-Qaeda was slaughtering.
The triumph of Jeremy Corbyn has led to What’s Left sales picking up, and readers acclaiming my alleged prescience. Grateful though I am, I cannot accept the compliment. I never imagined that left-wing politics would get as bad as they have become. I assumed that when the criminally irresponsible Blair flew off in his Learjet, the better angels of the left’s nature would re-assert themselves.
What a fool I was.
Snip.
The fact remains that the Labour party has just endorsed an apologist for Putin’s imperial aggression; a man who did not just appear on the propaganda channel of Russia, which invades its neighbours and persecutes gays, but also of Iran, whose hangmen actually execute gays. Labour’s new leader sees a moral equivalence between 9/11 and the assassination of bin Laden, and associates with every variety of women-hating, queer-bashing, Jew-baiting jihadi, holocaust denier and 9/11 truther. His supporters know it, but they don’t care.
Snip.
The half-educated fanatics are in control now. I do not see how in conscience I can stay with their movement or vote for their party. I am not going to pretend the next time I meet Owen Jones or those Labour politicians who serve in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet that we are still members of the same happy family. There are differences that cannot and should not be smoothed over.
I realise now what I should have known years ago. The causes I most care about — secularism, freedom of speech, universal human rights — are not their causes. Whatever they pretend, when the crunch comes, they will always put sectarian unity first, and find reasons to be elsewhere.
I know I should be talking about Trump or immigration or jihad, but fresh takes just aren’t occurring to me this morning. So instead, let’s just talk about newly minted Labour head Jeremy Corbyn’s freakshow of a shadow cabinet. (For those not conversant with UK political terms, the “shadow cabinet” is the cabinet of the opposition party (in this case Labour) which would (theoretically) take over if the Tories were to lose power over a no-confidence vote; since the Tories currently enjoy an absolute majority, it would take a pretty big political upheaval for this to happen before 2020.) Evidently it was quite difficult for Corbyn to even find Labour MPs willing to take positions in his shadow cabinet.
A few choice examples:
Kerry McCarthy, shadow secretary of agriculture, is a hardcore vegan, and I’m sure her absolute opposition to meat will really help Labour win back not only the British butcher industry, but also the working class white voters that used to be Labour’s largest block of support. She’s also a supporter of homeopathic medicine.
The new Shadow Chancellor (finance minister) is John McDonnell, who openly states his desire to overthrow capitalism, wants to nationalize banks, praised the IRA for it’s bomb-setting and killing activity, and has fantasized about traveling back in time to assassinate Margaret Thatcher.
Shadow defense secretary Maria Eagle’s biggest issues seem to be gay rights and opposition to mink farming, neither of which tend to weigh heavily in defense policy.
Diane Abbott, shadow secretary of state for International Development, once said that “blonde, blue-eyed Finnish girls” at London hospitals were unsuitable as nurses because they had “never met a black person before” and that “white people love playing ‘divide & rule.'”
This isn’t just a “let’s have a laugh at the expense of the far left freaks” post (fun though that may be). To a large extent, personnel is policy, and this shows how quickly extreme left-wing/Social Justice Warrior ideas can take root at the center of a major political party if they have enough adherents in the overclass. Right now, there’s no shortage of Democratic Party activist who would love to make veganism the official policy of the United States government, and as Obama appointees have shown, would not let little things like “laws” (or the lack thereof) stand in the way of implementing their extremist policies were they be placed in a position of power.