Posts Tagged ‘Democrats’
Monday, September 14th, 2015
Early polls, plenty of time, yadda yadda. But there’s no way that a presumptive frontrunner should be down 10 points in Iowa to an elderly socialist.
Also, in New Hampshire, Sanders leads Hillary “by a whopping 52 percent to 30 percent.”
Tags:2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, Bernie Sanders, Democrats, Elections, Hillary Clinton, Iowa, polls
Posted in Democrats, Elections | No Comments »
Friday, September 11th, 2015
It’s the 14th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and thanks to the super-genius foreign policy ofthe Obama Administration, radical Islam is more powerful than ever before!
The Islamic State attacks the Kurds with mustard gas Hey Obama: Big, bright red line here! What are you going to do about that? Nothing, eh? Just going to keep up your just-for-show pretend-war against the Islamic State?
The thermocline of truth at the Pentagon: “More than 50 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military’s Central Command have formally complained that their reports on ISIS and al Qaeda’s branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials.”
Mark Steyn: “Since I last appeared in Copenhagen, some three-quarters of those I shared the stage with that day have been shot at, firebombed or forced to retire from public life and go into hiding.”
If you hit a pedestrian in China, do you: A. Stop to render aid, B. Flee the scene or, C. Back over again to make sure they’re dead?
“The policies of Jeremy Corbyn, the old-fashioned socialist on course to be elected leader of the U.K.’s Labour Party, are wrong not because they’re left-wing, but because they’re delusional.”
Thanks to the Magic Power of Socialism(TM), in Venezuela there’s no justice like mob justice. (Hat tip Instapundit.)
Could Putin be undone by a European court rulings?
How Bush43 helped keep Russia from invading the rest of Georgia in 2008.
Islamic attack leaves leaves 30 dead in Cameroon.
Jihad kills 10 in Tajikistan, U.S. embassy shut.
“Tunisia is experiencing psychopath drain.”
Muslims riot in Rotherham. (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
Believe it or not, Republicans actually have the demographic edge in 2016.
Abilene cop killed in home.
This sounds super, super, super, super, super, super dumb.
After a long hibernation, Blue Dot Blue has awakened from her deathless slumbers.
Dwight has a pretty swell memorial to Oliver Sacks up.
Lawfully use your legal firearm to protect your foster kids in Nevada? Watch your kids get taken away.
Liberal writer discovers America. “I spent the night at the Chateau Motel & Liquor Store, which is a brilliant business idea that absolutely needs to come east.” #Merica (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
“Here is the only important fact versus the hyperbolic claims about aspartame and health: There’s a correlation between sugar consumption and health problems. There’s no link between artificial sweeteners and health.”
The ghost homes of Japan. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Texas most-wanted sex-offender caught.
Creeper in Williamson County:
Deputies are searching for a man that allegedly injured a 12-year-old girl at a Williamson County park over the weekend.
It happened Saturday, Sept. 5 at around 5:50 p.m. on the Rattan Creek Park Trail, west of Parmer Lane at Dallas Drive. Investigators say the girl was walking on the trail at a bridge near where two paths intersect when she was approached by an adult male from the south. The Sheriff’s Office says he made several comments regarding the child’s beauty, saying she appeared older than she was, and asked various questions about her and any companions.
The suspect grabbed the child by the arm, tight enough to cause minor injury. He let go when one of the child’s friends approached them, and walked away from the trail, heading north into the woods, investigators say.
The subject was described as a white male, approximately 6’0″, with a slim to medium build, short brown hair, and believed to be in his late 30s. He was last seen wearing a white tank top, blue jeans, and had a large tattoo (possibly Old English text) on his left shoulder, extending down to his chest. The suspect was described as having unusually long fingernails.
If this suspect is observed in the area, you are asked to call the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office Detective Jason Waldon at (512) 244-8631 or jwaldon@wilco.org or after hours (512) 864-8302.
Read More at: http://www.keyetv.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/Deputies-Searching-For-Man-That-Injured-Child-At-WilCo-Park-202903.shtml
Keep an eye out…
The Shooter in Her Cooter.
Tags:9/11 Attacks, Abilene, Austin, Blue Dot Blues, Cameroon, Democrats, Dwight Brown, Guns, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Japan, Jeremy Corbyn, Jihad, Kurds, Mark Steyn, Media Watch, Oliver Sacks, Rotherham, Russia, science, socialism, Tajikistan, Tunisia, UK, Venuzuala, Vladimir Putin, Williamson County
Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
Thursday, September 10th, 2015
Via Dwight comes word that “Six defendants in the sweeping criminal prosecution of Raymond ‘Shrimp Boy’ Chow, part of a public corruption and organized crime investigation that ensnared a once-prominent Democratic politician, pleaded guilty on Wednesday, prosecutors said.”
For those playing along on the home game:
George Nieh pleaded guilty to every count filed against him, including 146 counts of money laundering and a slew of weapons and drug charges.
Leslie Yun pleaded guilty to five counts of money laundering and drug-related charges.
Kevin Siu pleaded guilty to eight of the 24 money laundering counts against him, and
Alan Chiu pleaded guilty to 13 of 36 money laundering charges.
Yat Wa Pau pleaded guilty to trafficking in contraband cigarettes and admitted to his involvement in sales of contraband cigarettes worth more than $300,000.
Andy Li pleaded guilty to felony possession of a firearm along with money laundering and marijuana possession.
Funny how California Democratic State Senator Leland Yee, the ostensible “big fish” in the investigation, plead guilty to a single charge, while Nieh (who was reportedly one of Chow’s closest associates), plead guilty to everything.
And Chow’s own trial is still pending…
Tags:Alan Chiu, Andy Li, California, Crime, Democrats, George Nieh, Kevin Siu, Leland Yee, Leslie Yun, Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow, Yat Wa Pau
Posted in Crime, Democrats | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 9th, 2015
Hey, remember Donna ISD down in the Rio Grande Valley? You know, where the school board president committed suicide over a vote-buying scandal that followed hot on the heels of a bribery and graft scandal?
Turns out that there’s no end to the school district’s corruption.
“Last year, school officials failed to account for more than $1 million in missing funds. Marking the third consecutive year of unbalanced books, the district’s chief financial officer was removed — and reassigned as director of accounting.”
Snip.
Perched near the Mexican border, Donna schools serve a poor, heavily migrant community where public funds are coveted.
“Everyone is employed by the school district, the city or the county. It’s all about contracts and which friends get the bids,” Rio Grande Valley activist Maricela De Leon told Watchdog.org.
To hammer out those contracts, the board hired Robert J. Salinas, a convicted felon who served federal prison time for money laundering. Salinas now enjoys a $300,000 annual retainer and bills at $250 per hour. In May, Salinas charged the district more than $33,000, according to Breitbart Texas.
All this follows an attempt to oust superintendent Jesus Reyna over an alleged sex scandal.
And two weekends ago, Donna ISD Police Supervisor Ambrosio Francisco Limon was arrested for getting into a fist fight over a soccer game.
Sounds like state officials should take a close look at how Donna ISD does business…
Tags:Ambrosio Francisco Limon, Crime, Democrats, Donna (town), Donna ISD, Jesus Reyna, Rio Grande Valley, Robert J. Salinas
Posted in Crime, Democrats | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, September 8th, 2015
Time for another Texas vs. California roundup:
Why Texas is awesome:
First, there is no state income tax in Texas. Some people know this and some don’t—few really grasp what it means practically. It means that if you make decent money and decide to move here and rent something affordable, it’s essentially free to live in Texas. If you make $150,000 a year, your state income taxes in California are roughly $12,000 per year (in NYC it’s closer to $15,000). Or, you can put a thousand bucks a month toward your rent here. If you decide to buy, property taxes are high—but what you get for the money more than makes up for it. My editor at the Observer recently tried to cajole me into coming back to New York. Our house now—which has its own lake and is 29 minutes from the airport which never has lines—costs less than the rent we were paying for our lofted studio apartment in Midtown. Are you kidding?
Also note the mention of walk-in gun safes…
(Hat tip: Borepatch.)
600,000 Californians have moved to Texas since 2009.
Another take on that data: “5 Million People Left California Over the Past Decade. Many Went to Texas.”
Austin and Houston are the top two relocation destinations in the country.
$15 billion for a fish tunnel?
“The average full-career California teacher receives a pension benefit equal to 105% of their final earnings. CalSTRS CEO says the plan isn’t generous enough.”
In 2012, Los Angeles passed some modest pension reforms for newly hired employees. Surprise! A new union contract undoes those reforms. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
California, like Texas, has a homestead exemption built into their bankruptcy laws. Unlike Texas, California’s exemption doesn’t actually protect debtors.
The FBI raided Palm Springs’ city hall as part of a corruption probe.
Mining company suspends operations at California mine because rare earths aren’t.
Chief of tiny California fire district to have his $241,000 pension cut. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Enviornmental idiocy and California’s drought.
Texas’ 2016 Fiscal Year started September 1st. “Several taxes that were eliminated on September 1 include the Inheritance Tax, Oil Regulation Tax, Sulphur Regulation Tax, Fireworks Tax, Controlled Substance Tax Certificates, and the Airline/Passenger Train Beverage Tax.”
Meanwhile, California’s legislature is trying to raise gas and tobacco taxes.
Elderly poverty in California.
Evidently California’s Democratic politicians stay up late at night devising ways they can make the state go broke even faster. The answer: Host the Olympics again.
Korean-owned businesses in LA consider relocating to El Paso. “Kim makes the case that El Paso, once home to plants for denim companies including Levi’s and Wrangler, has abundant skilled laborers, fewer regulations, much cheaper rent and direct flights from Los Angeles.”
A cartoon via IowaHawk’s twitter feed. That is all.
Tags:Austin, California, CalSTARS, Crime, Democrats, El Paso, environmentalism, Houston, Los Angeles, migration, Olympics, Palm Springs, Regulation, Texas, unions, Welfare State
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Regulation, Texas, unions, Welfare State | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 1st, 2015
So Hillary’s Super Secret Secure Server was actually hosted on the same server as the not secret and not particularly secure Clinton Foundation email system.
Which means any hacker that could pwn the Clinton Foundation server (and why wouldn’t they?) could almost certainly pwn Hillary’s private e-mail server, chock full of illegal classified national security information, through any number of exploits or privilege escalation attacks.
And evidently she was running her emails off an Exchange 2010 Server, which meant it was running on top of Windows, which means there were no end of exploits by which a dedicated hacker could gain control.
“Oh hey! I’m hosting this list of ISIS secret agents on my Doom III deathmatch server! I’m sure there’s no way that could possibly backfire on me!”
Or to put it in non-computer terms, she was storing classified information in an unlocked tin box under her bed that everyone in her neighborhood also knew contained bundles of unmarked $100 bills, and she was just hoping no one broke in.
She’s a major security risk that should never, ever be in the oval office…
Tags:2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, Crime, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton Scandals, Microsoft, technology
Posted in Crime, Democrats | No Comments »
Friday, August 28th, 2015
So Damon Linker has penned a one-eyed-liberal-in-the-land-of-the-blind piece on how cultural elites have brought opposition to immigration (and Donald Trump) upon themselves by their failure to enforce border controls.
These institutions have been sluggish to respond to this discontent because two (sometimes overlapping) factions of our political and economic elite strongly support high levels of immigration — or at least oppose doing very much to stop it.
One of the factions — the business class and its neoliberal champions in government, think tanks, and NGOs — believes in a free-flowing international labor market that treats borders as superfluous.
The other faction — liberal lawyers, activists, intellectuals, journalists, academics, members of the clergy, and (once again) NGO staffers — has a deep-seated moral suspicion of nations and political boundaries in general. Why should an American count for more than a Mexican who crosses the border into the United States? Shouldn’t a refugee fleeing violence in North Africa enjoy full political rights upon setting foot in the European Union? Don’t all human beings deserve to be treated equally under the law? Isn’t opposition to such equality an example of bald-faced racism?
He’s not entirely mistaken, as these things go, but he’s leaving out one important factor: crass self interest.
Univeralism is all well and good as an explanation, but it’s crass self-interest that underlies most of the opposition to enforcement of existing immigration laws. Yes, crass self interest from business lobbies who want cheaper labor, but also crass self interest from left wing parties to construct a new electorate more to their liking. Tony Blair’s Labour Party did precisely this in the UK.
The Democrats believe (probably correctly) that a legalizing a massive influx of illegal aliens from Mexico and points south can help make them a permanent majority party, which is why they continue to support Obama’s unconstitutional and deeply unpopular illegal alien amnesty. It is this crass self interest that is why the Obama Administration refuses to deport illegal aliens who are taking entry level unskilled and manual labor jobs from the poor black and white Americans that used to make up their base. Indeed, for the Democratic Party it’s a twofer: they get a new voter from Mexico and they make an American more dependent on the big government welfare statism that is the bread and butter of their business model.
Illegal aliens may be bad for America, but they’re good for the Democratic Party. And that’s why Democrats in general, and the Obama Administration in specific, refuse to enforce border controls.
Tags:amnesty, Border Controls, Crime, Damon Linker, Democrats, demographics, Illegal Aliens, Labour, Obama Scandals, Tony Blair
Posted in Border Control, Democrats, Obama Scandals | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 25th, 2015
California has long had a tenuous grasp of what the rest of us regard as consensus reality. But two new pieces of legislation suggest they’ve gone off the deep end into full Victimhood Identity Politics land:
First, they decided that police shootings wouldn’t be subject to the grand jury process, because what’s a little things like two centuries of due process and the fifth amendment to the Constitution when there are policemen to be railroaded to satisfy black protesters?
They also decided to purge the words “illegal alien” from state statutes, because what’s mere law when there’s political correctness to be pandered to?
Of course, that’s not all that’s new on the Texas vs. California front:
“California taxpayers paid out big bucks to state workers in 2014. How much? More than the Gross Domestic Product of 100 countries, according to new data published by the State Controller’s office. In 2014, more than 650,000 state employees earned a total of $32 billion in wages and benefits.” It gets better: “Nine hundred sixty-nine state employees earned more than the President of the United States.” Added irony:
The lowest paid average workers represented agencies focused on the environment, women and people with disabilities. According to the state’s 2014 payroll data, the average salary for the 11 state employees at the California Commission on Disability Access was just $15,213 per year, slightly more than the $14,494 average salary paid to the four employees at the Commission on the Status of Women.
There is no California. Only Zuul…
Texas unemployment rate: 4.2%. California unemployment rate: 6.2%. (Hat tip: WILLism’s Twitter feed.)
Los Angeles’ new minimum wage has wrecked hotel employment. Or maybe just non-illegal alien employment… (Hat tip: Moe Lane.)
Why Public Services in California Decline Even As Revenues Rise. “Until California’s leaders address the three elephants – retirement, healthcare and corrections costs — that are crowding out public services and causing unproductive tax and fee increases, citizens will continue to suffer and inequality will continue to grow.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Chuck Devore on what makes Texas friendly to business: less red tape and lower taxes.
Voters to San Jose City Council: We want pension reform! San Jose City Council to voters: Get stuffed! (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
TV’s CHiPS never seemed to be involved in ethics scandals the way the current administration is, including no-bid contracts to European companies. (Bonus: it’s also suitable for Dwight’s Art Acevedo watch.)
California’s “Green Jobs Initiative” spent $297 million to create 1,700 jobs.
More on the same theme, and Tom Steyer wasting $29.6 million of his own money pushing it, from City Journal.
California’s SFX: from billion dollar company to bankruptcy.
Tags:Border Controls, Budget, California, Chuck DeVore, Crime, Democrats, environmentalism, fraud, minimum wage, pension crisis, Political Correctness, San Jose, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Tom Steyer, unions, waste, Welfare State
Posted in Border Control, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 5 Comments »
Monday, August 24th, 2015
Hmmm, I wonder what that could possibly be about…
Also, according to Ace, Biden has reportedly offered Elizabeth Warren the VP spot and promise to run a one-and-done Presidency.
That would make things very interesting indeed.
Tags:2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, Democrats, Elections, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden
Posted in Democrats, Elections | No Comments »
Friday, August 21st, 2015
Small LinkSwarm this time.
“Hillary Clinton is the contemporary poster child for special privileges for the rich and powerful.”
Latest Iran deal revelation: Iran gets to self-inspect their own nuclear site. But Kerry did get them to agree to pinky swear they’re telling the truth…
Obama and his party. “No president in modern times has presided over so disastrous a stretch for his party, at almost every level of politics.” Caveat the first: Although I think the phrase “there’s neither a Great Depression nor a criminal conspiracy in the White House to explain what has happened” is probably false on both counts. Caveat the second: Notice how the article carefully omits any mention of the specific Obama policies that have made his party so unpopular…
From back in June: Karl Rove lied about Ted Cruz. (Hat tip (tangentially): Perry vs. World, where Evan seems to have woken from his summer slumber…)
I really want to believe this Atlantic piece on how Russia is losing in Ukraine, but I just don’t. This one sentence has so much wrong with it I have trouble trusting the rest of the article: “Shale, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and renewables—three areas where Russia is extremely weak—are ascendant and are dramatically altering the market.” Shale’s a solid play if you’ve already tapped out more easily-extracted hydrocarbons (I doubt Russia has), LNG is a profitable byproduct if you’re already extracting oil, but at today’s market prices (which have sucked since 2009) it’s not worth pursuing on its own, and renewables? Hippie, please…
Muslim beats wife in front of police, saying they can’t arrest him because she’s his property.
Slovakia to the EU: Screw you, we’re not taking any Muslim refugees. (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
Movement in Spain tries to erase Salvador Dali from history. You’ll get my Salvador Dali from me when you pry the melting clocks out of my burning hands!
Could Google rig the next election?
It’s a Goldman-Sachs world. We just live in it…
Three students at the “Homestead Job Corps” murder a fourth. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that program isn’t working…
Missed this from earlier in the year: Arkansas cops attempt to plant malware on a lawyer’s computer, fail miserably.
Joe Straus is backing Jeb Bush. I don’t imagine that this will come as a shock to anyone…
Tags:2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Goldman Sachs, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton Scandals, Homestead Job Corps, Iran, Islam, Jeb Bush, Jihad, Joe Straus, Karl Rove, LNG, Russia, Salvador Dali, Slovakia, Spain, Ted Cruz
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, ObamaCare, Uncategorized | No Comments »